The Hammer of God by Tom Avitabile Page A

SCIAD net. We can use it to process the tape in three minutes max.”
    Brooke entered the van and placed the camera and tape in front of her comm tech.
    â€œWhat’s this?” the tech asked.
    â€œYou’ll get instructions.”
    â€œFrom who?”
    Brooke spoke into her cell. “Bill, who’s gonna tell my tech what?”
    â€œMy guy Kronos will be on the line in a few seconds.”
    Brooke jutted the cell phone at the tech. “Can you capture this call?”
    â€œSure. What’s your number?”
    In a few seconds the patch was complete and over the speaker they all heard, “Kronos here. Who am I talking to?”
    â€œRich Hest, JTTF com officer.”
    â€œI’m Kronos. You got HTML?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œ512K Bandwidth?”
    â€œ1 meg.”
    â€œI’m going to multiplex that to 30 meg,” Kronos said.
    â€œWhoa, how you going to do that?”
    â€œMagicians oath. If I told you I’d have to make you disappear.”
    â€œOkay, I’ll just do what you tell me.”
    â€œCool. X,F,T,P, back slash, back slash, sciad, forward slash, admin.”
    â€œForward slash admin. Got it.
    â€œHere’s the answer to the challenge. Charlie, Siera, Tango, Romeo, Papa Siera.”
    The tech typed simultaneously as he listened. “Papa, Siera. I’m in.”
    â€œWhat are we uploading?” Kronos asked.
    â€œI got a HD camera here.”
    â€œFirewire?”
    â€œShit, no cable,” the tech said looking around.
    â€œI’m on it,” Brooke said as she bolted from the van. Once outside she yelled to Wallace. “We need all the wires!”
    Wallace reached into his car, grabbing the whole bag and ran back meeting her halfway.
    âˆžÂ§âˆž
    Janice took the lull in the action to ask, “What’s going on?”
    â€œKronos is rewiring my network and pulling off another miracle.”
    â€œOh, that.”
    âˆžÂ§âˆž
    Brooke opened the bag and the tech found a cord that had a small plug at one end and larger one at the other. He put the small end in the camera and the other in an Core i7 - iMac that was in the van. “Okay I’m hooked up.”
    Kronos came back on the line. “I just set up, back slash, back slash, tape. Upload to that.”
    â€œOkay, I pressed play; it’s on its way.”
    â€œBill, where’s this going?” Kronos asked.
    â€œFBI labs in New York and Washington, TSA, DHS and Face Recognition Systems in Roanoke.”
    â€œI better send them all this Ultra HD video codec as well, so they won’t waste time. They never got video like this before.”
    None of this was lost on Brooke’s tech in the van. “Whoa, real-time HiDEF full-bandwidth upload? Who runs this thing?”
    â€œNeed to know only, Rich. Erase and forget it when this is over, understood?”
    â€œYes, Sir, Ma’am.”
    Kronos had the backdoor shut and SCIAD secure thirty seconds after the tape finished uploading.
    Bill asked the tech to hand the phone back to Brooke. “Brooke, what happened up there?”
    â€œLooks like these guys had cold cream jars filled with a bio agent of some kind that had its own heat source.”
    One of the cops entered with the empty case they found in the shootout room.
    â€œCould be a viral strain, one that needs to incubate right up to the point of release. Are we contained?”
    â€œA few jars got shot up, some were smashed, and one was opened by a cop.” Brooke noted the stamp “24 count” on the side of the cardboard. “It looks like there were twenty-four of them.”
    â€œBrooke, lockdown immediately! The risk of secondary contamination is too high.”
    â€œI already ordered a secure perimeter. I have Bio-response on the way. Any idea what we could be dealing with here?”
    â€œThere’s no way to know for sure, but we were just war gaming an attack with HCD Complex 33. It’s a