Acts of War

'Don't pull any punches,' Hood said. 'Give it to me straight.'

'Sorry,' Bicking said, 'but you've got all these ancient hatreds being fanned and interacting — Turkey and Greece, Syria and Turkey, Israel and Syria, Iraq and Kuwait, and various combinations and multiples thereof. The smallest thing can trigger any of them. And once those locusts start hopping—'

'You've got a swarm,' Hood said.

'The swarm,' Bicking replied.

Hood nodded unhappily. Suddenly, there was going to be a lot more to do in Damascus than save the ROC.

Bicking twirled his hair a little faster. He peered at Hood from under heavily lidded eyes. 'Here's a thought,' he said. 'Let me work on the ROC situation while you and Dr. Nasr concentrate on preventing a major conflagration.'

'There may not be a lot of time to work on the ROC situation,' Hood said. 'If there's even a remote chance that it will be used by the Kurds, the President is going to order the ROC found and destroyed.'

'Pronto,' Bicking added. 'And finding it won't be a problem. As soon as they uplink, the military will have signal to lock on to—'

Hood grabbed the phone and dialed. 'That's how we buy time.'

'How?'

'If the captors manage to turn on the ROC, the signal has to go through the satellite. When it does, there may be a way Matt Stoll can shut it down. If the ROC is dead in the water, we may be able to convince the President to give us time to negotiate a release.'

Bicking twirled rhythmically. 'It's good,' he said.

Hood waited for the connection to go through. The plan to destroy the ROC was a simple one. There was no self-destruct button. It had to be designed as a completely unarmed facility in order to be allowed into many foreign nations. Instead, wherever it went, it could be taken out by a Tomahawk missile, which could be launched from ground, air, or sea and had a range of over three hundred miles. Equipped with terrain-following computers, it could hit the ROC virtually anywhere.

Stoll's assistant answered the phone. He put Matt on at once.

'Are we secure?' Stoll asked breathlessly.

'No,' Hood said.

'All right, then listen,' the computer expert told him. 'You know that missing rock and roll group?'

'Yes,' Hood said. They didn't have code phrases to describe the situation with the ROC, so Stoll was improvising.

'There's an ambient level of juice which radiates out when their amps are on,' Stoll said. 'Bob lost that when the rockers pulled the plug earlier.'

'I understand,' Hood said.

'Okay. Now our high-dying friend the ES4 is beginning to pick up a signal again.'

The ES4 was the Electromagnetic Spectrum Satellite Surveillance System. The sensors were a component in a chain of mufti-purpose satellites which read terrestrial radiation in frequencies from 10²⁹ to zero hertz and in wavelengths from 10^-13 centimeters to infinity. These readings included gamma rays, X-rays, ultra-violet radiation, visible light, infrared, microwaves, and radio waves.

'So we now know exactly where the band is?' Hood asked

'Yes,' Stoll replied. 'But not what they're doing.'

'No audio yet,' Hood said.

'Zippo,' said Stoll. 'What's significant, though, is that the band leader's not in any rush to get on-line again.'

'How can you tell?'

'According to the tests we ran back here before they left, you can get from zero to sixty, so to speak, in about four minutes and change. You follow?'

'Yes,' Hood replied. The batteries which had been removed inside the ROC could be replaced in a little over four minutes.

'At the gate El Supremo's plugging things in,' Stoll went on, 'the bandwagon won't be up to full power, nor the wheels turning, for another fifteen minutes or so. That's twenty-five minutes in all.'

'Which means the outer band's still in charge of the equipment,' Hood said.

'Very likely,' Stoll said.

So Rodgers was stalling and the Kurds were in control. Hood also knew that if Bob Herbert and Matt Stoll were drawing these conclusions from the ROC readings, so was the CIA and the Department of Defense. If they decided that the ROC was fully operational and in enemy hands, it was doomed.

'Matt,' Hood said, 'is there any way we can shut the band down if it comes online?'

'Sure,' Stoll said.

'How would you do it?'

'We'd send a command to the uplink,' Stoll said. 'Tell it that as soon as a signal from the band hits the receive reflector, it should ignore all other signals from that source. That'd take about five seconds.'

'Give the bandleader fifteen seconds,' Hood said. 'If he's going to try to get a message to us, he'd do it right away. Then shut it down. He'll understand what we're doing and why.'

'Okay,' Stoll said. 'We'll still keep an eye on them, though.'

'Right.' The ES4 would be able to follow their electromagnetic trail until the NRO satellite was turned on them in just a few minutes. If Hood could keep the President from issuing a destruct order, they'd have a chance of getting the team out. 'Matt, I want you to write this up and get it to Martha. Tell her to send it over to the White House with my recommendation that we watch and wait. Meanwhile, you get things ready to close the door if our band opens it.'

'It's as good as done,' Stoll said.

Hood hung up and briefed Bicking. They both agreed that if the ROC could be shut down, the President would give Striker time to get it back. Despite pressure from National Security Chief Steve Burkow, who believed in security at any price, the President would not be anxious to take out his own team. Not if the hardware in the ROC could be neutralized.

Hood and Bicking began to study the Syrian position papers which had been loaded into their computer. But Hood had trouble focusing, and announced that he was going off to the galley. Bicking said he'd start highlighting Administration positions while Hood was gone.

The Op-Center Director got a Diet Pepsi from one of the two male flight attendants, and sipped it while he stood looking back at the cabin. The thickly cushioned seats were arranged in two rows of two with a wide aisle. Passengers were huddled over computers.

Typically, an hour or so of work got done before drinks and restlessness and reporters desperate to file stories turned the trip into a social gathering. There were two small tables in the back for conferences and working meals. They were empty right now, but wouldn't be around five when snack sandwiches were served. Beyond them was the door which led to the modest office and sleeping quarters used by the Secretary of State when he was aboard.

Hood wondered how the most powerful nation in the history of civilization, with awesome technological resources and a great army, could be sandbagged by three men with guns. It was inconceivable. But even as he wondered about it, Hood knew that it wasn't the Kurds who were holding the U.S. hostage. It was ourselves, our own self-restraint. It would be a simple matter to target pockets of Kurds and blast them one by one until our people were released. Or to capture and murder the families of their leaders. But civilized, twentieth-century Americans would not do to anyone else what they did to us. We played by the rules. That was one of the qualities which kept any superpower from becoming an abomination like the Third Reich or the Soviet Union.

That was also what gave other people the courage to lash out at us, Hood thought as he finished the soda and crushed the can. He went back to his seat determined to make all of this work through the system. He believed passionately that the American way was the best way in the world, and he took comfort knowing that history-buff Mike Rodgers believed that too.

'The Kurds and the Islamic fundamentalists don't have a corner on political zeal,' Hood said as he looked at