Extinction Machine

Chapter One Hundred One

House of Jack Ledger

Near Robinwood, Maryland

Sunday, October 20, 9:16 p.m.

“Great plan,” I said to Bunny, “and what exactly is our band of ‘bad guys’ supposed to do? Who should we go and rough up?”

“Um,” said Bunny. “yeah … there’s that.”

“Do you have a suggestion, Captain?” asked Church.

“Maybe,” I said. “There’s one name that keeps coming up in this. In the cyber-attacks, in the field of radical weapons and technology … and on the list of possible M3 members Junie put together. Well, guess what, Rudy made a bunch of calls today to UFO experts and one question he asked everyone was who is most likely to be a member of M3. People threw a lot of names around, but there’s one name that appeared on over eighty percent of the lists. Anyone want to take a guess?”

It was Junie who answered.

“Howard Shelton.”

Mr. Church nodded.

“Howard Shelton,” I agreed. “He was even there when your father—or whatever he was—was winning the prizes that got him recruited by DARPA.”

“Wait,” said Ivan, “how could it be Shelton? Those cyber-attacks slammed him. All those dead people at Wolf Trap? The attacks on his computers…”

“If we were discussing someone who was well balanced,” said Mr. Church, “I would be inclined to agree that Mr. Shelton is an unlikely candidate. But I can see where Captain Ledger is going with this. Shelton could be making himself bleed in order to prove that he is a victim and not the attacker. There are a lot of cases of that kind of pathology.”

“Pretty elaborate way to establish an alibi,” said Ivan.

“And pretty effective,” I said. “Especially if the areas taking the cyber-hits were important—but not important to his plans with M3 and the T-craft.”

“Hold on,” said Pete, “I don’t know a lot about Shelton. Who is he?”

Bunny tapped some keys on the MindReader substation and a picture of a man’s face appeared. “Meet Howard Shelton, grade-A scum-sucker.”

The face on the screen was a professional portrait of a sixty-something man with warm brown eyes, silver hair, strong jaw, straight nose, and perfect teeth. He looked like the kind of actor who played the older, wiser doctor on soap operas. He exuded warmth and confidence. The photographer even contrived to suggest the barest hint of a twinkle in his eyes.

“Run him down for us, Junie,” I said. “Why’s he at the top of our list?”

“He’s a billionaire from Pennsylvania,” she said. “Mostly old money, but a lot of it. His family’s been tied to politics since Teddy Roosevelt but none of the Sheltons have ever held office. Shelton’s companies hold defense contracts to the tune of sixteen billion.”

Mr. Church said, “Shelton is also a principal stockholder in Blue Diamond Security.”

“Okay,” asked Pete, “but how does that tie Shelton to UFOs and stuff?”

Junie recapped for the team what she’d said during the video conference, about companies that made fortunes off unexpected and radical design leaps. “If you look at companies that have made more unusual and varied breakthroughs, and you trace outright ownership or significant stock ownership, then again you have a short list of names, and Shelton’s name is always on the list.”

“How much of this do you know,” I asked, “and how much is guesswork?”

“It’s all guesswork,” she said. “No, let me correct that—the financial picture based on radical patents is real. The connection to the DoD and DARPA is real. The connection to every new generation of stealth technology is real. The guesswork is that he’s tapping alien tech as the source. And that he’s a member of M3.”

“The kicker for me,” I said, “is the controlling interest in Blue Diamond. I think if we scratched the surface of these Closers we’d find that most or all of them work for Blue Diamond.”

Pete made a face. “I don’t know if I buy it. I mean, when it comes to big business, how can you tell the difference between someone who really believes in doing what’s right for the common good and someone who does it to make a profit? A lot of industrialists have profited off every war, that doesn’t make them bad guys. And not to sound corny or anything, but there’s still that whole Constitution thing.”

“There is one more factor,” said Church. “Something that Bug found, but it’s not really proof. More a lack of proof. There is no official record of Howard Shelton ever being investigated. Not by a congressional committee, not by the FBI or the DEA. You know that when MindReader exits a system it erases its tracks? Most computers can’t do that at all, and even the very best ones leave a bit of a twitch in the software. Like a scar. However, when Bug looked for any trace of official investigations into Howard Shelton, all he could find were scars in those places where case files or even case numbers should be.”

“So he’s managed to expunge his record?” asked Junie.

“Expunge it and clean it up so well that all anyone—even MindReader—can do is find smudged fingerprints. That has Bug very worried. No known system should be able to do that, which means that there is an unknown system out there. Something that operates very much like MindReader.”

I snapped my fingers. “And that’s how they’re doing the cyber-attacks!”

“That would be my guess,” agreed Church. “With a system like that it would be relatively easy to shift blame toward the DMS. Bug tells me that the system may, in fact, be so harmonious that it’s allowed them to hack MindReader.”

We all turned to stare at the computer.

“Frightening, isn’t it?” said Church.

I reached over to turn the computer off.

“That won’t be necessary, Captain,” said Church. “Bug has introduced some aggressive new software into the anti-intrusion system. He believes that MindReader is protected now.”

“Believes or knows?”

Church merely smiled.

Junie looked around the room. “What happens now?”

I stood up. “We get some rack time, and then by dawn’s early light we go and pay a call on Howard Shelton.”

“How? Do you just bust in?”

“Sadly, no. Pete’s right, there’s a constitutional issue. If there’s even the slightest chance Shelton is innocent, then I’m not willing to destroy him because I made a bad call. No, we’ll go in and ask some questions. Like … are you a member of M3? Do you have the Black Book? And did you just kill two hundred of my friends? Questions like that.”

“God, whether he’s innocent or guilty he’ll throw you out.”

“He is welcome to try.”