Read Online Storm Killer by Benjamin Blue - Free Book Online Page A

wind-driven seas were impressive with dark waves of three to four meters, but the huge aircraft carrier barely rolled from their effects. He squinted into the storm-ravaged early morning gloom as he sipped his first coffee of the day.
    He saw his reflection in the window glass. What looked back at him was a fit trim man of forty years old. The man was clean-shaven, with piercing blue eyes and a ruddy complexion from spending far too time in the sun.   
    The Abraham Lincoln was his flagship for the strange assortment of vessels that made up his ‘fleet.’
    Olsen was in command of the fleet of science vessels scattered around the edges of the ever-growing hurricane.
    He was an Annapolis graduate with a spotless record of command assignments on various naval vessels. This was his first fleet level assignment where he was responsible for multiple vessels.
    His fleet consisted of one hundred and twenty vessels. These vessels were private science research laboratories, and NOAA weather ships, as well as twenty Navy destroyers and frigates stationed at each eighteen degrees of the compass. These navy vessels were the anchors of the observation net and would receive and process weather information from the smaller science vessels. They, in turn, would forward the data across broadband connections to the Abraham Lincoln’s converted ‘war room’. The war room now housed two massive parallel processing computers capable of doing hundreds of millions of calculations per second. The only computer more powerful than these was housed at Fort Meade, Maryland. That was the massive machine built to break any known encryption standard for the National Security Agency.
    These two computers would be running multiple models of tropical weather simulations and forecasting. The lead scientists onboard could determine the impact of Storm Killer’s technology on the storm with only a ten-minute delay from real time.
    The Admiral reviewed the current plot of the positions of his fleet and nodded his head. “Perfect position. We’re ready to complete our mission!”
    Olsen thought to himself with glee, and once this mission is successfully completed, I should make Vice Admiral.
    He chuckled happily to himself as he walked off the bridge. Little did he know what awaited his ship and his fleet in the next few hours. If he had, he would have ordered the ship turned and headed for home. But he had no such foreknowledge. He went happily along his way not realizing that death awaited him, his crew, and his ship in less than twenty-four hours.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    17
Incident Or Accident
    Brad was waiting for them in his office when Adam and Greg arrived at the control center. Brad waved them to a small conference table at one corner of his office and shut the door. Taking his seat, Brad sighed and then looked at the two men sitting opposite him. “This was no accident.”
    The two men looked at each other and then back to Brad. “What have you found out?” asked Adam, an alarmed look on his face.
    “The techs got to the sub-processors and found the hardware intact, but the both main and backup input feeds had been reversed. The inputs were telling the system that the airlock and reception area doors were closed. This was not an accident. Someone had to manually reverse those circuits,” Bolino reported. “The computer service module was also taken offline so the diagnostics could not execute. This was a planned, coordinated attack that could have killed many and set our timetable back months or even years.”
    “What does Security think?” asked Greg.
    The “Security” that Greg mentioned was the onboard team of security agents paid for by CORDEX, the prime contractor, but reporting to the office of the NASA Inspector General.
    “They agree that this wasn’t any accident and strongly recommended a formal investigation be launched,” Brad responded. “In fact, the most ardent security officer is waiting in the outer office for