Tomahawk (11 page)

“I thought the test people were supposed to be independent. Give DOD an objective look at whether or not the system works.”

“Sure, we're not going to drive that. If the transporter gets a flat tire, it gets a flat tire. But is that a mission limiter? That's the kind of question you can help them out on.” Evans got up and took a turn around the room. “Leave room in your luggage to carry classified material back, data tapes. Hot tip: Cold Lake is gonna be about eight feet deep in snow.”

“I hope you're kidding, sir.”

“Not by much. Oh, and not everybody ur there's happy about us flying these things over their country. Just to give you a heads-up. Anyway, let me go back to this flight transition problem. Some suspect the booster, but—” The colonel shoved papers and reports aside on an adjacent table and came up with a transparency. The title read “Booster separation redesign 10-D.” Evans said, “I don't have the most rfecent one. I think they're up to twelve or thirteen by now.”

“So you want me to watch the tests, and be alert for any glitches—”

“And if they occur, get us some idea why.”

Dan thought that was actually the contractor's problem, but the message he was getting was that somebody didn't trust somebody else. So Niles was asking him to be his eyes on the scene. “All right, sir, I'll give her a try.”

Evans knocked his pipe out into the ashtray, keeping the burnt tobacco carefully distant from his spotlessly crisp Class A's. “Thanks, Dan. That's all, I guess.”

He only remembered when he was locking his desk that he had to give a presentation that night. “Shit,” he muttered.
He riffled through his file drawer, pulled out three folders and stuffed them into his briefcase.

The class had shrunk from twenty to nine. Sliding into his chair, closing his eyes in exhaustion, Dan understood. Szerenci assigned work ruthlessly. Each project entailed first study, then creative thought, then endless calculation. They'd written computer programs that reproduced the entire armored battle in central Europe. The finished paper was two pages long, but it had taken him eight nights.

Szerenci looked tired, too, as he threw his coat, damp from a slow, cold rain, onto his desk. This time, Sandy Cottrell didn't go up to greet him. She didn't even look at him, just sat with her legs crossed and her eyes on her notes.

“Okay, tonight we've got a treat—a presentation by Mr. Lenson on Navy weapons development. Dan?”

He started from memory, with a description of the missile. Nothing classified, but you'd have to dig around to put the figures together. He outlined range, speed, accuracy/ He explained the different versions and how each would fit into Navy and Air Force inventories.

Szerenci asked, “Let's hear more about the TLAM-N. What does it do for our nuclear strategy?”

Dan reoriented. “Uh, that carries a two-hundred-kiloton W-eighty warhead. It was part of President Carter's program to upgrade the B-fifty-two.”

“Right, but what exactly does it
do?
What does its addition to the strategic arsenal buy for us?”

Szerenci went to the board. In five minutes, he had outlined the Soviet air defense system, reduced it to a mathematical equation, and shown how a cruise missile could triple the number of U.S. warheads arriving on target. Dan was awed; in all the time he'd spent at JCM, he'd never heard a concrete justification for the nuclear Tomahawk. Now it lay on the board, spare and unequivocal as
E = MC2.
Szerenci raised an eyebrow. “You look like this is new to you.”

“It is.”

“But obviously somebody did this work at some point. Right? You could burrow back and find the roots of this at Program Analysis and Evaluation, a Secretary of Defense
named Mel Laird, a study for Harold Brown. And the internal politics are fascinating. You've got SecDef and Congress fighting the Chiefs to get a weapon the services don't want. You've got an Air Force program assigned to Navy sponsorship so the Air Force can't torpedo it, and elements in the Navy using the Air Force as cover to get a weapon for the surface fleet without their own aviators shooting it down.

“But this isn't a course in political maneuvering. Sorry, I'm interrupting your presentation; please go on.”

“That's all I had on the weapon. Let's talk about the developmental process next.”

He flipped slides, going through interorganizational relationships, then the budgeting process. Heads bent over notebooks. He caught a smile from Mei. Maybe he should try again with her. But did he really want to get involved with somebody who'd already told him she was going back to China? What was he trying to do, replicate his failed marriage?

He jerked his mind back like a disobedient dog, described the
New Jersey
installation, then closed and asked for questions. He took his seat with relief as the prof began his lecture.

“Calculating the possibility of a disarming first strike. Is it theoretically feasible, or not?” Szerenci asked.

They straggled toward Mr. Henry's in a misty rain. Szerenci took one schnapps and pushed the other across the table. “Nice presentation.”

“Thanks.” Dan tossed the fiery sweet liquid back as Szerenci signaled the waiter for more. Cottrell looked away from them. They were all at the same table, but she seemed distant. Hectic spots flamed in her cheeks as she hand-rolled another cigarette. Not for the first time, he wondered if she was in the best of health.

“Mei, are we talking too fast? Are you keeping up with all this jargon?”

Mei fingered her wineglass. “I understand what you are saying.”

“We'll be getting into the Chinese strategic position in
a couple of weeks. Maybe you can talk about how your forces are set up.”

“I will try. Perhaps my uncle can help me.”

Dan finished the second schnapps, feeling the glow. Two lit the fire. Should he go for another? Why not? he thought.

“You career Navy, Dan?” the prof asked.

He glanced at his Academy ring, glowing golden in the bar light. “Trying to make a decision on that.”

“Thinking about the executive side? Consulting? Academia? A law degree can buy you time. And it'll come in handy, whatever you do.”

The idea of law horrified him. Being locked in an office with stacks of dusty books, helping whoever paid you to rip people off…. Szerenci flipped a card onto the table. “Or, I know some folks who are setting up a new research institute. Going to take on RAND and Brookings and CNA…. You decide. If I can help, come and see me.

Dan caught Cottrell's eye, and was startled to see hatred plain in it. She said casually, “I'll have to get him over to my side of town, too. Show him what goes on up on the Hill. Would you like that, Dan?”

“Uh, I guess.”

“Good. I'll call you. Sometime soon.”

He looked after them as she and Mei headed for the ladies' room. Something going on there, but he wasn't sure what. He slipped Szerenci's card into his wallet, said thanks again, and got up.

Outside in the rain, he looked up at the buildings around him, envisioning how a fifty-megaton warhead would turn them instantly into incandescent gas. Then he headed for the subway, feeling secure only when he was shielded by a hundred feet of solid rock.

8

 

 

 

A couple of days later, Dan found Westerhouse sitting at his desk when he let himself in. The captain rose when he came in, clearing his throat in a way that might have been self-conscious. Dan saw he'd lost weight; the tab of his uniform belt came a couple of inches out of the buckle.

“Hi, sir. You back?”

“Oh, hi. I wonder if we could get together later in the day, go over what you've got on your plate.”

“Will do, sir. How about if I
stop by around eleven?”

They agreed on that and Westerhouse left. Dan sat, and there was a couple of seconds' worth of silence. Then Sakai said, “Hey, you see Peter Jennings last night?”

“Uh, no. What'd I miss?”

“Hour-long special on Libya. Khaddafi's building a nuclear weapon.”

“Jesus Christ. That's all we need.”

Burdette leaned back from his cubicle. “Dan.”

“Sorry. Forgot I was being monitored by the Moral Majority.” He looked at his list of things to do and remembered the Halloween girl again. She'd probably given him a string of random numbers just to get rid of him. One last try.

This time, to his surprise, she answered. “Hello.”

“Is this Kerry? Kerry Donavan?”

“Yes?”

He could tell she had no idea who he was. “We met the other night, in Georgetown? The guy in the sweats. We went down to the canal together.”

“Oh. Oh, yes. I remember now.”

“I called before, but a guy answered.”

“You must have talked to Carl.”

He wondered who Carl was, and why they lived in the same house. “Look, I thought maybe we could get together, for a drink or something.”

“Are you serious?”

“Sure, why not?”

“I told you—you might be surprised by what you find.”

“Sometimes surprises are fun. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out.”

“I guess that's a reasonable attitude. This afternoon?”

“This
afternoon? I'm at work.”

“You work downtown, right? I have to be there a little after three. Can you meet me at three?”

He thought fast. “Maybe. Maybe I can.”

“All right, meet me at Federal Triangle. The subway exit. You can go with us. Then after, we'll see, maybe come to dinner.” Someone called. A man's voice? “Gotta go. See you.”

She hung up. After a second, so did he, thinking, That was strange. Where were they going? Who was “us”? He faced his desk again, picked up a piece of paper, then put it down. He looked at his watch, then at the stack of reports and messages.

He cleared everything else out of his mind and went to work.

At ten to eleven, he turned his classified material facedown on his desk, locked his file drawer, and told Vic he was going to the program manager's office.

Westerhouse was sitting with his head propped on his arm. He pointed silently to the seat opposite. Dan sat and waited. Finally, he cleared his throat. “Sir, you got my note about my going to Canada, didn't you?”

“Yeah, I did. Sorry, I had to be out. How are we looking on the schedule?”

“It's actually looking up, sir.”

Westerhouse examined him. “An optimist?”

“No, sir. It'll be close, but we just might do it.”

“Are we going to get the ABLs in time for
New Jersey!”

He outlined the status, the split buy among the three contractors. “I'm riding herd on them. They'll deliver the first unit in March.”

“Maybe. My experience has been that when you're working from redlines, there's always some woodchuck that pops out and stops the show. How about the other hardware?”

He described the status of the operator interface display terminals, and the rest of the gear set being built for
New Jersey
—five separate pieces of electronics for the equipment room, four more racks for the control room. Westerhouse said, “Are you telling me they'll be ready on time?”

He bit the bullet. “Barring any unforeseen problems, they look on track, sir.”

“Okay, the software?”

“That's the long pole in the tent. It's written in assembly language and it's a disaster. I've got Sakai on it about eighty percent of his time. Got an assist visit scheduled next week. Sparky and I'll try to find the bottleneck and ream it out.”

“We've got to get it on the rails. You work it at the technical level. I'll set up a CEO-level meeting.”

“Okay, sir. How's the missile doing? How's Convair reacting to Admiral Niles's cattle prod?”

“Larramore's got a gold team taking apart their quality problem. About all we can do now is wait for them to get their ducks in ranks. Other hard spots … well, we've got the transition-to-flight problem.” Westerhouse said the Canadian tests should show whether the booster changes worked or if they had to go at it from another angle.

His boss turned over a message blank and sighed. “Okay, new subject. These congressional hearings. The public relations types prepare the testimony, but they're gonna need technical help. Can you take that on?”

“I've never done anything like that, but I'll try.”

“Go on up and see Carol, get a window set up.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Westerhouse turned over another page. “You're going to Cold Lake?”

Didn't we cover that? he thought, but he just said, “Yes, sir. Colonel Evans asked me to go up there and keep everybody honest.”

His boss tapped a pencil. “Is there anything else that if you got it, it could speed things up, make your job easier?”

“Just about six extra months, sir.”