didn't even know existed.
'Good Lord, Earle! Do you know what you've done? Not only lost a seventy-seven million dollar satellite, but drawn us into a whole new kind of war we've been desperately trying to avoid.'
'How was I to know?' Deloach cried, hysterically defensive. 'We've looked at their carriers before, all the time.'
'Hey, okay,' Isaacs calmed his voice. 'The Novorossiisk was special, but you couldn't know they would react this way. The important thing now is to prevent any escalation and to find out what really did happen to the Novorossiisk so we can defuse the whole thing.
'Earle, thanks for filling me in. The Director will want a meeting. We'll work it out.' He rose and Deloach stood in turn.
'Okay,' said Deloach with resignation, 'but dammit, the gear on FireEye was a work of art. It's like losing a baby.'
'We know that, Earle, but you can do it again. The next generation will be even better.'
As Isaacs ushered him out, Deloach's mind was already turning over a couple of the sweet ideas he'd been forced to omit from FireEye when the budget was drawn. He could do it better and cheaper now.
Isaacs returned to his seat in gloom. This was bad all around. They still did not know what had happened to the Novorossiisk. There would be strong quarters in the Pentagon plotting retaliation to the Soviet attack. And in his own nest, McMasters would be sending up smoke screens all over the Agency to hide his tremendous error. If the crunch came, Isaacs knew, McMasters would even sacrifice Deloach, his unwitting ally. That would be a tragedy. For all his faults, Deloach was too good at what he did best.
Two days later Isaacs sat at his desk, forehead cradled in his hands, intently reading the report before him. Every few minutes he would lower his right hand to turn a loose— leaf page and then replace it on his head, thumb to temple, fingers shading his eyes. Across from his desk, Vincent Martinelli sat, legs crossed, reading the same report. Boswank had done his job. The report, fresh from the translator, was taken directly from the file of the Soviet Admiralty. Isaacs finished first and leaned back gazing at the ceiling, mulling what he had read, waiting for Martinelli.
After a few minutes, Martinelli looked up. 'What do you make of that? Sure as hell something more going on than a match in a gas tank. There's nothing in here about a spacebased weapon, though.'
'Someone higher up must have reached that conclusion after reading this,' Isaacs said. 'Let's see how the thinking may have gone. There is widespread agreement from the hands on the flight deck that there was some kind of noise, a hissing, growing in intensity, and coming apparently from overhead.'
'That's no reason to think whatever it was came from something in orbit.'
'Granted, but it is a peculiar precursor. I can't think of anything offhand to account for it.'
'You've got me there.'
'Then the fire breaks out,' Isaacs continued, 'apparently a punctured fuel tank and a spark.'
Martinelli squinted in concentration. 'I'd say the fire was incidental, granted one of them may have sparked the fire, but the punctures themselves are the odd bit.'
'I agree and so, it seems, do our Soviet counterparts. Drilled is the word the translators came up with. A hole, a half a centimetre to a centimetre in diameter,' right through the ship. No evidence in the first couple of decks because of fire damage, but from there on down, a clean little hole, right through every deck and out the bottom of the hull.'
'That's the son-of-a-bitch, all right. Did you catch the reference to the sonar?'
'Ah, right, it's here on page -' Isaacs leafed through the report, 'page fifty-seven. Sonar operator picked up a sudden strange signal just as the fire klaxon sounded and all hell broke loose.
'So,' Isaacs continued thoughtfully, 'you are Yuri Blodnik reading this report. What do you conclude?'
'Noise above,' summarized Martinelli, 'a hole drilled vertically through the decks, and a sonar trace below. I'd say I'd been shot.' Martinelli dramatically clasped his hands to his heart and then thrust a pointed finger at the ceiling. 'And the varmint what did it was up there!'
'All right, Tex ,' Isaacs smiled, 'and just what were you shot with?'
Martinelli grew serious. 'Not a conventional projectile. You'd need a hell of an explosive punch to penetrate all that steel, and then you'd rip things up, not drill any dainty little hole. If it's not an explosive, then it'd have to be a slug with tremendous velocity.'
Martinelli could see the idea flare in Isaacs's eyes and spread across his face as his brow unfurrowed and his dun came up. Isaacs pointed a finger at him.
'A meteorite.'
Martinelli stared at him and then slowly nodded in comprehension.
'The damned carrier was hit by a meteorite!' Isaacs exclaimed. 'We've worried about them mistaking a large meteor for a nuclear explosion and launching a retaliatory strike. Now they get hit by a small one, a chance in a million, and they think it's a beam weapon.'
'Damn, that smells right.'
'We've got to convince the Soviets of that, particularly whoever decided a beam weapon was involved.'
Isaacs reached for a pad and began to make notes. 'We need to know who that person was, or what group, and how they think. Bureaucratic types? Someone in intelligence? Scientists? And, if so, government flakes or independent thinkers? We need evidence. What would a meteorite do? Can it do this? I'll set my team on that. We'll need a projectile specialist. Maybe there's some work in the labs, Los Alamos or Livermore. Too bad there's not more specific information here,' he tapped the report, 'on the nature of the punctures, stress on the surrounding metal, flaring at the rim. There should be contamination by meteoritic material, but that would require a specific metallurgical examination of a sample from around the holes. We've got to get them to do that.
'You get with Boswank and find out about the decision structure here. We'll do a report outlining the effects of meteorite impact, feed that to them through channels, and see if we can get them to look at those punctures in detail. If they can convince themselves, that'll be best. Great! We can move on this.'
'Won't hurt to be quick,' advised Martinelli. 'I just got word about Drefke's meeting with the National Security Council yesterday. It went just the way you called it.'
'The space shuttle?'
'Yep, the Joint Chiefs came out pushing hard for sending the shuttle after Cosmos 2112. Their arguments were almost a parody of what you predicted for Drefke day before yesterday. Can't let the Russkis get away with this, or they'll start picking off all our birds like sitting ducks. Got to hang tough. And, of course, they're drooling' to get their hands on the laser itself, do a little satellite vivisection.'
'Damnation!' exclaimed Isaacs, pounding his fist on the desk. 'Can't they see the danger of escalating this flung? The last thing the human race needs is a whole new way to make war! Good Lord! We have no idea where it will lead.'
'Hey!' protested Martinelli. 'You're talking to the wrong guy.'
'Sorry,' Isaacs slumped back in his chair, 'but what a tragedy, especially if it's all an overreaction to a freak of nature. Oh, damn!'
He thought quietly for a moment. 'Just what do they suggest? All we need is for the Cosmos to blast the shuttle as it approaches. No way we could keep that from the public. The President couldn't resist the war cries.'
'Well, of course, they've been planning for just such a contingency all along. Apparently, as well as working on laser systems, the Livermore people have been working on defences as well. They've designed a highly reflective, collapsible mirror specifically for the shuttle. It's been rocked in a warehouse for some time. The shuttle swings this thing overboard with the manipulating boom and positions it to reflect any laser blast as they close in. Just how they immobilize the satellite to get it in the cargo bay and bring it home isn't clear to me.'
'Isn't it too big?' Isaacs wanted to know.
'In a sense, but the Soviets know how big the shuttle bay is. The satellite is basically the upper end of one of their big booster rockets.'
Isaacs nodded.
'Apparently, they added some external gew-gaws specifically designed to make the whole thing too large to
