meant, more often in the bad old days of the Cold War than now, but the pattern was all too familiar. In all probability, Advanced Analysis was not a normal aspiring defense contractor. Not with those two men involved. Advanced Analysis was most probably a front for the CIA or perhaps another agency with an interest in certain special operations. There were always things that needed doing that no one in the established military structure wanted to be responsible for. Sure, they recognized the necessity, even suggested particular operations, but when it came down to committing forces to the operations, the enthusiasm evaporated.
The outer office and lobby of Advanced Analysis was done in traditional colors and style. Mauve and sky blue predominated, with modern pictures composed of interesting fabrics and textures gracing the walls. The waiting room had several comfortable chairs, a plastic and slightly dusty small tree in one corner, and a few outdated magazines carefully arranged on the side tables. It gave little evidence of ever being used.
To date, Advanced Analysis had only four employees: the two Magruders, another Tomcat pilot named Jeremy Greene, and a receptionist, Janice Hall. Greene was technically a civilian, and had accepted a discharge from the Navy with the understanding that if he left Advanced Analysis he would be immediately recalled to active duty. Hall was a quiet, sharp woman, adept at maintaining the outer facade of the company. She fielded incoming calls, collected the resumes dropped off by job hunters and kept the small refrigerator stocked. Of the four, only Hall had regular hours. The other three worked insane hours when a mission was prepping and stood down between missions.
Tombstone had just returned from two weeks in Africa. There had been some indications that his wife, the former Tomboy Flynn, had been taken there as a prisoner following her ejection at sea. Tomboy, as the commanding officer of VF 95, had punched out when her aircraft was fatally damaged.
A month before, a Navy captain had risked her career to provide him with photo-intelligence shots of a rebel camp. In one of them, Tombstone could clearly make out Tomboy’s face, lifted up toward the sky. It was a procedure that all aviators were taught, to expose their faces to the sky in hopes that a satellite or reconnaissance aircraft would be able to identify them. Analysis indicated that she was probably at a rebel camp in Africa. Tombstone had few contacts in the area, but that did not prevent him from going there personally and imposing on every possible government official to gain access to the interior.
“Good morning, sir,” Hall said as Tombstone strode into the waiting room. “Your uncle is already here.”
“And Jeremy?” Tombstone asked.
Hall shook her head. “Traffic, probably.”
“Probably. Again,” Tombstone said. None of them punched a clock at Advanced Analysis, but certain standards of behavior were expected when an operation was in the offing. Even during downtimes, they were expected to stay in contact with the office, ready for immediate recall. Since the last mission, Greene had been increasingly restless and sometimes difficult to locate when needed.
Tombstone knew what was at the heart of the younger aviator’s attitude. Jeremy was a pilot and he wanted to fly. When he accepted the offer to join Advanced Analysis, he had been assured that he would be flying, and in more dangerous situations than he would in the fleet. It hadn’t worked out that way, and too much of it had been Tombstone’s fault.
Damn it all, it was so hard to turn over the controls. But how was Jeremy going to get the experience that Tombstone had without — well, experience?
The security door opened as Hall let him in. Tombstone strode down the short passageway to his office, checked for messages, and then headed for the conference room. A few hours catching up on paperwork, and he would be done.
His uncle was already there, perusing a thin brown folder. “Morning,” Tombstone said. “Anything up?”
“Maybe.” His uncle sighed heavily, shut the folder, and shoved it across the table to Tombstone. “Although I’m not sure what we can do about it. We might not even be involved.”
Before he took the folder, Tombstone paused to study his uncle. In the last three months, his uncle’s boundless enthusiasm for Advanced Analysis and its mission seemed to have waned. Instead of presenting the ruddy, cheerful face he normally did to the world, his uncle had lost a good deal of color. His face tended to look gray and drawn now, and he appeared older than he had in years.
“Is anything wrong?” Tombstone asked, his hand still on the closed folder. “You don’t look so hot.”
“I’m fine,” his uncle said.
“You sure?”
His uncle glared at him, his eyes piercing under his heavy eyebrows. There was a grim set to his face, a determination that Tombstone knew very well. It was an expression he’d seen often during his uncle’s days as chief of naval operations, but less often since he had retired from active duty. Now, seeing the same expression again, Tombstone felt uneasy. “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
Tombstone recognized that tone in his uncle’s voice. Questioning him further would just result in an argument. Whatever was going on — and Tombstone was convinced something was — he would have to wait for his uncle to reveal it in his own time.
Tombstone opened the folder. A satellite photo was on top, and Tombstone spent a few minutes trying to puzzle it out before referring to the attached analysis sheet. Photo-intelligence interpretation was a highly specialized skill, more art than science, and it took trained eyes to extract the most information from a picture.
He glanced at the technical data before getting to the analyst’s comments. The picture was taken at nighttime by an older geosynchronous satellite and showed a large portion of the Atlantic Ocean. There was a sharp line running across the center on it, linking the top right and bottom left corners. Tombstone had assumed it was a scratch of some sort, or a processing anomaly or gap in the data.
After reading the analyst’s comments, he flipped back to the photo with renewed interest. “A laser shot,” he said, impressed. “And from a Russian ship. Just why did they let us see this? They know when the satellites are going to be overhead, and what areas are covered by geosynchronous assets. Why test it on a clear day when you know a satellite is watching?”
“Exactly. But keep reading — there’s more.”
Tombstone skipped the rest of the report and leafed through the later materials. Just after the analyst’s report was a top secret message from the National Atmospheric and Oceanographic Observatory. It announced the termination of the satellite that had taken the first photo. The cause was listed as unknown, possibly a mechanical failure. The message was classified top secret.
The message after it went one step further, both in classification and in explanation. It was specially compartmented information, eyes only. Readers had to have a cosmic purple clearance even to know that those messages existed.
And the contents were stunning. Tombstone whistled softly as he read. “Laser… intentional termination… possible experiment and response to theater ballistic missile testing…” When he finished reading, Tombstone looked up with concern in his eyes. “They think the Russians nailed the satellite? But why? How does that tie in with the theater ballistic missile defense system?”
“Pretty tightly, if you ask me. You saw the storm of worldwide protest when President Bush first announced that the United States would be pursuing an anti-missile defense system. Well, the rest of the world has had a few years to think about that while we worked on developing an operationally reliable system. It relies on early detection of launches and laser targeting and weaponry for soft kill operations. It makes perfect sense as a tactical system. The first thing anyone would want to do would be eliminate the detection and targeting systems, and that means taking out the space-based lasers. What better weapon to use against a laser than another laser?”
“Fight fire with fire?” Tombstone mused.
His uncle nodded. “Exactly. It’s very much like the development of the mutually assured destruction, or MAD, program. If you recall, the think tanks were tasked with coming up with a solution to the possibility of nuclear attack from Russia. They spent years considering defense systems just like this, but the technology didn’t exist then. Finally, some smart kid ran the numbers and came up with the answer — within the budget restraints, the only way to fight the Russian ballistic missiles system was to develop our own. Fire with fire, as you say. That
