Stephen Coonts - Combat

Ray met his look with one of his own. “Question, Jim. What’s the best way to protect a satellite? If someone’s shooting them down, how can you stop them?”

“They haven’t even confirmed it’s the Chinese …”

“Doesn’t matter who’s doing it!” McConnell countered. “Someone is.” He paused and rephrased the question. “Can you effectively protect a satellite from the ground?”

Avrell answered quickly. “Of course not. You’re on the wrong end of the gravity well, even if you’re near the launcher site, and you might be on the wrong side of the planet.”

“Which we probably are,” McConnell agreed. “Here on the surface, even with perfect information, we can’t defend a satellite until something is launched to attack it, so we’re always in a tail chase. If we’re above the launcher, with the satellite we’re trying to defend, Isaac Newton joins our team.”

“And this is going to do the job?” Avrell asked, motioning toward the diagram. He tried to sound objective, but skepticism crept into his voice in spite of his efforts.

McConnell seemed used to it. “It can, Jim. There’s nothing startling in here. The technology is all there: an orbital vehicle, sensors, and weapons.”

“And you’ve been tasked by …”

“It’s my own hook, Jim. This is all on my own,” Ray admitted. Then he saw his friend’s question and answered it without waiting.

“Because I can’t wait for the government to think of it, that’s why. The answer is obvious, but by the time they hold all the meetings and write all the Requirements we won’t have any satellites left.”

McConnell sat down heavily, fatigue and strain showing on his face. “This isn’t about just GPS or the Chinese, Jim. Someone’s developed the capability to attack satellites in space. That means they could attack manned spacecraft. They can probably launch orbital nuclear weapons at us, or anyone else they don’t like. And we certainly know they don’t like us.”

Avrell leaned back against the edge of a table and looked carefully at Ray. “So you’re going to design the answer to our problems.” He phrased it as a statement, but it was still a question.

“Me and all the other people here,” Ray corrected. “Why not, Jim? I’ve got a good idea, and I’m running with it. I might not be in the right bureau in the right branch, but I believe in this. Ideas are too precious to waste.”

Inside, Avrell agreed with his friend, but practicality pushed that aside. “You can’t build it,” he stated quietly.

“Well, that’s the rub,” McConnell said, actually rubbing the back of his neck in emphasis. “I’ve made a lot of friends over the years. I’m going to shotgun it out — only within the system,” he hurriedly added, referring to the procedures for handling classified material. “I won’t go public with this. It’s a serious design proposal.”

“Which needs a Requirement, a contractor, and research and development …”

“And congressional hearings and hundreds of man-hours deciding what color to paint it,” continued McConnell. “A small group can always move faster and think faster than a large one. I want to present the defense community with a finished design, something so complete they’ll be able to leapfrog the first dozen steps of the acquisition process.” He grinned. “We can skip one step already. The other side’s writing the Requirement for us.”

Ray stood and turned to face Avrell directly. “I know I’m breaking rules, but they’re not rules of physics, just the way DoD does business. I’m willing to push this because it needs to be done, and nobody else is doing it.”

Avrell sighed. “So who’s working on your comm system?”

McConnell grinned. “The guys in the kitchen, but they’ve got almost all the electronics. There’s lots to do. Come on, I’ll introduce you …”

“Wait a minute, Ray.” Avrell held up his hand. “Let me make a call first.”

“Carol?”

“No. Sue Langston. She’s in graphics.”

Ray laughed and pointed to the phone. Heading out of the office and down the hall, his intention was to check with the propulsion group in the living room, but then he heard the doorbell again. Fighting impatience, he hoped for another volunteer, or the Chinese takeout he’d ordered.

Jennifer Oh stood on the doorstep, and Ray blinked twice in surprise. Another unexpected caller.

“Can I come in?” she finally asked.

“Oh, certainly, please come in, Jenny,” trying to sound as hospitable as he could. His distraction increased. She’d obviously come straight from work, and her naval uniform, with lieutenant commander’s stripes, jarred after the casual outfit he’d seen her in last week. Her long black hair was tied up in an ornate bun.

She didn’t wait for him to speak. “Jim Naguchi told me a little about what you’re doing here. I think it’s an incredible idea.” She held up three square flat boxes. “And I brought pizza.”

“Thank you on both counts, Jenny. Jim’s not here tonight, though.”

“I came to help you, Ray. I can see what you’re doing. I’ve got a lot of experience in command and control systems,” she offered.

Ray suddenly felt that Defender was going to work.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff didn’t normally meet at two in the morning, but Rear Admiral Overton’s call was worth getting out of bed for.

Most of the Chiefs had been in the Pentagon anyway, trying to manage the crisis, the troops, and the media. Although only three active GPS satellites had been lost out of a constellation of twenty-four, it had still created periods when there was no coverage in some parts of the world at some times, and there was no indication that they’d be able to fill the gaps soon. Everyone was assuming it would get much worse before it got better.

There was also the continuing problem of the Vietnam Crisis. U.S. forces could not execute a coordinated, precision attack without complete GPS coverage, but they could not maintain such high readiness levels forever. And what if China had started attacking American satellites? Had a war already started?

As they hurried into the Command Center, the J-2, Frank Overton, compared the generals’ normal polished appearance with the tired, overworked men in front of him. He was glad he had good news.

The Chief of Staff of the Air Force and the Chief of Naval Operations were both last, coming in together and breaking off some sort of disagreement as they walked through the door. Overton didn’t even wait for them to sit down.

“We have proof it’s the Chinese. We figured out where, and that led to how,” he announced.

Overton’s data pad and the screen at the head of the table showed a black-and-white satellite photo. A date in the corner read “Jun 2006.”

“This is the Gongga Shan prison camp in southern China — at least, we had identified it as a prison camp. We named it after the mountain.” Using his pointer, he showed areas marked as “Prisoners’ Barracks, Guard Barracks,” and so on. “As far as we know, it was built about five years ago, and can accommodate several thousand prisoners.”

He pressed the remote again, and the first image slid to one side, and a second, of the same area, appeared alongside it. “This was taken about six hours ago. This construction work”—he indicated a long scar on the side of the mountain in the first photo—“has been finished or just stopped. We think finished, because if they’d just abandoned it, the excavation would still be there. In fact, if you look in the second photo, the mountain’s been restored to its original state. The original analysis four years ago speculated that the prisoners might be mining, or building an observatory, or an antenna. The site goes right up to the top of the mountain, and it’s one of the tallest around.”