“Price,” the mission controller answered brusquely, touching a switch.
“Bear, here,” a gruff voice replied over the speaker. “My team just pulled in something hot.”
“Excellent,” Price said. “Send it over.”
A moment later there came a soft hum from the table and a document extruded from the printer under the table. When it dropped free, she picked it up and briefly scanned the message. Then she paused and read it again, slowly and more thoroughly.
“It seems that the real owner of the warehouse is the DOD,” she announced, sailing the sheet across the table. “And according to these top-secret inventory records, the Quonset hut was packed to the rafters with defunct electronics from the cold war. Mostly obsolete inertial guidance systems for ICBMs.”
“Son of a bitch,” Blancanales said, snatching up the sheet to read the report. “That’s what used to steer our long-range missiles before we switched to GPS navigation, right?”
“Before we switched to using GPS,” Schwarz said in a monotone, “an intercontinental ballistic missile was a hideously complex and staggeringly sophisticated piece of military ordnance. But not the warheads, of course. Atomic bombs were relatively easy to make. Slap two semicritical pieces of enriched uranium together and they exploded.”
No, the difficult part was delivering the warhead on target, and on time, through the enemy defenses, halfway around the world, without having it veer off and explode in friendly territory. The trick was guidance.
The Pentagon had tried a lot of solutions to the problem, some of them quite bizarre, but in the end, the inertial guidance system proved to be the only viable solution to steering an ICBM at the time. Anchored by gyroscopes, and with fantastically detailed relays, an INS device could precisely deliver a two-story-tall ICBM anywhere with deadly accuracy. However, an inertial guidance system was hideously expensive to manufacture, almost a million dollars a piece, and each unit took nearly six months to construct. Even with computer automation. It was simply that complex a piece of equipment.
During the Reagan administration, the Pentagon had decided to scrap the INS and use the much cheaper GPS. A collection of telecommunication satellites had been launched around the world and placed in stable orbits in specific points above the spinning Earth. The satellites transmitted a complex code and could be read on a receiver to give your precise location on the ground. A civilian model of a receiver would give your location within ten yards, a commercial model within two yards. A military model was dead-on, bull’s-eye accurate. Twenty years ago, the very existence of the GPS network had been beyond top secret. Nowadays, a person could buy a GPS device from the local electronics store to take on the family camping trip, and most of the better luxury cars came with the devices installed at the factory. It was commonplace. Ordinary. Mundane. There wasn’t a plane, train, ship, submarine, missile or long-range weapon system in the world that didn’t use the Global Positioning System as an aid to navigation.
“I thought the GPS network was untouchable,” Price said suspiciously, “the access codes mathematically impossible to break.”
“So did I.” Schwarz sighed deeply. “But I guess these folks found a way. Some new approach, or technique, that we never thought of.”
“Barb, you’d better call Hal and have him inform the President,” Lyons stated brusquely. “The military is down to laser-guided weapons, dead-head rockets and heat-seekers for defense until further notice.”
“All of them short-range weapons and pretty damn useless at stopping an incoming ICBM.”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
Without further comment, Price went to a phone on the wall and started punching buttons.
“Okay, if the saboteurs—or rather, the hackers—hit the warehouse before they stole the missiles,” Blancanales said slowly, narrowing his gaze, “that means they’re afraid we might fix this before a real war starts.”
“Which certainly seems to be their goal,” Lyons noted.
“Agreed. This seems to say that time is critical to them.”
“Then we just have to move faster,” Schwarz added somberly.
Deep in thought, Blancanales pulled in a long breath and let it out slowly. “Gadgets, any idea how long it might take for Jet Propulsion Laboratory to make replacement units?”
“I’m sure the templates are still in storage somewhere,” the man said hesitantly. “Unless they were also in the warehouse. But even if they have to work from scratch, I’d estimate three months, maybe only two.”
“No better than that?” Price demanded unhappily, hanging up the receiver.
Schwarz shrugged. “Hey, it used to take six months to build the things, and the very first model took years to perfect.”
“All right, inertial guidance systems are expensive, rare and delicate,” Lyons said, looking upward to stare at the featureless ceiling. “So let’s use that to our advantage.”
“What do you mean?” Price asked, reclaiming her chair.
“If we had more inertial guidance units, our ICBMs would be safe and the terrorists would be out of business.”
Slowly, her face lit up. “So we make more of them. Hundreds more. On paper.”
“Exactly. Then when the terrorists attack the fake warehouse,” Lyons said, “we grab a few alive and twist the location of their base out of them.”
“And how they’re doing it,” Schwarz added, gesturing with a finger. “That’s paramount.”
“Agreed.”
Price said nothing. She could image what would be involved in the process. Able Team wouldn’t torture a prisoner for information, no matter how badly it was needed, but there were a lot of ways a man could be forced to talk. Including letting him escape and following him back to his base of operations. However, that was used only when the situation was truly desperate. Sometimes, the “rabbit” would simply run, staying far away from his comrades. But then, nothing was certain in life except death.
Tapping on the intercom, Price said, “Bear?”
“Yeah?” the man replied.
“We need you to create a virtual warehouse full of INS devices,” Price told him.
“What for?” Kurtzman growled over the speaker. “Oh, I get it. A trap. Sure. Where do you want it located? I know of a DOD warehouse in Columbus, Ohio, where we store nonsensitive documents. Easy enough to switch the inventory to guidance systems…no, that would be much too close. The warehouse has to be as far away as possible, but still on American soil.”
“Good point. How about Puerto Rico?” Blancanales suggested, leaning forward in his chair. “I know for a fact that the U.S. government already has several long-term storage facilities on the island.”
“Sounds fine,” Kurtzman replied.
“As soon as you have the fake warehouse filed, I’ll pull Phoenix Force off their inspection and have them order the technicians at the silo to prepare the other missiles for an emergency retrofit,” Price said. “Then they’ll take a standard military transport to Puerto Rico, requisition a cargo truck and drive off into the jungle, with a return flight scheduled for an hour.”
“Why not helicopters?”
“The winds are too strong in some of the more remote valleys,” she answered. “Besides, trucks are slower. Which gives the terrorists time to stage an ambush. So choose someplace appropriate, Aaron. Far from civilians.”
“With plenty of combat room. I understand. No problem,” the man replied, and the intercom clicked silent.
“How can we be sure the terrorists