“I haven’t made up my mind,” she said.
Coming from anyone else, Rubeo would have interpreted the statement as hinting at blackmail. But Jennifer wasn’t like that.
“Teaching — I don’t think you should waste your time,” he said.
Jennifer smiled. “Someone taught me.”
“Well, yes. But in your case… ”
“Let’s go get some breakfast. Blue room?” she said, referring to one of the all-ranks messes.
“Fine,” said Rubeo, following her out.
Jennifer picked up the long strip of bacon and eased it into her mouth, savoring the salty tang. She hadn’t eaten for days. She hadn’t eaten bacon in months if not years; her breakfast ordinarily consisted of yogurt and an occasional oatmeal.
“Good?” said Rubeo, sitting across from her at the table.
“Delicious. Go on.”
Rubeo wanted to use the electronic signal gathering capabilities of
Couldn’t they?
“Probably. Of course, if we interfere and don’t get the encryption right, the UAV will probably go into native mode,” observed Jennifer. The Flighthawks were programmed to act that way if interfered with. “The first thing you have to do is straighten out the hooks between C3 and the
“I have Morris working on it.”
“Morris?”
“Well, you weren’t available,” said Rubeo. “The team from the Signal Group is helping him.”
Jennifer picked up another piece of bacon and stabbed it into one of her eggs. She scooped up the yolk with the bacon like a spoon and pushed it into her mouth.
“Have you tried checking the data against the NOSS system?” Jennifer asked. She was referring to a network of quasi-stationary Sigint satellites used to gather radio signals around the globe. The abbreviation stood for Naval Ocean Surveillance System.
“Why?”
“You could use that to track down whatever they’re using as a base station. Then you’d know where they were operating from and you could physically take them out of the picture. All that data has to be available. You can backtrack from that. You really haven’t done that yet?”
Rubeo frowned. He hadn’t thought of it, but being Ray, he wasn’t going to admit it.
Jennifer stood, then reached down and grabbed the bacon off her plate. “Let’s get to work, Ray. What have you been doing for the past few days anyway?”
Stoner decided to go back to Taipei; he wanted to talk to his people back at Langley as well as see what else the local agents had dug up on Chen Lee and his companies. Though dead tired, Danny insisted on going along, and so he was awake when Dylan Lyon called him from Dreamland to tell him what his survey with the IR viewer had found. The physicist began grilling him about the site. Danny really couldn’t supply much more information than what the sensors had already transmitted, but he answered their questions patiently, describing the exterior of the site and everything he’d seen.
Danny stayed on the phone as they switched from the helicopter to their rented car, and only concluded the conversation a few blocks from their destination. That gave him just enough time to call down to Brunei and tell Bison to get the team ready to move out; he anticipated Colonel Bastian would want another recon at the recycling plant, and this time he was going in with full gear.
Dog had already beaten him to it.
Stoner drove to a building owned by the American-Asian Business Coalition on Hsinyi Road not far from the American Institute, which handled American “concerns” in Taiwan on an officially unofficial basis. Despite the late hour, the coalition building was ablaze with lights, and Danny wondered if anyone in Taipei believed that the coalition was anything other than a front for the CIA.
Stoner led the way downstairs to a secure communications center. In contrast to the Dreamland facilities, the unit was primitive, amounting to a set of encrypted phones and two computer terminals that had access to a secure network. The decor wasn’t even up to the command trailer’s standards: The walls were paneled with a wood veneer so thin it looked like plastic; the industrial carpet on the floor was old and ragged.
Stoner pulled out a rolling chair from the conference table at the side of the room and swung it next to the desk with the phone bank. He swept his hand for Danny to take a seat, then made the connection back to Langley. When it went through, Stoner gestured for Danny to pick up a nearby phone. A case officer named James Pierce came on the line, updating them on information he’d gotten from Dreamland and the NSC liaison, Jed Barclay. That segued into a discussion of the capabilities of the government forces of Taiwan, and conflicting estimates of Chen Lee, his business empire, and the possible capabilities of his companies.
“There are dissenting views,” said Pierce. “But at this point, the best guess is that the government knows nothing about the UAV project. And if this is a nuke, they know nothing about it.”
“You sure?” asked Danny.
“The real expert’s sitting next to you,” said Pierce, meaning Stoner. “But there are no intercepts from known CKKC units indicating any sort of operational control on the aircraft, let alone any indication of experimental work, no unit movement, nothing,” said Pierce. “The NSA group working on it for us has gone over it pretty well. And as for nukes, forget it. We’re pretty wired into the government; we’d know. Believe me.”
Danny wasn’t sure whether Pierce meant what he said literally or figuratively.
“The best evidence that they don’t have one is a conversation three weeks ago between the president and the defense minister debating whether they should start a program and what it would cost,” added Pierce. “It was partly that debate that led the president to make his overtures toward China.”
Dog’s four or five hours of fitful sleep made him feel more tired than ever. He cut himself shaving, then burned his finger on the in-room coffeemaker. His mood was so foul that even a message on his voice mail system at Dreamland that Cortend had returned to the Pentagon “and contemplated no formal report” failed to put a bounce in his step as he walked from his hotel room to his elevator. Instead, his brisk stalk warned off the security detail escorting him, even the normally loquacious Boston, heading the team. The men stood at stone attention during the brief ride to the lobby, fanning out as the door opened — as much to stay out of the boss’s way as to protect him.
Miss Kelly, the State Department rep, was waiting near the door.
“Good morning, Colonel,” she said. “Breakfast?”
“No thanks. I have to check in with my people,” he told her.
“I wanted to apologize for being brusque the other day,” she said.
“Not necessary,” said Dog.
“I wonder if I could have a word,” she said, touching his arm to stop him and then glancing at the bodyguard detail.
“Fire away,” said Dog.
“The sultan would like a demonstration,” said Miss Kelly. “He’s heard so much about the Megafortress from his nephew, the prince — they would greatly appreciate a ride.”
“I thought Mack was entertaining them,” said Dog.
“He is,” said Miss Kelly. “But he made it clear that a ride, uh, a flight, was up to you.”
“I’ll bet he did.”
