Pyramid Scheme by Dave Freer and Eric Flint

There was a silence on the other end of the line. Then: “You’re asking me to use my men as guinea pigs?”

Miggy saw no point in trying to deny it. “Yes. I’m afraid so.”

There was another long silence. “Very well. But you’d better not be wrong.”

“Pull them out the minute one disappears. Get them out of the five-hundred-meter perimeter.”

“It’s gone up to 673 meters,” said McNamara grimly. “At least.”

Tremelo sighed. “And the device has increased in size by steady incremental jumps. The whole west wing of the Regenstein has pretty much collapsed around it. Won’t be long, at this rate, before the whole building is nothing but rubble.” He ran fingers through his gray hair and then asked abruptly: “How did the satchel charges work out, by the way?”

There was another silence from the other end of the line. “You weren’t supposed to know about that.”

“I have infrasound and ultrasound monitoring teams on the site, Colonel, with the best equipment in the world. I could probably have listened to playbacks of the combat engineers’ conversation. Besides, the NSA told me.”

It was McNamara’s turn to sigh. “We lost two men. Snatched from inside the tunnel. And the explosives had no effect at all on the pyramid. But you probably know that already.”

“Yes. But I’d like a couple of my men to examine the debris and have access to information about the volume of the explosive. We can learn quite a lot from that.”

“Be my guest. Of course, I’m not supposed to tell you we did this.”

Tremelo chuckled. “I won’t tell the NSA if you don’t.”

* * *

After he hung up the phone, Miggy stared at the mass of paper on his desk. It was the small hours of the morning and he’d been up since the small hours of the previous morning. His eyes kept refusing to focus. The U.S. government’s mobilization was in full steam now. Midway had become a military base, for all practical purposes, and the streets of South-Central Chicago rumbled with Army vehicles.

And the new troops were losing about one man in ten the moment they crossed the invisible barrier which the troops were starting to call the “snatch zone.” Most of the snatchees—87%—came back dead almost immediately. Which was just about the same “snatch” and casualty rate as that suffered by the initial group of paratroopers.

All except for that one group. They lost only two people, right at the beginning. Since then—all six of them are still unaccounted for.

He peered blearily at the paper sitting right in front of him. The leaden prose had official document stamped all over it.

IMMEDIATE

FM: CJCS WASHINGTON DC//

TO: USCINCJFCOM NORFOLK VA//

USCINCSOC MACDILL AFB FL//

USCINCSPACE FALCON AS CO//

HQ NORAD CHEYENNE MT CO//

USCINCTRANS SCOTT AFB IL//

HQ ACC LANGLEY AFB VA//CC//

HQ USFORSCOM FT MCPHERSON GA//

* * *

“And on and on,” muttered Tremelo. “Christ, is there anyone they didn’t mobilize?” He scanned through to the end of the list of recipients—USCINCPAC HONOLULU HI, for the love of God!—and got to the meat of the thing.

• * *

•

BT

SECRET SECTION 01 OF 01

SUBJ: HASTY RECEIVER EXECUTE ORDER //

S E C R E T

OPER/HASTY RECEIVER//

MSGID/SYS.RRM//

REF A/DOC/NATIONAL SECURITY DIRECTIVE 346//

REF B/ORD/HASTY RECEIVER OPERATIONS ORDER//

REF C/LOI/JOINT OPERATIONS PLANNING AND EXECUTION SYSTEM (JOPES) LETTER OF INSTRUCTION (LOI)//

GENTEXT/IMMEDIATE EXECUTION OPERATIONS HASTY RECEIVER

1. (U) IAW NCA DIRECTION REF A, SECDEF ORDERS ALL ACTION ADDRESSEES TO BEGIN IMMEDIATE EXECUTION OF OPERATION HASTY RECEIVER. USCINCJFCOM IS DESIGNATED SUPPORTED CINC AND WILL ACTIVATE STANDING JTF. FALLING ANVIL PHENOMENON LOCATED WITHIN HYDE PARK DISTRICT, CITY OF CHICAGO. UPON RECEIPT OF THIS MESSAGE, ALL ILLINOIS NATIONAL GUARD AND AIR NATIONAL GUARD UNITS ARE NATIONALIZED UNDER THE COMBATANT COMMAND (COCOM) OF USCINCJFCOM AND WILL ASSEMBLE AT NORMAL DUTY LOCATIONS. IAW PUBLIC LAW SUPPORTING REF A, POSSE COMITATUS RESTRICTIONS ARE LIFTED WITHIN HASTY RECEIVER AREA OF RESPONSIBILITY (AOR).

* * *

“Well, that’s something useful, anyway,” Tremelo growled. “At least we won’t have every damn soldier dancing around scared to death he’s violating the law by telling a civilian to get the lead out. What few civilians are still left in the area.”