The Archimedes Effect by Tom Clancy Read Free Book Online Page B

focused on the model. He triggered some code and abruptly the model on the table grew larger, until he was standing at the entrance, scaled to appropriate size.
    He walked forward and tapped the left side of the entrance. A tiny window appeared midair, spelling out the gate’s dimensions. Underneath the black figures were blue ones.
    Let’s see. . . . Aha—
    The blue figures were the ones he’d pulled from public sources, and the black ones were from the files that General Ellis had arranged for him to receive. He’d kept the public records in the few instances where they differed.
    And they were different. The black figures read sixteen feet, eight inches. The blue ones read eighteen feet six inches. A simple transposition.
    Could it be the wrong base?
    He checked the other parameters—distance to the rock wall, thickness of the door, composition of the wall. No. The match was good.
    Which was very interesting indeed.
    Whether it was the military’s measurements that were correct, or whether the public records were right, wasn’t what was important—the difference of twenty-two inches didn’t matter. What was important was that the figures from the game matched the military numbers.
    Whoever had coded the game had used the military’s files.
    Nothing like finding a clue to brighten your morning. The devil was in the details, and today Old Scratch was on Jay’s side. He’d take it. But the general was sure gonna be pissed off about this.

5

Nighthawk Cafe
Alexandria, Virginia
    Carruth frowned. “I was lookin’ forward to collecting that nuke. What happened?”
    Rachel Lewis, dressed down in civilian clothes, smiled. Collecting the nuke had never been in the cards, though she hadn’t bothered to let Carruth in on that. They were in a booth in a small cafe on a dead-end street behind a new strip mall. Lewis liked to find places where the service was terrible and business was slow, but hadn’t found anything like that here in Alexandria. She’d chosen this place instead because it was frequented by locals, not tourists, and was quiet during this time of the day. You could dawdle here for an hour and nobody would bother you, or likely sit close enough to overhear you.
    She said, “The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs pulled on Net Force’s leash sooner than I expected. Jay Gridley, their best guy, is on it, and by now he will have figured out how I set the game up, and he will have run with it. The brass are peeing all over themselves, they’ll give him whatever he asks for, and he’s quick. He’ll track the DCP—he’s bound to be able to pick up early copies of it—and he’ll know which bases we used.”
    “Is he any threat?”
    “Not to me. Oh, I’ll admit that he’s got some moves, but so do I, and I have the advantage—I know who he is.”
    “Well . . . crap. So that means we can’t use any of the stuff we got?”
    “Not from the original game scenario. We have two sets of follow-ups. Gridley will get the first game, and, eventually, he’ll think to look for more DCPs, but those are almost ready, another day or two, we can harvest them and trash the rest. He can’t backwalk any of them to me.”
    Carruth nodded, sipped at his coffee, frowned. “This tastes better than most coffee you buy me, Lewis.”
    She smiled. “I aim to please.” She didn’t bother explaining her choice of diners to him.
    “So, what now?”
    “I’ll get you the stats on the next target the day after tomorrow. The Army will have upped security everywhere, but we factored that in. Gridley will give them a list of the first round of targets and they will think that’s it, so that’s where they’ll beef things up. They are as predictable as winter snow in North Dakota.”
    Carruth shook his head. “You really got a hard-on for the Army, don’tcha, hon?”
    She fixed him with a stare that could etch glass. “First, that’s none of your business. Second, you call me ‘hon’ again, you are going to be looking for