Mercury Rises by Robert Kroese

toward a parking lot crammed with the double-wide trailers that acted as the Anaheim Command Headquarters, On-site Operations, which had the unfortunate acronym ACHOO. He made his way through the maze of trailers to the one marked Central Briefing. Below the official sign identifying the building was a hand-painted piece of laminated cardboard that read GOOFIE. All of the trailers had been given cartoon character names that later had to be modified due to threat of a lawsuit. As a result, GOOFIE now sat nestled between MICKEE, DONULD and MINNEE. The U.S. military feared no fighting force on earth, but even it was no match for the army of attorneys that served the Mouse.
    Jacob walked up the ramp that led to GOOFIE and went inside, taking a seat at a table at the front of the room, along with the other members of the blast team. They sat with their backs against the wall, facing an assortment of military and civilian higher-ups that had gathered to hear them speak. This was to be the third briefing delivered to the Heads of the Joint Anaheim Command (unofficially known as HeadJAC) by the blast team. The previous two briefings consisted mainly of the blast team members pleading for more time to assess the situation, and there had been a lot of pressure leading up to this latest briefing to deliver some kind of preliminary report on what had happened. The blast team had, as a result, written up a sketchy eight-page report that was long on descriptive information and very short on causality. The report had been distributed to the HeadJAC members the previous day, but the real trial by fire was going to be the Q&A period following the briefing.
    After the briefing had been called to order, Kevin Samson began to read the report word for word, pausing often for generous drinks of water. Kevin had been chosen as the de facto spokesperson of the blast group because of his painfully deliberate, halting way of talking. Only thirty minutes had been allotted for the briefing; it was conceivable that he could use up the entire time reading the report and the Q&A period would have to be postponed.
    "Preliminary report on the kinesthetic dynamics of the Anaheim Event," Kevin began. "Um." He picked up a water bottle from the table in front of him, unscrewed the lid, put the opening to his lips, took several small swallows, screwed the lid back on, and set the bottle back down on the table. He continued, "Before drawing any conclusions from the, um, physical evidence present at the scene of the Anaheim Event, hereinafter referred to simply as 'the Event,' it is necessary to...undertake a, um, thorough cataloguing of the...data at hand." Kevin cleared his throat and continued, "To wit." He cleared his throat again, said, "Excuse me," and picked up the water bottle again. He unscrewed the lid, took several more sips, screwed the lid back on, and set it down once more. He began again, "To wit. Um."
    A gruff voice from the back of the room broke the silence. It was the deputy assistant director of the FBI, Dirk Lubbers. "Look," he said. "Do you know what kind of bomb this was or not?"
    Kevin paled. He riffled through the eight-page report as if looking for a section entitled "What Kind of Bomb It Was." He didn't find anything of the sort. "Um," said Kevin. "Before drawing any conclusions, um..."
    "For Christ's sake," Lubbers growled. "There are seven of you, and you've had six weeks to examine the scene. Surely you can tell us something ." Murmurs of assent bubbled up from the assembled members of HeadJAC.
    Brighton Quincy, another member of the blast team, spoke up. "We have a theory," he said, which was news to Jacob and the rest of the team.
    "Go on," said Lubbers.
    "We believe that a device producing an extremely high-temperature, symmetrical blast could conceivably have vaporized the stadium, converting much of the matter within range to plasma. The super-heated plasma would have shot upwards, creating a massive vacuum at the scene that would