Mackenzie's Mission

to see if there's anything suspicious.'

'What's your gut feeling?' General Ramey had the utmost respect for Joe's instincts.

Joe paused. 'A catastrophic situation developed without warning. We don't know yet if it involves only that one laser cannon or if it's common to all the aircraft, but it's either a major problem with the system, or someone deliberately caused it It's fifty-fifty, so I can't ignore the possibility of sabotage. I'll know more after I get the computer analysis.'

'Call me immediately when you know something.'

'Yes, sir, I will.'

Joe sat back in his chair, his eyes thoughtful. Sabotage. No one ever liked to consider it, but he couldn't afford to discount it. Technology constantly created new techniques in spying and sabotage. The security police had gone to great lengths to keep Night Wing under wraps, which was why every entrance into every building, both doors and windows, contained sensors linked to a central computer that kept track or who was in each building at any given time, recording both entrance and exit times. Guards were also posted at the hangars at night and no one had approached the planes without proper clearance, but if the problem was sabotage, that meant only that the saboteur had the required security clearance.

If he were lucky, the laser team would find the problem and it would be something mechanical, something explicable. If not, he wanted to have the security check already in progress.

What a bitch. If they didn't find out what was wrong immediately, it would ensure that he wouldn't see Caroline tonight, and last night without her had been pure torment. It was amazing how quickly his body had become accustomed to frequent gratification, and how strong his sexual hunger for her was. He'd never wanted a woman that way before, like an incessant fever that refused to be cooled. He'd never enjoyed a woman that way before, without any boundaries or restrictions. She was vital and electric, as straightforward with her loving as her thoughts and personality were. It had been a mistake to let his thoughts slip to her. His pants had become very uncomfortable. Down, boy, he thought wryly. Now was definitely not the time or the place.

No matter how they checked, they couldn't discover how the laser had been activated by accident. Caroline's actual expertise was with the laser itself, not with the triggering mechanism. That was Adrian's field, and he was surly because of it. If the problem was laid at his door, he might be recalled from the project or possibly even fired. Typically, he took out his frustration on Caroline.

'What are you, a jinx?' he muttered, scowling as he painstakingly checked every detail of the firing mechanism. 'Everything was going fine, just a few minor kinks now and then, until you showed up. Things started falling apart as soon as you started working on them.'

'I haven't worked on that mechanism,' she pointed out, refusing to let him anger her or to get embroiled in a finger-pointing episode. She didn't have to say anything else, however, because Adrian took her comment to mean that he had been working on it, so therefore it was obviously his fault.

'Let's stop the bickering,' Yates ordered. 'Cal, is anything showing up on the computer?'

Cal looked exhausted, his eyes bloodshot from staring at a monitor screen and stacks of dim printouts for too many hours. He shook his head. 'It's all checking out on paper.'

They were standing grouped around the laser pod on the belly of the aircraft Bowie had been flying. Caroline stared at the pod, deliberately blotting out what everyone else was saying as she tried to sort things out. The laser seemed to be in perfect working order, as did the firing mechanism. The lock-on was also performing perfectly, but then, they already knew that. After all, it had locked on to Daffy's bird and blown it out of the sky. But what had told it to lock on? According to the computer record, Bowie definitely hadn't touched the switch, so the lock-on and firing mechanisms had both operated automatically, something they weren't supposed to do. Nor was the laser supposed to have been activated; actually firing the lasers hadn't been scheduled for another ten days. Three things had gone wrong simultaneously: the laser had activated, the lock-on had targeted Daffy's aircraft and the thing had automatically fired. None of those three things was supposed to have happened at all; for all of them to have happened at the same time went beyond chance or Murphy's Law.

She didn't like the direction her thoughts were taking. If it wasn't logical for those three things to have happened by accident, then they had to have happened by design. The laser couldn't be activated by an accidental bump, and it certainly didn't have an outside switch labeled On and Off. Activating the laser was something the laser team had to do with a precise set of commands to the computer. Because of the security involved, they were the only ones with access to those commands.

Inescapable logic indicated that one of the team had activated the laser.

Caroline didn't believe in leaping to conclusions. Her work habits were orderly and painstakingly precise. Before she let herself begin thinking that one of the three men she worked with was deliberately sabotaging the laser, she had to make certain there was no way anyone outside the team could do it. Everything was computerized now, and though safeguards were built into the programs and elaborate precautions taken, nothing was impossible. There were a lot of things so difficult that no one had done them yet, but that didn't make them impossible. It was feasible that if someone could get the activation commands, he or she could also get into the program and use them. And it would be child's play for anyone that knowledgeable about computers to add commands that would override the pilot's physical keying of the lock-on switch, say if another aircraft came within a certain distance. Maybe Bowie had been flying a ticking timebomb today, just waiting for the right set of circumstances. It had been Daffy's bad luck that he had been assigned to shadow Bowie, but it could as easily have been Mad Cat, or even Joe, who had been shot down.

Yates had been watching her thoughtfully for several minutes. She was standing motionless, her gaze locked on the pod but not seeing it, with all her concentration turned inward. He could almost see that computer brain running down a checklist and inexorably narrowing the possibilities.

'What is it?' he finally asked when he couldn't stand the suspense any longer. 'Any ideas?'

She blinked, and her eyes slowly refocused on him. 'I think we should check the computer program,' she finally said. 'If it isn't the equipment, it has to be the program.'

Cal looked positively haggard. 'Do you know how long it will take to check this entire program?' he asked incredulously. 'This thing is huge. It's the most complicated program I've ever worked on.'

'Maybe a Cray…' she murmured, looking back at the pod.

'Book time on a Cray supercomputer?' Yates made it a question, but he was already mentally running through the logistics. 'Expensive as hell.'

'Not as expensive as stopping the program.'

'It could take forever to get a booking, unless the Pentagon can line up some priority time.'

'Yeah, that's a fine idea,' Adrian said impatiently, 'but you people are forgetting that the big man gave us thirty-six hours, of which we have already used ten. I don't think he's going to be satisfied with a possibility.'

'We've come up with nothing everywhere else. Do you have a better idea?' Caroline replied just as impatiently.

He glared at her without answering. The truth was, they had all reached a dead end.

Caroline didn't mention her other conclusion, that if the solution to their problem was in the computer program they still had to discover whether it was a basic error in programming or if someone had deliberately programmed it in, but running everything through a Cray would give them the answer to that. By comparing the working program with the original, the Cray could tell them if the working program had been altered in any way. If it hadn't, then it was back to the drawing board for DataTech; if it had, then they had to find the person responsible for the changes.

'So what do we do?' Cal asked, rubbing his eyes. 'Stop looking and just assume we're going to find it in the program, or stay up all night looking for something when we don't know what we're looking for?'

Despite herself, Caroline had to grin. 'If you're as groggy as that sentence sounded, I don't think you can stay up all night.'

He gave her a bleary look and an equally bleary grin. 'Sad, isn't it? In my younger days I could carouse all night and work all day, then go back out for more carousing. What you see here is a shadow of my former self.'

'I'm glad you two don't find this serious,' Adrian snapped.

'Knock it off!' Yates ordered, temper in his usually calm voice. They were all tired and frazzled. He moderated his tone. 'I mean it literally as well as figuratively. We aren't accomplishing anything except exhausting ourselves.