Shadow Command

anticipate the aerospace market, Boomer — I try to shape it. That’s what I want you to do. You won’t answer to anyone else but me, and you get to pick your team, your protocols, your design approach, and your timelines — within reason, of course. You knock my socks off with your ideas, and I’ll back you all the way.”

“And this estimated budget figure for my lab…?”

“Yes?”

“Is this for real, Jon?”

“That’s just the starting point, Boomer — that’s the minimum,” Masters chuckled. “You want that in writing, just say so, but I’m guaranteeing you that you’ll have a generous budget to build the team to research and evaluate your designs.”

“Even so, it’s not enough for the entire division. I’ll need—”

“You don’t understand, Boomer,” Masters interjected excitedly. “That money is just for you and your team, not split up between everyone in your division, existing projects, or specific company-mandated programs or technology.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I’m serious as a heart attack, brother,” Masters said. “And it’s not for stuff like company-wide expenses, compliance mandates, or security, but for your team- and project-specific costs. I believe in giving our top engineers the tools they need to do their job.”

“I can’t believe it. I’ve never even heard of that kind of money being invested by a small company like this.”

“Believe it, Boomer,” Masters said. “We may be small, but we’ve got investors and a board of directors who think big and expect big things to happen.”

“Investors? A board of directors…?”

“We all answer to someone, Boomer,” Masters said. “I ran my company by myself with a handpicked board of directors, which was okay until the projects got smaller and the money got tight. There were a lot of investors out there who wanted to be part of what we were doing here, but no one wants to dump hundreds of millions of dollars into a one-man show. We’re public, and I’m not president anymore, but everyone knows I’m the guy who makes the magic.”

“I don’t know…”

“You don’t worry about the board, Boomer. You report to me. Be advised, I’m going to make you work for every dime. I’m going to expect big things from you, and I’ll be putting bugs in your ear about what I know or discover about government requests for proposals, but like I said, I don’t want you waiting around for some weenie in the Pentagon to tell us what they might want — I want us to tell them what they want. So, what do you say? Are you in?”

“I’m thinking about it, Jon.”

“Okay. No problem. I know your commitments to the Air Force are up in eight months, correct?” Boomer guessed that Jon Masters knew to the day when his educational commitments to the Air Force for pilot training were up. “I guarantee they’ll offer you a regular commission before that, along with a big fat bonus. They might try to stop-loss you, claiming you’re in a critical specialty, but we’ll deal with that when and if we have to. I have enough contracts with the Air Force, and enough buddies in the Pentagon, to put a little pressure on them to respect your decisions. After all, you’re not getting out to go work for the airlines or be a consultant or lobbyist — you’ll be working for the company that builds them the next generation of hardware.”

“That sounds good.”

“You bet it does, Boomer,” Jon Masters said. “Don’t worry about a thing. One more thing, buddy. I know I’m older than you, probably old enough to be your dad if I started real early, so I get to give you a little heads- up.”

“What’s that, Jon?”

“I know trying to tell you to take it easy, be safe, and maybe don’t fly so many missions is like trying to tell my golden retriever to stay out of the lake, but I wouldn’t want to have the company’s future vice president of R&D become a shooting star, so take it easy, okay?”

“Vice president?”

“Oh, did I say that out loud?” Masters deadpanned. “You weren’t supposed to hear that. Forget I said that. Forget the board was considering it but didn’t want me to reveal that. Gotta go before I tell you about the other thing the board was kicking around…oops, almost did it again. Later, Boomer.”

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW, RUSSIAN FEDERATION

A SHORT TIME LATER

The room was loudly called to attention as Russian Federation president Leonid Zevitin quickly strode into the conference room, followed by his chief of staff Peter Orlev, the secretary of the security council, Anatoli Vlasov; the minister of foreign affairs, Alexandra Hedrov; and the chief of the Federal Security Bureau, Igor Truznyev. “Take seats,” Zevitin ordered, and the officers already in the room — General Kuzma Furzyenko, the chief of staff; General Nikolai Ostanko, chief of staff of the army; and General Andrei Darzov, the chief of staff of the air force — shuffled to their chairs. “So. I gave the command for our fighter to attack the unmanned American bomber if it fired a missile, and since we’re meeting like this so quickly, I assume it did, and we did. What happened?”

“The American B-1 bomber successfully launched a missile from over the Caspian Sea that reportedly destroyed a Hezbollah squad preparing to launch a rocket from an apartment complex in southeast Tehran,” General Darzov replied. “The missile made a direct hit on the launch squad’s location, killing the entire crew…” He paused, then added, “including our Special Forces adviser. The bomber then—”

“Hold on, General, hold on a sec,” Zevitin said impatiently, holding up a hand. “They launched a missile from over the Caspian Sea? You mean a cruise missile, and not a laser-guided bomb or TV- guided missile?” Many of those around the table narrowed their eyes, not because they disliked Zevitin’s tone or question but because they were unaccustomed to someone with such a distinct Western accent at a classified meeting in the Kremlin.

Leonid Zevitin, one of Russia’s youngest leaders since the fall of the czars, was born outside St. Petersburg but was educated and had spent most of his life in Europe and the United States, and so had almost no Russian accent unless he wanted or needed one, such as when speaking before Russian citizens at a political rally. Frequently seen all over the world with starlets and royalty, Zevitin came from the world of international banking and finance, not from politics or the military. After decades of old, stodgy political bosses or bureaucratic henchmen as president, the election of Leonid Zevitin was seen by most Russians as a breath of fresh air.

But behind the secretive walls of the Kremlin, he was something altogether different than just expensive silk suits, impeccable hair, jet-setter style, and a million-dollar smile — he was the puppet master in the grand old Russian tradition, every bit as cold, calculating, and devoid of any warm personality traits as the worst of his predecessors. Because he had no political, apparatchik, military, or intelligence background, no one knew how Zevitin thought, what he desired, or who his allies or captains in government were — his henchmen could be anyone, anywhere. That kept most of the Kremlin off-guard, suspicious, tight-lipped, and at least overtly loyal.

“No, sir — the missile went faster than Mach four, which is the fastest speed our fighter’s radar can track a target. I would describe it as a very high-speed guided rocket.”

“I assume, then, that you compared the time of launch and the time of impact and came up with a number?”

“Yes, sir.” His eyes looked pained — no one could tell whether it was because the general was afraid of telling the president the bad news, or because he was being lectured to by this foreign-sounding young playboy.

“But you don’t believe the number you computed,” Zevitin said for the air force chief of staff. “Obviously this weapon was something we did not expect. What was the speed, General?”

“Average speed, Mach five point seven.”

“Almost six times the speed of sound?” That news rocked every member of the security staff back in their chairs. “And that was the average speed, which means the top speed was Mach…ten? The Americans have an attack missile that can fly