Sigma One (2 page)

Radcliff compared the two alternatives in his mind. The first might release radioactive material into the atmosphere. He remembered Chernobyl and the pitiful pictures of the effects of contamination on the reindeer in Lapland and decided this would not be a good choice.

The second alternative with the missile exploding in the ground would cause the deadly material to be entombed for eternity. Sure, the nuclear waste disposal teams might have a difficult time, and the ground water might be contaminated in the future, but the effects would be far less immediately harmful to mankind. He liked this choice better, grinned and took another slug of bourbon.

In his mind, he formulated a question he might get asked tomorrow at the hearings: "And how does this reprogramming get accomplished?" He pondered this and tried to imagine some answers while the bourbon took effect.

He scratched his chin and thought, "I know, we'll get moles into the Soviet Rocket Forces and have them accomplish the reprogramming, and then announce the results to Moscow." He shook his head: Not very feasible. The screening process for Strategic Rocket Force duty was too stringent and the risks too great if the moles were discovered.

He thought again of another answer to get the reprogramming done. "By selectively letting the Soviets buy key software technology from the United States for micro-circuit manufacturing through a third party, we could let them think they were putting one over on Uncle Sam? All the while we could make sure the software they would be buying was defective and secretly modified with critical bugs such that when they went to make the layouts for their own microcircuits the bugs would result in the production of defective parts which could be reprogrammed by the US via satellite microwave links after they had been installed!"

He shook his head again.

Hardly likely. How would we know the Soviets wouldn't find the bugs and fix them? He wrinkled his brow as he pondered this question.

He flipped the next chart. Pictured here was the same Soviet Rocket complex, the same blowup picture of the CPU, but outside the picture was a picture of a person dressed in (you guessed it) the old red white and blue. Squiggly waves were shown emanating from his head and were being focused at the CPU. The words next to the blowup of the CPU now read "US personnel selectively recruited and trained to mind meld with computers could dynamically reprogram Soviet Rocket Forces without ever leaving US soil. Selective "launch accidents" could be planned and announced in advance, proving the omnipotent potential of such technology, thus forcing the Soviet Union into complete surrender."

He liked this idea far better, but his head was becoming groggy as he finished the last of the whiskey in his glass. He then closed the book, went to his safe, locked it and left his office for the night.

He had all the ammunition he needed. Who could argue such a brilliant concept? "Hell, what's another 2 to 3 billion in investment?" he said to himself as he walked out of the building.

Patrick Huxley had followed a varied career path, both in and out of the government. Graduated from Annapolis as a midshipman in 1969 at the age of twenty-two, he had served his nation in only one military campaign-the evacuation of the United States embassy in South Vietnam in March 1972. That conflict changed his life.

There, during that brief encounter with his first live firing
incident, his Corsair took three stray bullets from the rooftops as he flew in low over the huddled shacks south of the city. His plane's oil pressure dropped dramatically just seconds after the first of the rounds pierced the oil lines and as he turned his head he could see dark smoke pouring out from under his left wing. He had had to abort, even before he was able to fire a shot at the enemy. That had pissed him off.

Somewhere out in the Gulf, he jettisoned his ordnance and wing tanks to minimize the risk of an explosion thinking he would be lucky enough to limp his aircraft back onto the decks of the Coral Sea. Before he hit the release, however, he squeezed off a couple of hundred rounds and watched as the bullets riddled the choppy waters in front of him. His anger increased as he realized no one was receiving his twenty millimeter greeting cards.

He cursed his foul luck at not being able to complete his mission.

Just as he lifted his finger from the trigger and prepared to radio in, his plane shuddered violently and started to lose altitude. His altimeter slowly wound down as he watched. Because he was only at 10,000 feet, he knew his rate of descent would put him a good twenty miles away from the aircraft carrier when his plane finally augured in.

Forgetting his procedures momentarily, he raised the nose of the plane slightly to diminish his rate of descent and applied what little power he had left. The aircraft shuddered again, and the airspeed indicator slowed as did his rate of fall as the engines generated what little thrust they had left. He hoped it would be enough to allow him to climb to flight level two zero zero (20,000 feet). At that altitude, then, even if his engine quit, he'd be within line of site to the Coral Sea and could radio his position to them before punching out and burying his 20 million dollar machine in the sea. Hell, he might even have enough to land if the engine could just hold on for a few more minutes.

He waited and watched as the altimeter began to indicate he was in a slow and steady climb. His heart raced and his hands began to sweat as he gripped the throttle and the stick. His plan almost worked, but as he passed through twelve thousand feet, the engine gave one last violent shudder and then quit. The oil pressure dropped to zero, and his momentary upward progress was suddenly halted. The Corsair pitched over and began to fall from the sky. His initial reaction was to try and restart the engine, but with only twelve thousand feet between him and the deck, he knew that he would be wasting valuable time--time he would need to call in; time for one of the helos in the area to respond to his call so that he wouldn't be left to fend for himself in the shark infested waters. He also knew he would need time to steady the craft before punching out so his ejection could be made safely.

He instinctively lowered the nose to pick up airspeed and avoid a stall. Fortunately he reacted in time and only seconds before he ejected he was able to contact his ship and give them his position. Had it not been for getting his parachute lines tangled on the way down, all he would have had to show for his accident would have been an oblique entry in a previously flawless military service record. But he wasn't that lucky and a fouled parachute line caused his fall to be severe and uncontrolled. When he hit the water, his right leg was bent backwards and the impact caused him to dislocate his hip. That injury ended his flying and caused him to now walk with a permanent limp. It also shortened his military career.

He served the last of his obligatory five year tour in the Navy Annex as a public affairs officer, and even with the boredom associated with a desk job, he was able to make the best of a bad situation. This last job in the military enabled him to make numerous contacts with high roller government contractors in the Washington D.C. area and these contacts, in turn, had enabled him to meet Senator Radcliff.

Through Radcliff, Pat landed a particularly well-paying, post-service government job serving as the senator's personal liaison with the pentagon. This was due in part to his knowledge, but more to the truth, because he had rescued the senator from a major political embarrassment when he covered for him to his wife in one of the many torrid affairs the senator had had with a junior secretary they both had met at a post-election win celebration. Had it not been for that affair and Radcliff's wanting to pay him back, even with Pat's previous credentials as a Naval Academy graduate, he more than likely would have ended up moving back to Longview, Texas and taken a job in the same brewery his father had worked in till he died. His chances for a post military flying career had ended because of his accident, but his career at the NSF had begun as a result.

Pat Huxley worked for Senator Radcliff for four more years after he left the military. One year into his tenure, at the age of twenty-eight, Pat hired Sarah Johnson to replace the Senator's personal secretary who had left under other-than-normal circumstances.

Sarah, a raven-haired beauty with charcoal, piercing eyes and alabaster complexion looked more like she should be on the cover of Vogue magazine than taking the typing test he had given her. At least that's what Pat remembered thinking the first day he interviewed her for the post.

Sarah, then twenty-five, had just moved to Washington from Boynton Beach, Florida as a result of breaking up with her childhood sweetheart. She had dated the guy for seven years after graduating high school, but finally realized her romantic energies were being wasted on a boy whose only ambition in life was to lie out in the hot Florida sun and work on the perfect tan. Sarah was tenacious though and thought she could change Tad's outlook. Maybe that's why she hung on for as long as she did. But once she did come to the conclusion that they were going nowhere, three days later, she was on a United Airlines flight from Palm Beach International Airport (before it was remodeled) to Dulles.

With only seven hundred dollars in her purse, but a pocketful of determination, Sarah arrived in Washington. She knew she would have to work fast to land a job, but she was confident she could make it on her own. Buying a paper in the airport, she circled five or six potentials and then headed out to take our nation’s capital by storm. That confidence was visible in her poise as she played the keyboard of the IBM selectric in front of Pat's watchful eye, turning in a perfect 92 words per minute on her first try. That confidence, too, along with her beauty and poise is what immediately attracted Pat to her.

Unbeknownst to her, she had the job the moment she walked into Pat's office.

Pat was dumbstruck by her, and during her typing test was already picturing what the two of their kids would look like; whether they would have his sandy brown hair, or her jet black locks.

Their courtship was a short one; she, on the rebound he, wanting to end his single days and settle down. Six months after they met they were married in Baltimore in a small private ceremony. One year and two months later, Alice was born, a carbon copy of her mother.

Sarah became Pat's reservoir of strength during the next three years as he struggled in his job working for the senator. She was also the one who finally prompted him to leave when he felt he was going nowhere and tired of covering for Radcliff. It was her strength, too, he relied on as he worked his way up in PCA, the beltway bandit he joined after leaving the Senator's employ. And when his career stalled in this job as project manager on some innocuous urban development planning study for some underdeveloped third world country, she was there to prod him into action again in spite of himself.

Pat oftentimes when overworked would drown himself in self-pity partly because of his physical disability, partly because he had never had to deal with failure. Sarah knew the signs, and these signs began to show themselves after only one year with PCA: little conversation; lack of his ability to get to sleep; sharp words addressed to herself and to Alice; sulking.

During their three years of marriage, though, she had learned how to cope with her husband's mood swings. She had also created an undeniably simple method of breaking his self-destructive cycle when things got too bad. Her method was this: she would compare Pat to her ex-lover, Tad. Tad was the antithesis of Pat, lazy, going nowhere, and not very intelligent. That's why her method worked. Pat knew these things about Tad and being compared to him was intolerable.

On one cold November day after three weeks of the silent treatment, she thought it time to put her defenses in motion.

Pat stood at the mirror watching the smile lines deepen on his face. He was and had been disgusted with his job at PCA. Things just were not working out as he had expected them to when he hired on a year earlier. He knew he should be happy. He got to be a program manager in three months, didn't he?

"But that doesn't matter," he muttered to himself.

"Damn it, Sarah!" Pat said sharply, turning around and raising his voice slightly to be overheard from the running water.

"Damn it! I'm not going anywhere at PCA and I'm sick and tired of watching the founders of the company gettin' rich selling the same old crap to new customers." (Pat was referring to a particularly knotty proposal he had had to work on over the past three weeks. The proposal involved repackaging an old analysis done three years prior for a different client. This time the work would, however, be done at twice the price.)

"Did you say something, Tad?" Sarah emphasized the last word as she turned over in bed.

Pat didn't hear her and continued angrily. "Yeh, I said something!"

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"What's bothering you, TAD?"

This time he heard, but ignored her. "You heard me!"

"Not all of it I didn't." By this time, Sarah had gotten up and put her hand on his shoulder.

Pat hesitated then began again trying to hide the smile that had crept onto his face. He didn't want her to know that she had gotten to him.

"I'll tell you what's bothering me. I'm sick and tired of working at PCA and getting nowhere. I'm just not cut out to continuously deal in paper studies. I want to do something that matters, something that will have meaning three years from now. Something we can be proud of. I'm not doing any of that at PCA. I'm selling transportation studies to underdeveloped, third world countries. As if they have a need for mass transit. Hell, they can't even feed themselves. And to make matters worse, they want me to lead up the newest project in Zaire. That means I'm gonna be gone from you and Alice for at least three months, maybe longer. And that burns me up!"