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  It did. Samson and Hayes watched as it streaked over the launch barge, the imaging infrared view of the barge flipping upside down as the IIR sensor stayed locked on the target. Three small cylindrical canisters appeared on the image, spinning under a small stabilizing parachute. Suddenly, all three canisters separated from the parachute, and moments later there were several bright flashes of light that completely obscured the barge. When the image cleared, the barge was on fire and half submerged.

  “Man, I love watching those things,” Hayes admitted. The BLU-108 “Shredder” sensor-fused weapon, or SFW, was the Air Force’s new air-delivered antivehicle weapon. Each Shredder canister contained four copper skeets, aimed by an infrared sensor. As the canisters spin, they find a target, and at the proper instant they detonate. The explosion sends a molten copper slug out each skeet at the target at supersonic speed, fast enough and hot enough to cut even three-inch steel armor into Swiss cheese within a half mile of ground zero. Because the launch barge was the only target in the area, all twelve slugs hit the barge.

  “Me too,” Samson said. “I love the smell of molten copper slugs in the morning.”

  “Very, very impressive, Earthmover,” Hayes went on, writing notes in a small notebook. “First a successful ABM test, then a successful counterattack test. Excellent. Interesting to think what it’d have been like if you’d had one of those plasma-yield weapons on a Wolverine.”

  Samson looked at Hayes, then hit the radio button on his throttle quadrant: “Fireman, this is Two, get us extended range clearance for second launch sequence.”

  “Roger, Fireman Two. Break. Neptune, Fireman flight, requesting extended range clearance for final launch sequence. Ten-mile minimum clearance all vessels.”

  “Roger, Fireman flight, this is Neptune control, the range is extended-radius clear. You are cleared hot for final missile series.”

  “Fireman flight copies extended-range clear, Fireman flight check.”

  “Two,” Samson said. “Fireman, Neptune, stand by.” He turned to Hayes. “Anytime you’re ready, sir.”

  “Ready for…?” Hayes stopped, dropping his oxygen mask in surprise. “You’re shitting me, Samson. Don’t tell me you’ve got a plasma-yield weapon onboard that B-1 right now?”

  “No — I’ve got two,” Samson replied. “I’ve got one Lancelot ABM and one Wolverine cruise missile armed with a THAAD plasma-yield warhead, ready to go.”

  “By whose authority?” said a stunned Hayes, his voice rising in fury. “Who the hell authorized you to do that, Samson?”

  “Sir, as you said at that Senate subcommittee hearing, I did it under the authority given me by the President and the secretary of defense,” Samson replied. “We developed the weapon, did some mating, release, jettison, and captive launch tests, and certified it ready for launch. It’s never been tested before on a live launch. We own the airspace for two hundred miles in all directions; we’ve only got a couple of Navy ships in the area, and we’ve got a target. I think we should let ’er rip and see what we got.”

  “You’re crazy, Samson,” Hayes shot back. He was so red-hot angry that he thought he would explode. “You have got to be off your rocker. This is the most blatant form of insubordination I’ve seen since… shit, since Brad Elliott. You just think that you can load up a missile with an experimental subatomic warhead and shoot it into the sky anytime you feel like it? We can cause a major military crisis! We can cause an international incident! We can both lose our jobs and spend the rest of our lives in Fort Leavenworth! Goddammit, Samson, you scare me! I’m going to take a good hard look at your suitability for your position and your continued service after we get on the ground!”

  * * *

  The tactical action officer, or TAO, aboard the U.S. Navy Ticonderoga-class Aegis guided missile cruiser USS Grand Island, who was acting as range controller, attack officer, and supervisor for the morning’s tests, watched his electronic displays carefully. The Combat Information Center — CIC — of the Grand Island had four large multicolor electronic displays forward, which integrated all electronic signals from ships, planes, and shore stations, giving the TAO a three-dimensional picture of his “battlefield” for hundreds of miles in all directions. He and his deputy sat in the middle of the CIC compartment, surrounded by weapons officers, sensor operators, and communications technicians.

  He thought what he saw was a glitch in the two displays that gave him horizontal and vertical plots of the missile tracks. He turned to his radar technician and asked, “Radar, what happened to those missile tracks? What do you get?”

  “Don’t know, sir,” the radar technician replied. “I saw the target rocket launch, then the airborne missile launch, then the cruise missile launch to attack the launch barge, same as the first test sequence. It looked like a good intercept. Then poof. Nothing. Both tracks disappeared. No debris.”

  “Comm, did the zoomies broadcast an abort warning?” the TAO asked a communications technician.

  “No, sir,” the communications specialist confirmed.

  “Damn Air Force weenies,” the TAO muttered. “Too embarrassed by a faulty flight to tell us they self-destructed both missiles.” He paused for a moment, then asked, “Radar, you say you’re not picking up any debris?”

  “No, sir,” said the radar technician. “Usually, the SPY-1B will track debris pretty good, enough so we can clear a specific piece of airspace or ocean.” The SPY-1B was the three-dimensional phased-array radar on the Aegis-class warships, powerful enough to track a target as small as a bird two hundred miles away. “Nothing this time.”

  “Humpf,” the TAO grunted. Both missiles might have splashed down. He didn’t know enough about either of them to know if they floated, if the warheads became more unstable in seawater, what they looked like when they broke apart, how to disarm a ditched missile — and a hundred other things he would’ve been briefed on if the Air Force had done its job correctly. “Comm, tell all vessels to stay east of the second launch barge. Radar, clear all aircraft out of the range via the shortest way possible away from the missile tracks. Then do a systems check, find out why we can’t see their debris.” On the intercom, he radioed, “Bridge, Combat.”

  “Go ahead.” The TAO recognized the captain’s voice.

  “We lost track of the missile debris, sir, so we’re clearing all aircraft away from the missiles’ flight paths and terminating all activity. We’re done for the day.”

  “Copy that. We’ll form up and head back to the barn.”

  “What did you see up there, sir?”

  “We saw…” There was a very long pause, then: “We don’t quite know what we saw, Combat. We saw two good missile plumes heading toward each other, then… well, we’re not sure after that. We saw a flash of light, and some of the lookouts say they saw a big silver globe. But we didn’t hear or pick up anything. No explosion, no nothing.”

  “Checks down here, sir,” said the TAO.

  “What did it look like to you, Combat?”

  “About the same.”

  “What about the cruise missile? Did it hit its target?”

  “Stand by,” the TAO said. “Radar, what have you got on the second launch barge? Did the zoomies hit it?”

  “I… I don’t know, sir,” the radar technician stammered. “It’s like the ABM intercept. It looked normal, heading right for the target, then… gone.”

  “Gone? The target? Gone like blew up? Gone like sunk?”

  “Gone like… gone, sir,” the technician said. “I pick up nothing. The missile has disappeared… shit, and the barge disappeared too!”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Surface range thirty, high res,” he demanded, and checked the short-range surface radar depiction. There was no sign of the barge.

  “I’ve got a good radar lock on the first launch barge, sir,” the technician said, “but zilch on the second. It must’ve broke apart and sunk like a stone.”

  “That barge was almost two hundred feet long, eighty
feet wide, and weighed ninety tons. Those things do not just disappear,” the TAO said aloud to no one in particular. Even the first launch barge, which was hit dead-on by the sensor-fused weapon dropped by the cruise missile, was still partially afloat. The TAO hit the intercom button: “Bridge, Combat. We don’t have a fix on the second launch pad. It must’ve sunk. What kind of warhead did they have on that thing? It must’ve been a two-thousand-pounder at least.”

  “Negative, Combat,” the captain responded. “We didn’t hear or see any explosion.”

  The TAO looked at his CIC crew members in shock. “How is that possible, sir?” was all he could think to ask.

  “I don’t know,” the captain said, feeling the anger rise in his throat. He had a suspicion that the Air Force had pulled a fast one on him — that they had tested a new weapon in the wide-open daylight skies and seas, in a well-used military weapons range that belonged to the U.S. Navy. To the officer of the deck, the captain said, “How long for us to get to that second launch barge’s last position?”

  “About thirty minutes at standard, sir.”

  “Officer of the deck, plot a course to the second launch barge’s position,” the captain ordered. “All ahead full. I want a full investigation on what kind of weapon sunk that barge. Air, water, electromagnetic, debris analysis, the works.” He paused, then added, “And have the corpsmen prepare to do a full radiation scan as well.”

  The last order froze everyone on the bridge in their tracks. The captain was silent for a long moment, then said, “Get to it, gentlemen. Keep your damn eyes open.”

  * * *

  It took less than twenty minutes for the two Air Force jets to fly back to Elliott Air Force Base. The base, ninety miles northwest of Las Vegas, was situated near a dry lake bed named Groom Lake. Anyone who viewed the lake bed — which would have been both difficult and illegal, since the airspace for fifty miles around the base was restricted from ground level to infinity—would have seen a roughly five-mile sheet of hard, sunbaked sand. But seconds before the planes touched down, sprinklers popped on and highlighted a long strip of sand-colored concrete in the lake bed. Less than three minutes later Terrill Samson had turned off the runway and the sun evaporated the water. The runway disappeared once again.

  Bradley James Elliott Air Force Base was the name of the installation built next to the dry lake. It resembled a cross between a small, old, nearly abandoned air base and a modern industrial development facility. It had some old wooden buildings and many modern concrete buildings. Because it was so far from the nearest town, it had dormitory-style enlisted, officer, and civilian quarters. There were few amenities: a mess hall, only a small shopette instead of a full commissary and exchange, a little-used outdoor pool, and no base theater.

  The roads were well maintained and the sidewalks were lined with cactus and Joshua trees. The roads had typical Air Force base names, honoring Air Force legends: military aviation pioneers like Rickenbacker and Mitchell, leaders like Spaatz and LeMay, Air Force Medal of Honor recipients like Loring and Sijan, and air combat aces like Bong and DeBellevue. Other streets had names that most people new at the base might not immediately recognize, like Ormack and Powell — names of dead test pilots who had been assigned to the base. About two thousand men and women worked at the base, typically four days on, three days off. They were either bused in in convoys of air-conditioned Greyhound buses, making the 110-mile drive in under two hours, or flown in on unmarked jet airliners from Nellis Air Force Base north of Las Vegas in a matter of minutes.

  The one difference between this base and dozens of other military bases resembling it around the world: Elliott Air Force Base did not appear on any map. There were no signs for it. It was not on any listing of active Air Force bases. No one could ask for an assignment there, and if someone did, he or she would be likely to come under secret investigation as to why the request had been made. Every person assigned there swore an oath never to reveal any details about the base or its activities. Most people took that oath very, very seriously — not because of the substantial legal penalties, but because they really believed that keeping their activities secret contributed to the strength and security of their homeland. By almost every conventional measure except physical presence, Elliott Air Force Base did not exist.

  The base was the home of the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, under Terrill Samson’s command. HAWC was officially Detachment One of the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center headquartered at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Before any new aircraft or air-launched weapon began unclassified operational testing at any of the Air Force’s test facilities prior to full-scale production and deployment, it flew at HAWC first. HAWC’s pilots and engineers worked with aircraft and weapons years before the rest of the world ever saw them, and in many instances worked with weapon systems the world would never see. What would seem like the stuff of science-fiction novels were commonplace devices at HAWC. The secrecy and the weird sightings reported in the deserts of southern Nevada led many to believe the secluded area was harboring aliens from outer space and their spacecraft.

  In reality, HAWC was simply a site for innovative, creative aerospace engineers. Although the days of unlimited “black” budgets were gone, free thinking — by engineers, pilots, scientists, and even the commanders — was encouraged and rewarded here.

  Terrill Samson taxied the F-111 toward a row of twelve low hangars, all painted to blend in with the sand-colored desert landscape around them. As the plane approached, a hangar door slid open, and it taxied directly inside without stopping or even slowing down much. The hangar doors started to close long before the plane was fully inside — the less time the doors were open, the less chance that snooping eyes could catch a glimpse of whatever was inside. It had been preceded minutes before by the bomber that it had stayed with over the Pacific Ocean just a short while earlier, and parked next to it.

  As soon as the F-111’s engines were shut down, the crew chief and his assistant brought boarding ladders over to its side. But General Victor Hayes was still too stunned to remove his helmet and unstrap himself, let alone climb out of the cockpit. Samson took off his own helmet and released his straps, then sat in the cockpit, amused, quietly watching the Air Force chief of staff. A dozen heavily armed security policemen, maintenance crews, and engineers had descended on both aircraft on arrival, prepared to swarm over them and to gather electronically recorded information about the test launches. Now they all waited for Hayes and Samson to step out, perplexed but wisely keeping out of earshot.

  “Well, sir?” Samson asked. “What do you think?”

  The hangar was air-conditioned, but long before entering it Hayes felt a chill — especially when he thought about what he had witnessed that morning. “What do I think?” he echoed. “I can’t believe it. That warhead is incredible. Talk to me, Earthmover. What the hell else have you got here? Whatever you’re selling, I’m buying. I don’t know how we’re going to pay for it, but I’m for damned sure in the market.”

  “What I’ve got, sir, is a bunch of concepts and demo models,” Samson said. “All a leftover of Brad Elliott’s vision and leadership. He’s got stuff here that would make James Bond shit his pants. I’m sorry I blew the poor son of a bitch off for so many years. We all thought he was just certifiable. It turns out he was a certifiable genius.”

  “The antiballistic missile stuff, Earthmover. Lancelot,” Hayes said. “That’s what Congress wants to field right now. What is it, how much, how fast can we get it in the field?”

  “Let me show you what we’ve got, sir,” Samson said. Hayes removed his straps at last and followed Samson out of the chase plane and over to the B-1 beside it. After their IDs were checked and verified by thumb and retina prints, they began a walkaround of the big, sleek bomber. “We call it the EB-1C Megafortress-2, sir,” said Samson. “Prime-time example of taking a good strike aircraft and making it better. You won’t notice too many changes outside, but Brad transforme
d this thing into a real tactical strike machine.”

  Hayes touched the big bomber, and his eyes narrowed in surprise. He was trying to identify what he felt. “That’s not steel,” he said.

  “Fibersteel,” Samson explained. “Same stuff as RAM — radar-absorbent material — but fibersteel is structural-strength. We’ve reduced the weight and the radar cross section and increased the durability by at least fifteen percent just by reskinning with fibersteel. A stock B-1 has ten times the radar cross section of a B-2 stealth bomber. This one has only three times the RCS.”

  He pointed to the bomber’s broad, flat underside, between the nosewheel well and forward bomb bay. “There are the external weapons and fuel hardpoints. Best move we made was to bring those back. We can launch any weapon in the arsenal, including air-to-air missiles. Each external hardpoint can hold three AIM-120 Scorpion air-to-air missiles, two AGM-88 HARM antiradar missiles, four AGM-65 Maverick missiles, one AGM-84 Harpoon antiship missile, one Wolverine cruise missile, even one AGM-142 Have Nap TV-guided missile. We’ve even modified Lancelot as a low earth-orbit satellite killer.”

  “What?”

  “Brad Elliott revived and perfected the old ASAT antisatellite program,” Samson said proudly. “The B-1 can get a datalink from Space Command or use the LADAR, wait until an enemy satellite passes overhead, then fire an ASAT from an external hardpoint straight up. With a plasma-yield warhead installed, it’ll kill a satellite up to two hundred miles in orbit; with a conventional explosive warhead, about one hundred miles. We haven’t tested it, but all the computer models say it will work. And we can do it all now, sir.”

  “Amazing!” Hayes exclaimed. “I want to see that tested. Killing satellites two hundred miles in space — my God, what a capability that’ll give us.” He motioned to the long, pointed nose and asked, “That nose cone looks weird — almost like glass instead of fiber-steel. What kind of radar did you put in this thing? Still the stock one, or did you soup it up too?”