The Big Blitz

By Jean Baptiste Doucet

After a late-night phone call from his former PhD mentee and fiancée, Priscilla Kleitman, Doctor James Doucet finds out that her former boyfriend, Shaun Phillip-Jousa, has developed a way of harnessing lightning bolts to set off powerful E-bombs that could black-out entire cities. Meeting with Priscilla in Kansas, they investigate what she believes is a “test run” of his lightning powered E-bomb which has knocked out the city of Manhattan and nearby Fort Riley. Caught by Agents “Dee” Kowalski and “Deedee” Dubchek, as they are sneaking onto the bomb site, they are taken to the hastily erected headquarters of the bomb site investigation team. There, they are invited to join the Top Secret Homeland Security Department division known as the Domestic Analysis and Investigation Division.
Once recruited by what Jim and Priscilla perceive as an erratic and somewhat eccentric band of secret agents, they are off to Washington DC to help them find the other E-bombs Shaun has already constructed and planted in three major cities on the East Coast.
Divided into search teams and guided only by Jim’s deductions on how the E-bombs might be hidden, Jim takes his team on a search through the northern reaches of Washington while Priscilla accompanies her team to New York City. There, she and Dee meet up with the real master-mind of Operation Big Blitz, Morrison Hadley, Priscilla’s former step-dad and CEO of Merrimac Industries, Inc., a very large defense contractor just recently discredited by Congress for unethical practices in Afghanistan. Morrison kidnaps Priscilla and has his henchmen tie Dee to the New York City E-bomb he has built atop of the GE Building.
Meanwhile, in Washington, Jim, along with Agents Smith, Dubchek and Bailey find the camouflaged quarry site of the DC E-bomb only minutes before an approaching storm sets off the device with a lightning bolt. The resultant electromagnetic pulse does more than shut down Washington DC and most of Baltimore; it kills Priscilla, who had been tied into the lightning circuit only hours before by Morrison. Shocked and depressed, Jim finds no console in the fact that Dubchek’s partner, Agent Kowalski, must also be dead. Sullenly, they wait while Agent Smith, who is also the Agency’s only Medical Examiner, attempts to find some clue Priscilla may have left that would tell them where the third and last E-bomb might be.
In New York, Dee Kowalski is rescued from the E-bomb by Agents White and Brown and successfully deactivates the device with the help of “Moses” and the NYPD Bomb Squad. Learning of the successful E-bomb attack on Washington DC, Agents Kowalski, White and Brown rush down to Andrews Air Force Base where the other members of DAID have set up a temporary command post. Along with Mr. Peabody, and the Agency’s “clean-up crew,” they fly up to the quarry where Jim and his agents are waiting with information on the whereabouts of the third E-bomb. But after flying down to a container yard in Newport, they discover the container number Priscilla had written on her body, contains only the tied up “straw man” of Morrison’s operation, a French Foreign Legion agent by the name of Jacque Malet.
But news is received that the Coast Guard Cutter, Monitor, has intercepted and sequestered a semi-submersible boat towing a strange missile on its own floating launch pad. Flying out to the Cutter on two Coast Guard helicopters, Jim, Smith, Bailey, and Kowalski discover that not only has the crew of the Monitor successfully captured the third E-bomb but Morrison Hadley as well. But during an escape attempt, Morrison is accidentally shot and killed by Kowalski. Jim insists on scuttling the E-bomb rocket with explosives, the Captain of the Monitor agrees, and they destroy the last E-bomb with depth charges while the ship’s crew and DAID agents watch and take videos.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jean Baptiste Doucet
• Release date: Apr 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310568145

Jean Baptiste Doucet

Jean Baptiste Ducet lives in a far, far Western suburb of Chicago with his wife, Martha and their faithful canine companion, Nelly. Besides writing, “J.B” enjoys bicycling, vacationing, and boating with his wife. Otherwise, he can be found in his backyard machine shop inventing something “ecologically and economically worthwhile.” Born in Toronto, Canada, he moved to Chicago with his parents in 1949 when he was already two years old. There, he attended various parochial and public schools in Chicago until being summarily drafted into the United States Army in 1965, where he serve one tour of duty in Vietnam and returned to Illinois to attend the same University at which his son, James, is a Physics Professor. After several years of teaching Industrial Arts at a well-known Chicago High School, he later went on to earn his Masters Degree and Doctorate, earning him a position at a prominent Suburban Junior College. Although retired, he occasionally gives guest lectures at various Illinois Universities and Colleges on the “State of Manufacturing Technology in America.” When contemplating the career path of his two sons, James and Lamont, he cannot imagine any two career paths as being any more dissimilar than theirs.

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Prologue

In the months and years after 9/11 the United States Government took supreme measures to make sure that terrorists would never again attack American citizens on native soil. One of these measures was the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Another was the creation of an agency whose very existence was to remain TOP SECRET. Euphemistically called the Domestic Security Department, their mission was and is to seek out, investigate, and neutralize any and all threats of Domestic terrorism directed against the United States, its cities, and infrastructure- by any means possible.

Chapter One

THE CALL

Hunched over the railing of the deck of his facsimile log cabin home, Doctor James T. Doucet was lost in thought. He was dimly aware of the gathering storm approaching him from the west. Drawing one last breath of smoke out of the cigarette in his hand, he flicked it casually onto the flagstone patio below him. Swirling the last few sips of Scotch around in the glass he held in his left hand, he raised it to his lips and finished it, too. Putting the glass down on the deck railing, he sighed. For this late in the season, the storm seemed to be more ominous than usual. He had read somewhere that the total energy of a good thunderstorm was equal to that of a fair-sized atom bomb. He smiled wryly to himself, only a physics professor would think of something like that.

Dressed only in slacks and a dark tee shirt, he settled his ebony arms onto the railing. Around him the wind started increasing, picking up cadence and speed as the advancing storm closed in on the two storied house. To either side of Jim's home was a sparsely populated forest of oak trees, rooted with thorn bushes and weeds. He'd never bothered to clear them, and left them unattended for the false sense of privacy they seemed to give him. From the previous year's harvest of fallen leaves, the wind whipped up the smell of fresh earth. It was only one of the reasons Jim had moved to a place so far outside of the city.

The first few drops of falling rain splattered down on Jim's face and closely cropped hair. He ran his hand over the top of his head brushing at the matted hair, sprinkled through with tufts of gray. He looked surprisingly at the deck. Is it hailing? he asked himself, spying several confirming white specks of fallen ice on the dark brown deck. Grabbing his empty glass, he went inside closing the patio door behind him. His retreat from the elements had brought him inside to his bedroom. He put his glass down on the bed stand stacked with Walter Mosley novels, stripped off his tee shirt and rapidly walked over to the bathroom to grab a towel. Drying off, he noticed that it had gotten awfully dark awfully quick. The lack of any inside lighting seemed to heighten the transition. The rain and pellet-sized hail began to fall with increased intensity. Over the loudening drumming of rain and hail, Jim could just barely hear the buzzing of his cell phone on the dresser. He saw it just as it scuttled off of the dresser and onto the carpet. Quickly, he scooped it up.

Hello.

Jim, he recognized the female voice immediately, a former mentee of his at the University. She had since moved down to Lawrence, Kansas, after receiving her Doctorate. In the long hours he had spent, helping her with her dissertation, concocting odd experiments, and coaching her to pass her Doctorate exam, their relationship had developed into more than just a professional association. The match was so paradoxical that none of their close associates had ever suspected that they were lovers. Jim, being of African-American descent, and Priscilla, a red head with bright green eyes and a Texas accent so thick you could spread it on bread, as she was used to saying, were not the typical couple people were used to accepting. So, they didn't, always assuming that the conversations between the two lovers were strictly professional in nature, having to do with quantum physics, electromagnetic wave theory, Fourier analysis, or some other esoteric aspect of the couple's shared vocation. This appalling denial allowed Jim and Priscilla to carry on their relationship for over five years, even after she had moved to Lawrence.

Jim, you need to get down here as soon and as fast as you can.

Ah, was all he got to say before she burst in again.

It really is very, she emphasized the word 'very,' important.

Where? he asked.

Usual place, she answered, in fact, I'm calling you from number five right now.

The 'usual place' was a motel on the outskirts of Lawrence, Jim referred to it as the 'In-and-Out-Motel,' but never to Priscilla, who called it the 'No-Tell-Motel.' They'd agreed on meeting there whenever Jim went down to Kansas, as Priscilla's cramped apartment was well watched by her many nosey neighbors. Jim's own residence afforded a modicum of privacy which they took advantage of whenever she came up to visit him, immediately parking her car in Jim's rendition of a log cabin garage.

Alright, I'm getting dressed, I'm driving down there, even though it's raining and hailing outside, he held his cell phone out, hoping she could hear the syncopated roar of rain and ice hitting his patio doors. When he returned the phone to his ear, he could hear her laughing.

I believe you, she laughed again. I'm watching the weather channel right now.

You couldn't tell me-

Not on the phone, she interrupted him, really, she spoke in a monosyllabic cadence, not on the phone.

Okay, I'm going to have to call Wendell and let him know I'll be out tomorrow, then, I'm on my way.

Love you, she said.

I love you, too, Baby. He was about to close up his cell phone when she called out.

Jim!

Yeah! he was dancing around, trying to get his wet slacks off when he heard her shout and put the phone back up to his ear.

I'm not pregnant.

Jim stopped hopping. If you were - well, you know... was all he said.

I know, she answered slowly.

Hey, Jim changed the mood suddenly, let me get dressed and out to my car, so I can see you, love ya!

Okay, she seemed to brighten at the prospect of seeing him again, Bye.

By the time Jim was ready to leave, the rain had slacked off to a gentle prattle. He went through his usual misgivings of not having the garage attached to the house, not having installed an automatic garage door opener, and not owning at least one decent umbrella as he went out to his vehicle to leave. By the time he was in his car and circling the driveway to get out onto the street, his clothes were just on the threshold of uncomfortably wet.

He turned on the heat and blower in his small car to clear the fog off the windshield and hopefully, drive some of the moisture out of his slacks and jacket. Concentrating on the trip ahead of him, he shifted through the gears and settled on fourth to take him through the neighborhood streets until he could wind out the engine and take advantage of the remaining two gears.

His was a sporty little car. His decision to buy it was probably borne more from middle aged angst than economic sensibility. He was accustomed to using a standard transmission, stirring the gear shift lever and pushing down on the clutch pedal whenever the engine needed a change of tempo to keep him going. It was a preference gained from his father, whose own preference forced his mother to also learn how to drive a standard shift transmission, or stay stranded at home.

Once out on the highway, he finally dropped the shifting lever into sixth gear and settled in for the almost seven hour drive ahead of him. Just that morning, he had changed out a couple of CDs in his player and decided to enjoy them uninterruptedly before testing his ability at finding a decent music station to listen to on the radio. He liked contemporary jazz, mainly, because, he thought to himself, he liked contemporary jazz. He could never really give any reason or logic for it, it just happened to be what he liked. As the first few rifts of music filled the interior of his car with a vibrant bass and crisp treble, Jim slapped the steering wheel. Damn! He just remembered the thermos bottle of fresh, hot coffee sitting on the center cabinet of his kitchen.

It wasn't raining in Kansas when he got there. Actually, for most of the trip, Jim enjoyed clear weather, dry roads, and the satisfaction of watching the sun set straight out in front of him accompanied by the music of his newly bought CDs. He negotiated Kansas City, reminding himself for the hundredth time, that he should probably get a CD with that song on it about goin' to Kansas City, since he did so about two times a month.

At the motel, he rapped softly at the door. He could hear the television inside, a movie from so very long ago that Jim could remember the story line explicitly, but not the title. After almost a minute, he knocked again, louder, thinking that Priscilla had fallen asleep. With one last long pause, followed by an even louder knock, Priscilla finally opened the door. When she saw Jim through her half closed eyes, she smiled weakly.

Hi, I was sleeping, she grabbed his hand and pulled him into the room. Once inside with the door closed, she fell up against him, her head resting on his shoulder. Several seconds went by as she stood unmoving, and Jim began to wonder if she'd fallen asleep again, since she had always been a difficult person to wake up and get going in the morning.

Jim, she barely mumbled, just take off your clothes...leave your skivvies on...all I want to do right now is sleep.

Sure, he bent down and scooped her up in his arms and brought her over to the bed. Laying her down, he noticed she was still fully dressed. He covered her up and got ready for bed himself.

MANHATTAN MONITOR (UP) - Authorities are investigating the explosion of a propane tank mounted on an RV that was parked at Tuttle Creek Lake State Park last Monday night. The tank was struck by lightning at about eleven thirty PM. Apparently no one was injured and surprisingly there seems to be hardly any damage to the surrounding area.

Lightning also struck Manhattan's local cell phone tower, blacking out all cell phone service for the Manhattan and Fort Riley areas. A nearby electrical substation was also hit by lightning, causing an electrical black out that has enveloped the area for almost 36 hours. Power Company officials are saying that the lightning strike had damaged two very large transformers. Both transformers, said one spokesperson, will have to be replaced. Replacement transformers are being shipped in from out of state, so repairs, they say, may take another two or three days.

Chapter Two

THE TELL-TALE SPIKE

In the morning, Jim awoke to sunlight streaming in through the Oh-My-Gawd-the-curtains-are-wide-open window of the motel room. He jumped up, wearing only his boxers and tee shirt and closed the curtains. Standing by the now covered window, he could hear the shower running and see wisps of water vapor wafting from the open bathroom door. He looked around the room. Priscilla's personal effects were scattered all over the room, as if she had piled them all at the center, then exploded them all to their various resting places. Her unusually large pink leather handbag was tipped out onto the top of the dresser, forming a cornucopia of eyebrow pencils, tubes of lipstick, mascara, barrettes, eyelash vials, tampons, a hair brush, permanent pen markers, a billfold, loose change, ball point pens, one short wooden pencil, her cell phone, and a silver-plated double-shot forty-caliber Derringer, a graduation gift from Priscilla's mother if he remembered correctly. On a small stand provided by the establishment for that purpose, Priscilla had set up, opened and rummaged through her suit case. Items of outer and under clothes lay draped over every available edge of the suit case, as if caught in the act of trying to escape, but now fearfully unmoving in their realization that Jim was watching them. Priscilla had either been on a long trip, or was waiting for him before starting one.

Good morning, Mister I-don't-snore-when-I-sleep, Priscilla greeted him as she stepped out of the bathroom. Her hair was wrapped up in a towel, which by all means and known laws of physics should not be up there. Jim could never figure out how she could attach it so that it never came off until she wanted it to. She'd made a white bodice out of another towel and stood, Jim had to admit, quite seductively, watching him.

He chuckled, and good morning to you, Little Miss Sleepy Head.

Her gaze fell to a growing deformity in his boxer shorts. Putting her hand up to her mouth, she giggled. I think breakfast can wait for a while.

Later, they motored out to a nearby diner in Jim's car. Their conversation centered round current classes, the most recent adventures of shared friends, and what really would be great to have for breakfast. They were both famished.

The diner offered them a somewhat private alcove for them to enjoy their meal. As they ate breakfast, Priscilla managed to parse out the bits of and pieces of her most recent escapades and the reason she called Jim down to Lawrence.

I was wondering, she began in her soft Southern Texas accent, if you heard anything about an explosion at a state park down here called Tuttle Creek?

No, he hadn't. Indeed, he didn't hear much or watch much about what was going on in the world at all. He preferred to catch the news whenever he could from colleagues or students. It saved him the time of sitting in front of a television and then being mesmerized into watching some prime time sitcom he really didn't want to watch, but would anyway, to see how that week's conundrum would finally sort itself out. And listening to the news in his car was not as enjoyable as listening to music, so he never caught up with the world's events that way, either.

She sighed, I should have known. She picked up a fork and started fencing with her scrambled eggs, even though the eggs couldn't fence back, there was a huge, she emphasized the word 'huge,' explosion at Tuttle Creek two nights ago, about eleven thirty PM, right at the height of a huge, she emphasized the word 'huge' again, thunderstorm.

And? Jim asked looking up from his double stack of syrup covered pancakes, garnished with melting chunks of real butter.

And, she said with feigned indignation, the news is that it was from a propane tank mounted on a camper van that was hit by lightning.

So, Jim said slowly, drawing her out for more information.

So, she imitated his mocking tone, a propane tank, on a camper?

Jim was slicing and forking large chunks of stacked pancakes into his mouth, washing them down with black coffee. He swallowed hard on his pancakes, took a quick sip of coffee, and looked at Priscilla. Maybe they'd just put it on, and the guy who did it, well, didn't tighten up some fittings well enough, and when the lightning hit, well, BOOM!

She suddenly stopped stabbing at her hash browns with her fork and pointed it straight at him, did they really teach you to think like that at Columbia?

Jim's eyes went wide. This whole matter was more serious than he had originally suspected. Alright, if she wanted serious, he'd give her serious, even with a lightning strike, there'd still have to be a fire created around the tank in order to build up enough pressure to explode the tank. But the tanks have relief valves - valves, plural - so the propane would vent out and burn, not explode all at once.

That's better, she returned her fork to the hash browns, the reports are, that there was a crater, maybe fifty feet deep and a hundred feet across. Actually, she brought her fork up with a large piece of hash browns stuck to it and waved it around, the size depends on who you want to believe.

Jim stopped his fork midway up to his mouth with the last vestige of pancakes impaled on its tines, that wasn't a propane tank, he put the pancake pieces in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully for a while, probably some experimental air force jet - like one of those surveillance drones they use over in Iraq, he pronounced it eye-rack, only it had bombs on it, and they're not supposed to have bombs in the 'States, so they're trying to cover it up by saying it was a propane tank. He put down his fork and gave her a look, as if to say tah dah!

Very good, Jim, Priscilla seemed pleased, Jim didn't know if it was because of his logically developed argument or his demonstrated ability at certain times, to think things through as deviously as she did.

Or, Jim lit up, it could have been a UFO. Priscilla's face instantly told Jim that that conjecture was WRONG.

Alright, he chuckled, he did admit he made that last assessment just to get a reaction out of her, but I think you have reason to believe the explosion was something else.

Priscilla literally gobbled down a sausage patty before answering. Clearing her throat with a generous gulp of creamed coffee, she spoke. Yesterday morning I came into the lab to check my monitoring equipment. I'm trying to put some data together to establish a median level for background electromagnetic radiation, mostly in the microwave range. She began hunting around in her handbag. Finding what she was looking for, she looked around the restaurant. We need to get this table clear so I can show you this, she held up a folded roll of graph paper, the kind used on recording devices to graph EKGs, earthquake waves, or the changing temperature in an annealing oven. There were many other uses for the type of paper she was holding, and the type of stylus recorder that used it. In Priscilla's case, it was being used to recorded microwave intensities picked up by a set of antennas on top of the physics department building at the Kansas University Campus.

Not seeing any waitresses in attendance, Jim and Priscilla snuck over to an adjacent booth. Priscilla spread out the sheet, folding most of the roll to either side of the section she especially wanted Jim to see. She quickly explained the gradients on the chart and the levels of power they represented, then, slid the chart across to Jim.

Electromagnetic radiation, propagation, and attenuation were not Jim's forte. He had been a particle physicist from the day he'd settled on his thesis project. Priscilla's interests had been in electromagnetic waves, all kinds, every kind, radio waves, microwaves, light waves, infrared, ultraviolet, gamma waves and X-rays. She was intrigued with how they were made, how far they could travel, what they could do, and how to stop them. In the short five years after getting her Doctorate, she'd had many lucrative offers to work for the military or some large government-involved corporation, devising ways to make aircraft invisible to radar, detect the faint infrared signal of a hiding terrorist through a building wall, or developing a cell phone blocker for a major movie theater chain. Her current research was actually on a grant from an astronomical group wanting to know how much interference from local broadcasters, CB users, police radios, and electrical power lines they should allow for in the design of a new radio telescope. Which is why she had a record of every electromagnetic pip and squeak in the Lawrence, Kansas, area for the full twenty-four hours of the same day Tuttle Creek State Park experienced what now appeared to be a very mysterious explosion. She pointed to one area on the chart. Jim whistled and Priscilla sat back in triumph.

Pretty high, huh? Priscilla asked.

Jim looked at the spike graphed on the chart. He looked again at the gradients, then again at the spike's level. He glanced up a Priscilla, How far away is Tuttle Creek from where you recorded this?

About eighty miles.

Lightning?

Those are all around at the bottom, all those tiny spikes going up to the log-three axis, Priscilla explained.

Jim really didn't want to say it, thus, when he did so, it was just barely louder than a whisper, nuclear bomb?

Ah, Priscilla jumped forward and put her finger on the chart, a nuclear explosion produces a very sharp, almost instantaneous rise in amplitude, then drops off almost gradually, she began tracing the line Jim had been looking at, there is a perceptible rise to this spike before it peaks and then, it almost instantaneously drops off, it's a mirror image of the kind of electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, you would get from a nuclear bomb.

Although Jim wasn't too sure of exactly what Priscilla's analysis of the spike indicated, he made a pretty good guess as to what caused it, an E-bomb?

Exactly.

In Kansas?

Yes, she was emphatic.

Nowhere near any large city.

Fort Riley, Manhattan, but yes, again, no major city like Chicago or New York, she agreed.

Priscilla, Jim sat back in his seat, there's something you're not telling me.

And there was. As Jim hailed over a waitress, paid for their meal, and steered the petite professor back out to his car, she told him about a fellow grad student she had met while going to school in Texas. He was bright, he was ambitious, and, she discovered, mucho loco. She'd made the mistake of moving in with him, listening to all of his grandiose ideas of harnessing superconductive technology for fusion reactors, when, seemingly, in one day, his interest turned to flux compression generators, a scientifically euphemistic term for E-bombs. He'd left her one day after having some kind of revelation regarding his obsession, and she never saw him again.

And this revelation? asked Jim as he guided his car back to the motel.

That by using a lightning bolt to create the initial magnetic flux of an explosively compressed flux generator, Priscilla intoned, as if reading the words from a technical manual, you can eliminate about ten tons of auxiliary equipment.

So what's left can be put in a moving van, a railroad car, or...

Camping van.

You really think so? Jim asked, then before Priscilla could answer, but why, here, why, Kansas?

Because I'm here, she answered matter-of-factly.

Jim had to mull over that one a little bit. A former boyfriend develops the ultimate terrorist weapon, albeit dependent on the vicissitudes of the local weather, and he carts it from where? - Texas? - All the way up to Kansas in order to impress his former girlfriend? Do you think this is his mad way of trying to win you back?

That crossed my mind, but what I neglected to tell you, Jim, not only, was he a mad genius, he had the temperament of thirteen-year-old boy.

Ah, said Jim, so if this thing was his doing, it was his way of telling you: 'hey, I told you so'.

Priscilla made a funny grimace with her mouth, exactly, just like a little brat.

Arriving at the motel, Jim and Priscilla gathered up their things from the room. Motoring away from the establishment, Jim followed Priscilla's car in his own. After dropping hers off at the Physics Department building on campus she joined Jim in his car for the ride up to Tuttle Creek Lake.

Chapter Three

JIM AND PRISCILLA MEET THE ARMANI MEN

As they were leaving Lawrence, Priscilla unfolded a map of Eastern Kansas. On it were heavy dots made with different colors of highlighter pens. Around Tuttle Creek Lake she had drawn a circle in pink that almost totally encompassed Manhattan, Kansas.

That's the effective radius of the E-bomb, or footprint as the military likes to call it, she traced the circle out with the index finger of her right hand. All of these blue, yellow, and orange dots are how I mapped the footprint, yesterday.

Jim narrowed his eyes quizzically, How?

By driving around like an idiot, talking to people, 'hey, is your cell phone working? Do you have power? Can you start your car? Do you have a land line phone? Is it working?,' She paused to take a breath, I was able to plot these out until I was far enough away, where people's cars were functioning and cell phones working. Everything else is moot, 'cuz the power's out, even beyond this footprint, so even if someone had a TV that was still working, they wouldn't know, 'cuz they wouldn't have any power to run it.

So, obviously, they're blaming the power blackout on the storm, but how about all the cell phones?

The cell phone companies are claiming that not only did the storm take out their two main relay towers, but that one of them managed to send out a virus-like signal that incapacitated all of the cell phones in the Manhattan and Fort Riley areas.

The relay towers being located at Tuttle Creek, Jim ventured.

Exactly.

How about the cars? Jim asked after several seconds of silence.

Priscilla laughed, I'm waiting on that one. That ought to be a really tall tale!

UFOs, said Jim, ominously.

MANHATTAN MONITOR (LOCAL UPDATE) - Car not running? Can't get your pickup truck started? At a meeting called to order at downtown Manhattan's Chamber of Commerce building, a group of