Rocket Science
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Since nearly everybody in the room had seniority on me, I got dispatched on what we like to call a "backgrounder," or sometimes a "fact-finding mission," which are just fancy ways of saying that I'd be gathering the information that someone else might use to make an arrest and get all the glory. But what the hell, that's my job.
They gave me a special laminated card, hot off the presses, some kind of souped-up pass that was supposed to let me speed through the checkpoints with a minimum of hassle, and the damn thing actually worked, most of the time. And they gave me a couple of dossiers that I was supposed to read, but they didn't give me any time to read them, or even to Google the two guys I was supposed to interview, so I was pretty much going out there cold.
I met the two subjects, Doctors Parker and Rosenberg, at a nondescript warehouse in Fletcher's Cove, no identification of any kind on the outside, just a faded street number over the mail slot. They were waiting for me at a long table at the far end of a cavernous room, I would have taken it for an abandoned airplane hangar but I don't think there were ever any airports in the area. To get to the table I had to weave my way through a maze of workbenches that were littered with a jumble of circuit boards, disassembled computers, miniature airplane parts, soldering irons, clamps, and some bigger tools that wouldn't fit on the tables, I recognized a lathe, a drill press, and a couple of table saws, and there were a few that I didn't recognize, oversized machines from some kind of industrial art-deco nightmare. Given enough time, I probably could have assembled a 747 from spare parts.
"Was it a Predator?" Rosenberg asked, as soon as I was within hearing range. At least, I assumed it was Rosenberg, I don't want to be accused of profiling, but he looked and sounded like a Jewish kid from the Big Apple.
"We think it was," Parker chimed in with a Midwestern twang when I didn't respond right away. He had the earnest good looks of a corn-fed Boy Scout, if Keaton hadn't told me that Parker had a Ph.D. from CalTech I would have pegged him for a linebacker from Iowa State.
I eased into the one remaining empty chair, a beat-up aluminum folding job that creaked unnervingly as it adjusted to my weight. I'll ask the questions, is what I wanted to say, but I reminded myself that these guys were friendlies, no need to come on so strong. "I'm afraid that I'm not at liberty to talk about it," I said, which is the same thing, but it sounds more apologetic than adversarial. "I appreciate you guys agreeing to talk to me, but I'm afraid that I'm not really going to be able to reciprocate." I shrugged and smiled and tried to project the image that I was a little abashed, I'd like to be more forthcoming, but rules are rules, what could I do?
I started by asking them for a quick summary of their backgrounds, I didn't take notes because I didn't want them to know that I hadn't read their dossiers, I just kept nodding as if what they were telling me jibed with what I already knew. Amazingly similar stories: Ph.D.'s in Aeronautics from CalTech (Parker) and MIT (Rosenberg), recruited by all of the big defense contractors, made brilliant advances (if they may say so themselves) in drones (Parker) and missiles (Rosenberg), kept running into each other at conferences, realized that they were the only people they knew who could actually understand each other, discovered that they were both fed up with corporate bureaucracy, quit their lucrative but boring jobs at General Atomics (Parker) and Lockheed Martin (Rosenberg) to form their own consulting firm. "We pretty much designed the Avenger," Rosenberg said matter-of-factly, and I raised an eyebrow like I was impressed while I made a mental note to find out what the hell an Avenger was.
At this point I was going to ask them for their ideas about what might have gone down – feel free to speculate, I was going to say – but Parker and Rosenberg were way ahead of me, they were tossing ideas back and forth before I could say a word. They sketched diagrams as they spoke, filling up huge sheets of white paper that they tore from a pad that they obviously kept around just for that purpose. The back-and-forth was moving so fast that they were not only finishing each other's drawings, they were completing each other's sentences. They mostly ignored me, but every once in a while one of them would glance in my direction to make sure that I was following them or maybe just to be polite, and I would unglaze my eyes and nod thoughtfully. I remember that Parker said something about an LGB, which I guessed was a laser-guided bomb, and Rosenberg tossed first-pass PK around a few times, but I couldn't even come up with a guess on that one. Luckily for me, the Olympus DS-5000 in my pocket was catching all of it, which would give the bright boys back at the office something to chew on for a while.
At some point, it occurred to me that I might have a better chance of getting out of there at a reasonable hour if I at least made an attempt to direct the discussion. I cleared my throat to remind them that I was still there. "I would guess," I pointed out, when they looked my way, "that there are very few people who could design and build a high-powered explosive missile that was only a foot long. Would that be an accurate statement?"
Rosenberg looked over at Parker, who appeared to be the designated receiver of this question. Parker closed his eyes for a few seconds, and I swear I could hear the pistons in his brain clanking away as he thought it over. Then he opened his eyes and nodded. "Yeah," he said, slowly, "I'm pretty sure I could build something like that."
Which, I thought, was an interesting way of answering my question.
"I could definitely build something like that," Rosenberg countered, in his matter-of-fact way. "But the real question is: How many people could figure out how to launch it from something small, like a model airplane." He grinned, pleased with himself. "That's the tricky part. I think I could do something like that, but I'm not at all sure."
"I definitely could build something like that," Parker announced, as if he had just won some kind of design competition.
And at that point I remember thinking how thin the line can sometimes be between experts and suspects.
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