The Caliphate by André Gallo (books to read for 13 year olds .TXT) 📕

     Habib read a mixture of despair and pride in Amitai’s eyes, as if he knew viscerally that he was not likely to survive, but that this was his only chance to get his story out. Was Amitai hoping for immortality? Was he dreaming of being mentioned in the annals of science that future generations would study?

     “Have you ever heard of LAKAM, the scientific intelligence bureau of the IDF?” Amitai asked. “Have you ever heard of Rafi Eban? He’s a living legend in Israel. In 1960 he captured Adolph Eichmann, the Nazi, in Argentina. He’s now an elected member of the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament. Eban headed LAKAM when it recruited Pollard, the American spy who is still in a federal prison. LAKAM didn’t go away when Eban went into politics. LAKAM was able to collect intelligence from the Russian, American, French, and Japanese consortium committed to a nuclear-fusion reactor project in Cadarache, France, and from the Livermore Laboratory in California. Being small has disadvantages—resources for example—but advantages as well. We can quickly focus on important projects. We set up a small experimental project. At first we used the deuterium-deuterium process to create helium 3. However, we found that the intense heat and pressure necessary were containable only by using the tritium-deuterium method creating helium 4.”

     Despite the feeling that he was on the cusp of scientific discovery, Habib forced himself to move on.

     “That’s impressive, Doctor. But even if you use nuclear energy, you’re still left with the distance from the space gun to the land target. So, I see two problems that you must have solved: one, the fact that the beam’s energy dissipates with distance, and, two, that the beam tends to be scattered by dust and particles in the atmosphere. Brute force can’t be the only answer.”

     “You first test the scatter effect with a test beam, a smaller beam. Then you use the big laser to send a very specifically distorted beam that will be refocused by the dust and water in the air. But the key is the mirror. We needed bigger mirrors than had ever been used. The bigger the mirrors, the more complex they were. In order to distort the beam, we needed not hundreds but thousands of small actuators positioned behind the mirrors to alter the surface of the mirror to compensate, to pre-distort if you will.”

     “Yes, adaptive optics has been an essential part of the laser magic. But thousands of actuators? How big is the mirror?”

     “I designed and built the biggest space-based mirror in the world. It’s one-hundred-eighty feet in diameter.”

     Habib paused before asking his most important question. “Then explain the control room. And how do you trigger the weapon? How do you target it? Is it now targeted against the red-light locations on the board?”

     “The map, as you can see, is only of the Middle East, our ‘near enemy.’ We can target a city within a fraction of a second. Would the entire city be destroyed? No. Very little of the city proper would be affected, unless the beam’s heat starts fires. The beam would have to spread out to the size of the city. And the bigger the strike zone of the beam, the more the energy is dissipated. Further, destroying a brick and mortar building is different from piercing the thin metal skin of a missile that is built as lightly as possible. But anyone who was outside and unprotected within a small radius would probably be killed by the heat.”

     “That’s a fantastic achievement!” Habib said. “I guess none of this is in the professional journals? Otherwise I would recognize your name.”

     “Aaron Amitai, Doctor Aaron Amitai; it will appear eventually, I’m sure.”

     “Have you actually field tested it?” Habib asked. “Has the laser gun been activated?”

     “We built an entire system one-tenth the size of our current system, and the experiments were successful. We’ve never fired the actual laser gun, of course. It’s our last defense. The United Nations and others can make their ‘tut-tut’ speeches. But we’re the ones who will live or die. Anyway, we have to be ready, and we are. We should have fired it to show the world we had it. As a warning. Shoshanna made that recommendation. But she was ignored.”

     Habib still hadn’t gotten the answer he sought.

     “I want to know how to target and fire the laser. Show me!” As a reminder of who was in control, Habib motioned the guard closer.

     “My expertise was the space mirror. My wife Shoshanna is more knowledgeable on those details.”

     Habib suspected that Amitai had manipulated him, to deflect his attention away from Shoshanna, the one with the real answers. He felt vindictive but knew he had no choice. He told the guard, “Bring his wife in here. And get him out. Don’t let them see each other.”

     When she came in, Habib behaved as a more serious interrogator.

     “Doctor Amitai,” he began. He wasn’t sure that she had a Ph. D., but it wouldn’t hurt to start with a show of respect for whatever academic credentials she had. It had worked with her husband. “Your achievements here are extremely impressive. Once this comes to the attention of scientific community, you will take your place besides Newton and Einstein in science’s hall of fame.”

     He paused a second to judge her reaction, which by the widening of her eyes, he assumed was surprise that one of the terrorists could speak with at least a veneer of education. Then a terse smile replaced her guarded demeanor, accompanied by silence.

     Habib continued, “We are actually going to help make that happen. You’re going to show the world your achievement by firing your creation. We’re going to pick an uninhabited spot, in the Sinai, say. This will better show the world