Free The Rock by Robert Doherty

is any connection to the second bomb, but it's the only thing we've got."
    "But in and of itself," Hawkins asked, "what do you think we have here in the Rock?"
    "I have no idea. I hope the other members of your team can figure that out." He paused and then softened his voice. "I need your help with this, Hawk."
    Hawkins shrugged. "I'm here. I'll do my best."
    "I know you'll do your best. You always have." Lamb looked down at his desk for a second. "I heard what happened in Colombia. I was in the air on Looking Glass already heading here when I gave you the go and I received the after-action report on the secure line. Your men did a good surgical job."
    "If you consider putting a nine-millimeter round through the brain of a young woman a good surgical job," Hawkins said, bitterly, "then I suppose it was."
    "I heard about that too," Lamb said, his eyes fixed on his subordinate. "I also heard you were acting strangely in the exfiltration aircraft."
    Hawkins stood. "I'm fine." He turned on his heels and left the room, the door swinging securely shut behind him with a dull thud.
     
     
    21 DECEMBER 1995, 1000 LOCAL
    21 DECEMBER 1995, 0030 ZULU
     
    “What are you doing?" Hawkins asked, gazing over Levy's shoulder at the screen of the computer she was working at.
    "I'm looking at the original form of the message," Levy answered.
    "Looking at it for what? Haven't they already decoded it?"
    "They decoded it one-dimensionally," Levy said. "I'm checking to see if there might be another dimension to it."
    Hawkins blinked. "You've lost me."
    Levy removed her hands from the keyboard and swiveled her head to look at him. "This is an unknown communication. We don't know who or what sent it. Therefore we should not assume that simply because it has been deciphered one way, there might not be other ways to decipher it. There might be two dimensions to this message or even more."
    She closed her eyes briefly in thought. "To give you a simple example, a stop sign has three dimensions: the shape of the sign, the color, and the actual word STOP itself. Anyone of those by itself gives you a message if you know what you're looking for. In that case, it's the same information--but you can also send different information on different dimensions of the same original message. In this case," she said, turning back to the computer and tapping the screen, "the actual physical arrangement of the characters might be informative in and of itself."
    Hawkins looked at the arrangement of 0's and 1's. "Doesn't look like anything to me," he noted.
    "I agree," Levy said, "but it was something I wanted to check."
    Hawkins sat down and scooted his chair close to hers. "I looked at your record--as I'm sure you did mine, in the folder they gave you--and I'm quite impressed with your academic and intellectual achievements. If you were to speculate, what would you say we have here?"
    Levy fixed Hawkins with an intense gaze. "You qualified your question quite interestingly, Major. Should I accept the inverse of what you said and assume that you are not impressed with me outside of my intellectual achievements?"
    Hawkins returned her steady gaze. "Why should you assume something negative? I phrased it that way because I know nothing about you other than what was in the file and all that was in there was your academic and scientific record. So I assume nothing about you as a person."
    Levy broke the eye contact. "I'm sorry. I've never really learned much social tact."
    Hawkins softly laughed. "Hell, that's all right. They don't teach that stuff in school. I've been told I don't have too much tact either. My profession isn't noted for it." He paused. "Have you ever worked for the government before on a classified operation?"
    She shook her head. "I've done quite a bit of consulting work on various research projects, but never anything like this."
    Hawkins leaned back in his seat, feeling very uncomfortable. He was out of his element here. Even Levy's simple explanation of