Capital Offensive. Don Pendleton

conversation.

      “I’ll be brief.” The President grimaced unhappily, starting to pour himself another cup of coffee. But the urn proved to be empty. “Last night at around 2:00 a.m., there was a test firing of three of our new StarDagger ICBMs. Absolutely state-of-the-art missiles theoretically capable of penetrating the defense grid of any enemy nation without their even knowing it occurred. The targets were located far at sea, a long distance from any foreign powers, and a safe distance from the commercial shipping lines…just in case anything went wrong.”

      “Which it obviously did,” Brognola stated, templing his fingers. He didn’t like where this conversation was going.

      “Sadly, yes.” The President started to speak, paused, then took a deep breath. “Almost immediately after launching, the missiles went wildly off course and hit Paris and Beijing. One landed in the Pacific Ocean.”

      “Where was that again?” Brognola asked, stunned. The news had talked about trouble overseas, but nothing like this. “Were the birds hot?”

      “Thankfully, no.” The President sighed, rubbing his face. “The missiles were only equipped with marker warheads, just a half ton of M-2 plastique.”

      Brognola knew that was enough high explosive to throw out a plume of water a hundred feet high, but not enough to do any significant damage to a major city. Maybe destroy a city block or two, but not much more than that. “How many people are dead?” he demanded gruffly.

      “Hundreds. However, it could have been much worse.”

      “Not by much,” Brognola replied curtly, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. Racking his memory, the man recalled that modern-day ICBMs didn’t have a self-destruct and that their flight paths couldn’t change from the primary target. It was a failsafe procedure to prevent an enemy from seizing control and turning the missiles back against America. Once launched, the warbirds were totally autonomous. “How far off course did they go?”

      “The original targets were the Fifth Fleet in the North Atlantic, the third Carrier Group in the Sea of Japan and the Second Submarine Assault Group in the South Pacific.”

      The big Fed grunted in reply. Obviously the missiles hadn’t veered slightly off course, but had completely changed direction and flown halfway around the planet in new directions. That smacked of outside control, not a malfunction. “Any idea what went wrong, sir?” he demanded gruffly.

      “To be honest I have no idea,” the President replied, spreading his hands. “Nor does anybody else. Only a wild guess. Every telltale was green, all telemetry was nominal, and yet…”

      “Sabotage is the obvious answer, but how could anybody get to all three of them?” Brognola mused out loud, massaging his jaw. “Were they launched from the same base?”

      “No.”

      “Then we either have a network of traitors scattered through the launch silos…”

      “Not completely out of the question.”

      “Agreed. But if that’s not the case, then logically, somebody has found a way to manipulate our long-range weapons systems.”

      “Sadly, that’s also my conclusion.” The President growled as if the notion put an unpleasant taste in his mouth. “Which means that until this matter is rectified, the nation is virtually defenseless. If we launch another ICBM, or even a long-range stealth bomb, it could go anywhere. Hit anybody from Manhattan to Melbourne. And the next time we may not be so lucky, and the civilian death tolls could be catastrophic.”

      “And if these saboteurs can also alter the course of other nations’ missiles…” Brognola added grimly. The implications were staggering. “India fires at Pakistan, but hits London. The British launch at New Delhi and hit Moscow, and then they hit…” The man made an endlessly circular gesture. One wrong move by the U.S. could start a domino reaction that would bring about the long-feared apocalypse of the old cold war.

      “I see that you’ve also come to the same conclusions as myself,” the President said. “At the moment, every antimissile we have has been taken offline. We can’t trust them anymore. Which leaves us with rail guns and lasers of questionable accuracy in the first place.”

      “Artillery would be better.”

      “Agreed. The Pentagon has all of our jet fighters on patrol around the continent watching for incoming missiles. But we can’t keep them up forever.”

      “Especially if whatever is sending our missiles off course can also affect our jets, making them fly in the wrong directions to violate international airspace, crash into each other over populated cities…”

      “…Or leave a wide-open breach for an incoming missile to fly through without hindrance,” the President finished grimly. “We have the best combat pilots in the world, but men get tired, and when they need to rely upon their navigational systems…” There was no need to finish the sentence.

      “What can my people do to help, sir?” Brognola asked bluntly, leaning forward in the chair.

      “Find out what happen to those ICBMs and stop whoever is responsible from doing it again,” the President stated, passing over a clear plastic jewel box containing a computer disk.

      The shiny disk was marked with a brown stripe of high explosive. Open the jewel box incorrectly and the disk would violently be rendered useless. “This has the full technical readouts on the new missiles. Maybe your people at the Farm can find something useful. However, it is paramount that this remain top secret. If the public got wind of what was actually happening, there could be a national panic. Terrorists would attack U.S. bases overseas knowing that we can’t properly defend ourselves. The stock market might crash, financially crippling the nation for decades, hundreds of companies could go bankrupt, closing down factories and sending thousands of people out of work.” He grimaced. “It’s a nightmare waiting to happen.”

      “Don’t worry, sir, we won’t let you down,” Brognola declared, rising from the chair.

      “You never have before,” the President said, and started to add something more when telephone on the desk gave a soft buzz. The man glared at the device as if it were a live bomb, then lifted the receiver.

      “Yes?” the President asked. He listened for a minute, then replaced the receiver in the cradle. “Well, it just happened,” he stated. “Two of our F-18 SuperHornets patrolling the oil fields of eastern Iraq got lost and accidentally crossed the boundary into western Iran. The mullahs are screaming violation of sovereign airspace and demanding punitive measures from the United Nations for our quote, ‘rampaging aggression,’ end quote.”

      “The enemy is escalating their attacks already?” Brognola asked uneasily. “We can expect a lot more of this, and soon.”

      The President opened a drawer and pulled out a folder marked with Top Secret seals and an explosive security tab. “Then stop wasting time talking to me and get moving,” he commanded, sliding on a pair of reading glasses and opening the file to start skimming the pages.

      With a nod, Brognola turned and left the Oval Office, his mind already working on the complex matter. A lot of people hated America for various reasons. However, he knew there were few groups who had access to the sort of highly advanced technology needed to pull off this sort of cybernetic attack.

      Departing from the building, Brognola headed for the parking lot behind the Old Executive Building. Heavily armed Park Rangers were on patrol everywhere inside enclosure, while D.C. police officers patrolled the sidewalks outside.

      The key to the matter was how somebody had seized control of an ICBM in flight. And sent a military jet a hundred miles off course, the big Fed noted. There were a hundred safeguards and multiple backups on both guidance systems. Yet it had been done. There had to be some sort of common denominator; a computer chip or software program.

      Stopping at his car, Brognola looked skyward at the dark storm clouds gathering high overhead. In the distance, thunder