Threat Level Black

by Jim DeFelice

  “Computer system figures out if you’re inside and don’t have a tag on,” warned Mathers.

  “What’s it do, vaporize you?”

  “Very possibly.”

  Inside the building, the agents were met by a personal minder, another large athletic type Fisher thought he might recognize from WFW reruns. He led them to a private room where Amanda Kung was waiting.

  As a member of the high-tech community, the company had a certain image to maintain and therefore did not call the room a room but rather a “cell.” It looked very much like a room, at least to Fisher, though the decoration was not in keeping with the ultra–high-tech style of the rest of the building. Twenty-feet-by-twenty-feet-square, it had thick red carpet, leather-upholstered furniture, wainscoted walls, and paintings of various dogs. Kung explained that this was because the firm had begun its existence by making special radio collars for an invisible K-9 fence before branching out into the more lucrative defense field.

  There were a number of dog jokes attached to the explanation of the company’s history. Fisher made it through the first—We’re the only business that succeeded after going to the dogs—then decided to cut Kung off and ask if she could tell him about the Korean.

  “I met Dr. Park two years ago at a conference in China,” said Kung. Short and thin, Kung had the female dweeb look down, with thick glasses beneath uneven bangs. Her purple blouse hurt Fisher’s eyes. “He is an engineer working on electrical generation projects.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s what he told me. I got the idea that he might know more, because of the sessions he was at. And then I got that e-mail.”

  “Want to go to Korea?” asked Fisher.

  “Korea?”

  “North Korea. I have some frequent-flier miles to redeem. Supposed to be pretty nice in February. They put out fresh mud.”

  “I don’t know.” Kung looked at Mathers.

  “You want to help your friend, don’t you?” said Mathers, apparently ignoring the ESP signals Fisher had beamed into her brain.

  “He’s not really my friend,” said Kung. “He’s just an engineer I met.”

  “Well, he thinks of you as his friend,” said Mathers, stubbornly impervious to mental suggestion.

  Kung pursed her lips.

  “You’re not married, right?” asked Fisher.

  Kung’s lips turned white. “He’s going to Moscow the day after tomorrow,” she said.

  “Moscow?” asked Fisher.

  Kung unfolded a piece of paper and slid it across the table to Fisher. “This came this morning.”

  HELLO AMANDA

  GOING TO MSCW. CAN YOU GET ME OUT? BEST CHANCE THURS. PLEASE I HAVE INFORMATION.

  Fisher took the e-mail and looked at the header that showed the path the message had taken:

  ----------------- Headers -----------------

  Return-Path:

  Received: from rly-xc04.mx.aol.com (rly-xc04.mail.

  aol.com [172.20.105.137]) by air-xc02.mail.aol.com (v93.12) with ESMTP id MAILINXC23-3f873ec520

  e528b; Fri, 7 March 2008 13:33:25-0400

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  for ; Fri, 7 March 2008 13:37:33 -0400

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  EE10”

  There were various ways the actual route an e-mail took could be hidden, and the agent recognized one of the remailers as a kind of semianonymous clearinghouse in Asia that he’d seen in the course of another investigation.

  “Can I keep this?” asked Fisher.

  “Sure.”

  Fisher got up. “Well, think about going,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “Korea,” said Fisher.

  “Why Korea if he’s going to be in Moscow?” asked Mathers.

  Fisher decided the time was right for the ultimate weapon and unleashed the double-dog–drop-dead stare. Mathers’s breath caught in her chest and she swallowed whatever sentence had been lurking in her mouth.

  “That’s all you want to know?” asked Kung.

  “Pretty much,” said Fisher.

  He stopped at the door. “I do have one other question,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “Do you have a smoking area?”

  “That was your entire interview?” asked Mathers as they walked back to the car.

  “Yeah.”

  “I have to say, your interrogation style leaves a lot to be desired.”

  Fisher went around to the passenger’s side, waiting while Mathers fiddled with the locks. The car was searched once again as they left. The search was thorough enough for Fisher to smoke two whole cigarettes and start on a third before having to get back in the car.

  “I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t smoke in the car,” said Mathers. Her voice was so sincere that Fisher almost considered putting the cigarette out.

  “Could you at least roll down the window?” asked Mathers.

  Fisher could do that, and did.

  “I shouldn’t have criticized you,” she said as they drove away. “I’m sorry.”

  “Not a problem.”

  “But if those were the only questions you were going to ask, why bother coming out here in the first place?” asked Mathers.

  “Boss wanted me out of Washington,” Fisher told her.

  “You figured the people at the company are listening in,” said Mathers a few miles later.

  “I’m sure they were,” said Fisher.

  “You don’t think you can trust them?”

  “Haven’t a clue.”

  “So, what do we do? Go to Moscow? Talk to her at home?”

  “We find a place with really bad chili dogs and have some lunch,” Fisher told her. “I haven’t had a good case of heartburn in more than a week.”

  Chapter

  10

  Howe pushed himself down into the cockpit, listening as the NADT contract pilot gave him a few last-minute instructions on the Iron Hawk’s handling. Jeff Storey, the other pilot, was a former Navy man under contract as a test jock; Howe had met him a few times before. Storey was going to fly wing in a second plane while Howe took the Iron Hawk for a short familiarization hop, part of the campaign arranged by Dr. Blitz to convince him to take the NADT director’s job.

  Howe had started early that morning with a tour of the headquarters building, where every single female employee appeared to have been instructed to wear the shortest dress imaginable. Following the flight, he would be taken to lunch at one of the area’s best restaurants. A briefing on more NADT programs was planned for late afternoon, and then he was supposed to join two senators for dinner.

  Howe was actually looking forward to the flight. His aircraft combined a host of different technologies that, apart from its aeronautical abilities, demonstrated what NADT could mean to the military. But he was interested primarily in feeling the strain of gravity against his chest, and the giddy rush that the experienced pilot still felt when he goosed the throttle. He hadn’t been at the stick of a jet in months.

  Howe’s aircraft had ostensibly started its life as a McDonnell Douglas T-45, an extremely airworthy and capable aircraft used by the U.S. Navy as a jet trainer but versatile enough to serve as a multirole fighter for foreign air forces. NADT had taken the basic airframe and reworked it for its own purposes. Among the many obvious c
hanges were longer wings shaped in a modified delta, forward winglets near the fuselage that helped maneuverability, and a reworked cockpit area. While the new cockpit allowed only one pilot, not the two common in a normal trainer, it included a “bathtub” of titanium and a carbon-fiber compound designed as a kind of bulletproof armor to protect the pilot. The idea was that the Iron Hawk would be especially survivable on a close–air-support mission, where it might come under ground fire while swooping down to support troops.

  Less noticeable improvements included the more powerful engine, the large-capacity fuel tanks, and an improved radar/synthetic sight system called AMV.

  AMV stood for advanced military vision and was at least potentially a quantum leap over normal radar. In its most basic modes, it combined phased-array, millimeter-wave, and microwave devices and input from multispectral and hyperspectal image sensors—optical, infrared, and near infrared viewers to synthesize a radar “picture.” The combined sensors gave it a far wider detection span than what was possible with radars normally installed in tactical fighters; a B-2 bomber could be seen at about fifty miles. Seen was an appropriate word, because the technology that was used to integrate the sensors also allowed the computer to draw a three-dimensional picture of the detected object. In the Hawk, the image was presented on a flat, two-dimensional multicolor screen, but the system could be mated to a 3-D hologram display similar to that being developed for the F/A-22V.

  AMV had several modes that would be familiar to any interceptor pilot since the advent of solid-state avionics. It could sweep a wide area, track particular planes while continuing to search for others, and target an aircraft at long and close range using all of its sensors. It included a system to “cue” a pilot in a dogfight, essentially telling him when to fire. But the radar capabilities also allowed synthetic close-up modes, useful for a number of applications. For example, an airplane suspected of smuggling large amounts of drugs or weapons could be “scanned” at about five miles. In layman’s terms, the system provided a detailed “X-ray” of the interior. The computer interpreter attached to the system could assess what it was looking at quickly and then present the information to the pilot transparently. It not only could tell an F-15C from an F-15E but detail the target aircraft’s fuel and ammunition states. AMV had potential for police uses as well: It could scan a smuggler’s aircraft and detect bales of marijuana, for example.

  Perhaps the real breakthrough was the size of the unit: It was small enough to be carried by the Hawk, which had given over part of its fuselage and undercarriage to the antenna pods and sensors, but otherwise still looked like the compact airframe it had begun life as.

  There were still a number of bugs to work out. One of the most annoying was the failure of the software routines that filtered out things like birds at long distances; a single bird would occasionally blink onto the screen as a red triangle “unknown,” staying there for a few seconds before the computer satisfied itself from the flight pattern that it was in fact a bird, rather than a cleverly disguised missile or aircraft. Nonetheless, AMV had major potential for the future.

  The Iron Hawk itself was just a tester, but NADT was preparing to propose the plane as a lightweight attack aircraft, versatile enough to serve as a backup interceptor. In theory it could replace both the A-10A and F-16, with much of the toughness of the former and all of the adaptability of the latter. It could take off and land on short runways with a full load of bombs, withstand several direct hits by 23mm flak guns, pull 10 g’s without coming apart, and accelerate to just over the speed of sound in a hair-breadth. As a dogfighter, it couldn’t match the F/A-22 or even an F-15, but it cost considerably less. All of that made the aircraft exceptionally attractive.

  But Howe wasn’t here to evaluate the plane, just to get a look at NADT’s toys.

  Maybe his toys?

  At a half-million dollars a year, he could afford his own plane. And a nice house, and nice vacations, and whatever the hell else he wanted.

  “Bottom line, flies just like a T-45 with a full load of fuel,” Storey told Howe. Storey was flying an identical plane. “Takes off smooth—you’ll swear you were in a trainer. It’s that easygoing. Very forgiving, very friendly. But it still goes like a champ.”

  Howe gave him a thumbs-up and began familiarizing himself with the cockpit. Despite the NADT upgrades, the basics were recognizable descendants of the Navy’s Cockpit 21 program—a McDonnell Douglas designed arrangement that featured multifunction displays and a layout perfected during in the late 1980s and 1990s. Aside from some updated GPS and radio gear, the main improvements concerned the radar and weapons systems the Hawk was meant to test. He soon had Hawk One snugged and tiptoeing toward the flight line.

  NADT leased space at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland; the arrangement allowed it to make use of the finest facilities in the world. The Air Force also provided some of the security around its three hangars—though regular Air Force personnel were not admitted into the compound area, and in fact would have been subject to court-martial if they dared even approach the external fences. It was a sweetheart deal for NADT, demonstrating not only how important the private agency was but also showing the vast resources it could call on if necessary. The people maintaining the plane Howe sat in included veteran mechanics and other technical people who’d gained experience in the military, and the engineers who had actually designed the systems were available for consultation.

  Besides the Hawks, two other NADT aircraft were housed here. Howe happened to be familiar with both. One was an F-15E that had been used to test some of the systems later installed in the F/A-22V Velociraptor. The other was a knockoff of the Russian Sukhoi S-37/B Berkut—a two-seat, next-generation version of the super plane built by NADT from specifications obtained by the CIA.

  The S-37/B had been Howe’s introduction to NADT; he’d come to the D.C. area on a special temporary duty assignment specifically to fly the aircraft. The project had been so secret that only two men had been trained to fly the aircraft, Howe and Tim Robinson.

  Timmy had lost his life in the Cyclops project.

  The Sukhoi sat under a tarp in the far corner of the hangar, mostly forgotten now that its mission had been completed and it had yielded its data to the CIA and Air Force. Howe powered up and rolled away from the hangar.

  “I’m not taking this job,” he reminded himself as he waited for the tower to give him clearance. “It’s not what I want to do. And besides, it’s a desk job.”

  Although there were fringe benefits: He felt one of them as he accelerated into the sky.

  “Hawk One, this is Two,” said Storey as they tracked out into the small rectangle they’d been given to fly in. “I’d say you’ve flown before.”

  The two aircraft moved over the Atlantic, passing through a thick bank of clouds.

  “Clear skies,” remarked Storey as they burst above and ahead of the weather. It was as if the sun had disintegrated the curtain of clouds; the sky seemed so clear you could look up through the canopy and spot the angels polishing the stars.

  Howe pushed his wing down and began a gentle bank, riding the Hawk southward in a lazy orbit. The stick responded easily, the aircraft eminently predictable despite all its mods and miles. One thing he had to give NADT: They knew what they were doing.

  If he took the NADT post, he could do this whenever he wanted.

  If he really wanted to fly, why had he left the Air Force in the first place?

  Hell, he could find a job as a contract pilot somewhere. Anywhere, just about. Work as a test pilot.

  Maybe that was the slot he should take at NADT, not boss man.

  Turn down the chance to be rich?

  Maybe the money had corrupted Bonham. Wasn’t money the root of all evil? Or was it your own soul where the problem was?

  Half a million bucks a year—more, potentially lots more, when you threw in bonuses and stock options and all the perks. Maybe it was a drug you couldn’t resist.

  As they
neared the end of the cleared range, Storey started talking up the plane, mentioning some of the improvements in engine technology. As a general theme, the engineers had substituted new materials for the traditional metals, seeking to make the power plants lighter and yet tougher at the same time. Howe knew the real question wasn’t whether the materials were usable but rather whether it would be practical—as in affordable—to use them in full-scale production. Even the military had financial constraints, and just because you could make something smaller, faster, and lighter didn’t mean it was cost-effective to do so.

  Howe started a series of maneuvers, doing inverts and sharp cuts, rolling out and climbing, diving toward the ocean and whipping back upward, doing his best impression of a 1920s barnstormer. While admittedly the Hawk couldn’t match those old biplanes for sheer warp-ability, it could slash around the sky fairly well. He managed some tight angles and high g’s, felt the restraints press against his body and the blood rush from his head despite the best efforts of his flight suit.

  The maneuvering forward airfoils and the variable-attack edges on the main wings gave the smallish Hawk some serious advantages in a close encounter with an enemy fighter. Howe found himself almost wistful for the days of cannon-punctuated furballs, close-in dogfights as much decided by the skill of the engineers who constructed the aircraft as the pilot himself. Today a dogfight would typically end without the planes even seeing each other; an American fighter pilot was equipped and trained to down his opponent before the enemy’s radar even picked him up.

  Forget the romance. There was no arguing against the idea of beyond-visual-range combat. The goal was to shoot down the enemy and live to tell about it, and a great deal of work had gone into making that happen.

  Reality and fantasy veered in different directions. Reality: The NADT job would be a pain in the ass. He’d be a paper pusher. And maybe worse: They’d expect something for their half-million big ones.