Tomahawk (46 page)

“My attitude? Friendly, I guess. I know we're helping your military program.”

“Why did you get this material for us?”

“I have child support, other expenses.”

“That's right; I remember now. Your daughter lives in Utah, doesn't she? With your ex?”

He nodded, keeping his expression bland. A lion, or some large cat, roared from the darkness beyond where they sat. The zoo must be over there, past the mass of trees. Li was letting him know he knew about Nan. That he even knew where she lived. He would pay for this, too.

“Have you got change for a five?”

“Uh—wait a minute. Yeah, if you can take some quarters.”

He put the bills beside Li's fries. It was so smoothly done that he was putting the bill into his wallet when he noticed it wasn't a five; it was a five hundred.

“That's for the list. Would you be willing to get some other materials for us?”

“Uh, that depends. What kind?”

Li smiled apologetically. “I'm sorry, my boss didn't give me a very clear picture of what you do with the Cruise Missile Project. What exactly
do
you do?”

“I'm in charge of mating Tomahawk to surface ships. Destroyers, cruisers … right now, specifically, battleships.”

“Ah, the
Iowa
class. That's a responsible position…. What is that singing?”

He became aware of music in the distance. Li put his half-eaten dog down. He got up, and Dan rose, too, and
followed him. He went back after a few steps and retrieved his drink.

They passed through a grove of ornamental trees. Their fantastical gnarled boles, like the illustrations for a scary children's story, made tormented shapes against the lights. Li stepped out, setting a marching pace. They walked till they reached an outdoor theater. An opera was in progress. The attaché listened for a time. Then he cleared his throat.

“You must have access to technical documentation, then.”

“I see a lot of that. Test results, logic diagrams. Yeah.”

“Guidance-system documentation? Actual circuit diagrams?”

Goal, he thought. Attucks had been right. “They're in the CMS vault, but I can check them out when I need them.”

“What about software? Tapes, data discs?”

He looked around, wishing he had somebody to help him. He didn't see Bepko anywhere, hadn't since they parted at the pavilion. He wondered if there was a second player from the Chinese side. Too many people here, moving through the scented darkness…. He said, “I don't know if I could get my hands on anything like that.” Playing reluctant, like they'd advised him to.

Another long silence. He didn't know what these pauses meant. Was Li trying to shake him? Waiting for him to fill the gap with words, and give himself away? Did he have other, weightier matters on his mind? Or was he was just enjoying the evening, the overheard performance?

The singer launched into a dramatic aria. Li took his hat off and examined the hatband. He said, “You said you had access. Is it a matter of clearances?”

“No. No, I've got the clearances. I guess I could get what you want. Some of it, anyway.”

“When?”

“Uh, pretty much whenever. But not right away. I have to go to sea tomorrow.”

Three young women swept by on in-line skates, bare bronzed limbs flashing beneath the park lighting. Li
watched them pass. “Holy Toledo. Did you see the tush on that last one?”

Dan shook his head. “Boy, where did you learn your English?”

“Watching TV, mostly. I watch everything.
Dallas. The Jeffersons.
My favorite is
Charlie's Angels.”

“Jaclyn, Kate, or Farrah?”

“What?”

“Those are the actresses. They play Kelly, Sabrina, and Jill.”

“Kelly, I'm in love with Kelly Garrett.” Li began marching again, headed back toward the carillon. Dan hesitated, then followed him. “So, you're going to sea. More flight tests?”

“That's right.”

“When will you be back?”

“I'll be back in D.C. in about a week.”

“Give me a call when you get there. But never from your office or apartment. Only from pay phones. A different one whenever you call. We won't meet again until you actually have something for me. All right?”

“Wait a minute. So you want whatever I can get on the guidance system, right? Is that all? What about strategic targeting data? If I could get that?”

He figured this would appeal. Targeting data was supposed to be the highest of the high-classification material. But to his surprise, the attaché shrugged. “I'm not too interested in that. What I'd be willing to pay for are guidance diagrams. If you can get software, that might be even more valuable. But please, nothing you wouldn't see in the course of your job. You're not a spy,”

Dan almost said, “I'm not?” Instead, he said, “Well…”

“I know you've had some problems with your superiors,” Li said softly. “Because of your involvement with the peace movement. But I'm never going to ask you to do anything harmful to the United States. You and I, we're on the same side, man.”

Dan stared at him, feeling himself start to tremble. Fighting the sudden terrifying sense this half-smiling man knew everything. He knew about his problems at JCM.

He knew about Nan. He knew about the Dorothy Day House. But now Dan knew something, too. It wasn't Zhang who had set Kerry up on the trail. Somehow, it had been this man, with his fluent American slang, his hooded, anonymous face and practiced furtiveness. Maybe not intending for her to be killed, but he'd made it possible. Thirty percent guilty of her murder? Fifty percent? Seventy-five? He sucked air, trying to filter hatred out of his eyes, out of his voice. He said, “Who's on the other side?”

“The Russians, of course.”

“Right. But still, I don't expect to do this for free.”

Li smiled suddenly, as if he'd had to save up for it. “If you can get us useful stuff on terrain comparison, and digital scene correlation, we could pay ten thousand, maybe even as high as fifteen thousand dollars. That should help with your alimony payments.”

Reluctance and cupidity. He gave it a beat, then said, “That's not very much.”

“It's what you make in a year.”

“No. I make around thirty-five a year. With allowance for quarters.”

“Jeez, is that right? My information's dated. Maybe we can do twenty thousand, then. If you come through. We don't withhold taxes, so that'll like double your income. I'd like to make that much! And another thing: I'm repeating myself, but I don't want you to take any risks. Hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“I want our acquaintance to last for a long time, Dan. So … ciao, okay?”

With a squeeze of the arm, he was gone, marching briskly away into the jasmine-scented dark. Dan realized he'd probably walked over from wherever he was staying, wherever he'd been when he took Dan's call from the pier. He stood looking after him as the coated figure shrank away into the crowds, into the evening dark, the shopping bag swinging like a martial metronome. How sure of himself he was. Attucks was right: Somebody needed to hold a wake-up call on the counterintelligence
community. Maybe this would do it, tearing the lid off Li and his boss.

But after that, none of it would be his concern. He'd be out in the real world. Running a software team, or being a systems analyst.

He turned and headed back toward the street, gradually lowering his head as he walked.

29

 

 

 

Four days later, he stared through borrowed binoculars at a shrinking speck. Others watched too, crowded elbow-to-elbow along
Merrill's
bridge wing. The chest-vibrating ignition roar and the slow, agonized climb-out had been succeeded by silence. The exhaust column, shining in the afternoon sun, fell away astern as the destroyer hummed on through three-foot seas.

“Aw, hell,” someone muttered. He knelt abruptly, the better to point the glasses upward, resting them on the edge of the splinter shield.

Thousands of yards away, the speck slowly fell toward the waiting sea. It seemed to take a long time, drifting down out of the blue. He tried to urge it on through the miles of air, willing it to fly. But it didn't. In the vibrating soundless field of the binoculars, a distant jet of spray burst upward, then subsided, till there was only the saw-toothed horizon again, the waves marching along the distant razor line where sea met sky.

The spell broke. The commanding officer, Cannady, asked him. “Did you see wing deployment?”

“I thought so, Captain. Pretty sure I saw the wings out.”

“But no engine start?”

“No.” He felt sick, depressed, enraged. Chase planes overhead, telemetry manned, everything ready … and one loose wire or line of buggy software dicked everything.

“Take it easy,” said the CO, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Your face is white, know that?”

Merrill's
spacious pilothouse was crowded with the bridge team and phone talkers and, of course, the riders. Cannady swung himself up into his leather chair, an unlit stogie drooping from his mouth. As Dan got to the ladder, he said, “Okay, I guess we'd better get on over there. Call away the whaleboat, see if there's anything left floating around.”

One deck down, CIC was black dark and freezing cold. He stood blinking and peering, then felt his way onward as the hull leaned into the turn.

The ship's Tomahawk team were still sitting at their display terminals. The last frame of launch data glowed in front of them. Burdette stood behind them, arms folded, along with a barrel-shaped man in a blue jumpsuit: the Missile Test Center rep. “Any idea what went wrong?” Vic muttered as he came up.

“Looked like an engine nonstart. Boost phase, fine. But then … zilch. Never even saw the starter cartridge.”

Sakai came up from the equipment room, face closed. He said he'd help the DSs take it down to parade rest, make sure it wasn't software. Dan talked to the missile officer, confirming prelaunch had gone normally. Then he went back to the fantail to watch the search for debris. They found one of the shrouds, but nothing else.

He left the deck abruptly and headed down to the berthing area. It was empty, lights dimmed, curtains swaying on untenanted racks. He grabbed a handhold and swung himself up. Then stared at the underside of the top bunk.

He and the other riders and the crew had been working through the whole transit up from San Diego. The launch software was the new version. He and Sakai had scrubbed it all down. Meanwhile, Burdette and the FTs had scrubbed down the ship-to-missile interface. Everything had checked out fine.

Then they'd fired it, and it had tumbled into the sea.

He lay motionless, fighting the impulse to slam his fist into unyielding steel.

So far in the series, they'd had two go birds and two
failures. The first shot had jumped off the foredeck and cruised off into a cloudy sky, chase planes hot on its tail. The pilots reported when it broke from the search pattern and steadied on an approach course, dropping to within fifty feet of the waves. Everyone in CIC listened as they reported the terminal maneuver: an abrupt pull-up five miles out from the target hulk, then a dive-in at a precisely calculated angle. The missile was less than a mile from impact when the pilot took control and pulled it out of the dive, then headed it for the sea recovery area west of San Clemente.

OT-2 had gone even better. This time, the launch team plotted a reverse approach, sending the missile circling the target before pouncing from the rear. The payoff on this maneuver would be in attacking a heavily defended, high-value unit. With six or seven missiles arriving simultaneously from all points of the compass, even an Aegis cruiser would be hard pressed to go through the detect-track-engage cycle fast enough to knock them all down.

He'd thought they were in the clear at last. Till today. This morning, OT-3 had flown out great. It went into the third weave in its search grid, hesitated, then came out of it headed for downtown LA. The chase pilot had given it five seconds, then did a command override. And now OT-4 had just fallen out of the sky.

They had one more chance, tomorrow morning, before the final OPEVAL.

He sat up, dangling his legs over the edge. Asking himself, Well, so what? You're not going to be here. What difference does it make? Even if the whole program gets canceled?

The difference it made was that the surface fleet,
his
friends and shipmates, goddamn it, needed a long-range missile. If Tomahawk couldn't come through, the tail-hookers and the Air Force would win. Carriers were great, but they were too valuable to put in the front line. He knew who'd have to go in instead, the next time the balloon went up. The small boys, frigates and destroyers. The all but defenseless amphibious ships. And men he'd served with, men he cared about, would die, unable to hit
back at the launching platforms. Missile after missile, incoming, till one got through.