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by
Tom Clancy
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March 4 - May 10, 2020
systems could be neutralized by elimination of their GPS navigation satellites, without which they could still kill cities, but the ability to attack missile silos would be irretrievably gone.
Filitov envisaged was the standard Soviet case study. Some crisis erupted (the Middle East was the favorite, since nobody could predict what would happen there), and while Moscow moved to stabilize matters, the West interfered—clumsily and stupidly, of course—and started talking openly in the press about a nuclear confrontation. The intelligence organs would flash word to Moscow that a nuclear strike was a real possibility. Strategic Rocket Force’s SS-18 regiments would secretly go to full alert, as would the new ground-based laser weapons. While the Foreign Ministry airheads—no military force
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than necessary. Simultaneously, the lasers would disable as many American reconnaissance and navigation satellites as possible but leave the communications satellites intact—a gamble calculated to show “good” intent. The Americans would not be able to respond to the attack before the Soviet warheads struck. (Misha worried about this, but information from KGB and GRU said that there were serious flaws in the American command-and-control system, plus the psychological factors involved.) Probably the Americans would keep their submarine weapons in reserve and launch their surviving Minutemen at
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That was the important part—to make people stop and think. A man might attack cities on impulse or in a state of rage, but not after sober reflection.
either side would see its defense systems as a rationale for an offensive strike. In a crisis, however, their existence could mitigate the fear that prevented its launch—if the other side had no defenses. Both sides, therefore, had to have them. That would make a first strike far less likely, and that would make the world a safer place. Defensive systems could not be stopped now. One might as easily try to stop the tide. It pleased this old soldier that intercontinental rockets, so destructive to the ethic of the warrior, might finally be neutralized, that death in war would be returned to
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CHAPTER EIGHT Document Transfer
No. I will not visit another death upon this woman. The decision also amazed the Archer. It was as though the voice of Allah Himself reminded him that mercy is second only to faith in the human virtues. That was not enough by itself—his fellow guerrillas would not be persuaded by a verse of scripture—but next the Archer found a key ring in the man’s pants pocket. He used one key to unlock the handcuffs and the other to open the briefcase. It was full of document folders, each of which was bordered in multicolored tape and stamped with some version of SECRET. That was one Russian word he knew.
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sir.” Jack smiled. “You pay me to see connections, Judge. I don’t mind being cut out of things I don’t need to know, but I’m starting to think that there’s something going on that’s part of what I’m trying to do. If you want me to brief the President, sir, I should go in with the right information.”
Was it time to add a new member to the ∆ fraternity? After a moment he delivered his own sly smile.
We’ve had agents lost because presidents talked too much. Not to mention the odd member of Congress.”
“Ever since I’ve been here, Judge, I’ve asked myself at least once a day—what’s most remarkable about this place, the things we know or the things we don’t?”
Five years ago, I had people try to kill my wife and kid. They had to fly three thousand miles to do it, but they came anyway.” “Oh, right! You’re the guy—” “Ancient history, Major.” Jack was tired of telling the story.
“This array here at Bach is a laser transmitter.” “And they blasted a satellite with it?” Jeff Pelt asked. “Yes, sir,” Major Gregory answered. “They ‘slagged it down,’ as we say at the lab. They pumped enough energy into it to, well, to melt some of the metal and destroy the solar power cells entirely.” “We can’t do that yet?” the President asked Gregory. “No, sir. We can’t put that much power out the front end.” “How is it that they got ahead of us? We’re putting a lot of money into lasers, aren’t we, General?”
been investing in high-energy physics research for years as part of an effort to get fusion-power reactors.
They invented the RFQ—the radio-frequency quadrapole—that we use in our neutral-particle beam experiments. They invented the Tokamak magnetic-containment device that we copied up at Princeton, and they invented the Gyrotron. Those are three major breakthroughs in high-energy physics that we know about.
The idea is that you can use electromagnets to oscillate the electrons crosswise to their path. What you get is a beam of light coincident with the oscillation frequency of the wiggler magnets—that means you can tune it, sir, like a radio.
Compared to the electrical power that this country uses to cook food, the amount needed for a laser defense system is negligible. The trick is making it really work. We haven’t done that yet.” “Why not?” The President was interested now, leaning forward slightly in his chair. “We’re still learning how to make the laser work, sir. The fundamental problem is in the lasing cavity—that’s where the energy comes off the electrons and turns into a beam of light. We haven’t been able yet to make a very wide one.
We haven’t figured that out yet. Probably they have, and that probably came from their research into fusion power. All the ideas for getting energy out of controlled fusion are concerned with using a magnetic field to contain a mass of high-energy plasma—in principle the same thing we’re trying to do with the free electrons. Most of the basic research in that field comes from Russia, sir. They’re ahead of us because they’ve spent more time and money in the most important place.”
We can put ’em pretty high up, between three hundred and a thousand miles. We can use stealth technology to make them hard to locate on radar—you can’t do that with most satellites, but we can do it with these. The mirrors will be relatively small, and light. That means we can deploy a lot of them.
‘Defense is moral, offense is immoral.’ That’s a Russian talking, sir, not just a communist. To be honest, I find that a hard argument to disagree with. If we do enter a new phase of competition, at least it would be defensive instead of offensive.
“Mr. Allen, the peace we have is one continuous crisis. You say we can reduce inventories by half—again, so what? You could cut Soviet inventories by two thirds and still leave them with enough warheads to turn America into a crematorium. The same thing is true of our inventory. As I said coming back from Moscow, the reduction agreement now on the table is cosmetic only. It does not provide any degree of additional safety. It is a symbol—maybe an important one,
Like with the Apollo Program, sir, it’s not so much a question of inventing a new science as learning how to engineer technology we already have. It’s just working out the nuts and bolts.”
The report concluded that the other remaining problem was in the optical and computer systems. I’ll have to see what our intelligence organs are doing about that, Filitov told himself. Finally, he spent
“Take this down to Central Files—Section 5, maximum security. Oh, and where’s today’s burn-bag?” “I have it, Comrade.”
It took only a minute for him to photograph the new diary pages, after which he rewound the film and extracted the film cassette. He pocketed this and replaced the camera
For one thing, the Russians themselves had made it easier by giving CARDINAL an apartment on a heavily traveled street. For another, in making such a hash of the new embassy building, they prevented him and his family from living in the new compound, and that forced Foley or his wife to drive down this boulevard every night. And they were so glad to have his son on their hockey team. That was one thing he’d miss on leaving this place, Foley told himself as he got out of the car.
Made the news big time when Soviets sank bugs into structure of new US Embassy building.
he came in and hung up his coat, he kissed his wife, then tickled her ear at the same time. She giggled in recognition, though both were thoroughly tired of the stress that came with this post. Just a few more months. “So how was the reception?” she asked for the benefit of the wall microphones. “The usual crap,” was the recorded answer.
CHAPTER NINE Opportunities
“We’re fighting ignorant savages, Comrade Major. I doubt that they have much interest in documents of any kind. They might have recognized his uniform as that of a KGB officer, then dragged him off to mutilate the body. You wouldn’t believe what they do to captives.”
In his twilight state he wondered why he hadn’t been killed. He’d heard enough stories in Moscow about how the Afghans treated captives . . . and was that why you volunteered to handle this tour in addition to your own . . . ? He wondered now at his fate, and how he’d brought it about.
he rose to look in the mirror to see what treason had done to a Hero of the Soviet Union. He could not—would not—stop, of course, but . . . but look what it is doing to you, Misha. The once clear-blue eyes were bloodshot and lifeless, the ruddy complexion gray like a corpse. His skin sagged, and the gray stubble on his cheeks blurred a face that had once been called handsome. He stretched his right arm, and
She’d never seen the face of her contact on this train, but she knew that he’d seen hers. Whoever he was, he appreciated her slim figure. She knew that from his signal. In the crush of the crowded train, a hand hidden by a copy of Izvestia ran along her left buttock and stopped to squeeze gently. That was new, and she fought off the impulse to see his face. Might
The courier turned back forward and went over his escape procedures. Foley went over his own. The courier would dispose of the film, first exposing it by pulling it out of the metal cylinder, then dumping it in the nearest trash receptacle. That had happened twice before that he knew of, and in both cases the cutout had gotten away cleanly. They’re trained how, Foley told himself. They know how. CARDINAL would be warned, and another film would
He turned right and walked off. There was an alley half a block away, and a sewer grate that he could use. His cigarette would be finished just as he got there, yet another thing that he’d practiced. Now, if only he could get the film out of the cassette and exposed to sunlight . . . Damn. He slipped off his other glove and rubbed his hands together. The courier used his fingernails to get the film. Yes!
Had he been followed? He frequently was, of course, like all Americans on the embassy staff. His personal tail was a man he thought of as “George.”
The Russians didn’t know who Foley was. He was sure of that. That thought caught in his throat. Being certain about anything in the intelligence business was the surest route to disaster. That was why he’d never broken craft, why he never deviated from the training that had been drilled into him at Camp Peary, on the York River in Virginia, then practiced all over the world.
They didn’t take him to Dzerzhinskiy Square. KGB headquarters, so long used as a prison—a dungeon for all that happened there—was now exclusively an office building since, in obedience to Parkinson’s Law, the agency had expanded to absorb all its available space. Now
simply that Russians, in lacking freedom, often lack the concepts needed for active resistance.
“Finished.” The technician came back. He’d developed the film and printed one blow-up, still damp from the process. He handed back the film cassette, too, in a small manila envelope. “The film has been exposed and rewound. I managed to save part of one frame. It’s interesting, but I have
“Nothing can be done. Once film is exposed to sunlight, the data is utterly destroyed.”
CHAPTER TEN Damage Assessment
“As soon as we know which, I’ll send our man to her. We’ll use Mr. Clark,” Ritter said. Heads nodded. Clark was a minor legend in the Operations Directorate. If anybody could do it, he could.
“Okay, get the message off to Foley,” the Judge said. “I’ll have to brief the President on this.” He wasn’t looking forward to that.
Admiral Greer went immediately to his office. It was just before seven, and he called the Pentagon, OP-02, the office of the Assistant Chief of Naval Operations (Undersea Warfare). After identifying himself,
he asked his first question: “What’s Dallas up to?”
Captain Mancuso was already at work, too. His last deployment on USS Dallas would begin in five hours.
His second Distinguished Service Medal, awarded for that mission, was classified and he couldn’t wear it;
“You’re making a high-speed run for Faslane. Some people will be meeting you there. That’s all I know, but the orders originated at OP-02 and came through SUBLANT in about thirty seconds.” Williamson didn’t
There was talk that the Russians might actually withdraw. Their troops no longer craved close combat with the Afghans. Mainly the Russians used their infantry to achieve contact, then called in artillery and air support. Aside from a few vicious bands of paratroopers and the hated Spetznaz forces, the Afghans felt that they had achieved moral ascendancy on the battlefield—due, of course, to their holy cause.
