CHARIOTS OF ARMAGEDDON

[Christopher]

OPENING SCENE - Introduces antagonist, provides initial setting, establishes tone, introduces protagonists, and foreshadows the primary conflict.

CHAPTER ONE.

Everyone knows that just about everything in the U. S. is shipped by trucks, more than 10 billion tons of freight each year. Trucks are indispensable. Fruit, razor blades, computers, lumber, chickens. This is the linchpin of American commerce. Put another way, trucks move 72 per cent of the nation’s goods.

But not everyone knows that trucks deliver all the U. S. nuclear bombs from the factory to the military! A person might drive past a convoy full of nukes just rolling along Interstate 95 at the posted sped limit without ever knowing it. These trucks are the Chariots of Armageddon. One other thing about these operations is that not everyone knows that these same trucks are the weakest link in the otherwise highly secure chain that protects the United State’s 4,000 nuclear weapons.

The National Nuclear Security Administration is the U. S. Government organization that owns this nuclear trucking company. In the suite of the Director of the Office of Secure Transportation, the nuclear trucking company known by the acronym OST, ludicrous animated sloths and laughable woolly mammoths cavorted on a 34-inch ultra high resolution widescreen computer monitor. In blazes of extreme contrasting colors, bulging eyes morphed into toothy grins and faded to frightful faces.

People glancing at the caricatures usually looked away in confusion or embarrassment, because the child’s screen saver was incongruous on a high-ranking civil servant’s office PC. No visitor to the office ever said a word about this peculiarity. Having assured anonymity of cartoon imagery that drew the eye to the screen, Donald Nimick, effectively curtained off an audacious and unauthorized bitcoin mining operation under his desk. Nimick was greatly satisfied whenever he could hide things in plain sight. A lifetime of obfuscation made him very, very good at it.

Anything having to do with cryptocurrency trade or acquisition was illegal on a U. S. government-owned computer. Nimick’s cryptographic solution generator was ciphering away during business hours, no less, and it used significant electrical power for the operation from the building’s substantial energy grid. This was a triple play crime. But bitcoin wasn’t about making the Director of OST rich beyond his otherwise modest government salary.

To Nimick, it was more about using his intelligence to get away with something felonious, and secretly laughing about it behind everyone else’s back. In the bigger picture, Nimick’s lawlessness was merely a dry run for the real retribution that he planned. Because no one even remotely suspected this guy with an overtly spotless record, Nimick was arguably the worst individual to be in the position of trust overseeing and managing the transportation of nuclear weapons.

Nimick settled back in a comfortable Aeron ergonomic chair and dialed an out of state number on his office desk phone from memory. His party picked up at the other end on the second ring, and greeted the Director by name thanks to the callerID technology on her office phone. Nimick replied in an even but pleasant voice, “Hello Doctor Summer, I hope all is well at work. I want to let you know that I have no further comments or inputs for you. I would like to get the final status of our project from you, before flying out to Oak Ridge for the commissioning meeting next week.” Nimick paused briefly for effect.

Before Catalina “Cat” Contreras-Summer, PhD, could interject, Nimick continued but now with a smile on his lips that could be deduced by voice inflection over the phone, “I might add that in my opinion, and by all accounts, the deliverable appears to be flawless, and I commend your team.”

Cat, the program manager of the work being discussed, was wholly delighted by Nimick’s statement. In her soft Texas twang, Cat replied, “Your complements are very kind, Mr. Nimick, and I will pass them along to the team! I’m glad you don’t have any further inputs. That last set of scripts you sent us were especially difficult to work into this final version of the program at the very last minute. I’m sure these will add the functionality you require.”

Cat had always been nervous about the detailed inputs Nimick had provided over the course of two-plus years of project development, but his last request almost caused a schedule variance. Nimick would be a direct user of the program as a Director of OST when it went live, and Cat had to comply with Nimick’s requests even if they were slightly out of scope of the contract. Cat also knew that Nimick was a brilliant specialist, and that he insisted on designing some of his own quirky, yet important, capabilities that were to be built into the final version of the state-of-the-art program. But what’s more, his budget provided about a fourth of the funding for the work, so Nimick was a stakeholder, as well as simply an end user. Nimick was therefore a very important person.

Cat finished, “Everything is on track, sir. We have zero issues. The bulk of the code executes as envisioned and designed. Your scripts execute as you specified them. We have uploaded the latest version to the Oak Ridge supercomputer, and let me reiterate that we are going gold with this stable release version. Still, we will be reviewing, evaluating, testing, and if necessary patching the code right up to the very last minute we board our flights for the commissioning meeting. As a result, the commissioning will be an uneventful day, and maybe even a bit boring.”

Cat had already provided the final status that the software had been released to production in an Email yesterday. Maybe Nimick didn’t look at his inbox, but he should have already known the status because there was never any indication of a variance in the schedule or change of plans for the verification in the past two weeks. Cat let herself believe that Nimick was just being courteous, but his bedside manner, so to speak, was curt, perhaps condescending, and always atrocious. Cat really didn’t care for Nimick, and she was a person that always saw the best in everybody. She worked with, and managed all kinds of people for decades, good and bad, yet she couldn’t put her finger on exactly where her dislike came from in Director Nimick’s case.

Nimick processed her reply, one side of his mouth rose in a slight smile, and he ended the call abruptly by saying, “Very well Doctor. I will see you in Oak Ridge. Enjoy the rest of your evening.” As usual, he didn’t wait for Cat to reply, but gently cradled the handset and broke the connection.

The peculiar smile on Nimick’s face changed to a blank expression as he wasted no time and immediately picked up the handset again to dial a second number from memory. The party at the other end of the line picked up immediately and said, “Office of Secure Transportation. Federal Agent Contreras speaking. How may I assist you?”

Nimick replied courteously yet authoritatively in the voice of a superior, but with the familiarity of someone who hailed from the same para-military organization, “Dart, this is the Chief. What is today’s status on the new big rigs?”

The first phase in modernizing the OST trucking fleet was nearly complete. While Nimick was involved with the software project because of his background in computers, the 18-wheeler project was the biggest and most important undertaking within OST in its history of operations. The current vehicles were aging and rusting out after 30 years of service, and some had started to fail safety and security tests periodically. Millions of miles does that to a vehicle, and there is only so much proverbial duct tape and Bondo resin filler that can be applied to hold things together. The need for new vehicles was obvious.

Nimick had secured Congressional approval for the capital improvement project. After initial funding was authorized, and near the end of a 6-year development effort, three new blast-proof semi-tractor trailer transport vehicles were about to roll off the assembly line, ready for road trials. The contractor was scheduled to perform some final interface and control evaluations on the factory floor for at least one of the three new units this week. But they had been working overtime to complete all three first-line production units in an ambitious last-minute push.

Nimick had been encouraging the contractor to speed completion near the end of the project. He already knew the tests on the three units would ultimately turn out to be successful, since he had clandestinely hacked into the master interface and control computer and reviewed the data from last week’s results. The data were perfect for nothing less than carrying the most valuable strategic assets held by the U. S. Of course, the contractor was bound to provide triple redundant testing at this phase, but the last few tests nevertheless seemed to move along at a glacial pace, especially for someone watching more or less impotently from the sidelines.

Nimick had his own personal timetable that he was aiming for, which was self-imposed and had nothing to do with the official contract or delivery schedule. He was trying to line up the commissioning of Cat’s computer project with the rollout of the new vehicles for his own purposes. He withheld his hidden agenda from everyone, and he worried that his time to dovetail the two outwardly disparate programs was running short.

Federal Agent Ricardo “Dart” Contreras, secure cellular phone held up to his ear, was juggling his normal convoy command duties with overseeing the final vehicle deliverable stages. Dart was a competent end user of those goods, and wanted nothing but perfection out of a final product he would put his life on the line for every time these were used. After all, he was the senior driver and a convoy commander for OST. He knew that the project was humming along beautifully. Dart himself didn’t care to push the development contractor any more than he had to, especially with what he considered to be the Chief’s phony schedule nonsense. The workers were right on track in Dart’s book. If the team was driven harder, somebody might make a mistake that could knock the overall schedule back a week or more. Why poke the bear?

Dart thought better of saying something unprofessional or vulgar to his superior at this point, and instead confessed smartly to the Director, “Chief, we’re completing the final tests on the third production unit right now. We’ve reason to believe that we’ll finish up all three units successfully by 1630 hours local time today. I can’t, in good conscience, rush the staff in case there’s a mistake. I will Email my report along to you first thing Monday.” Dart wondered what it was that was making Nimick so uptight right at the end of final development.

Chief Nimick was inwardly pleased, but he wasn’t going to allow that emotion to surface. He spoke without intonation or emphasis, “Well done, Dart. I look forward to getting that report from you. See you down the road.”

He hung up and allowed himself that asymmetrical smile, almost a sneer this time. A pernicious game board was just about set up. Now he needed to start moving the playing pieces. All the while, the sloths and mammoths continued their macabre promenade on Nimick’s computer monitor.