Dark Star. Don Pendleton

could be seen along the coastline, while swarms of Apache and SuperCobra gunships hovered overhead.

      The room seemed to grow still as Brognola said nothing for a few seconds; there was only the muted hush of the jet engines.

      “How many people did we lose?” the big Fed asked, controlling his seething emotions. Normally the Cape was as clean as an operating room, washed and scrubbed almost daily. Now it looked like the bombed-out sections of Beirut.

      “Eighty-six are confirmed dead,” the President reported. “With another hundred missing, including a lot of tourists.”

      Inhaling deeply, Brognola turned away from the grisly vista of destruction and sat back in his chair. For a long moment he said nothing, lost in dark contemplation.

      “Any idea who did it?” he asked.

      “None.”

      “Damn. And we’re sure this was not a nuke?”

      “Absolutely positive,” the President replied, scowling down at the closed report. “Both NASA and the DOD checked for residual radiation, and NSA Keyhole satellites registered nothing out of the usual on the magnetic spectrum.”

      “All right, if they weren’t hit by a nuke, then what happened?”

      “We’re not exactly sure,” the President replied, tapping a few buttons on his desk. “But the NSA was able to retrieve this image from the cell phone of a Mr. Thomas Hutchings who was fishing about a mile off Cocoa Beach.”

      The monitor flickered, then abruptly changed into a jumpy view of the bow of a fishing boat, and a white line stretching down into the water.

      Just then something fiery shot down from the sky like a film of a missile launch played in reverse. Smoke exploded from the Cape, then a series of bright explosions, closely followed by a blinding light flash that extended outward. The corona was dotted with bodies and tumbling cars, and pushed back the choppy waves to create a tidal wave that slammed into the fishing boat and sent it flying. The cell phone was dropped to the deck with a clatter and there were only chaotic images for a few seconds, mixed with the sound of splintering wood before the screen went blank.

      “Hell of an explosion,” Brognola said in an ordinary voice.

      “A hell of an explosion,” the President agreed.

      “How long did the attack take?”

      “Three minutes, fourteen seconds.”

      “To destroy the whole damn Cape?”

      “And escape,” the Man said.

      Unbelievable.

      “Was radar able to track the trajectory of the…whatever it was, coming or going? That could tell us a lot about it’s origin,” Brognola stated.

      “No.”

      Frowning, the big Fed started to speak, but the one-word answer spoke volumes. This was just incredible, but horribly true. The entire facility had been destroyed, annihilated was a better word, in only a few minutes by something that moved faster than a missile, dropped straight down from the sky, was radar invisible and killed with fire from the underneath.

      “Show it to me again,” Brognola ordered brusquely. “Slower this time, with maximum magnification focused on the flying object.”

      The President hit another button on the small console and the monitor came to life once more, the nightmare scene advancing in a series of freeze-frame shots every few seconds.

      “Hold it right there,” Brognola said as something moved horizontally across the base.

      The picture went motionless, and he stared hard at an object momentarily silhouetted by a rising cloud of white smoke. It looked like a cone of some sort. A cone riding a column of fire…

      “So it has finally been done,” the big Fed said with a sigh, rubbing his forehead. “Somebody solved the power problem and built an SSO.”

      “Unfortunately that is also the opinion of the Department of Defense,” the President said, turning off the monitor. “As well as myself, which is why I immediately called you.”

      A working SSO, a single-stage-to-orbit rocket. Brognola tried not to shudder. Several years ago he had been present at the maiden flight of the Delta Clipper, the first test model of an SSO ever built. If successful, it could have been the first true spaceship in human history, a rocket that launched straight up, standing on its own legs, and landed doing the same thing. Just like in the comic books. A genuine rocket ship. Unfortunately the Delta Clipper failed. The vehicle had gained barely a hundred feet of height when it had a massive short circuit in the controls and developed a fuel leak that almost killed the crew. Also, the engines had been pitifully weak, barely able to lift the tiny, thirty-foot-tall X-ship. The test flight was considered a total failure, and the project canceled. It was the considered opinion of everybody involved that the present state of modern technology was simply insufficient to build such an incredible complex piece of machinery.

      Which was actually for the best, Brognola noted grimly. A working SSO, or X-ship as it had been nicknamed, would have been a security nightmare of gigantic proportions. Able to launch from a driveway and to land on top of an apartment building halfway around the world, a successful X-ship could have heralded a tidal wave of smuggling that would have engulfed the entire world. It would rise straight up into space, then drop back down again in a steep curve, using the natural rotation of Earth to cover thousands of miles in only a few minutes. Overnight, border guards, harbor patrols, custom inspectors and airport security would have become obsolete. Weapons, drugs—anything—could almost literally be delivered to the front door of the customer. Terrorists would have been able to land right on top of their targets—buildings, bridges, schools—and use the fiery exhaust of the X-ship to do more damage than most conventional explosives. Why carry a bomb when the thundering exhaust of the rocket engines was even more powerful? Unless they got hold of a nuke. A working X-ship armed with a tactical nuclear weapon could destroy any place on Earth, and nobody would be able to stop it. The fantastic speeds involved and the vertical trajectory would make all conventional air defense systems virtually useless.

      All that was needed was for some lunatic to also make the things invisible to radar, like a stealth bomber, and you’d have the end of the world, Brognola thought.

      Only now it seemed that somebody had solved those technical problems and had just gotten in the first strike.

      “Okay, we’re facing an X-ship,” Brognola said, cracking his knuckles thoughtfully as he digested the impossible information. “Any chance the lab boys at the Pentagon were able to get an estimate of the size of the SSO from the cell phone video?”

      Reaching for a coffee urn, the President poured himself a cup, took a sip, then placed it aside. “Yes, roughly 120 feet tall.”

      About the size of a ten-story building, Brognola mused. No way that monster was going to be hidden in a garage or car port. Okay, one small point in our favor. It’s invisible, but huge. That sounded like a contradiction of terms, but sadly was not.

      “Have there been any other attacks?”

      “Hal, every other major launch facility in the world has been hit. Edwards Air Force Base, Houston, Compose Island in Brazil, Woomera Base in Australia, French Guyana, Rocket City in Russia, Tanegashima Island in Japan, Sriharikota Island in India…every launch facility capable of putting a shuttle into space has been flattened. Utterly smashed. The death toll for all of the bases combined is monstrous.”

      “This is why we’re meeting here,” Brognola said suddenly, tapping the arm of the chair. “A moving target will be harder for them to hit.”

      “Exactly.” The President paused, then added, “Plus each of the three planes have another jumbo jet riding above it as a physical shield.”

      Damn, that was smart. Once more his admiration for the sheer guts of the U.S. Secret Service was raised. The President would have to stay on the move from now on,