Chương 37: Chapter 36: The First Man Through The Wall (09/21/1983)

DATE: Wednesday, September 21, 1983 LOCATION: La Jolla, California LOCAL TIME: 11: 30 AM PST The heavy steel door hissed open. Uncle Bob Yauney stepped into the bunker carrying a manila folder, his face tight with concern.

"They got the approval," he said, tossing the folder onto my workstation.

"FCC just greenlit the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X." I barely glanced at the memo. Bob rubbed his temples.

"Jacobs and Viterbi are pacing holes in the floor over at Linkabit. Motorola just beat us to the consumer market. The whole industry is calling it a revolution." I leaned back in my chair.

"They just spent a hundred million building the perfect analog dinosaur," I said calmly.

"Let them sell their two-pound bricks to Wall Street bankers. That thing runs on a fragile legacy network. It's expensive, easily intercepted, and the bandwidth is pathetic." Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. Bob frowned.

"They have first-mover advantage, Chad."

"The first man through the wall always gets bloody," I replied.

"Let Motorola educate the public on mobile phones. Let them spend the money building the towers. While they're doing that, Jacobs and Viterbi are going to perfect CDMA. We don't want the hardware, Uncle Bob. We're going to own the digital spectrum." The encrypted radio receiver clicked twice. I hit the transmit button.

"Go ahead." John Patterson's smooth baritone came through the speaker.

"Target One is secured. Chiapel accepted fifty thousand for the full copyright, negatives, and contact sheets." Evelyn Vance's voice followed right after.

"Target Two is also complete. Wymer signed the NDA and turned over the color negatives. Both sets are in hand." I leaned forward slightly.

"Excellent. Evelyn, deliver them directly to her. No loose ends." I released the button and looked up at Bob. He was staring at me, slowly shaking his head.

"I don't even know what you just bought in New York," he said quietly.

"But watching you brush off a billion-dollar telecom milestone while casually coordinating a shadow operation on the other side of the country… it's terrifying, Chad." I didn't answer him. Because the truth was, what terrified me wasn't what I could control. It was everything I couldn't.