Free Countdown to Mecca by Michael Savage Page B

society. Then he turned to Jack. “So what do we do, hold tight?”
    Jack laughed again, standing up beside his old partner in battle. “Hardly,” he said, grabbing up the carrying case with his recording equipment. “We’re going to do an interview.”
    â€œWith?”
    Jack replied, “Professor Peters.”
    Forty minutes later the two were trudging up a hillside overlooking the shoreline of the Point Reyes National Seashore preserve.
    â€œProfessor Bernie Peters is a bona fide genius,” Jack told Doc, somewhat breathless.
    â€œI know that name,” grumbled Doc, “I just can’t place it.”
    â€œFormer childhood prodigy, finished his dissertation at eighteen, worked in the nuclear weapons industry for more than forty years.”
    Peters lived in a small, rustic, log cabin tucked into a corner of the preserve, but he wasn’t there when Jack and Doc arrived in the minivan. Jack acted as if it were business as usual.
    â€œHe wasn’t here the last time I visited, either,” he told Doc. “That was well over a year ago, when I’d personally driven out to bring him to my show. But I had been warned by his girlfriend. He likes to wander.”
    Doc shook out his legs as he took in the pastoral comfort of the house and the natural splendor of the surroundings. “Nice place.”
    â€œSupposedly, the house is leased to him for one dollar a year by the government in recognition of his many years of service,” Jack explained as he started down the path around the side of the dwelling. “But I strongly suspect it’s a padded handcuff.”
    Doc followed without complaint, his boots having navigated much rougher terrain in their time. “‘The Man’ wants to keep an eye on him, huh?”
    Jack nodded. Doc dodged a branch that swung back when Jack lost his grip.
    â€œGlad to see you’ve still got your reflexes, old man,” Jack teased.
    â€œThe day I move a little too slow is the day I end up under a pile of rocks,” Doc said. “Hey, did this fella have something to do with the B53?”
    â€œNice get,” Jack said. “Peters made his bones on the team that adapted the W53 Titan II warhead from the B53 air-to-ground bomb. The two-stage thermonuclear weapon tipped American ICBMs well into the 1980s, ranking it as one of the most seminal and long-lasting nuclear designs ever. Peters had worked on all the important nuclear weapons projects, known and unknown, deployed and not deployed, until the mid-1990s. At that point he was assigned to a number of teams developing speculative designs.”
    â€œWhat does ‘speculative designs’ mean?
    â€œBernie wouldn’t say when I asked him,” Jack confessed, “but from a few hints I guessed they involved miniaturizing atomic weapons. And when he’d mastered that, he was assigned the task of designing wide-array explosives, bombs that could spread weaponized bacteria and viruses without frying them.”
    â€œHow the hell is that done?” Doc asked. He’d been to many of the globe’s hottest hotspots over the years but that was a new one on him.
    â€œWith NEDAs,” Jack said. “Non-explosive demolition agents. Just add water to the chemical powder. The mix experiences super-rapid expansion and creates a puffball effect to disburse toxins. The atmosphere does the rest.”
    â€œJesus,” Doc replied. “Imagine what these minds could do if they tried to help people instead of killing them.”
    â€œYeah, well, no government contracts for that, is there?”
    â€œNot unless you’ve got a flop of a green earth system like Solyndra had,” Doc snickered.
    â€œAnyway, after that our boy was put to work evaluating other countries’ programs, specifically those in the Middle East. He had announced that Libya’s program was a bluff well before it was proven to be. Conversely, he had