Mackenzie's Mission (19 page)

 
No matter how they checked, they couldn't discover how the laser had been activated by accident. Caroline's actual expertise was with the laser itself, not with the triggering mechanism. That was Adrian's field, and he was surly because of it. If the problem was laid at his door, he might be recalled from the project or possibly even fired. Typically, he took out his frustration on Caroline.

 
"What are you, a jinx?" he muttered, scowling as he painstakingly checked every detail of the firing mechanism. "Everything was going fine, just a few minor kinks now and then, until you showed up. Things started falling apart as soon as you started working on them."

 
"I haven't worked on that mechanism," she pointed out, refusing to let him anger her or to get embroiled in a finger-pointing episode. She didn't have to say anything else, however, because Adrian took her comment to mean that
he
had
been working on it, so therefore it was obviously his fault.

 
"Let's stop the bickering," Yates ordered. "Cal,
is
anything
showing up on the computer?"

 
Cal looked exhausted, his eyes bloodshot from staring at a monitor screen and stacks of dim printouts for too many hours. He shook his head. "It's all checking out on paper."

 
They were standing grouped around the laser pod on the belly of the aircraft Bowie had been flying. Caroline stared at the pod, deliberately blotting out what everyone else was saying as she tried to sort things out. The laser seemed to be in perfect working order, as did the firing mechanism. The lock-on was also performing perfectly, but then, they already knew that. After all, it had locked on to
Daffy's
bird and blown it out of the sky. But what
had
told
it to lock on? According to the computer record, Bowie definitely hadn't touched the switch, so the lock-on and firing mechanisms had both operated automatically, something they weren't supposed to do. Nor was the laser supposed to have been activated; actually firing the lasers hadn't been scheduled for another ten days. Three things had gone wrong simultaneously: the laser had activated, the lock-on had targeted
Daffy's
aircraft and the thing had automatically fired. None of those three things was supposed to have happened at all; for all of them to have happened at the same time went beyond chance or Murphy's Law.

 
She didn't like the direction her thoughts were taking. If it wasn't logical for those three things to have happened by accident, then they had to have happened by design. The laser couldn't be activated by an accidental bump, and it certainly didn't have an outside switch labeled On and Off. Activating the laser was something the laser team had to do with a precise set of commands to the computer. Because of the security involved, they were the only ones with access to those commands.

 
Inescapable logic indicated that one of the team had activated the laser.

 
Caroline didn't believe in leaping to conclusions. Her work habits were orderly and painstakingly precise. Before she let herself begin thinking that one of the three men she worked with was deliberately sabotaging the laser, she had to make certain there was no way anyone outside the team could do it. Everything was computerized now, and though safeguards were built into the programs and elaborate precautions taken, nothing was impossible. There were a lot of things so difficult that no one had done them yet, but that didn't make them impossible. It was feasible that if someone could get the activation commands, he or she could also get into the program and use them. And it would be child's play for anyone that knowledgeable about computers to add commands that would override the pilot's physical keying of the lock-on switch, say if another aircraft came within a certain distance. Maybe Bowie had been flying a ticking
timebomb
today, just waiting for the right set of circumstances. It had been
Daffy's
bad luck that he had been assigned to shadow Bowie, but it could as easily have been Mad Cat, or even Joe, who had been shot down.

 
Yates had been watching her thoughtfully for several minutes. She was standing motionless, her gaze locked on the pod but not seeing it, with all her concentration turned inward. He could almost see that computer brain running down a checklist and inexorably narrowing the possibilities.

 
"What is it?" he finally asked when he couldn't stand the suspense any longer. "Any ideas?"

 
She blinked, and her eyes slowly refocused on him. "I think we should check the computer program," she finally said. "If it isn't the equipment, it has to be the program."

 
Cal looked positively haggard. "Do you know how long it will take to check this entire program?" he asked incredulously. "This thing is huge. It's the most complicated program I've ever worked on."

 
"Maybe a Cray…" she murmured, looking back at the pod.

 
"Book time on a Cray supercomputer?" Yates made it a question, but he was already mentally running through the logistics. "Expensive as hell."

 
"Not as expensive as stopping the program."

 
"It could take forever to get a booking, unless the Pentagon can line up some priority time."

 
"Yeah, that's a fine idea," Adrian said impatiently, "but you people are forgetting that the big man gave us thirty-six hours, of which we have already used ten. I don't think he's going to be satisfied with a possibility."

 
"We've come up with nothing everywhere else. Do you have a better idea?" Caroline replied just as impatiently.

 
He glared at her without answering. The truth was, they had all reached a dead end.

 
Caroline didn't mention her other conclusion, that if the solution to their problem was in the computer program they still had to discover whether it was a basic error in programming or if someone had deliberately programmed it in, but running everything through a Cray would give them the answer to that. By comparing the working program with the original, the Cray could tell them if the working program had been altered in any way. If it hadn't, then it was back to the drawing board for
DataTech
; if it had, then they had to find the person responsible for the changes.

 
"So what do we do?" Cal asked, rubbing his eyes. "Stop looking and just assume we're going to find it in the program, or stay up all night looking for something when we don't know what we're looking for?"

 
Despite herself, Caroline had to grin. "If you're as groggy as that sentence sounded, I don't think
you
can
stay up all night."

 
He gave her a bleary look and an equally bleary grin. "Sad, isn't it? In my younger days I could carouse all night and work all day, then go back out for more carousing. What you see here is a shadow of my former self."

 
"I'm glad you two don't find this serious," Adrian snapped.

 
"Knock it off!" Yates ordered, temper in his usually calm voice. They were all tired and frazzled. He moderated his tone. "I mean it literally as well as figuratively. We aren't accomplishing anything except exhausting ourselves. We're calling it quits for the night, despite what I said earlier. I think we've eliminated everything it could be except the program, so that's our
logical
next
step, and we can't do it here. I'm going to clean up and have a good meal while I think about this, then I'm going to have a talk with Colonel Mackenzie. Let's get some rest."

 
Captain Ivan Hodge, head of security, said without preamble, "We have a very suspicious pattern here, sir."

 
Joe's stem face showed no emotion, though he wished the captain hadn't found anything.

 
Major General
Tuell's
flinty eyes became even flintier. As base commander, he was ultimately responsible for everything that happened, and he was intensely concerned with whatever had caused the crash of an F-22. "Show us what you've found."

 
The captain was carrying a thick log. He deposited it on Joe's desk and flipped it open to a
premarked
page. "Here." He noted an entry he had already highlighted in yellow. "This is the security code number for a member of the laser team, Caroline Evans. She arrived last Tuesday as a replacement for a worker who had a heart attack."

 
Joe's guts knotted up and his eyes went blank as he waited for Captain Hodge to continue.

 
"She has a pattern of arriving in the morning before everyone else and being the last to leave," the captain said, and Joe relaxed a little. Caroline was a workaholic; hardly damning circumstances, and he himself had walked in on her unannounced several times, catching her doing nothing suspicious… although she had quickly cleared the computer screen that one time.

 
He had briefly wondered about it, then forgotten it, until now.

 
"You yourself have that pattern, sir," Captain Hodge said to Joe. "In itself, it doesn't mean anything." He flipped to another
premarked
page. "But here, on Thursday night, the sensors show Ms. Evans entering the laser work area shortly before 2400 and not leaving until almost 0400. She was alone the entire time. She reentered the building at 0600 for her normal workday. The birds went up that morning and for the first time experienced some malfunction with the lasers, isn't that right?"

 
The ice was back in Joe's eyes. "Yes."

 
"She left the area late that afternoon with the other members of the team and didn't return until Sunday night, again shortly before 2400. Again, she was the only person there. She left the building at 0430, returned at her usual time of 0600. This time, Major Deale's aircraft was shot down. Hell of a lot more disruptive than the lasers not working at all. These midnight appearances in the work area, combined with the fact that the trouble didn't start until she arrived, don't look good." The captain hesitated as he looked at Joe. The colonel's expression was enough to make any sane man hesitate, and Captain Hodge considered himself very sane. Nevertheless, it had to be said. "I understand you've taken a… uh, personal interest in Ms. Evans."

 
"We've gone out together a few times." They'd done a hell of a lot more than that, he thought savagely. She had given herself to him with a completeness that had shattered his memories of other women, reduced them to nothingness. And after they had returned from Vegas Sunday night she had slipped out to the work area and… done what? Secretly activated the laser on Bowie's aircraft? Had the laser on the bird he'd been flying been activated, too? Could he just as easily have been the one who shot down a friend?

 
Captain Hodge looked uncomfortable. "While you were with her, did she say anything? Ask any questions pertaining to Night Wing?"

 
"No." He was certain of that. Work had been mentioned in only the most general way. But then again, why should she have to ask him anything? "She has the clearance to find out anything about the project that she wants without having to ask anyone else."

 
"That's true. But did she say anything that, in retrospect, you could construe as being a reason for wanting the lasers to fail? Or for wanting to scuttle the Night Wing project?"

 
"No." But she wouldn't; Caroline was too smart for that. Caroline was brilliant. Caroline was perfectly capable of activating the lasers; she was not only an expert, she had access to the codes. "She has the knowledge and she had the opportunity," he heard himself saying. "Do you have anything else? Motive, anything suspicious in her past, any current money problems?"

 
"Her background is clean as a whistle," the captain admitted. "We're going to do a total recheck to make certain it's correct and none of it has been fabricated, but that's only a precaution. Everyone connected with this project has been verified down to the fillings in their teeth."

 
"Clarify this for me," Major General
Tuell
said. "She could activate the lasers from the work area, without actually being in contact with the lasers themselves? The birds are under twenty-four-hour guard."