Return to Honor (11 page)

The intercom on Montoya’s desk crackled back to life. “Done, sir.”

“Stand by, Colonel.” Montoya flicked off the intercom. A slight bit of color began to creep back into his cheeks, almost as though the initial shock of the hijacking had abated. Montoya’s voice was level as he spoke. “All right, your announcement has been made. Now what do you want me to do?”

Hujr grew suddenly alert, catching the subtle change in Montoya’s voice. He had to act now. He had to put down any thoughts the President might be having of trying to circumvent Hujr’s plan. Hujr jumped up with the bomb and backhanded Montoya across the desk. “I said no speaking. Move away from the desk.”

Montoya stood, complying. A red mark appeared on his face where Hujr’s hand, weighted by the deadman switch, had hit. Montoya stood rigidly in front of the desk. Hujr approached, then swiftly planted a foot to Montoya’s testicles. Montoya winced, grabbed at his groin, and doubled over. When he grasped for breath, Hujr kicked Montoya’s kneecap, sending the President sprawling. Montoya curled up on the floor.

Hujr toed the President. “Once more. You will speak only if you do not understand me. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

Hujr kicked the President on the cheek—not hard enough to cause permanent damage, but well-placed, so that Montoya’s cheek oozed blood.

“I said, is that clear?”

This time Montoya only nodded. Saliva and snot mixed with Montoya’s blood on the carpet; the blue Presidential seal soaked up the fluids.

Hujr allowed Montoya a few moments to think about the threat, then prodded him once more with his toe. “Get back to your desk.”

Montoya pushed himself up and staggered, holding a hand to his cheek. When he sat, Hujr stared at him stonily. “Inform the captain once more of the warning I gave not to attempt to break into the chamber. Anything else they try—such as a rapid decompression, a sudden dive, or firing bullets through the bulkhead—will only gain them death. Furthermore, they are to turn off all running lights, identification signals, and electronic gear. The steward in the cockpit will verify what they have done.”

Montoya did as he was told. He remained silent after speaking to Colonel McGirney. Du’Ali verified the pilot had followed the President’s orders, and Air Force One was cut-off from the outside world.

Hujr allowed a smile to grow over his face. “Very
good,
Mr. President. I think we can have a working relationship. Now, instruct the captain to fly in the following heading.” He reeled off a series of numbers. “He must fly directly in that heading, disregarding any airspace violations he may expect to encounter.” Hujr consulted the wall clock. “But he will not have any, at least not any unexpected ones. Have him change course immediately. Once again, the steward in the cockpit will acknowledge that your pilot is following my directions. If he does not obey your orders, you will die. Now tell him.”

Hujr relaxed back on the couch as Montoya groped for the intercom. The coup was going as planned, and things couldn’t be better.

U.S.S.S.
Bifrost

Space was the perfect place for the CRAY-Omega quantum computer. Like its younger brother—the much smaller and less sophisticated CRAY-Beta on Earth—the CRAY-Omega was fast.
Very
fast. So fast, in fact, that if the CRAY-Omega were on Earth, the entangled qubits that made it so powerful would be affected by the local gravitational anomalies created by trucks roaring on roads two hundred meters away. Vibrations from those same trucks would cause the 1.2 million qubits of the CRAY-Omega to disentangle, and the computer would yammer like a moron.

So the only place the CRAY-Omega could operate with the isolation it needed was in space. Surrounded by two meters of water to absorb cosmic rays, it was housed in a module five hundred meters away from BIGEYE’s main body, connected by a slender, graphite-composite tube.

Originally developed for the scuttled anti-ballistic missile program, the CRAY-Omega had been built by Seymour Cray’s disciples to process exabytes of “all-source” information in order to generate real-time simulations of every possible war scenario—and calculate optimal win strategies on a running basis.

So without the anti-ballistic missile program, the quantum supercomputer—a cryogenically cooled single unit using molecular spin for memory … a device no larger than an old-fashioned calculator … a computer that could
only
work in the isolation of space—did not have anything to do.

So the U.S. Air Force put the CRAY-Omega to work on board BIGEYE, processing the information that it gathered from earthbound, stratospheric, and satellite sensors. In addition, any unusual EM transmissions were screened by the CRAY; bits and pieces of radio calls from dope smugglers were analyzed right along with eavesdropping on unfriendly, and sometimes even friendly, governments. A machine that can process and integrate vast amounts of disparate information might as well be put to use.

Lieutenant Colonel Frier was using only a minuscule fraction of the CRAY-Omega total computing power running a combat simulation game when the terminal burped at him. Frier frowned and moved closer to the three-dimensional screen. The status board indicated that no sensors were activated, but something had triggered the warning. Frier made hand movements in front of the motion-sensitive screen.

As he ran through the options he hummed an old song—the words wouldn’t come back to him, but the melody was still as clear as it had been twenty-three years before when he was an IP at Laughlin. Sometimes he could still feel the breeze off the lake and smell the dry desert. Those were good times; he was young, so he did not have anything to worry about except his students. It wasn’t until years later, right before the crash, that things had started to wear on his nerves.

Why did he always have to let his thoughts drift back
? The memory stayed with him: an already-dead student, soaked with JP-4, bursting into flames as Frier dragged him out of the cockpit; then Frier swatting at patches of fire that tried to catch his Nomex flight suit; falling down and not being able to get up—and finally
watching
his legs burn away. The worst part was the charred flesh.

No, it was the smell he couldn’t shake. And when they told him he’d never use his legs again, of
course
the opportunity to command the
Bifrost
was something he couldn’t turn down. What else did he have to live for? And pass up a chance to be productive again? There just wasn’t any question about it.

He shook his head and concentrated on the screen. The spook satellites were shown graphically in order of altitude from earth. Frier checked HERK-3’s position. The satellite was a polar bird, as was BIGEYE, but was nearly two hundred miles closer to the Earth than BIGEYE. Its lifetime in orbit was exponentially shorter than BIGEYE’s, but at that altitude, HERK-3 could practically tell you the color of someone’s eyes.

HERK-3 was southeast of the Mediterranean at the time. Usually things were pretty quiet there, but something must be going on. The satellite was picking up data and dumping it, via the AFSATCOM, into the CRAY’S memory. The CRAY-Omega had put something together—a combination of several seemingly unrelated facts—and had thought enough of it to warn him.

Frier did not like what he saw, so he decided to correlate the information with different sensors.

Frier reconfigured the screen and ran the CRAY through the “tell-me-three-times” routine to make sure the machine hadn’t slipped a bit. When the answer came up the same, he let out a single word:

“Crap.”

Frier didn’t say anything more until he set up a scrambled transmission direct to NSA, bypassing the CSOC downlink. The first few mnemonics of the coded sequence read: “XVW XVW XVW …”

National Security Agency Headquarters,
Fort George Meade, Maryland

The computer screen flashed on-off-on-off in a red and blue contrasting sequence designed to alert the operator. A beeper emitted a high-pitched warbling for the same purpose. There were four computer consoles in the room. Three of the consoles were manned, and the fourth, a training console, used exclusively by the on-duty supervisor, was idle. As the middle of the three active consoles warbled its warning a young, good-looking woman in a wheelchair jabbed at the interactive screen, silencing the alert.

The woman glanced up at the clock. “Twenty minutes and I’ve won the pot. Ready to pay up?”

The two operators flanking her grumbled good-naturedly but handed over the pot of money kept at the supervisor’s console. The first alert normally didn’t come until at least halfway through each shift. To win this early was certainly an omen.

The woman swung her wheelchair around after glancing at the screen. She waved her hand at the terminal, and the coded message appeared as a high-resolution hologram floating in front of her supervisor, who stood behind her. “What do you think?”

“I think those damned field operatives are using the XVW too often. You’d think they’d save the hot labels until they’ve got something substantial.”

“BIGEYE isn’t your run-of-the-mill field operative.”

Her supervisor raised a brow. “You’ve got a point.” He pushed at the hologram and it disappeared. “Ship it off to the NECC and let them decode it—you do the honors.”

“Right.” She tapped at her terminal. As the message was transferred the woman counted the pot of money she’d won. It was just enough to take her colleagues out for drinks after work.

The White House, Washington, D.C.

“Mr. Woodstone.”

The Vice President waved him quiet.

White House Chief of Staff Baca knelt in the dark viewing room at the Vice President’s side. “Mr.
Woodstone,
this is urgent.…”

“What is it?”

“We lost contact with the President’s plane fifteen minutes ago.”

“Could his radio have gone out?”

“Impossible. There are too many backups on board. Besides, we lost his IFF along with radar contact. Air Force One has disappeared from sight.”

G. Percival Woodstone made his first major decision acting as President of the United States of America: “Turn off the film.” He stood abruptly and started for the exit as the house lights brightened. “Now, what’s going on? I want to be fully briefed on this matter.” He turned for the Oval Office.

Baca stood in the hallway. “Mr. Woodstone, I recommend we use the vault.”

“Eh?”

“The National Emergency Command Center, sir. You’ll be able to keep in touch with our intelligence sources
there.” To Woodstone’s blank stare he added, “We have a direct link with our satellite sensors and other operatives in the NECC.”

“You’re right, as usual. I’m not used to taking over in times like these.” Woodstone whirled and followed the chief of staff to the elevator that would take them to the basement. “What else do you know about this?”

“I’ll be able to brief you in depth once we’re in the vault, sir. I’ve only got a smattering of the original message myself. I thought it was more important for me to inform you now than to have you surprised later if the entire message took too long to verify.”

“Right.” Woodstone kept in step with Baca’s strides. Though a shorter man, Baca kept the Vice President hopping right along.

Woodstone felt an involuntary rush of adrenaline pound through his veins. The excitement of something
big
happening grabbed him. Kissing babies, dedicating libraries, opening manufacturing plants, and speaking to groups of little old ladies bored him to tears. As Vice President, he thought he would have a little more say in running the country—but he was really only a figurehead. He knew he’d have to be a PR man for Sandy Montoya when he agreed to take the job, but enough was enough. Sandy didn’t even trust him to run things on his own.

The President had left his chief of staff to help run the show when he went to Europe. So he knew he couldn’t flub this one. Here was his chance to have a real part in making a Real Big Decision.

They passed the ubiquitous Secret Service man guarding the entrance and entered the command center. An air force colonel met them inside.

“Mr. Vice President, we have a briefing ready for you, sir.”

Colonel Welch led him to an overstuffed chair in front of a long table. A large screen took up the front part of the room. Myriad terminals manned by men and women with headsets were crammed into the back. The room was air-conditioned; Woodstone swore he could detect a hint of piñon wafting through the room.

Woodstone settled into the chair. “What’s the story?”

“Fifteen minutes ago, 1949 local time, air controllers lost contact with Air Force One over Turkey. The President’s plane is equipped with an Identification Friend or Foe transponder as well as the usual radar transponders. They are all routinely monitored through satellite relay. All contact with the plane ceased at the same time. The only conclusion we can reach at this time is that Air Force One met with an unforeseen ground obstacle.”

“You mean it crashed.”

“As far as we can tell, that is correct, sir.” Colonel Welch pushed a button; the screen lit up with a view of Turkey and the Middle East. “The President’s route is marked in red.” The screen flashed to a close-up of the Turkish border. “We lost contact with him close to where the red line terminates.” The colonel flashed a bright red arrow up on the screen using a laser pointer. “As you can see, the Taurus Mountains start here and extend down to here—which is south of where we lost contact with the plane. We didn’t know Air Force One’s exact position, so it’s possible that the plane was ahead of its schedule and crashed.”

“We’ve scrambled an air force unit to scout the area and look for the wreckage. Plus, in addition to our overhead national assets, we have a reconnaissance plane equipped with IR cameras flying down from Crete. With any luck we should be able to find the plane within a few hours.”

Woodstone shifted his weight in the chair. “So what now? What do we do?”

Awkward silence filled the room.

Baca spoke up. “Colonel, are you absolutely certain the plane went down?”

“Well, sir, of course we can’t be one-hundred-percent sure until we locate the wreckage, but we’ve got a backup search plan. We’ve got an AWACS forward based in Saudi Arabia that can get a radar fix on anything moving within five hundred miles, but it will take some time to get there.”