by Tom Clancy
"And they recharge in ?"
"Point zero-four-six seconds. We can deliver twenty shots per second, in other words."
"But you didn't shoot that fast."
"We didn't have to, sir," Gregory replied. "The limiting factor at present is the targeting software. That's being worked on. The purpose of this test was to evaluate part of the software package. We know that these lasers work. We've had them here for the past three years. The laser beams are converged on a mirror about fifty meters that way"-he pointed-"and converted into a single beam."
"They have to be-I mean, the beams all have to be exactly in tune, right?"
"Technically it's called a Phased-Array Laser. All the beams have to be perfectly in phase," Gregory answered.
"How the hell do you do that?" Ryan paused. "Don't bother, I probably wouldn't understand it anyway. Okay, we have the beam hitting the downside mirror "
"The mirror is the special part. It's composed of thousands of segments, and every segment is controlled by a piezoelectric chip. That's called 'adaptive optics.' We send an interrogation beam to the mirror-this one was on the shuttle-and get a reading on atmospheric distortion. The way the atmosphere bends the beam is analyzed by computer. Then the mirror corrects for the distortion, and we fire the real shot. The mirror on the shuttle also has adaptive optics. It collects and focuses the beam, and sends it off to the 'Flying Cloud' satellite mirror. That mirror refocuses the beam on the targets. Zap!"
"That simple?" Ryan shook his head. It was simple enough that over the previous nineteen years, forty billion dollars had gone into basic research, in twenty separate fields, just to run this one test.
"We did have to iron out a few little details," Gregory acknowledged. These little details would take another five or more years, and he neither knew nor cared how many additional billions. What mattered to him was that the goal was now actually in sight. Tea Clipper wasn't a blue-sky project anymore, not after this system test.
"And you're the guy who made the breakthrough on the targeting system. You figured a way for the beam to provide its own targeting information."
"Something like that," the General answered for the kid. "Dr. Ryan, that part of the system is classified highly enough that we will not discuss it further without written authorization."
"General, the purpose in my being here is to evaluate this program relative to Soviet efforts along similar lines. If you want my people to tell you what the Russians are up to, I have to know what the hell we're supposed to look for!"
This did not elicit a reply. Jack shrugged and reached inside his coat. He handed the General an envelope. Major Gregory looked on in puzzlement. "You still don't like it," Ryan observed after the officer folded the letter away.
"No, sir, I don't."
Ryan spoke with a voice colder than the New Mexico night. "General, when I was in the Marine Corps, they never told me that I was supposed to like my orders, just that I was supposed to obey them." That almost set the General off, and Jack added: "I really am on your side, sir."
"You may continue, Major Gregory," General Parks said after a moment.
"I call the algorithm 'Fan Dance,'" Gregory began. The General almost smiled in spite of himself. Gregory could not have known anything about Sally Rand.
"That's all?" Ryan said again when the youngster finished, and he knew that every computer expert in Project Tea Clipper must have asked himself the same thing: Why didn't I think of that! No wonder they all say that Gregory is a genius. He'd made a crucial breakthrough in laser technology at Stony Brook, then one in software design. "But that's simple!"
"Yes, sir, but it took over two years to make it work, and a Cray-2 computer to make it work fast enough to matter. We still need a little more work, but after we analyze what went wrong tonight, another four or five months, maybe, and we got it knocked."
"Next step, then?"
"Building a five-megajoule laser. Another team is close to that already. Then we gang up twenty of them, and we can send out a hundred-megajoule pulse, twenty times per second, and hit any target we want. The impact energy then will be on the order of, say, twenty to thirty kilograms of explosives."
"And that'll kill any missile anybody can make "
"Yes, sir." Major Gregory smiled.
"What you're telling me is, the thing-Tea Clipper works.
"We've validated the system architecture," the General corrected Ryan. "It's been a long haul since we started looking at this system. Five years ago there were eleven hurdles. There are three technical hurdles left. Five years from now there won't be any. Then we can start building it."
"The strategic implications " Ryan said, and stopped. "Jesus."
"It's going to change the world," the General agreed.
"You know that they're playing with the same thing at Dushanbe."
"Yes, sir," Major Gregory answered. "And they might know something that we don't."
Ryan nodded. Gregory was even smart enough to know that someone else might be smarter. This was some kid.
"Gentlemen, out in my helicopter is a briefcase. Could you have somebody bring it in? There are some satellite photos that you might find interesting."
"How old are these shots?" the General asked five minutes later as he leafed through the photos.
"A couple of days," Jack replied.
Major Gregory peered at them for a minute or so. "Okay, we have two slightly different installations here. It's called a 'sparse array.' The hexagonal array-the six-pillar one-is a transmitter. The building in the middle here is probably designed to house six lasers. These pillars are optically stable mounts for mirrors. The laser beams come out of the building, reflect off the mirrors, and the mirrors are computer-controlled to concentrate the beam on a target."
"What do you mean by optically stable?"
"The mirrors have to be controlled with a high degree of accuracy, sir," Gregory told Ryan. "By isolating them from the surrounding ground you eliminate vibration that might come from having a man walk nearby, or driving a car around. If you jiggle the mirrors by a small multiple of the laser-light frequency, you mess up the effect you're trying to get. Here we use shock mountings to enhance the isolation factor. It's a technique originally developed for submarines. Okay? This here diamond-shaped array is oh, of course. That's the receiver."
''What?" Jack's brain had just met another stone wall.
"Let's say you want to make a really good picture of something. I mean, really good. You use a laser as your strobe."
"But why four mirrors?"
"It's easier and cheaper to make four small mirrors than one big one," Gregory explained. "Hmph. I wonder if they're trying to do a holographic image. If they can really lock they illuminating beams in phase theoretically it's possible. There are a couple of things that make it tricky, but the Russians like the brute-force approach Damn!" His eyes lit up. "That's one hell of an interesting idea! I'll have to think about that one."
"You're telling me that they built this place just to take pictures of our satellites?" Ryan demanded.
"No, sir. They can use it for that, no sweat. It makes perfect cover. And a system that can image a satellite at geosynchronous altitude might be able to clobber one in any earth orbit. If you think of these four mirrors here as a telescope, remember that a telescope can be a lens for a camera, or part of a gunsight. It could also make a damned efficient aiming system. How much power runs into this lab?"
Ryan set down a photo. "The current power output from this dam is something like five hundred megawatts. But-"
"They're stringing new power lines," Gregory observed. "How come?"
"The powerhouse is two stories-you can't tell from this angle. It looks like they're activating the top half. That'll boost their peak power output to something like eleven hundred megawatts."
"How much comes into this place?"
"We call it 'Bach.' Maybe a hundred. The rest goes 'Mozart,' the town that grew up on the next hill over, they're doubling
their available power."
"More than that, sir," Gregory noted. "Unless they're to double the size of that town, why don't you assume the increased power is just going to the lasers?"
Jack nearly choked. Why the hell didn't you think of it, he growled at himself.
"I mean," Gregory continued, "I mean that's like hundred megawatts of new power. Jesus, what if they made a breakthrough? How hard is it to find out what's happening there?"
"Take a look at the photos and tell me how easy you think it would be to infiltrate the place," Ryan suggested.
"Oh." Gregory looked up. "It would be nice to know how much power they push out the front end of their instrument. How long has this place been there, sir?"
"About four years, and it's not finished yet. Mozart is new. Until recently the workers were housed in this barracks and support facility. We took notice when the apartment building went up, same time as the perimeter fence. When the Russians start pampering the workers, you know that the project has a really high priority. If it has a fence and guard towers, we know it's military."
"How did you find it?" Gregory asked.
"By accident. The Agency was redrawing its meteorological data on the Soviet Union, and one of the technicians wanted to do a computer analysis of the best places over there for astronomical observation. This is one of them. The weather over the last few months has been unusually cloudy, but on average the skies are about as clear there as they are here. The same is true of Sary Shagan, Semipalatinsk, and another new one, Storozhevaya." Ryan set out some more photographs. Gregory looked at them.
"They sure are busy."
"Good morning, Misha," Marshal of the Soviet Union Dmitri Timofeyevich Yazov said.
"And to you, Comrade Defense Minister," Colonel Filitov replied.
A sergeant helped the Minister off with his coat while another brought in a tray with a tea setting. Both withdrew when Misha opened his briefcase.
"So, Misha, what does my day look like?" Yazov poured two cups of tea. It was still dark outside the Council of Ministers building. The inside perimeter of the Kremlin walls was lit with harsh blue-white floods, and sentries appeared and disappeared in the splashes of light.
"A full one, Dmitri Timofeyevich," Misha replied. Yazov wasn't the man that Dmitri Ustinov was, but Filitov had to admit to himself that he did put in a full day's work as a uniformed officer should. Like Filitov, Marshal Yazov was by background a tank officer. Though they had never met during the war, they did know one another by reputation. Misha's was better as a combat officer-purists claimed that he was an old-fashioned cavalryman at heart, though Filitov cordially hated horses-while Dmitri Yazov had won a reputation early on as a brilliant staff officer and organizer-and as a Party man, of course. Before everything else, Yazov was a Party man, else he would never have made the rank of Marshal. "We have that delegation coming in from the expert mental station in the Tadzhik SSR."
"Ah, 'Bright Star.' Yes, that report is due today, isn't it?"
"Academicians," Misha snorted. "They wouldn't know what a real weapon was if I shoved it up their asses."
"The time for lances and sabers is past, Mikhail Semyonovich," Yazov said with a grin. Not the brilliant intellect that Ustinov had been, neither was Yazov a fool like his predecessor, Sergey Sokolov. His lack of engineering expertise was balanced by an uncanny instinct for the merits of new weapons systems, and rare insights into the people of the Soviet Army. "These inventions show extraordinary promise."
"Of course. I only wish that we had a real soldier running the project instead of these starry-eyed professors."
"But General Pokryshkin-"
"He was a fighter pilot. I said a soldier, Comrade Minister. Pilots will support anything that has enough buttons and dials, Besides, Pokryshkin has spent more time in universities of late than in an aircraft. They don't even let him fly himself anymore. Pokryshkin stopped being a soldier ten years ago. Now he is the procurer for the wizards." And he is building his own little empire down there, but that's an issue we'll save for another day.
"You wish a new job assignment, Misha?" Yazov inquired slyly.
"Not that one!" Filitov laughed, then turned serious. "What I am trying to say, Dmitri Timofeyevich, is that the progress assessment we get from Bright Star is-how do I say this? — warped by the fact that we don't have a real military man on the scene. Someone who understands the vagaries of combat, someone who knows what a weapon is supposed to be."
The Defense Minister nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, I see your point. They think in terms of 'instruments' rather thai 'weapons,' that is true. The complexity of the project concerns me."
"Just how many moving parts does this new assembly have?"
"I have no idea-thousands, I should think."
"An instrument does not become a weapon until it can be handled reliably by a private soldier-well, at least a senior lieutenant. Has anyone outside the project ever done a reliability assessment?" Filitov asked.
"No, not that I can recall."
Filitov picked up his tea. "There you are, Dmitri Timofeyevich. Don't you think that the Politburo will be interested in that? Until now, they have been willing to fund the experimental project, of course, but"-Filitov took a sip-"they are coming here to request funding to upgrade the site to operational status, and we have no independent assessment of the project."
"How would you suggest we get that assessment?"
"Obviously I cannot do it. I am too old, and too uneducated, but we have some bright new colonels in the Ministry, especially in the signals section. They are not combat officers, strictly speaking, but they are soldiers, and they are competent to look at these electronic marvels. It is only a suggestion." Filitov didn't press. He had planted the seed of an idea. Yazov was far easier to manipulate than Ustinov had ever been.
"And what of the problems at the Chelyabinsk tank works?" Yazov asked next.
Ortiz watched the Archer climbing the hill half a mile away. Two men and two camels. They probably wouldn't be mistaken for a guerrilla force the way that twenty or so would have. Not that this had to matter, Ortiz knew, but the Soviets were to the point now that they attacked almost anything that moved. Vaya con Dios.
"I sure could use a beer," the Captain observed.
Ortiz turned. "Captain, the thing that allowed me to deal with these people effectively is that I live the way they do. I observe their laws and respect their ways. That means no booze, no pork; that means I don't fool with their women."
"Shit." The officer snorted. "These ignorant savages-" Ortiz cut him off.
"Captain, the next time I hear you say that, or even think it real loud, will be your last day here. These people are working for us. They're bringing us stuff that we can't get any place else. You will, repeat will treat them with the respect they deserve. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir." Christ, this guy's turned into a sand nigger himself.
3
The Weary Red Fox
IT'S impressive-if you can figure out what they're doing." Jack yawned. He'd taken the same Air Force transport back to Andrews from Los Alamos, and was behind in his sleep again. For all the times this had happened to him, he'd never quite learned to deal with it. "That Gregory kid is smart as hell. He took about two seconds to identify the Bach installation, practically word for word with the NPIC assessment." The difference was that the photointerpreters at the National Photographic Intelligence Center had taken four months and three written report to get it right.
"You think he belongs in the assessment team?"
"Sir, that's like asking if you want to have surgeons in the operating room. Oh, by the way, he wants us to infiltrate somebody into Bach." Ryan rolled his eyes. Admiral Greer nearly dropped his cup. "That kid must watch ninja movies."
"It is nice to know that somebody believes in us." Jack chuckled, then turned serious. "Anyway, Gregory wants know if they've made a breakthrough in laser power output-excuse me, I think the new term is 'throughput.' He suspects t
hat most of the new power from the hydroelectric dam will go to Bach." Greer's eyes narrowed. "That's an evil thought. Do you think he's right?"
"They've got a lot of good people in lasers, sir. Niko Bosov, remember, won the Nobel Prize, and he's been laser-weapons research ever since, along with Yevgeniy Velikhov, noted peace activist, and the head of the Laser Institute is Dmitri Ustinov's son, for God's sake. Site Bach is almost certainly a sparse array laser. We need to know what kind of lasers, though-could be gas-dynamic, free-electron, chemical. He thinks it'll be the free-electron kind, but that's just a guess. He gave me figures to establish the advantage of putting the laser assembly on this hilltop, where it's above about half of the atmosphere, and we know how much energy it takes to do some of the things they want to do. He said he'd try to do some backwards computations to estimate the total power of the system. The figures will be on the conservative side. Between what Gregory said, and the establishment of the residential facilities at Mozart, we have to assume that this site is intended to go into formal test and evaluation in the near future, maybe operational in two or three years. If so, Ivan may soon have a laser that can snuff one of our satellites right out of business. Probably a soft kill, the Major says-it'll smoke the camera receptors and the photovoltaic cells. But the next step-"
"Yeah. We're in a race, all right."
"What are the chances that Ritter and the Operations people can find out something inside one of those Bach-site buildings?"
"I suppose we can discuss the possibility," Greer said diffidently, and changed the subject. "You look a little ragged." Ryan got the message: he didn't need to know what Operations had in mind. He could talk like a normal person now. "All this traveling around has been pretty tiring. If you don't mind, sir, I'd just as soon take the rest of the day off."
"Fair enough. See you tomorrow. But first-Jack? I got a call about you from the Securities and Exchange Commission."