Breaking point - By Tom Clancy & Steve Perry & Steve Pieczenik Page 0,30

interruptions during really bad weather were sometimes a problem—nobody much enjoyed sitting in the cold and dark even if the transmitter still worked, so the local grid was eventually switched over to their own generators. Power-wise, they were self-sufficient—as long as the monster fuel tank was kept filled.

Morrison could understand why Ventura wasn’t all that impressed—a lot of the older buildings that were supposed to have been temporary were still there, and they weren’t anything to write home about. These were no more than trailers with cheap wood paneling and external conduits for switches and electrical plugs, beat-up old computers and monitors, steel desks and press-board filing cabinets. Not what you thought of as cutting edge.

Still, impressing Ventura was not the point. Running the next test was.

Which was what he was about to do. He had another target, and the conditions were as good as they were going to get this time of year, so he was ready to begin.

Ventura stood behind him, wearing a disguise that ought to fool anybody here into thinking he belonged—black polyester slacks over brown loafers, a white shirt with a pen protector in the pocket, an ugly vest, uglier tie, and dark plastic rimmed glasses. A perfect geek.

There was a gun tucked under the vest, Morrison was certain, but even though he knew it was there, he couldn’t see it.

The controls in the auxiliary trailer worked as well as the main ones, but they were less likely to have unexpected visitors here, and unexpected they would be if any showed up.

Morrison said, “With our computers up, and if the sun-spot activity isn’t too bad, we can hit the mark ninety-eight times out of a hundred.” He adjusted a control, and a liquid crystal display of numbers flashed new digits.

He and Ventura were alone in the HAARP auxiliary control room. The ACR was where Morrison usually conducted his calibrations and, in this case, an unauthorized use of the equipment. The thing was, you couldn’t tell by looking where the energy generated by the array was going. Since the project was shut down for the summer, except for maintenance and calibrations, no real scientists would be looking over his shoulder—and the guards wouldn’t have a clue what he was really doing.

In his guise as a geek scientist, Ventura chuckled.

Morrison frowned. “Something funny about that?”

Ventura said, “In some circles, ninety-eight percent accuracy is considered failure.”

Morrison adjusted another dial, then turned to look at Ventura, the question apparent in his raised eyebrows.

“In the late 1800s, there was a trick shooter named Adolph ‘Ad’ Topperwein. In December of 1906, he decided to try for a record. He had a sawmill in San Antonio, Texas, make up a bunch of wooden cubes, two-and-a-quarter-inches square.”

“A bunch? There’s a scientific term.”

“Give me a minute, I’ll get there.”

Ventura held his thumb and forefinger apart, about the thickness of a modestly fat reference book. “Blocks were about so, a little bigger than a golf ball.”

Morrison glanced at his control board, tapped a key. The computer screen scrolled more numbers. “Fine. So?”

“So, Ad went to the San Antonio Fair Grounds with a couple of relays of throwers, some official witnesses, three Winchester M-03 self-loading .22 rifles, and a—here’s that word again—bunch of ammunition. He had his assistants stand about twenty-five feet in front of him. They tossed a block high into the air, and he snapped off a shot, only one, per block.

“He shot more than fourteen hundred of the little blocks before he had a miss. After that, he went more than fourteen thousand straight, hit every one.”

“Jesus. That’s a bunch, all right.”

“Not yet it isn’t. He did this for a week, seven hours a day. At the end of that time, he had fired at fifty thousand blocks. Of fifty thousand tries, he missed exactly ... four.”

“Good Lord,” Morrison said. “With a rifle? Not a shotgun ?” Morrison had done some target shooting as a boy with his father’s .22 rifle. The idea of hitting fifty thousand blocks sitting on a table at twenty-five feet and only missing four was amazing. To hit them flying through the air? That was astounding.

Ventura smiled. “It gets better. He was averaging more than a thousand blocks an hour, one every three and a half seconds or so, and so he finished ahead of schedule—he had allowed himself ten days. He had the record and could have quit, but he didn’t. Instead, he had his assistants salvage some of the least-damaged blocks, got more ammo, and started