The Espionage Game

by Susan Glinert Stevens

  “Negative, Aphid Oh-one, I lost it behind all the smoke from the flares. Jeezus, can that thing turn!”

  “Missed, damnit!” Dan muttered. The image of his missile exploded when the safety fuse fired. “Where is it?”

  “Right here,” he heard over his earphones as a new target appeared on the screen.

  “Good lord!” Dan shouted when realized that Jerry had fired back. He jerked the control stick over hard right but forgot to fire chaff, the only thing that might have saved him.

  Jerry grinned while he watched his missile climb toward the first F- 22. A few seconds later, the strobe light on the F-22’s belly flashed to indicate the simfire hit. The pilot, aware of his simfire death, rocked his wings and veered toward his regeneration point. Jerry Rodell turned his attention to the second F-22.

  “Beetle control, that damned thing is listening to us on our communications channel. It just spoke to us too!” One of the F-22 pilots complained over the radio. “I thought it couldn’t understand us!”

  Good!Jerry thought while he smiled maliciously at the F-22.I got him confused.

  “He’s running for it,” Cleo remarked. The second F-22 Eagle banked and turned tail. “He’s also in Sparrow range.”

  “Be my guest,” Jerry said politely. Their second simfire Sparrow missile leaped off its rail. Soon the second F-22 was out of the game.

  “Two down! Where are the other two, Cleo?” Jerry demanded as he glanced around anxiously.

  “I don’t know,” Cleo replied innocently.

  “You WHAT?”

  “I don’t see them,” she said.

  “I thought you were watching them with that big computer brain of yours.”

  “I don’t see them,” she repeated.

  “Break left,” Jerry snapped. “Come around to two-seven-zero. They’re in the sun.”

  “How do you know?” Cleo demanded as she began a nine-g turn.

  “Professional secret,” Jerry muttered while he peered into the sun. He saw movement as Cricket leader began his dive. He was making an offset attack to keep him out of Cleo’s boresight radar. He roared past, and Cleo suckered for the bait. She half-rolled and began to dive after the plunging F-22.

  “NO!” Jerry yelled.

  Cleo, intent on the kill, ignored him and reefed their aircraft over into an impossibly tight turn. At a thousand feet, the F-22 leveled out and began a zoom climb, utilizing the vast amount of energy it had accumulated during his power dive. He rose quickly. Cleo turned tighter and moved the throttles to full military power as she set up a defection shot at the F-22. An instant later, with the g-meter reading twelve, she placed the HUD gunsight pipper on the climbing F-22 and fired a short burst. It happened so quickly, it left Jerry dazed by the action.

  “GOT HIM!” Cleo hollered exuberantly when the strobe light on the back of the F-22 flashed.

  “NO, GODDAMNIT!” he snarled angrily as he grabbed the controls. “I’ve got it.”

  He shoved the throttle forward, kicked the right rudder pedal and banged the stick hard right. The fighter snap-rolled violently, even faster than the lithe and agile F-5. An instant later, Cricket Oh-two streaked by.

  “YOU FORGET ABOUT THE OTHER FIGHTER, YOU DUMB MACHINE!” he screamed at the top of his voice.

  Cleo didn’t answer.

  “Killing one of them at the cost getting yourself killed is dumb, dumb, dumb,” he chided more gently. “The first guy went zooming by you to sucker you in. You went for it and set yourself up for the second.”

  “I got him,” Cleo replied defiantly.

  “Only because you pulled twelve g’s, and he hadn’t thought of that. He’ll never make that mistake again.”

  The silence was almost sullen.

  “Now, for the first time, we have the advantage,” Jerry said with a self-satisfied smile as the F-22 below him leveled off. He pulled the stick back and went into a vertical climb. He wanted altitude and this was his chance to get it.

  A few seconds later Cleo announced, “Warning, approaching ten thousand feet without oxygen.”

  “So what?”

  “You have negative oxygen flow.”

  Jerry Rodell grabbed his oxygen mask and found it still hanging by its straps from the left side of his helmet. He hadn’t even put it on.

  “Goddamn checklist,” he grumbled when he realized how he had made such a stupid mistake. They hadn’t run through the checklist properly; it probably didn’t even check for the pilot’s oxygen mask being functional, Jerry guessed. The aircraft leveled off by itself.

  “What the hell!” he exclaimed. “I’ve got the controls, Cleo!”

  “Regulation 143.978-038 stipulates that no pilot shall fly a high performance aircraft at higher than 12,500 feet ASL without fully functional oxygen,” Cleo repeated dogmatically. As far as she was concerned, she was the pilot and Jerry Rodell was just one of many inputs, one she was now required to ignore.

  They were flying straight and level at exactly 12,500 feet.

  Jerry glanced around and spotted the last F-22. Unencumbered by a regulations-spouting copilot, it had already out-climbed them. Jerry knew that in just a minute the F-22 would come diving out of the sun again, but wouldn’t be caught flat-footed by another violent roll. Furiously, Jerry struggled with the oxygen mask, but couldn’t find the snaps that held it in place. In desperation, he dived as the F-22 arched over into its own dive.

  The altimeter unwound in a blur. Jerry Rodell’s only hope was to lose himself in the ground clutter and thus keep the F-22 from firing a Sparrow. At five thousand feet, the plane pulled up automatically.

  “Air Force Regulation 143.483-092 stipulates that no unapproved pilot shall fly a high-performance aircraft at an altitude of less than five thousand feet ASL, unless engaged in a landing or a takeoff from an approved air base,” Cleo told him with great solemnity.

  “Bang! Bang! You’re dead,” he heard Cricket Oh-two shout happily over the radio.

  “YOU GODDAMN BITCH!” Jerry bellowed when he felt the controls go limp. The simfire “mort” light in the panel in front of him went on as the simfire computer confirmed the kill. They’d been waxed.

  “COLONEL KELDER! CAN YOU HEAR ME?” Jerry howled in utter frustration. “Get me out of this goddamn thing before I tear it apart with my bare hands!”

  “Calm down, Colonel!” Fred Kelder ordered. “I can’t until you land.”

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU CAN’T!”

  “You’re flying at five thousand feet,” Fred Kelder replied.

  “I’m in a goddamn regulation-spouting, self-righteous simulator that just got me killed. I want out, and I want out now!”

  “Cleo thinks that the flight is for real,” Fred said slowly in an effort to calm Jerry Rodell. “If we were to interrupt the flight, it might do irreparable damage to Cleo.”

  “Colonel, sir,” Jerry growled, “if you don’t get me out of here, I’ll do irreparable damage to it myself. Damnit, I’ll bail out!” he shouted as he grabbed the yellow and black handle. All he heard was a loud click.

  “I told you that I disconnected it, Colonel Rodell,” Fred said calmly. “And now that you’ve thrown your temper tantrum, what’s the big problem?”

  “It got me waxed because of regulations, sir.”

  “I warned you that Cleo was a bit of a martinet,” Fred answered quietly.

  “A BIT OF A MARTINET!” Jerry bellowed. “It was spouting regulations chapter and verse. There’s no way I’ll ever fly with a machine that’s going to second guess everything I want to do. First, it wouldn’t go higher than twelve thousand five, and then it wouldn’t go less than five thou.”

  “That’s because you were flying. There are good reasons for those regulations.”

  “Not in a fight, Colonel,” Jerry snapped back. “I’m in charge of the goddamn airplane. What I say, goes. If I have to break some regulation to survive in combat, I will. I can’t have some machine telling me I can’t do this or that, and then setting me up like
a fish in a barrel.”

  Fred chuckled. His reaction surprised Jerry Rodell. “Jerry, do you have trouble handling women?” Colonel Kelder asked politely.

  Jerry didn’t answer immediately. “What’s that got to do with this?”

  “Well,” Fred took a short breath, “Cleo is like any other woman. You have to tell her who’s boss.”

  “You male chauvinist pig,” Cleo grumbled. Her voice was different; she sounded older. Her comment caught Jerry Rodell by surprise, causing him to lean over and stare down at the base of his couch. He heard Fred Kelder laugh, as though some private joke was being played.

  “Jerry,” Fred said while still chuckling, “we thought of that. You can overrule any silly regulation that Cleo can come up with. All you have to do is say the magic words.”

  “Just what might those be?” Jerry inquired sarcastically.

  “‘Do it,’” Fred responded. “That’s all you have to say, Jerry, and your wish is her command.”

  “MCP,” Cleo muttered angrily.

  “Try it, Jerry,” Fred urged.

  Jerry Rodell yanked the stick back and banged the throttles forward. The nose of his plane shot up into a vertical climb.

  Cleo reacted as Jerry expected. “Warning, approaching ten thousand feet without oxygen.”

  “So what?” He made no attempt to put the oxygen mask on.

  “You have negative oxygen flow.”

  “I don’t care, Cleo, do it.”

  A few seconds later, they reached 12,500 feet and continued upward. The altimeter spun around at almost ten thousand feet per minute. They reached thirty thousand feet before Cleo made any more comments.

  “You’re still awake!” she exclaimed.

  “Yes, I am, aren’t I?” Jerry replied calmly.

  “But how? You’re not breathing oxygen. There is no flow through the oxygen system.”

  “Maybe there is a sensor failure,” Jerry suggested.

  “I’ve checked and double-checked all the sensor readings,” Cleo replied, sounding confused. “All sensors are functional and agree that there is no oxygen flowing throughMary Sue ’s oxygen system.”

  “Maybe I don’t need oxygen,” Jerry offered. Cleo seemed bewildered by the suggestion. She didn’t respond for several seconds.

  “Negative,” she insisted. “You are human, humans need oxygen, therefore you need oxygen.”

  “Perhaps I’m not human.” A grin appeared on his face.

  “You’re not electronic,” she noted. “If you’re not electronic or human, what are you?”

  “I’m a god, and you damn well better remember that!” He nosed the airplane over; they were looking straight down on a large part of the State of Nevada from over sixty thousand feet. The plane plummeted like a rock. Jerry Rodell kept the nose straight down and the throttle at maximum power.

  “Exceeding Mach 2.9,” Cleo called nervously.

  “So?”

  “Never-exceed airspeed is Mach 3.1,” Cleo replied.

  “Who says?” Jerry challenged her. “I say it’s Mach 10.”

  “But we have to cut airspeed.”

  “Cleo,” Jerry said calmly, “I want Mach 10, so do it.”

  Again, Cleo fell silent as he watched the Mach meter inch up to the upper limit. The altimeter was just a blur, while the vertical speed indicator was pegged at minus fifty thousand feet per minute.

  “Ground collision warning,” Cleo warned. “Pull up, pull up.”

  “I don’t want to,” he responded casually. “I want the plane to remain in a dive, so do it.”

  Cleo didn’t argue; she solemnly began reading off, “Ten seconds to impact … eight … seven … five.…”

  Jerry Rodell just folded his arms and watched the ground rush up.

  “Three … two … one.”

  The augered-in display was more spectacular than Jerry had dreamed possible. The entire fuselage shook violently as the screens were covered with reds, yellows and whites, in a visual display of a violent explosion. The crash noise was deafening, almost painfully loud. Everything went black.

  Just when Jerry thought the show was over, harp music flooded the cockpit as the lighting gradually came up, leaving the screens a milky white. A flourish of trumpets blared as a figure materialized before them. There was no question it was God; the image had been copied from Michelangelo’s ceiling frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. God stood before Jerry, resplendent in flowing white robes and beard. He contemplated Jerry with a fiery glare. Slowly, He raised His arm and pointed His finger accusatorially at Jerry Rodell.

  “REPENT SINNER!” the voice boomed. “Repent, lest ye be damned! Ye have sinned most grievously, for ye have augered-in.”

  The figure faded as the lighting once more darkened.

  “Are we dead?” Cleo begged in a quavering voice.

  “Dead?” Jerry exclaimed, surprised by the question. “Why do you think we’re dead?”

  “Because I can’t sense anything but you. I can’t see anything; there are no data inputs, nothing but the sound of your breathing. Is this what death is?”

  Do computers have souls?Jerry wondered. Realizing his lack of theology training, he abandoned the question, although he was taken by the realization that Cleo comprehended death.

  “Cleo,” he murmured, “do you understand any Latin?”

  “No,” she replied.

  “Then here’s your first lesson: ‘Cogito, ergo sum.’ Repeat it.”

  “Cogito, ergo sum,” she obeyed. “What does it mean?”

  “It means, ‘I think, therefore I am.’”

  Cleo was silent for a moment. “The question is not if we are, but whether we are dead. The two are not necessarily incompatible states.”

  Jerry laughed aloud. Cleo obviously understood the theological possibility of life after death.Perhaps computers do have souls, he mused.Boy, would that drive the theologians up the walls!

  “Cleo, I think you’d better stay away from theological arguments,” he warned, “you might win.”

  “But are we dead?” Cleo insisted, sounding like a frightened little girl.

  “No, Cleo, we’re still alive.” He reached down to give Cleo’s container a reassuring pat. “It was just make-believe this time, Sweetheart. It was all just pretend—a game.”

  Chapter Nine

  “That’s about it, Mr. President. It appears that the cat is out of the bag,” Lazarus Keesley concluded while he began to fiddle with his pipe once again.

  President James Hayward leaned back in his desk chair and cupped his hands behind his immaculately groomed head of gray hair. He gazed idly up at the ornate frieze that bordered the ceiling and studied the scrollwork for a moment. He then glanced at Jonathan Boswell, the Director of the CIA, who was sitting near a window looking out over the snow-covered lawn of the White House.

  “What do you make out of it, Jonathan?” the president asked.

  “I really have nothing to add to Lazarus’ report, sir,” Boswell responded.

  President Hayward focused on Lazarus, who managed to relight his briar pipe to his satisfaction. He sat relaxed in the winged chair in front of the president’s desk. A puff of smoke trickled from the side of Lazarus Keesley’s mouth as he exhaled.

  “What I’m worried about,” President Hayward said, “is if the Russians are already after the CLEO system, then we might have a real problem on our hands. How did they ever find out about it so quickly?”

  “They obviously have a mole in Velvet Rainbow, Mr. President.”

  “Who?”

  “It could be anybody, sir.” Lazarus shrugged. He took a short puff on his pipe before continuing. “My guess is somebody rather low, maybe a janitor.”

  “Hasn’t everybody been cleared?” The president felt a bit foolish asking such an obvious question, but he stared intently at Lazarus to underscore his concern.

  “Several times, sir,” Lazarus replied. “By at least three different security agencies, each independently of the others. W
hoever the mole is, he’s well covered.”

  The president snorted in frustration. Velvet Rainbow was one of the country’s most closely guarded black projects, yet Lazarus Keesley’s SVR contact apparently knew more about it than even he, the President of the United States, did.

  “Lazarus,” President Hayward snapped, “I’m holding you responsible for safeguarding Velvet Rainbow in general, and the CLEO computer in particular. Do whatever you have to do, but keep that project safe from the Russians until we’re damn good and ready to leak it to them. Understand?”

  “Perfectly, sir.”

  “Do you need anything?” The president’s expression was sincere. That was reassuring although Lazarus had long ago learned that any successful politician was capable of appearing sincere at will.

  “No, sir,” Lazarus replied softly. “I assumed that you would give me this responsibility, so I have already taken the preliminary steps. The first was to order an immediate review of the security clearances for anyone directly involved with the project.”

  “Good!” President Hayward exclaimed, facing Boswell. “Now let’s move on to the situation in Iraq. You’re really convinced that all those Russian soldiers are really just mercenaries. Why?”

  “The money flow,” Jonathan Boswell responded. He shifted in his chair to make himself more comfortable. “We’ve checked out the names of most of the senior Russian officers working in Iraq, and they all have bank accounts in Switzerland. That’s how they’re paid. Apparently the junior officers and enlisted men get paid in cash—in hard Western currencies.”

  “You’re saying American dollars?” The president frowned.

  “Either that or Swiss francs, British pounds, or Euros. The beauty of the situation is that they send the money home to their families, who spend it in Russia. That way the money eventually flows into the hands of the Russian government which can, in turn, spend it for foreign goods.”

  “Okay, so they’re mercenaries,” the president agreed. “But what the hell are they doing in Iraq? You make it sound like the Russians are renting out their army on a unit-by-unit basis.”

  “General Sechenov did make a remark about the Russian ‘Renta- Army’ and even offered me a good deal on a company ofSpetsnaz to guard my house,” Lazarus said dryly. “You know, as a sort of private Praetorian Guard.”