"Right away," Caldwell said. He moved to the center of the group and suddenly felt the old, familiar feeling of being in command once again. "Karen and I will stay here to help out with that side of it. You'd better stay too, Chris, to explain the whole idea again. Vic needs to go to Washington to tell Packard what we want, and Lyn had better go with him because she knows the layout of the house."
"It sounds as if we should consider you in charge of this operation," Calazar said.
"Thanks." Caldwell nodded and looked around the room. "Okay," he said. "Let's go through the whole thing in detail from the beginning and work out as much as we can to synchronize the two ends of it."
* * *
Hunt and Lyn arrived in Washington late that afternoon. Caldwell had already called Packard from Alaska, so they were expecting to find Packard, Pacey, and Clifford Benson of the CIA waiting for them. What they were not expecting to find was a contingent of Soviet military officers there too, headed by Mikolai Sobroskin. To their further and total amazement they learned that a Jevlenese defector in the form of the scientist Verikoff was also present in another part of the building.
Most of the Russians were too stunned by what they heard from Hunt and Lyn to be capable of contributing very much to the proceedings. Sobroskin, however, digested their story quickly and confirmed—from what Verikoff had already told him—that the office wing of Sverenssen's house did indeed contain a full communications system into jevex, including a neural coupler. In fact Verikoff himself had used it on numerous occasions to make quick visits to Jevlen. This led Sobroskin to propose a means of simplifying considerably the plan that Hunt and Lyn had described. "As you say, the big risk in forcing Sverenssen to do it is that jevex might be able to observe what is happening," he said. "But perhaps there is no need for that at all. If we could just gain access to the device, Verikoff might be persuaded to do what is required voluntarily. jevex already knows Verikoff. It would have no reason to see anything amiss."
Ten minutes later they all left the room and descended one story of the building to enter a door that had two armed guards stationed outside it. Verikoff was inside with two more of Sobroskin's officers. At Sobroskin's request, Verikoff sketched a plan of Sverenssen's house on a mural display, indicating the location of the communications room and the access door into the wing in which it was located, as well as describing the building's protective features. "What's your verdict?" Pacey asked, looking at Lyn, when Verikoff had finished.
She nodded. "One-hundred-percent accurate. That's it, just the way it is."
"He seems to be telling the truth," Packard said, sounding satisfied. "And everything else he told Sobroskin checks with what Vic Hunt has told us. I think we can trust him."
Verikoff's eyes widened in surprise. He waved a hand at the sketch he had drawn, and then at Lyn. "She knows this already? How could that be? How could she know about the coupler?"
"It would take too long to explain," Sobroskin said. "Tell us what kind of visual sensors jevex has around the house. Are there some in all rooms, outside, inside the communications room, or what?"
"Only inside the communications room itself," Verikoff answered. He was looking from side to side uncomprehendingly.
"So jevex would not know about anything that was happening in the rest of the house outside that room," Sobroskin said.
Verikoff shook his head. "No."
"How about conventional intruder alarms around the grounds?" Pacey inquired. "Is the place equipped with anything like that? Would it be possible to get in over the walls and fences without being detected?"
"It's extensively wired," Verikoff replied. His expression became alarmed as he realized the implication of the questions. "Detection would be certain."
"Is the place watched from orbit by Jevlenese surveillance?" Hunt asked. "Could it be assaulted without it being reported?"
"As far as I know it is checked periodically, but not continuously."
"How frequently?"
"I don't know."
"How about Sverenssen's domestic staff?" Lyn asked. "Are they Jevlenese too, or just help that he hires locally? How much do they know?"
"Specially picked Jevlenese guards—all of them."
"How many?" Sobroskin demanded. "Are they armed? What armaments do they have?"
"Ten of them. There are always at least six in the house. They are armed at all times. Conventional Terran firearms."
Packard looked over at the others. One by one they returned slow nods. "It looks as if we could be in with a chance," he said. "It's time to bring in the professionals and see what they think."
Verikoff suddenly seemed apprehensive. "What is this talk of an assault?" he asked. "You are going in there?"
"We are going in there," Sobroskin told him.
Verikoff started to protest but stopped when he saw the menace in Sobroskin's eyes. He licked his lips and nodded. "What do you want me to do?" he asked.
An hour later a VTOL personnel carrier flew the whole party across the Potomac to the army base at Fort Myer. They were met by a Colonel Shearer, who commanded a Special Forces antiterrorist unit that had already been called to alert and was standing by. The planning and briefing session that followed went on until the early hours of the morning. The first gray light of dawn was showing in the east as an Air Force transport took off from Fort Myer and followed the coast toward New England. It landed with a whisper less than thirty minutes later at an out-of-the-way military supply depot situated among wooded hills twenty miles or so outside Stamford, Connecticut.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The Jevlenese were still tapping into Earth's communications net. Earth knew they were, and the Jevlenese knew that Earth knew. Therefore, Caldwell reasoned, the Jevlenese would expect any high-level communications between Earth's governments, especially anything to do with an impending attack on Jevlen, to be encoded by methods that were generally thought to be unbreakable; anything else would not look authentic. But if the codes were indeed unbreakable, little purpose would be served by planting authentically encoded information in jevex since jevex wouldn't be able to unravel what it said.
At Caldwell's request the scientists at McClusky beamed details of the coding algorithms currently used for high-security terrestrial communications through to the perceptron. visar studied them and announced that jevex would have no problem. The scientists were skeptical. As a test visar invited them to compose an encoded message and send it over the beam, which they did. visar returned the plaintext translation less than a minute later. The stunned scientists decided that they still had a lot to learn about algorithms. But the implication was satisfactory: jevex could be led plausibly to believe that it was eavesdropping on Earth's highest-level secure communications.
Since then visar had been busy manufacturing a revised history of the last few decades on Earth in which the superpowers had not disarmed but gone on to escalate their strategic forces to insane levels of overkill capability, concluding with an account of Earth's leaders meeting secretly and agreeing to a hasty alliance to hurl their combined strength at Jevlen with the Thuriens transporting the force to within striking distance. Its latest creation, being previewed in the Government Center in Thurios, showed a conference hookup in which some of the senior officers engaged in the joint planning of the operation were delivering a preliminary briefing to their staffs. A General Gearvey, whom visar had already appointed as the American Supreme Commander, began speaking.
"We are about to engage an enemy who possesses a technology incalculably ahead of our own, and of unknown strength and retaliatory capability. But against that we have two factors in our favor that could redress the balance—time and preparedness. We are in a position to move now, while all our intelligence from the Thuriens leads us to believe that the enemy is not. Our strategy is therefore based on exploiting these factors to the fullest. We will forgo detailed planning and rely heavily on the initiative of local commanders in order to move fast and aim at total devastat
ion of the enemy in a single, surprise, all-out, lightning strike with no compromises. This is not a time to ponder about morality. We might not have a second chance."
A Russian general leaned forward and took it from there. "The opening phase of the assault is designated OXBOW. Fifteen long-range radiation projectors will commence area-obliteration of selected targets on Jevlen, firing from one million miles standoff behind screens of destroyers and close-support tactical units. Five more will be held in reserve at ten million miles. The bombardment is intended to draw and engage the defensive forces while the spearheads move in to commence operations around the planet itself."
A European Air Force chief continued, "Phase BANSHEE will begin with a high-level sweep of Jevlenese nearspace to clear it of all enemy hardware. This will be followed immediately by rapid deployment of a mixed-strike orbital system to neutralize major military installations and observed ground concentrations. A secondary force will concentrate on population centers and administrative focal points to dislocate the defenses by creating panic and disrupting communications. Simultaneously, lower-altitude intercept units and killsats will contest Jevlenese air space, with carrier-based tactical groups operating in selective ground-strike and counterfire roles. Our objective here is to gain complete control above the surface within twelve hours of the spearheads going in. The codeword CLAYMORE will be issued upon the successful completion of this phase."
A Chinese general summed up the last part. "When CLAYMORE is declared, conditions will have been established to permit the seizure of bridgeheads on the surface. This phase is designated DRAGON. The first descents will be made by remote-controlled decoy landers to enable surviving defensive installations to be identified and destroyed by a portion of the orbital bombardment groups held in reserve for that purpose. The remaining orbiting groups will redeploy to provide close-support fire for the landings, and the carrier groups assigned to ground suppression will commence launching aircraft. When descent corridors have been cleared, the ground forces will be landed initially at twelve strategic points. Details of those operations are currently being finalized with the respective bridgehead commanders. Strategic bombardment from high level will continue throughout to prevent the defenses from concentrating on the landing areas."
"That concludes the overview," Gearvey said. "Individual unit assignments, timetabling, and call signs will follow immediately. Remain on standby."
"What do you think?" Caldwell asked as the image cut out.
"I'm impressed," Heller said. "It'd sure scare the hell out of me."
"Horrifying," Calazar pronounced numbly. "It is just as well that you did not go with the Shapieron. We would never have conceived anything like that."
Danchekker did not seem completely happy. "It still doesn't contain the sense of urgency that we have to convey," he said. "It doesn't mention any specific dates."
"I did that on purpose," Caldwell told him. "If we're going to be credible, we'd have to allow Earth ships months to get out of the solar system. The best thing seemed to be to leave it uncertain. What other way is there?"
"I don't know, but I still don't like it," Danchekker said.
Nobody spoke for a few seconds, then Morizal said, "Well, we've already got the Thuriens providing the transfer ports outside the Solar System. We could take it a step further and have the Terran vessels fitted with Thurien-supplied h-grid boosters. That way we could get them out of the solar system in a day."
"A whole fleet?" Heller said dubiously. "Could a whole fleet be fitted out that quickly?"
"Conceivably yes," Morizal replied. "It's quite a simple job. With unlimited assistance from Ganymean engineers, it would be feasible."
"How does that sound?" Caldwell asked, looking at Danchekker.
"It sounds more like what we want," Danchekker agreed, nodding.
"Suppose I change the last part to this," visar offered. The image reappeared and showed General Gearvey again, just about to sum up.
"That concludes the overview," he said. "There are no major revisions to the schedule to report. The h-beam boosters are currently being fitted by the Thuriens, and the first assault elements should commence moving out from Earth, on time, at eighteen hundred hours today. Current indications are that the full force will complete its assembly outside the enemy star system three days from now as planned. The force will then reenter h-space and be accelerated to reexit into normal space at a velocity that will move it to Jevlen in twenty-two hours. Therefore we should be going into action four days from now. Good luck to you all. Individual unit assignments, timetabling, and call signs will follow immediately. Remain on standby." The image vanished.
"Excellent," Danchekker murmured.
"The next thing I need to start working on is some surveillance data from Earth to back it all up," visar said. "But first I need some reference information on contemporary Terran military hardware and installations. Can you get it beamed in through McClusky?"
"Give me a line," Caldwell said. "I'll get something moving right away." He turned his head away and stared grimly for a few seconds at another view, constructed from visar's locally collected data, of the pattern of Jevlenese warships positioned around Thurien. "Any news about the Shapieron yet?" he asked.
"Nothing," visar told him. Its tone was neutral.
An image in the form of a frame enclosing the features of the controller at McClusky appeared in the air a few feet in front of Caldwell's face. Caldwell turned his head away from the view of the Jevlenese threat and returned his attention to the matter at hand.
Chapter Thirty-Three
"Damn! Damn! Damn!" Niels Sverenssen hammered savagely at the touchboard of the datagrid terminal, then brought his fist down heavily on top of the unit as the screen remained dead. He turned away and marched furiously toward the L-shaped central room. "Vickers!" he shouted. "Where are you, for God's sake? I thought those confounded dataphone people were supposed to be here by now."
Vickers, the heavily built and swarthy chief of Sverenssen's domestic staff, appeared from one of the passages. "I only returned ten minutes ago. They said they'd be right over."
"Well, why aren't they?" Sverenssen demanded irritably. "I have calls waiting that must be made immediately. The service must be restored at once."
Vickers shrugged. "I already told 'em that. What else was I supposed to do?"
Sverenssen began massaging a fist with his other hand and pacing to and fro, cursing beneath his breath. "Why do such things always have to happen at a time like this? What kinds of buffoon are unable to maintain a simple communications service competently? Oh, the whole thing is intolerable!"
The first faint hum of an approaching aircar drifted in from the direction of the window. Vickers cocked his head to listen for a second, then walked over to peer out through one of the sliding glass panels that formed part of a wall. "It's a cab," he said over his shoulder, "coming down over the roof." They heard the cab land on the other side of the house, in the front driveway. The door chime sounded shortly afterward, followed by the footsteps of one of the maids as she hurried to the front hallway. He heard a muted exchange of female voices, and a few moments later the maid ushered in a smiling Lyn Garland. Sverenssen's' mouth dropped open in a mixture of surprise and dismay.
"Niels!" she exclaimed. "I tried to call you, but you seem to be having problems with the line. I thought you wouldn't mind me showing up, anyway. I've been thinking about what you said. You know, maybe you were right. I thought maybe we could patch things up a little." Her hand was resting casually on the top of her shoulder bag as she spoke. Sverenssen was not inside the communications room, which was the one thing Colonel Shearer had insisted on before he could move in. Inside the top of the bag, Lyn's finger found the button on the microtransmitter and pressed it three times.
"Oh, not now!" Sverenssen groaned. "You should know better than to barge in like this. I am an extremely busy man, and I have things to attend to. Anyway, I thought I made myself perfectly clea
r on the not-so-memorable occasion of our last meeting. Good day. Vickers, kindly show Miss Garland back to her cab."
"This way," Vickers said, taking a step forward and nodding his head toward where the maid was still hovering.
"Oh, but you did," Lyn said, looking at Sverenssen and ignoring Vickers. "You made it very clear. And I was being so silly, wasn't I, just like you said. But now I've had a chance to think about it, it sounds so—"
"Get her out of here," Sverenssen muttered, turning away. "I don't have time to waste listening to any inane female prattling today." Vickers gripped Lyn's upper arm and steered her firmly back along the corridor to the front hall while the maid ran on ahead to hold the door open. The cab was still there. Just as they reached the door, a Southern New England Dataphones repair truck rounded the bend in the driveway and drew up in front of the house, halting so close to the cab that the ladders slung on its side overhung and blocked its ascent path.
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