Fire Controlman Chief Robert Lowery tapped the video screen with the tip of his index finger. A bright green wedge of static interference eclipsed an arc of the SPY radar display. “This is a playback of recorded video from the Aegis display system,” he said. He looked up at the faces of the three technicians gathered on the far side of the console. “The interference lasted about two and a half minutes, which is pretty consistent with the other two times this malfunction has shown its ugly head.” He tapped the screen again. That’s pretty much all we know, except that it always appears in the same sector of the aft port-side SPY array, and that it tends to show up in the early to mid-afternoon.”
Fire Controlman Second Class Todd Burgess rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s array number four, Chief. Fish and I have run every test in the book on that damned thing. Every single module in the array is operating within design tolerances. Now we’re thinking about a couple of tricks that aren’t in the book.”
Chief Lowery glanced back down at the partially garbled radar screen.
“Like what?”
Burgess nodded toward Fire Controlman Third Class Daryl Fisher.
“The problem always seems to show up during the hottest part of the day.
Fish thought that some of the emitter-receiver modules might be breaking down under the heat. If he’s right, we should be able to duplicate the problem by heating up the array a little bit. We have some ideas on how to do that.”
FCC Lowery cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “Why am I suddenly certain that I don’t want to hear the rest of your idea?”
Fisher grinned. “Relax, Chief. We’re not going to burn it up. We’re just looking to crank the heat up a notch.”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Burgess said. “We just want to half close a couple of valves in the cooling loop that feeds the array. That will slow down the movement of chilled water through the modules and reduce the effectiveness of the cooling loop. Then, when the array starts to warm up a bit, we run over-voltage tests on the emitter-receivers and heat things up a little more. If this malfunction is being triggered by some sort of thermal component failure, we should be able to force the array to reproduce the interference pattern.”
The chief nodded. “I see … If you
“Right,” Fisher said. “We’ll have the problem localized to the array, and we can chase it down a module at a time. Plus, we can get the engineers to rig us a couple of fan units inside the array housing to blow extra air across the back sides of the modules. That might help us hold the heat down enough to keep the array from shitting all over itself while we look for the bad modules.”
“Sounds good,” FCC Lowery said. He looked at the third technician, who hadn’t said a word yet. “Gordo, these clowns may be onto something, but we can’t afford to get tunnel vision here. This could still be a processor error, or a software glitch, or God knows what. I want you to reload the entire Aegis software package from your archive disk packs.”
Fire Controlman Second Class Bruce Gordon nodded. “Will do, Chief.
And the next time we get a satellite window for Internet access, I’ll log onto Navy Knowledge Online and post a note on the troubleshooting forum for SPY. It’s possible that somebody has seen this particular casualty before, and there might already be a fix for it.”
“Good idea,” the chief said. “All right guys, you’ve got your marching orders. I don’t need to tell you how serious this is. If we were joyriding off the coast of Southern California, this kind of casualty wouldn’t be much more than an inconvenience. Unfortunately, this is the Arabian Gulf, and the natives out here don’t run around in roller blades and thong bikinis. There are an awful lot of people out here who would love to stick a cruise missile up our ass while we’re not looking. We can’t afford to have our primary sensor go blind at a critical moment.”
The three technicians all nodded.
“Right,” the chief said. “Now, let’s go find this bug and kill it, before it kills
CHAPTER 18
The flight from Narita, Japan, to Alaska was nearly sixteen hours long, and there was still an hour of it left to endure. Then, after a quick refueling, it would be back into the air for another six hours on the final leg to DC. The very thought of it made Secretary of State Elizabeth Whelkin want to bang her head against the window.
The Air Force 747 was a nice enough plane, and she and her staff had the VIP section all to themselves, but she was tired. She was sick of flying, and she was feeling cranky as hell — far too cranky to handle the kind of delicate phone call that she was about to make.
Roger Couric, her chief aide, was on the phone now, wading through the intricate barrier of political flunkies that shielded the president of Egypt from the outside world. Elizabeth had been watching Roger work the phone for nearly forty minutes. He was good at it, shifting smoothly from English to Arabic, and back again as he climbed steadily up the chain of command of the Egyptian government. Even so, from the look on his face, things were not going well.
After a while, Roger appeared to hit an impasse. Chances were, President Bin-Saud’ knew why Elizabeth was calling and had instructed his staff to deflect the call.
Elizabeth yawned and stretched, the seat belt pulling tight across her well-padded stomach. Plump rather than fat, she looked like Hollywood’s idea of the perfect maiden auntie. Her tightly curled hair was an aggregation of silver gray and Clairol’s Born Blonde, but her bright blue eyes were pure steel.
Eventually, Roger covered the mouthpiece of the satellite phone and whispered, “Prime Minister. That’s the best I can do. The big man is absolutely not talking today.”
Elizabeth sighed and held her hand out for the phone. She had to endure two minutes of hold-music before it was picked up again on the other end.
“Prime Minister Amman.”
“Good evening, Prime Minister,” she said. “This is Elizabeth Whelkin.”
“Ah, Madam Secretary,” the Egyptian prime minister replied. “It is an honor to hear your voice again. Peace be unto you.” His voice carried a note of well-disguised condescension.
Egyptian men were inimical toward women on the best of days, and — polite conversation aside — their distaste for having to treat female political leaders as equals was never very far beneath the surface.
“And unto you,” Elizabeth said, trying very hard to keep the weariness out of her own voice. Exhaustion was a form of weakness, and weakness could be exploited.
“May the blessings of the one true God be upon your home, and upon your children, and upon your children’s children,” the prime minister said.
“And unto you and your family, blessings,” said Elizabeth Whelkin.
“May the Lord God protect you and keep you safe from harm.”
“Are you enjoying your stay in Beijing?” the prime minister asked.
“So kind of you to ask,” Elizabeth said. “I didn’t get a chance to spend much time in Beijing. But I did enjoy what little I saw of it. I have concluded my visit, and now I’m flying back to Washington.”
“I trust that your business in China was brought to a satisfactory conclusion?”
“I believe that we made some progress. It is, of course, a bit too early to tell how much.”
