the blankets were rolled against the wall. There were clothes nearby. Josh walked over, staring at the dark shapes.
A set of sandals sat neatly at his left, next to a folded pair of pants and a cone-shaped hat. Josh bent to examine the hat. As he did, he glanced at the corner of the room. The shape of the blankets caught his eye, and for a moment he thought they were a body. He turned away quickly, but then curiosity forced him back.
There was definitely a blanket; the shape had a fold and curled furls. But it did look like a body.
He took a step toward it, his mind insisting his eyes were wrong.
And then his mind admitted what it saw: a dark black stain in the middle of the tan covering. It was definitely a body, wrapped in the blanket where it had been shot, thrown against the side of the house by the force of the bullets striking it.
Josh bolted from the house, his stomach turning.
8
“They don’t make ‘em like this anymore,” said his passenger, Steve Rosen.
Murphy laughed. He’d heard people say that at least a hundred times since his assignment at the War College began, and he’d been here only a few weeks.
It was literally true: they didn’t make Corvettes anymore, or any other car that got less than fifty miles to a gallon of gas. Even if the law hadn’t forbidden it, gas cost $14.39 a gallon; between that and the annual pollution surtax, few people wanted to pony up for a new sports car, especially when used ones could be purchased at bargain prices. Everyone said that in four or five years hydrogen-cell vehicles would match the “classics” in acceleration, top speed, and handling, but they’d been saying that for years.
Murphy wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep the Vette, a gift from his dad. Even after the raise that went with his promotion to major, paying for the gas was tough. It was quickly eating up the store of money he’d earned from combat pay as a Special Forces trainer in Ukraine.
Oh well — easy come, easy go.
Or not so easy come. There’d been a few times when he didn’t actually expect he’d make it home.
Zeus leaned on the wheel and turned hard onto the interior road, then swung into the parking lot in front of Building B-3, the prosaic name of the War College’s newest structure. Built with so-called green construction techniques, its entrance sloped upward from the earth, jutting out from under a moss-covered roof. The building’s geothermal system handled all of its heating and cooling; electricity was supplied by a farm of solar electric panels that flanked the northern side of the building.
The panels could not supply all of the building’s electric needs; there wasn’t enough space for panels or battery capacity to compensate for Pennsylvania’s cloudy weather. Even the high-efficiency windmills at the far end of the property couldn’t quite generate enough electricity to satisfy the hungry computer servers in B-3’s basement. Nonetheless, the building showed how serious the Army was about energy initiatives. It had been the subject of stories by nearly every media organization when it had opened a year before. Some of the techniques used in its construction would set the standards for years to come.
“Another day, another ass-kicking,” said Rosen, unsnapping the seat belt as Murphy turned off the engine. “How long will the U.S. last today?”
“Give them six months,” said Murphy, unfolding his six-eight frame from the low-slung car.
“Perry was
“Hey, it’s allowable under the rules.”
Rosen laughed. Known as Red Dragon, the simulation they were running pitted the U.S. — Blue — against China — Red. Neither country’s name was ever mentioned in the game, of course, but everyone who played knew who was who.
“They may change the rules if you keep this up,” said Rosen. “They’ll take away your advantage.”
“The rules are already lopsided in Blue’s favor,” said Zeus. “The simulation underestimates Chinese abilities.”
“Most of their army is way undertrained.”
“That’s reflected in the game. It’s overstated, really. China is like the U.S. in the late thirties. Capacity to kill.”
Zeus waved his pass in front of the card reader, which took the biometric data on its chip and compared it to the image before it, as well as the one stored in its own database. It took a few nanoseconds to make sure everything matched, then opened the door and let Zeus inside. Rosen had to wait to do the same — the system would not let more than one person pass at a time. Once inside, the two men passed through an eight-foot-wide by twenty-foot-long chamber; as they did, chemical and radiation sensors “sniffed” them to make sure they weren’t carrying anything dangerous.
Then came the live checks. The sentry in the vestibule inserted the ID cards into his own reader, then had them open their bags and empty their pockets for inspection.
“Sergeant Jacobs, you do this every day,” said Rosen. “Don’t you know us by now?”
“Sir, I do this every day because I know you.”
“If you didn’t, you’d strip-search us?”
“If necessary, sir.”
“You want to see us in our undies, don’t you, Sergeant?”
“Not so soon after breakfast.”
Finally waved through, the two officers walked down the hall past a wall of glass that looked out on a man- made pond and waterfall (part of the heating and cooling system), then took the stairs to the lower level. They were a few feet from their assigned office when Colonel Doner, who ran the simulation section, called out to them.
“Majors, good of you to show up this morning.”
“Colonel, we’re ten minutes early by my watch,” said Rosen.
“Ten minutes early is twenty minutes
The colonel spun on his heel and walked down the hall to his office. Murphy gave Rosen a shrug and followed.
“Maggie, get the major some coffee, please,” said Doner briskly as he passed through the outer office into his lair.
Murphy smiled at Maggie. She had a round, exotic face and perfect hips, but unfortunately had only recently married, and was therefore officially out of bounds according to Murphy’s sense of duty and honor.
Not to mention the fact that her husband was a Special Forces lieutenant colonel who not only outranked him but knew even more ways than he did to kill with his bare hands.
“Just a little milk, Major?” she asked, getting up from her desk. The coffee was located down the hall in a small lounge.
“Just a little,” said Zeus. He watched her walk out the door, then went into Doner’s office.
“See something you like?” said Doner. He frowned, though not as severely as he had at Rosen.
“I know the boundaries, sir.”
“I’m sure you do. Hang on just a second.”
Doner had four different workstations lined up on the table behind his desk. Two showed simulations in progress. He made sure each was working properly, then pulled out his seat and sat down. Besides his personal laptop, a simple Dell open at the corner of his desk, he had no less than twelve working CPUs in the office, most of
