The private executive helicopter glided high in the night sky over the glittering lights of New York City. Joshua Jordan, the lone passenger, was in the back. Forty-three, square shouldered, athletic, and dressed in an expensive Italian suit, he looked like a man on top of the world. But he didn’t feel that way.
On a normal evening, heading to his office for late-night work, he’d be paging through his Allfone—checking emails and tabbing through a variety of documents that had been scanned-in for him to review. The digital revolution had finally merged all the major information, communication, and entertainment functions into one platform: a small handheld device that became all things—cell phone, fax sender, two-way Skype video camera, television, radio, and, of course, Internetaccessible computer. The big versions replaced TV sets in the entertainment cabinets of homes across the country. But it was the small handheld units, the top-of-the-line Allfone and its cheaper imitators, that had become the primary personal communication link for the public.
Ordinarily Joshua would have been accessing Fox News, CNN International, GlobalNetNews, BusinessNetwork—anything he needed to stay on top of the economy, politics, business, and world affairs.
On his mini-laptop-sized Allfone, he would be reviewing the headlines from four key publications: The Wall Street Journal, Barons, International Financial Times, and the Daily Economic Forum,
while keeping an eye on a second Allfone laptop opened to a graphic of the world, where charts would appear in the four corners and updated data would scroll under the banner “Global Risk and Security Assessment.”
Then again, if this were an ordinary evening he’d be mulling over disturbing new developments that were gutting the nation that he loved. He had served America as an Air Force test pilot and secret reconnaissance officer flying in some of the world’s hottest spots. Now he was serving the U.S. as a defense contractor. But in the light of catastrophic current events, that wasn’t enough for Joshua. So he and several others had begun an audacious new venture. Under normal conditions all of that would have been bouncing around his head like a pinball.
But this wasn’t a normal evening. Joshua couldn’t get yesterday’s conversation with his son, Cal, out of his head. Why did he have to blast his son like that? All Cal wanted was to talk about changing his college major. What was the big deal? He’d already accepted the fact that Cal wanted to go to Liberty University; after all it was a good school, and maybe Cal wasn’t cut out for the military. Joshua’s own father had been a military man. Joshua himself had spent almost twenty years in the Air Force. Even Debbie, his precious little girl, was at West Point now. But Cal was different. He’d turned down the military academy and said he wanted to go to a Christian college. So there was also that religious issue that Joshua had to deal with. Cal, like his mother, Abigail, and even Debbie, had all said at different times that they had become “born again Christians.” Joshua just couldn’t see the whole Christian thing, at least not for himself. But he had worked hard at trying to support Cal’s decision about college. Now that Cal was in his second year at Liberty, Joshua had settled into the idea.
That was until this morning when Cal told him he was switching majors. From engineering to art. Just one more of his son’s decisions that seemed to collide with common sense.
Joshua loved his son more than anything, more than life itself. He just didn’t understand him. Cal was so much like his mother, and, yes, Joshua envied him for that. Was that it? Was it envy? That even though Cal, like his father, believed that flag and country were important, what he really wanted was to bury himself in oil paints and canvas and shut out the world? It was one of the things he loved about Abby. She had been a brilliant lawyer, and yet she could also turn off the analytical side, the duty and legal side, and bury herself in a book or an art gallery, losing herself in the nuances of color and texture and light.
Why did he have to get so angry about it? He’d promised himself that when he had kids he wouldn’t be like his father—strict, demanding, perfectionistic—yet here he was, doing the same thing, making the same demands that had been made of him. Now Cal was gone, heading back to school with the echo of his father’s disappointment in his ears. Joshua ached for his son and, in a strange way, ached for himself.
The ring of a cell phone suddenly broke Joshua’s train of thought. He checked the personal phone function on his handheld Allfone. But it wasn’t ringing and showed no incoming calls. He realized that this ring tone was the heavy metallic one.
He thrust his hand into his suit-coat pocket and retrieved another phone. This one was flat and wide, colored a deep shade of blue. It was a specially encrypted satellite phone designed only for high-level secure conversations. It didn’t ring often. But when it did there was an emergency. The scramble-your-jets kind.
Joshua hit the encryption filter button and answered. “Joshua Jordan.”
“Colonel Jordan,” said a voice after a half second of descrambling. “This is Major Black, adjunct to the Joint Chiefs, sir, in R&D at the Pentagon. We’ve talked before.”
“Yes, Major.”
“We have a status red.”
Joshua paused for a millisecond as he felt his chest tighten.
“How can I help?”
“We’ve got two birds incoming, most likely nuclear,” the major snapped.
“Make and model?”
“North Korean. Taepo Dong missiles. Which means they should have a guidance system compatible with your RTS-RGS protocol.”
The RTS-RGS system, formally known as the Return-to-Sender-Reconfigured-Guidance System, was the antiballistic laser system Joshua and his team had been developing for the better part of ten years. It was still considered experimental and scheduled for its first real-world test next month.
“We’re going to have to move that test up, Colonel,” said the major, reading Joshua’s mind.
Joshua leaned forward toward the helicopter pilot and yelled, “Bert, drop us back down. And call ahead to get the team assembled—ASAP!”
Joshua turned back to the SAT phone. He almost couldn’t get out his next words. “What’s the target?”
“New York City.”
Joshua felt his heart stop. Cal should be clear of New York by now. He should be sitting on a train on his way back to college. But Abigail and Deb were in the city. Maybe they could still get to safety…
“How much time?” he choked out the words.
“Estimated detonation over Manhattan is fourteen minutes.”
Joshua’s mouth dried up as though he’d swallowed sand. “Please tell me we’ve got back-up options to interdict those missiles.”
“We’ve scrambled our jets, but they may not make it in time. The rest of our Eastern Seaboard missile system has been handicapped since the White House tied us to the Six-Party Missile-Defense Treaty. You and your system may be our last hope. So let’s just pray your little jammer can kick those two footballs back where they came from. If not, God help us all.”