“And save your ass like in Italy?”
“There are two opinions on that.”
“Yours and everyone else’s?”
“Oh, you’re a master comedian.”
“Yeah, I’m doing Vegas next week,” said Fisher. “Look, I’d love to trade bon mots with you, but I’m dying for a smoke. Where do I find the pilot of the F/A-22. Howe, right?”
“Who says you’re talking to Colonel Howe?” Gorman’s cheeks not only colored red but seemed to rise on her face. “I just went through the various assignments. This—”
“If you’re going to be a pain, we can call General Whatzhisname and ask him to read that long paragraph from DOD Memorandum 17-85B. The verbiage is a bit obscure, but I think it says something to the effect that you have to cooperate with me or get a good spanking. Of course, if that’s what you’re interested in…”
“Just stay out of my way,” said Gorman, walking away so quickly her escort had to double-time down the hall.
“Let’s go, Kato,” Fisher said to the sergeant looming at his elbow. “Smoke, food, meaning of life. More or less in that order.”
“Sir?”
“You can knock off the ‘sir’ routine,” he told the noncom, who looked to be about thirty. The patch on the pocket of his combat camos declared his name was JHNSN. “I know you don’t mean it. Just call me Fisher. Or Andy, if you’re pissed off. Come on, I need a smoke.”
“We have to go outside.”
“Yeah, or the men’s room,” Fisher told him. “But today we’ll go outside, because it’s always nice to make a good first impression.”
Chapter 3
Howard McIntyre settled into his first-class seat, indulging in a fantasy about the stewardess who was pouring the champagne. He was just removing her bra when one of the two cell phones he carried in his suit jacket — he had a third in his briefcase, along with an encrypted phone — rang.
The attendant was just good-looking enough to tempt him not to answer, and he might not have if the call hadn’t been on his “A” phone, a special encoded satellite phone with global coverage reserved for his boss, National Security Advisor Michael Blitz.
“McIntyre,” he said.
“Where are you?”
“Sitting on the airplane, about to take off for Hawaii,” McIntyre told Blitz.
“Get off and call me.”
“It may be too late. We’re about to taxi.”
“Then find a parachute.”
“Doc—”
“Don’t give me the Doc line and don’t call me Professor,” said Blitz. “Get off the plane and call me back.”
McIntyre stifled a curse and got out of his seat, reminding himself for the one millionth time in the past year that being a public servant meant putting off personal pleasure in hopes of much greater rewards in the future.
Though at times it was hard to imagine what those rewards could possibly be.
Twenty minutes later McIntyre found himself standing in the middle of the rental car lot, briefcase and carry-on in one hand, secure KY-118 phone — handheld computer in the other.
“Mac, what’s the latest?” asked Blitz. The NSC head was already in Hawaii, which was obvious from the background noises of the reception.
McIntyre could have played dumb, but that would only lessen the already infinitesimal chance that he could talk Blitz into changing his mind about what he wanted him to do. Both men knew each other well enough — McIntyre had been Blitz’s graduate assistant a million years before — to guess exactly what the other was thinking.
“Uh, nothing new on Cyclops One as of two hours ago, Doc. I had a secure videoconference with them to do the rah-rah thing, but—”
“I want you up there ASAP.”
“Aw, Professor.”
“To the best of my knowledge, my current employer is the U.S. government, not Harvard.”
“I’m due in Hawaii for the augmented-ABM tests,” pleaded McIntyre. “I mean, my main area is technology, and if that’s not technology…”
“There are plenty of people here. More than we need.”
“But, uh…” It was difficult to argue that he was needed in Hawaii — in fact, almost no one was, outside the actual work crews who monitored the test missile firings. Three different company coalitions were taking part in the tests, which called for long-distance, low-altitude strikes of small warheads, such as those that could be carried by cruise missiles.
The augmented system would greatly enhance “standard” ABM capabilities, closing a serious gap in the defense system and making the U.S. impervious to attack. While the tests involved surface-launched missiles, the production model would include satellite batteries that would eventually provide global coverage. It would be the last and most powerful part of a complicated blanket that would include tactical coverage from Cyclops laser planes — great at short-range interception but very limited beyond three or four hundred miles — and high-altitude ballistic interceptions from the “normal” ABM system, which couldn’t target short-range warheads, let alone cruise missiles. When built, the augmented ABM system would revolutionize warfare. It might even make it obsolete.
Assuming, of course, the system could be made to work. Surprisingly, none of the companies responsible for the standard ABM system had done very well in the tests so far. The surprise winner in the simulations had been a team headed by Jolice Missile Systems.
McIntyre didn’t particularly like the Jolice people — arrogant rich bastards well connected in Washington. He expected them to fall on their asses in the Hawaii tests, though not before their hospitality party — which, if past was prologue, would feature the best available babes in Hawaii.
“You’re stuttering, Mac,” said Blitz.
“I don’t know that I can do anything Gorman and Bonham can’t. They assured me twenty minutes ago that they’d be recovering the planes anytime now,” said McIntyre.
That didn’t draw an immediate response, so McIntyre added, “There’s a couple of hundred — must be a thousand — people involved in the search. The weather was a bitch, and that’s the only reason it hasn’t been wrapped up yet.”
“The President just asked me why you weren’t there.”
“Yes, sir,” said McIntyre. “So, how do I get to North Lake?”
“I have a jet en route from Edwards right now.”
Dr. Michael Blitz paced the length of the room, his right hand rubbing the nubby outline of his goatee, his left hitched back into his belt. It was a pose the students in his international relations seminar at Harvard would have recognized as presaging a major pronouncement, more than likely some wild metaphor comparing a campaign in the Napoleonic Wars to a Cold War tete-a-tete between Nixon and Mao Zedong, with a snide reference to Henry Kissinger thrown in for laughs.
But this wasn’t Harvard. And while the suite of rooms in the Hawaiian hotel where he was pacing was considerably more luxurious than his usual academic haunts, at the moment he would have gladly exchanged the surroundings.
Not the job, just the surroundings.
The two floors below him swarmed with contractors whose companies had staked billions on the right to build the next phase of America’s global augmented ABM system. The name itself was anachronistic, considering
