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  Chatelain-Malpass reached forward and took a sip of water. “In short, our laser weapon program is sliding to the right, and if it isn’t brought back on track by the time Congress returns from its summer recess we can expect Phoenix Depth to be cut. Do you know what that means?”

  “Means the French have a laser weapon and we don’t,” Halfpenny volunteered. “But, if that’s true, Alice, why don’t we tell Congress. That should—”

  “We can’t, General. Intelligence funds were used to develop this project. Funds that were supposed to be used for other functions. And there would be an uproar over the misappropriation. No one in the administration approved this diversion of funds.” She covered her mouth for a quick cough. “I know this sounds political, but it was the previous administration who diverted the funds…”

  Sounds familiar, thought Holman. Teflon politicians were a great commodity in Washington.

  “The problem is far worse as the SecDef can tell you. Right now America is a hyper-power. No one, anywhere, can stand up to us. With another nation having an effective laser weapon and America lacking parity in that technology, it could have a profound effect on us. See what I mean?”

  The chairman looked at her. “I think it’s worse than what you present, Ms. Chatelain-Malpass. If the laser weapon is everything you say, then it might be possible for it to take out whole fleets of ships and flights of aircraft in a single burst. It could reduce America to a second-rate power.”

  Holman looked up from the cover page, closed the folder, and crossed his hands on top. A few chill bumps creeped up his back. The chairman was right. The nation that possessed a weapon that had the capability of wiping out everything within a broad swath, without regard to whether it was aiming for it or not, would change the face of the world. Strength through numbers would be rendered obsolete. America’s military strength would be threatened by any nation that wielded such technology. We would cease to be the lone superpower, Holman said to himself.

  The ramifications flew through Holman’s mind — the tactical implications of fighting a war at sea. Missiles would die in the air as the platforms that fired them erupted into flames. The chairman is right. We’re dead if we don’t have weapon parity. The White House was concerned about another nation having technology we don’t, but Halfpenny Baines had thought the problem through and gone a step further in the implications, pointing out that we could quickly become an equal or less player in the world of global politics. America’s national security was at stake.

  “Then I guess I bring good news, General,” Chatelain-Malpass said. “The French only have a prototype of this weapon.”

  “If it’s a prototype, that means they have to test it or are testing it. Do we know where this is taking place?” the chairman asked.

  Chatelain-Malpass cleared her throat. “General, they are already testing the laser weapon. Have been for a couple of months. Our reports through certain channels indicate the tests have been very successful and the French are very pleased with it.”

  “Then, ma’am, you ought to have those channels get us a copy of their test results and something on the laser weapon so our people can duplicate it.”

  “Mr. Chairman, I am afraid that is impossible. The weapon is beyond our operative’s reach, and if he tried to obtain any data on it other than the briefings to which he has been invited, the French espionage service would quickly catch on and we would lose one of our most valuable resources. Even if we were willing to take that chance, the prototype is out of his reach regardless.”

  “Where is it?” Admiral Yalvarez asked. “I think I know from the presence of Admirals James and Holman where it is, but—”

  She nodded at the chief of Naval Operations. “To test their version of the weapon, the French military installed the prototype on one of their Atlantique reconnaissance aircraft.”

  “The one in West Africa?” Holman interrupted, leaning forward. If so, he knew what she was going to tell them to do. He wanted her to say it, though, and he wanted every bit of knowledge she had before she disappeared from the Tank and he’d never see her again. After that, she’d be stacking sandbags of denial around her.

  Chatelain-Malpass nodded curtly. “Correct. That very aircraft. And, Admiral Holman, that”— She glanced down at her notes —“Atlantique aircraft was the same one flying south of where the Air Force F-16 aircraft disappeared near your ships. We can’t prove it yet — even if we could, we aren’t sure how we would handle it — but we believe they deliberately chose this venue to test the laser weapon on our military aircraft.”

  “Alice,” General Halfpenny Baines interjected, “I, too, have read the CIA report. And the British MI-5 report that supports it. What both reports say is more conjecture than fact. Even our own Department of Defense Intelligence Agencies find it hard to believe that the French would deliberately attack our aircraft. They haven’t ruled it out, but their analysts fail to understand why they would do something such as this when we’ve come so far in mending fences between our two countries. Plus, there are better ways to test a weapon than shooting down another nation’s aircraft. They could use unmanned drones or missiles without taking the chance of compromising their possession of such a weapon.” He shook his head. “A weapon that would transform the act of war.” He shook his head again, more briskly. “Just doesn’t make good operational security sense to me.”

  “Unless, they believed themselves under attack or under threat of being shot down,” Admiral Yalvarez added.

  “I can’t believe that,” Halfpenny Baines replied.

  Chatelain-Malpass’s pencil-thin eyebrows scrunched into a shallow V. “Why would you say that, Admiral?”

  Yalvarez nodded toward Holman. “Dick, tell her.”

  How did the saying go? There’s three ways to skirt the truth; lies, half-truths, and statistics. Right now, none were applicable, and even he didn’t know the truth. That metaphorical itch between his shoulder blades was the knife the CNO had just shoved into him. He had a vision of himself walking the plank with sharks circling beneath him.

  Holman cleared his throat and repeated what he had told the chief of Naval Operations earlier about the possibility that the USS Winston S. Churchill had inadvertently locked its fire control radar on the French reconnaissance aircraft. He threw in as many “possibles” and “probables” as he could, knowing it made him sound like some gawldamn intelligence officer. And Bennett was still investigating the events surrounding the exercise. May be nothing there but the untrained eye of some junior officer. Lord knows, he’d seen plenty of “shoot first, put the bullets in later” officers in his career, who could say just what they were thinking when they did what they did with little regard to truth or consequence. The Churchill incident was like a first report from a combat zone. They’re seldom accurate, emotionally written, and always subject to change.

  Chatelain-Malpass listened, her face never betraying her thoughts. Holman thought he saw the fingers on her hands spread when he reached the point about the fire control radar. “If the Churchill’s fire control inadvertently locked on to the French aircraft, it could be construed as a violation of international law — an act of war. The time of possible fire control lock-on also matched the flight pattern of the four Air Force F-16s, heading outbound from the exercise on a direct course that could have been misinterpreted as intercept bound. Intercept-bound against a French reconnaissance aircraft operating over international waters.”

  He finished and leaned back in his seat. The water bottle was nearly empty; he gulped the last of it down.

  A couple of seconds passed with everyone looking at the woman from the White House.

  Chatelain-Malpass nodded curtly. “Thank you, Admiral, but that doesn’t change one damn thing about the mission. It only explains why the French would reveal their weapon, if they thought they were under attack. Weighing the chairman’s earlier assessment, it only serves to show that the French have already reached a conclusion as to how this weapon will
transform global power overnight. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have had the confidence to use it.”

  “We haven’t had a confrontation with them since Admiral Holman braced Admiral Colbert and his French carrier battle groups.”

  “In the same area, wasn’t it, General Baines?”

  The chairman nodded. “Yes, Alice, it was.”

  “Just further complements these pieces of the puzzle falling into place.”

  “If I may ask, ma’am,” Holman said. “What is the mission you want us to do?”

  He seemed to have gained the attention of the table, but the earlier coffee was working its way through him. No one ever mentioned it in the Pentagon, but the duration of many meetings depended on the strength of the chair’s bladder. He hated the thought of having to stand up and excuse himself, because the reason they were there was for him.

  “The mission, Admiral, is to go and get that laser weapon off the French aircraft. If we’re unable to do that, then destroy it. We can’t have the French or anyone other than ourselves possessing a weapon with such potential.”

  “Destroying it wouldn’t stop them from building another prototype, or — let’s hypothesize for a moment,” Halfpenny Baines offered, interlocking his fingers and resting them beneath his chin. “Let’s say the French did use the laser weapon to shoot down the F-16s. Add that to two weeks of field testing and you’ve successfully proven the utility and value of the weapon. You don’t need to build another prototype. You could, conceivably, go right into production.”

  “If we destroy it,” Lieutenant General Hulley added, his voice betraying a slight tremor from the massive jowls alongside each cheek, “then, we only destroy the prototype. If we bring it back, or bring the computer system that controls it back, then we have two things to keep in mind”—he held up two fingers—“one, we will be able to recover the data; and two, we have to do it without them knowing we were the ones.”

  “General Hulley is correct, Ms. Chatelain-Malpass,” Halfpenny Baines argued. “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to have to be careful.”

  “It will take time to arrange the mission,” Admiral Yalvarez said.

  “It would only take four or five days to prepare a SEAL team—”

  “Or Delta Force,” General Hulley added with a quick smile at Yalvarez.

  Chatelain-Malpass shook her head. “Gentlemen, the French will fly the aircraft out of Ivory Coast to France within the next seventy-two hours. We had considered sending in SEALs, or Army Special Forces, to steal the weapon systems, or, failing that, to destroy the aircraft…”

  “We can destroy the aircraft, Ms. Chatelain-Malpass,” Halfpenny Baines responded.

  “Yes, General, I’m sure you can, but can you destroy it without the French knowing we did it? While we’re prepared to take the chance of the French discovering we were the ones responsible for blowing it up, we would prefer that they never have concrete evidence just the same.”

  “I understand.”

  James shook his head. “This is going to be hard to do. I don’t have any SEALs in Liberia, ma’am.” James took a deep breath and let it out. Holman knew even as James spoke that the head of Navy SEALs was trying to figure a way to get teams to Liberia in time. “What I have is a lone SEAL commander attached to Admiral Holman’s command who is in Liberia to discuss with the government special operations training. We are going—”

  “I don’t care,” she said. “Admiral, it’s not my job to figure out how you’re going to do it. What I — we — want is for the Navy to execute the mission. Retrieve the laser weapon technology. While we thought about using SEALs or Special Forces for this mission, we can use neither. No SEALs or Special Forces can be involved.”

  “What!” Lieutenant General Hulley cried. “What do you want us to use? Military Police in a Humvee?”

  The chairman reached over and touched his director of the Joint Staff on the arm.

  “Alice,” Halfpenny said softly. “Our SEALs and Special Forces are the only ones qualified to do this mission.”

  “I know, General, but laws passed years ago require the president to authorize such a mission. We must have separation from the president on this mission. If it fails, it must not be linked to him. And if it succeeds, and the French discover it was the United States who made off with their laser technology, then it still must not be linked to him.”

  The military officers exchanged glances around the table, no one eager to say anything.

  “Well?” Chatelain-Malpass finally asked.

  “Ma’am, we can destroy the aircraft easily,” Holman volunteered. “The Air Force has six F-16s forward deployed to Monrovia. They can be across the border and back, mission accomplished, within—”

  Chatelain-Malpass leaned forward, her face still expressionless, and in the level tone she used for her briefing thirty minutes ago, she said, “There must be something wrong with the tone of my voice, gentlemen. It’s not the Air Force we want to go in there with guns blazing, singing yippee-kie-oh. There are political considerations. We will not have our political détente with the French destroyed by an overt military action.”

  General Baines leaned forward as if to say something.

  Chatelain-Malpass, palm out, held her hand up at him as she continued. “If it was just to go in and destroy the plane, any military action could do it, but the political reverberations would be unacceptable. The French aircraft is in the Ivory Coast. It’s on the west coast of Africa where ‘things happen.’ Things that never make the papers or, when things do, can be better explained. If we are going to detour the French laser weapon program we have to do it in Africa. Once that aircraft is back in France, the mission is over. We aren’t going to try anything on French soil. You have to ask yourself, why would we ask for you to keep this meeting top secret if we wanted to just destroy the weapon and not worry about them knowing who did it?” She stopped abruptly.

  “I think you misunderstand—” Holman started.

  “Can we expect a warning order from the president to do this mission?” Halfpenny Baines interrupted.

  “No,” she said. Poking herself in the chest with her finger, she continued, “I’m your warning order and your tasking directive. Your job is to execute it. The President must be kept separate from this mission for all the reasons I have noted.”

  “Without SEALs, we would have to send untrained personnel to do this mission,” Admiral Duncan James said sharply.

  “That’s not my problem, Admiral. That’s your problem. You can use the average sailor if you so desire, as long as the mission is a success. Tell them the French have free beer and they’ll take the whole continent.”

  Admiral Yalvarez’s head shot up. “I think you’re overstepping your bounds, young lady.”

  Whew! thought Holman. That’s the Time magazine admiral he’d heard about. And apparently Chatelain-Malpass was aware of the danger of taking on such a popular American hero because, to the surprise of those around the table, she apologized for her “sailor” comment.

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, Holman walked out of the men’s head on the eighth corridor. “I thought two years at the Pentagon had stripped me of the minimal amount of integrity I had when I arrived here, but after meeting with this National Security Council representative, I realize we aren’t so bad off in the field of integrity. Well, what do you think, Duncan?” he asked Admiral James, waiting in the hallway for him.

  “I would say she has that special appearance and voice — that intrinsic talent that comes together in a special way — that just pisses you off when she says, ‘hello.’”

  Holman chuckled. “Could be true, but what I meant was, what do we do?”

  “You have the only SEAL I have available, but he comes with baggage, Dick. His house was blown up two days ago, and he’s on the continent where the terrorist leader Abu Alhaul has sworn to kill him. Means if you use him, and I think you have little choice, he’s not only going to have the French Foreign Legion
to worry about, but this Islamic Jihadist who blames him for the death of his family in Yemen.”

  They walked toward the inner circle of the Pentagon. The windows ahead reflected the sunny day, lighting up the central courtyard of the Pentagon.

  “There’s also this African army that is somewhere around the border areas of Liberia and Ivory Coast. Our Islamic enemy may have his hands full trying to avoid those Africans, then again, he may not. I understand they’re wiping the land free of Jihadists, though, using methods that would make the average American throw up.”

  “And they’re ridding themselves of our missionaries, also.”

  Lieutenant Willis, who had been trailing Holman since the head, slowed slightly to give the two admirals comfortable distance to talk freely. Holman noticed and thought, Maybe I’ll keep him as my EA.

  “I do have some Seabees disembarking at Harper, Liberia, off the Mesa Verde,” Holman offered, trying to see what James would propose. Seabees may have some combat training, but they weren’t Marines or SEALs. They built things.

  Instead of turning down Holman’s half-suggestion, Holman was surprised to hear James discussing the combat training Navy Seabees go through. James further offered that, with the exception of Navy SEALs and EOD, the Seabees were the only other group who received combat training en masse. Granted, Seabees were not trained in covert operations, but at a minimum they knew which end of the gun the bullet came out, which was more than most sailors.

  “Good idea, Dick. Damn,” James said as they reached the “A” ring, “wish I’d thought of it.”