VII
On July 15, Joseph Miller, Harold Tanner, Casper Franklin, Jack Mota and White House Chief of Security, Lloyd Dahner, sat with President Robert Vanderbilt in the ready room just off his day office. Vanderbilt sat at a large, ornate desk, legs crossed, absently running his finger around the rim of a drinking glass that sat on his blotter.
Vanderbilt was a big-boned man in his late fifties, with archaic, mutton-chop sideburns and thinning, curly, brown hair that was graving at the temples. With the exception of a slight belly, he was in generally good physical shape. He had a callous sense of humor, and often used it at the expense of those around him.
“So, you don’t think they can fire again, Harold?” he was asking Tanner.
“Of course, we don’t know for sure, Mr. President,” replied Tanner, his face a worried frown, “but we’ve been unable to detect any sign of a thermal-energy signature in space. If the generator that powers the thing is chemically fueled, there should be one. Even if it uses a fission pile, it must have a heat radiator of some sort in order to get rid of the waste heat from the energy conversion system. No machine is one hundred percent efficient, so all heat engines must radiate some excess heat.
“According to Stickle and his experts, an orbital laser weapon would have to either generate power as it needs it, feeding it directly to the laser cavity during the firing sequence, or else generate the power prior to firing, in order to charge up an energy storage system, which would then supply the energy to the laser when called for. In either case, we should be able to detect waste heat being emitted as radiant energy, and so far, there is none.
“This leads us to believe that it was sent up with a one-shot charge already stored in some sort of energy storage capacitor. Since there was no fuel to be burned, there was no detectable heat signature when the thing fired.
“But, if it has no fuel, it can’t recharge itself, either. A solar energy array could supply energy to such a weapon, but it would be slow to recharge, and due to the power requirements, the array would be very large, and certainly visible to our radar.
“Based on the lack of a heat signature, and the absence of a solar generator, we think it was a one-shot device, designed to get our attention.”
“I’d say they accomplished that, all right,” said Vanderbilt, absently studying the whiskey glass. “But what about fuel cells, that kind of thing?”
“Same argument. They generate heat.”
“What about the energy beam itself? Can’t your satellites detect it, and trace it back to the weapon?”
“We’re working on it, Mr. President,” said Tanner. “The scientists all agree that if the beam frequency is in the high-energy part of the spectrum, it must ionize gas particles as it passes through the atmosphere, leaving an electrically charged path that exists just for an instant, something like a lightning stroke. The problem is, the area of space that it can be within is enormous. It is literally like looking for a needle of light in hundreds of thousands of cubic miles of atmosphere, a needle which may only exist for a few thousandths of a second, at best.
“As for our satellites, they’re in the same orbital plane as the weapon, twenty-two thousand three hundred miles up, and either looking down at the surface of the planet, or out into space at other stellar objects, not across the orbital plane. Our defensive ground stations are generally tuned to detect radio-frequency and infrared wavelength energy, not stuff in the ultraviolet or X-ray spectrum.
“The few terrestrial-based, scientific sampling instruments that operate within those frequencies are not set up to image a point-source of energy in a wide-field area of outer space. Even if they were, the odds against someone looking at a particular area of the sky during the fraction of a second when the weapon is firing are enormous.”
Tanner rose and walked across the room, obviously nervous in Vanderbilt’s presence. Vanderbilt was aware of Tanner’s unease, but he did not outwardly show it. The twitch at the corner of his mouth may have been an amused smile trying to form, but if it was, he controlled it well.
“We are taking steps now to correct that, though,” Tanner continued. “We’re setting up long-range Doppler-radar ground stations here at Langley Air Force Base; at Patrick Air Force Base at the Cape; and at several airports and other sites that have the necessary equipment. Falcon Air Force Base in Colorado is working with NOAA to enhance weather satellite imagery of lightning strokes, in the interest of detecting and logging all ionizing radiation emissions in the atmosphere over the U.S.
“The CIA is running the Langley site,” he acknowledged Franklin with a nod, “but the Patrick operation is a joint NASA/military operation. The Air Force’s 45th Space Wing is stationed there. The physics department at the University of Miami will do the actual monitoring.
“Caltech is contracted to do the monitoring at the Space Warfare Center at Falcon Air Force Base, and for NASA at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. We hope to be ready if they fire it again. We won’t have any satellite surveillance across the orbital plane—the beam wouldn’t be visible in space, anyway—but the ground stations should be able to see the beam path through the atmosphere and triangulate the orbital position of the weapon platform.”
“Do you think we should evacuate senior government staff from Washington, just on the off chance that these freaks make good on their promise?” Vanderbilt asked, studying Tanner.
Tanner resumed his chair, and looked Vanderbilt in the eye, a neutral expression on his face. “None of your political advisors think so, sir,” he responded, deftly avoiding giving his own opinion. “They feel that it would only lend credence to the terrorists, and would really piss off the people who were evacuated, especially if nothing happened. It could do a lot of damage to your public image, too.”
Tanner studied his fingernails a moment before continuing. “Tactically, the consensus is that chances are next to none that they have the stored energy to fire again. Of course, the Secret Service insists that you, and the senior White House staff and their families, be evacuated for a few days in early August, just to be on the safe side.”
“Speaking of image, won’t that look a bit strange to the public, not to say cowardly, if we just happen to vacate the White House around that date?” Vanderbilt asked.
“You can minimize it, Mr. President. Your security chief and press secretary can arrange for the Travel Office to schedule some sort of routine business engagements for you and the Vice President, and the rest of the cabinet can find excuses to be elsewhere. If you stagger the dates so that it isn’t obvious, and insist that you are just going about business as usual—attending prearranged events, and making it appear that you give no significance whatever to the terrorist threat—it should be believable to the mainstream public.”
“Have our intelligence people had any success in getting a lead on who these people are?” Vanderbilt asked Franklin, as he resumed toying with his glass.
“Not yet, sir, but they’re working on it,” Franklin responded. “We’re scanning all foreign and domestic launch records as far back as ten years, trying to determine the most probable launch sites. It’s probably a waste of effort. It could be almost anywhere. Could be in the Russian Ukraine, India, Southeast Asia, China, the Middle East, damned near anywhere. There’s no telling when it was put up. It could have been anytime in the last couple of years, maybe longer. Other nations do a lot of experimental stuff, just as we do. We can correlate and verify those launches and payloads where the payload is still functional and we know what it is— a communications satellite, for example—but science experiments are generally term packages, and we have no way of verifying that they all burned up.
“It’s also possible that a missile carried two separate satellites into orbit, while claiming only one—a MIRVed payload. Unless someone admits to it, I doubt we can find them by detective work alone. So far, no one is taking credit.”
“You seriously think it might be a Russian or Chinese operation?” Vanderbilt studied Franklin’s face.
“I know it sounds ridiculous, Mr. President.” Franklin rose and paced the room. “Everything does. It’s just that we can’t rule it out, based on any concrete information. In my opinion, though, it’s unlikely they would pull something like this. Certainly not the official Russian or Chinese military. Those nations have nothing to gain anymore. We are all partners in business, now. Anyway, why would they make demands concerning our tax system or our education policies?”
“What do you think, Jack?” Vanderbilt asked Mota.
Mota’s brow furrowed, and his dark eyes looked toward some distant image in his own mind. “The sophistication of their science notwithstanding,” he said, “I think it has to be some civilian faction, headquartered here in the States. Nothing else makes sense. Even that doesn’t make sense. Assuming some militia could come up with enough money to buy a launch vehicle and the personnel to put it up, where did they get the scientific know-how and manufacturing technology to build the payload—that’s the real mystery—and where is the paper trail? We’re talking real money, a billion or two at the very least, for a launch vehicle, and the technical personnel to carry out launch and mission operations. You don’t spend that kind of money without leaving a trail a mile wide, especially if it’s a domestic operation. It has to come out of bank accounts and go into bank accounts. It has to buy lots of electronics and other exotic parts. So far, there isn’t a trace.
“A very large institution might be able to hide such a sum in its routine expenditures over a period of several years, or several large institutions might manage it in one year, but it would require an extensive conspiracy in either case. I would rather believe that a foreign power is behind it than to believe that something of that magnitude could take place under our noses, without our knowing about it.”
“That brings us back, full circle,” said Franklin. “Why would any foreign government care about those specific domestic policy reforms? What government anywhere wants to increase democratic civil control of government? It’s an absolute mystery. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Vanderbilt stood. “All right. It sounds like you’ve got all the questions in hand. See if you can find me some answers. Keep me up to speed on it. I want a daily progress report through regular channels.”
He swallowed the contents of the glass, and replaced it on the blotter. “If something significant breaks, you can get me or Joe through the national priority net at any time. I want field commanders informed—they are to call me if anything important happens and they can’t reach their superiors. I want the Chiefs of NORAD and Space Command to issue orders that nobody is to be punished for circumventing their chain of command in an emergency.”
“Do you think that’s wise, sir?” Tanner frowned. “It will piss off a lot of command people.”
“I don’t give a damn who it pisses off,” said Vanderbilt, bluntly. “If those people sneeze, I want to know about it the instant after it happens, and I don’t want it filtered through a bunch of prima donnas who have to weigh the personal benefits of every bit of information that they pass up the chain. Make it plain to them, Harold. They had better play ball with me on this. I can’t afford to fumble, especially not if those bastards actually do knock out a city. A few hundred thousand dead voters won’t get me any roses, and if it looks like a bunch of inept bunglers in my administration let it happen, I’m going to come looking for some sacrificial goats. I’ll let you guess where I’m going to look. Do you read me?”
“Loud and clear, Mr. President,” Tanner said, frowning at the floor.
“Thank you for coming, gentlemen,” Vanderbilt said dismissively, walking away. “I’ll expect your first progress reports by ten o’clock tomorrow morning.” He smiled over his shoulder at the troubled countenances of his bureau chiefs. He enjoyed making them worry.