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  Immediately, the DEWSAT computer reduced the electrical power driving the Free Electron Laser to a safe level. After reducing the power, an automatic test showed all was well and the DEWSAT acknowledged Centurion’s message with an encrypted radio transmission.

  DEWSAT ack: laser power output = tag

  For the moment, the DEWSAT had lost its punch, throttled back for counterstealth testing—the war game of laser tag.

  4

  Motivation, 12/07/2014, 1035 "Zulu, 3:35 A.M. Local

  Allied Forces Command Headquarters,

  Consolidated Space Operations Center (CSOC), Situation Control Room,

  Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado

  For as long as there had been war, military leaders had struggled to do what Major General Robert Craven’s team had done. His organization had taken a quantum leap toward realizing the remotely controlled battlefield. As Supreme Allied Commander, Craven moved to the top of the ranks by leading an effort which consolidated battlefield communication, command, and control within the new Allied Headquarters building inside Cheyenne Mountain. He was one of the first to understand that optical technology offered the keys to make the remotely controlled battlefield a reality. They weren’t there yet, people were still in the loop, but this accomplishment was considered by many a technical marvel comparable to the Panama Canal. Considered brilliant by his superiors, Craven believed his ability to pick good people, point them in the right direction, then turn them loose was his greatest contribution. His motto—“Do something. Lead, follow, or get out of the way.”—had served his organization well in his day, but Craven’s time had now passed and instinctively he knew it. Over the last two years, he’d changed—he’d simply worn out.

  Craven was a mover and shaker. His long and distinguished military career, now drawing to a close, had been marked by frequent, fierce, and far-reaching battles with Washington over vision, strategy, schedules, and funding—especially funding. For years he had tirelessly lobbied Congress, the public, and the Pentagon to fully deploy the Star Wars space-based defense system, and in doing so had antagonized much of his Washington-based constituency. In the minds of many Army, Navy, and Air Force leaders, Craven was one of the most brilliant and controversial figures in American military history. So vigorous was his advocacy for an orbiting military armada that he had placed his career in jeopardy much like General Billy Mitchell had done promoting air power.

  Major General Robert Craven was average height with broad shoulders and massive forearms for his age. In his late fifties, his once thick curly black hair was now thin and gray. His face had a weathered outdoor look to it, but his eyes, most of all, revealed the inescapable fatigue he felt in his soul.

  There wasn’t a person in Craven’s organization who didn’t admire him, but the workaholic years of relentless stress had taken their toll. Craven’s onetime limitless energy was gone. He was exhausted, out of patience, and to top it off, his pet project—High Ground—was in trouble. Even though his baby was behind schedule and over budget, Craven believed the test results they collected during the next few days would turn this situation around. More clearly than anyone else, he understood they must.

  Surrounded by granite walls fifteen hundred feet thick, Craven worked through a computer printout with his attack force commander, Colonel Wayne Hinson. Although Craven’s mission was primarily defensive in nature, his organization included a small attack component for testing their defenses. The Consolidated Space Operations Center (CSOC, pronounced sis-awk) provided the Allied attack forces; the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) provided their lethal defenses.

  Protected by two massive twenty-five-ton steel blast doors, Commander Hinson sat in the center of the Situation Control Room surrounded by his master console—the computer brain of the attack center. From his master console, Hinson could locate, inventory, and control everything in the Allied military arsenal that orbits, flies, floats, rolls, or walks.

  Leaning over Hinson’s shoulder, Craven impatiently ran his finger over a computer printout, stopping on the results column. His once steady hands now shook uncontrollably around the clock. His mood was tense. His expression—one of disbelief. Before he could complete his thought, Craven was interrupted by a nervous young airman.

  “General, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is on the line, sir.”

  Along with most of working-class America, Craven had learned to hate the phone, and like most, his feelings were heartfelt. Suspending his thoughts in progress, he drew a deep breath before speaking. “Thanks, son. I’ll take it here.”

  He picked up the console phone. “Chief. This is Craven. What can I do for you?”

  Not one for small talk, the chairman got down to the crux of the matter. “You’ve got a big problem.”

  “Give it to me straight,” Craven replied. He clinched his teeth as the muscles around his mouth tightened. He hated plain talk from the chairman because it always put him on the spot.

  “The President is livid.” The chairman cleared his throat, then continued. His tone was strained and barely under control. “Iraq has two subs parked in cruise missile range of Washington and New York. High Ground’s been funded for years to counter this threat but has not delivered!” The chairman paused.

  There was a deep silence on the line. As the silence protracted, a test of wills emerged. Checking his watch, Craven grimaced. Calling from the comfort of his own home, the chairman had time enough to stall; he did not. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”

  “High Ground’s over two years behind schedule and over budget. Washington wants results—and 1 mean before Christmas!” The chairman’s restraint evaporated.

  “I get the message.” Put up or shut up, he thought. Craven fully understood that his counterstealth project, code-named High Ground, was in a jam. Their funding situation was desperate. If they didn’t deliver some good news soon, High Ground’s future was unpredictable. They could get the ax and lose it all.

  “Good.” Craven heard a sigh of relief over the phone. “Pull out the stops. Do everything you can.”

  “Will do. High Ground’s back on track and won’t derail again. I guarantee it.”

  Craven hung up and looked across the console at his heir apparent, General Daniel “Slim” Mason. Although tense, when looking at Slim he felt better—it was his tie tack. That tie tack always tickled Craven. A gift from his grandson, Slim’s tie tack was a tiny prop-driven biplane he wore no matter the occasion. It wasn’t important how it looked, it was a gift from his grandson and he valued it. Craven smiled to himself every time he looked at that tie tack closely—definitely not GI. Over the years, Mason always managed to keep his priorities straight and had a wife, three married sons, grandchildren, plus lifelong hometown friends to show for it.

  Mason believed in family, friends, country, hard work, decent values, and God. Slim didn’t force his beliefs on others, but once you knew what he believed in, you knew the man. His life exemplified everything he believed and Craven admired him for it.

  With Mason, what you saw was what you got and what you got came from the heart of Dixie. As far back as any of Slim’s hometown friends could remember, he’d always borne a striking resemblance to Jimmy Stewart, and in all honesty, as he’d grown older, his likeness had slowly transformed into a near facsimile. The silver-haired, fifty-two-year-old Jimmy Stewart look-alike was a little over six two, lean, angular faced, lanky with pipe-cleaner legs, bony arms, and shoulders broader than they looked on his tall frame.

  Mason and Craven went back a long way—all the way back to the Persian Gulf War. In January 1991, Captain Slim Mason flew over Baghdad as Major Craven’s wing-man while they were members of the elite Screaming Demons—the clandestine F-117 stealth fighter squadron first stationed in Tonopah, Arizona. An MIT graduate in electrical engineering, specializing in advanced radar technology, Mason loved airplanes and first married his two interests by flying the F-117—the black stealth fighter officially
known as the Nighthawk, affectionately known by the pilot community as the stinkbug. Mason joked that flying the F-l 17 wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Essentially, the stinkbug was a manned, fully automated Tomahawk cruise missile that flew itself to target, dropped its two bombs, then returned the pilot home. Given good intelligence and extensive planning, all the pilot did was take off and land—the stinkbug did the rest.

  After the Cold War wound down and the intoxicating success of Desert Storm had faded, Mason had been among the first who somberly predicted that mass-produced, long-range stealth cruise missiles would emerge as the preeminent threat wielded by the third world. Further, he predicted that stealth cruise missile detection from space was the only viable way to counter this third-world threat now looming just beyond the horizon. Although subsequent events confirmed his predictions, Mason faced a wall of resistance from the leaders of older, established military services just as Craven had found when advocating for an orbiting military armada. Mason began appealing directly to the public through books, interviews, and speeches. Once Mason went public with his appeal for expanding our military presence in space, Craven got wind of it and brought him into his fold under Cheyenne Mountain. Two old stinkbug pilots were united once again. Their quest for a worldwide, real-time, space-based air, land, and sea surveillance system was the glue that first bound them together, but over the years their relationship had developed into a deeper, more meaningful matter of trust.

  From its inception, Mason rose rapidly through the ranks of the High Ground project under Craven’s tutelage. Initially, Slim’s team focused on developing a surveillance system code-named ClearWater, a space-based sea surveillance system for detecting submerged submarines. Following ClearWater’s staggering success, Mason was promoted to general officer and acquired two hats within the Cheyenne Mountain community—military manager and technical leader extraordinaire. Not many could effectively switch hats back and forth, but Mason could. This extraordinary skill catapulted him over his peers, but no one seemed to mind. His peers and subordinates were often his biggest fans. When wearing his military manager hat, Mason served as unified NORAD/NATO Commander In Chief (CIC). Most of his mornings were wrapped up in the never-ending series of staff meetings required of the CIC. The job was a political juggling act, and his approach to the problem was management by consent. In the afternoon, Mason liked to change hats. With ClearWater’s naval success under their belts, Mason’s technical team progressed to the problem of air surveillance—specifically to the detection of stealth missiles over land and sea. As it turned out, detecting low flying stealth cruise missiles from low earth orbit had been an enormous technical problem—bigger than anyone had imagined—but finally they had good reason to think they’d solved it. Data collected over the next few days of testing would tell the story.

  Looking into the eyes of his former wingman brought Craven’s attention back to the immediate task at hand. He spoke quietly. “Heat’s on.”

  Mason nodded. “There’s a tremendous lot riding on these tests.”

  Leaning over Hinson’s shoulder, Craven stared at the screen labeled War Game Scoreboard. Highlighted in reverse video, the legend printed across the screen read:

  High Ground Simulation Results —

  Final Score:

  SDIO Defense Forces - 6

  CSOC Attack Forces - 0

  Hinson had run a computer program which simulated Hell Fire's missile attack on the Nevada Test Site. According to his simulation, High Ground should work perfectly—the counterstealth defense forces should come out on top.

  The large veins on Craven’s neck bulged as his face turned red. “I don’t buy it. Our defenses look too damn good—too optimistic.”

  Craven drummed his fingers across Hinson’s desk and spoke in his don’t screw with me now tone of voice. “I wanta see your attack plan simulated one last time before we run this test live. Change it. Make it more realistic.”

  “Yes sir.” He knew the routine. He’d gone over his attack plan with Craven twice in the last hour.

  “I wanta run through it again—start to finish.” Craven’s tone was final. He pointed to an icon shaped like a submarine on the computer screen. “I wanta see the position of your attack forces. Show me again—Hell Fire, the Dorito, and the sub—I wanta see ’em all.”

  Hinson recited his attack plan like a well-rehearsed actor, then concluded: “If Centurion tags all six missiles tonight, stealth is history.”

  Mason stood behind Hinson, quietly talking to their ally from the Soviet Commonwealth, General Yuri Krol. Both men looked concerned. The Allied alliance included the Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States as well as former NORAD and NATO countries. The alliance was based on economic necessity, an issue of dollars and cents, not mutual admiration. It was cost-effective to share a satellite defense system, and besides, no single country could afford it.

  Awkwardly sliding the rim of his round hat through his fingers, Mason looked into Craven’s eyes. “General, I

  think you fellas may be outrunning your headlights—just a little bit.”

  “Whataya mean, Slim?”

  Mason shifted his tall frame uneasily from side to side. “You have no visibility—no way to see trouble coming.”

  “What do you propose?”

  “Have someone keep an eye on Centurion—watch his activity log,” Mason suggested in his slow, deliberate stammer. “If there’s a problem, he’ll show you what’s going on.” Centurion kept a log showing every action he took and any errors he found.

  “Nobody reads activity logs anymore,” Hinson quipped impatiently. “Everything’s automated. Computers do the dirty work.”

  Mason didn’t like Hinson’s me-first-me-only attitude so he spoke to him clearly. A rampant careerist, Hinson’s single goal in life was to get his ticket punched and move on. “Yuri’s got experienced folks at Kaliningrad watching Centurion’s log around the clock. You’re gonna need trained people—no way around it.”

  “That’s true,” General Krol added, calmly chewing the stump of his pipe. “You’ll need staff full-time day and night.”

  Hinson looked confident about the test, but neither Craven, Mason, nor Krol shared his sense of well-being. Craven had been involved with High Ground testing over fifteen years and had survived many problems. If anything went wrong, he knew there was real danger here for Hinson’s attack forces. “Tonight’s no drill, Colonel. You’ve never run these attack scripts hot—on the air. Our people’s lives are on the line. If anything life-or-death comes down, my people have orders to break radio silence. You hear from them and I want this test aborted yesterday. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “And have someone cover Centurion’s log. If anything goes wrong, you’ll see it.”

  Hinson nodded his head, but did not hear. Tuning his The Bad Seed attack program, his fingers raced over the keyboard, trying to keep up with his head.

  Craven’s gaze shifted to Mason and Krol. “Conference call in ten minutes. Let’s go.” They left the room and descended one story deeper inside Cheyenne Mountain.

  5

  The Bad Seed, 12/0712014, 1037 Zulu, 1:37 P.M. Local

  Iraqi Cabinet Meeting

  Buried sixty feet below a residential neighborhood west of Baghdad, surrounded by brightly painted windowless walls of concrete and steel, Iraqi Cabinet members gathered in the security of their bunker for a meeting with Iraqi President Hessian Kamel al-Tikriti. Kamel, like his aging father-in-law Saddam Hussein, was a brutal tribelike chieftain who reigned by fear.

  Once Kamel arrived, the menacing silhouette of an enormous hulk appeared in the bunker doorway wearing a traditional gandura robe. Towering above the others at six foot five, shaped like the front end of a bus, al-Mashhadi blocked the light emanating from the bunker. Standing in his shadow, the President carefully studied the backlit form of his heir apparent, looking for some clue as to the mood of the coming meeting. There was none. Kamel found al-
Mashhadi’s dark expressionless eyes impossible to read. His face appeared cracked as old leather, his hands strong, deeply wrinkled but steady.

  Moving diplomatically to one side, al-Mashhadi warmly greeted Kamel in his deep gravelly voice. “Ahlan wa sahlan,”—my house is your house. “We’re honored you could attend on such short notice.” The secretary-general delivered his greetings with the utmost sincerity. No sense of the barbarian in the big man’s demeanor. His ability to lie with the grace of a polished diplomat was one of his greatest gifts.

  Al-Mashhadi personified his motto—“NOBODY HURTS ME UNHARMED.” These four words encapsulated the essence of the man and became the Iraqi state creed following the Persian Gulf War, a rallying cry for every Iraqi tribelike .sect, clan, and village, nobody hurts me unharmed was printed for all to see on Iraqi currency in much the same way the United States printed in god we trust, but no country outside the Middle East appreciated the significance of this political statement. Al-Mashhadi believed when it came to human rights and Middle East politics, the Allies lived in a world of delusion.

  The President took his seat at the head of the table flanked by leathery-skinned generals of the Republican Guard.

  “Excellency,” al-Mashhadi began with some sense of pride. “Allah has shown us again that he is greater than our enemies.”

  Cabinet members, dressed in gandura robes, nodded their heads in agreement.

  A methodical man, al-Mashhadi continued with elegant patience. “Allah is on our side in our jihad against the infidels. He has given us a sign, a powerful advantage. He demands we use it. It is our destiny. This week we may get the chance we’ve waited for so long—our chance to destroy the infidels’ war machine.”

  “Yes, yes,” the American-schooled President replied impatiently. “I’ve heard this chance of a lifetime story many times before. Get to the point. I have an appointment with the UN ambassador in twenty minutes.”