Cammy stared at the first computer screen showing the projected trajectory of a cruise missile launched from some distance away. The second screen was a graphic demonstration of her software activity, with a chart of adjustments acting like a virus invading another computer. The third screen was where she was typing in her instructions.
Sometimes she felt like the commander who sent the Trojan Horse filled with hidden combatants into enemy territory. By embedding her own combatants, she could surprise the bad guys and take over the city, or in her case, the onboard computer inside the missile. At least that was the plan.
She had been reworking the algorithms, trying to ignore a pain in her wrist that had been bothering her lately, when she heard the knock. General Landsdale opened the door. “Excuse me. Sorry to interrupt, but I just had a call from a Lieutenant Colonel Daniels from the White House. He says he exchanged emails with you about the hearing.”
Cammy looked up from her keyboard and sighed as she pushed away from the desk. “Yes, he was there. And he sent a nice note.”
“Well, he’s on his way over. You need to break away to give him a briefing on Q-3.”
“It’s classified.”
The General snorted, “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I know. I know. He’s got clearance.”
“Damn right. Those NSC boys have code word clearance higher than any number you can count.”
“I knew that,” she said.
“And this guy’s probably got TS SBI for SCI for God’s sake.”
“Would you care to translate?” she asked, straightening her hea band.
“It means Top Secret Special Background Investigation for Sensitive Compartmented Information,” the general explained patiently. He paused for a moment and added, “I doubt if he has a Yankee White Clearance, but that doesn’t matter to us.”
“That’s the highest level?”
“Yep. Just for the president’s closest advisers. The ones who can have access to him anytime. Those guys have a Zero Defects Clearance.”
“I guess that means they don’t even have outstanding parking tickets.” Cammy observed. “Okay, okay. He gets a briefing. How much disclosure this time? I mean, do you want me to tell him about how it worked once, but then the last three simulations have failed?”
“This briefing could be important to the company. This guy’s in the cat-bird seat at the NSC, and a little push from the White House legislative affairs staff could really help us with the Committee.”
“I know. Guess I’m just pressed for time.”
The General walked over and looked down at her computer. “Cammy, it worked once. Focus on the positive here.”
Cammy stared at the first screen again. “Jack, I’m so focused, I should do ads for Nikon.”
The General headed for the door. “At least you can keep a sense of humor here.”
“Daniels will be here pretty soon. Let me know how it goes. I’ll be in my office the rest of the day.”
Cammy tried to concentrate on her program again but something about the email exchange with Colonel Daniels had bothered her. It reminded her of the disastrous affair she’d had with Ken. Why couldn’t she forget the man? He had seemed so interested in her. Too interested as it turned out. She pushed the memories aside when the inter-office phone rang. She swiveled her chair and picked it up. “Dr. Talbot here.”
“There’s a Lieutenant Colonel Daniels in the lobby for you.”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll be right out.”
She saved the screen, straightened a few papers on her desk and headed to the front of the building. When she pushed through the double doors, she saw a tall man with broad shoulders looking out the window. He wasn’t wearing a uniform. Instead, he wore a navy suit with a blue and white striped shirt. Straight out of the windows at Brooks Brothers, she thought. When she got closer and called out, “Colonel Daniels?” he turned.
With a square jaw, high forehead and brilliant blue eyes, his face was striking. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed him in the hearing room. He took three long strides and extended his hand. “Yes, and I know you are Dr. Talbot.”
“Cammy,” she said as she shook hands. “Everyone calls me Cammy.”
“And my name’s Hunt.”
“This way then. I’ll show you around.” She peered into the retina recognition lens and waited for the door to click open.
“Pretty tight security around this place, I see,” he said, examining the black box installed next to the double doors.
And we’re going to keep it that way, she thought. “Yes, it’s a pretty good biometric system. I think it’s better than the fingerprint or voice-recognition programs. But then I doubt it’s any tighter than the White House,” she said as she led the way down the hall.
“Guess that’s right. I don’t pay much attention to it with all the Secret Service types around to worry about who’s coming in and out.”
“I’ve never been to the White House, so I haven’t seen it.”
“Well, maybe we can rectify that one of these days.” He followed her into her office and stared at the long row of computer screens and keyboards. “This place looks like USSTRATCOM.”
“You mean the command center at Offutt Air Force Base?” she said as she motioned to a chair.
“So, have you been there?” he asked, pulling the chair closer to her console.
“No, haven’t been there either. What’s it like?”
“It’s a big show-and-tell place with eight screens.”
“Well, I don’t have quite that many. Scoot over here, and I’ll give you a quick outline of our project.”
He sat down next to her and watched while she began to key in some initial data and the first screen sprang to life. Something inside him was starting to spring to life too. He had a vague sense of the scent of vanilla. Must be her shampoo or soap or something.
What the hell. What was the matter with him? He was here on official business. She was a scientist, and he was here to get up to speed on a new technology, not to get distracted. She did look kind of intriguing though. A combination of an all-business demeanor with an almost but not quite friendly façade. He wondered if she was one of those “Mensa” types who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. It doesn’t matter, he told himself. She may be attractive, but right now he had a job to do. And he’d better get about it.
He snapped out of his reverie and turned to watch the computer screen. “So do you want to explain what’s happening here?” he asked as he saw her fingers fly over the keys.
“Sure. Just a second.” She made some more adjustments and then pointed to the first screen. “Okay. First, the US radar and satellite tracking devices sense that a missile has been launched.”
“Yes, we have lots of those sensors. Ground-based and space-based.”
“Right. But we have special radar and satellite teams that can tie into those sensors and notify my Q-3 Project here. Obviously, time is critical, and we’re working on ways to cut down on the time delay between a satellite sensor and our tracking system. There’s at least a sixth of a second delay from a satellite. I can’t afford anything more than that. Not when the missile is going so fast. Anyway, we’ve got teams that handle that part. We’ve got a guy from India, Dr. Raj P. Singh in charge of that division,” she said. “And he’ll be moving in on our division too,” she muttered.
“Raj P. Singh? Don’t think I know him. But there are a lot of Indian guys in this business.”
“I know. Must be something in the gene pool.”
“The new CEO over at Sterling Dynamics is from India.”
Cammy winced when she heard the company name.
“I’ve met him,” Hunt continued. “Pretty impressive fellow. He’s got a bunch of guys from his university on the staff over there.”
“So I’ve heard. Anyway, our satellite team sees the missile and relays its course here.”
“Sounds good so far,” Hunt said. “Then what?”
“Okay, so as soon as we get the signal that there’s an incoming missile, Q-3 kicks in.”
“Wait a minute,” he said. “How do you figure out what kind of missile it is?”
“That’s the tricky part. I’ve had to research just about every type of missile and anti-missile device that I can find, develop a huge data base of their operational signatures as well as their critical parts and then build ways to counter these weapons. Here, with one of the newer computer guided missiles, I try to evaluate its C3,” she said as she gestured toward her bookshelves crammed with papers and manuals.
“Its command, control and communication.”
“That’s right.”
“So you see that there’s an incoming missile. Then what?” he asked.
“Then we try to lock on and communicate with its on-board computer. We use fast-calculating algorithms to figure out what frequency it’s listening to. If it’s listening to a single frequency . . . no problem. If it’s a variant of spread spectrum, that’s where the magic of algorithms works.”
“Spread spectrum. Wasn’t that invented back in World War II?”
“Yes, by an actress, Hedy Lamarr.”
“Hedy Lamarr? I’ve seen her in some old movies. She was a big star, but I had no idea she had anything to do with spectrums.”
“She was one of my idols when I was a kid. I heard the story about how this movie star had invented a new way for our ships to communicate, and I thought it was really neat.”
“So you wanted to grow up and be like Hedy Lamarr?” He asked, thinking that with a face like that, this scientist could have made movies too.
“Only to act on ideas, not on the screen,” Cammy replied.
“I wonder how she got the idea?” he asked.
Cammy turned away from her computer screens to face him. “Let’s see. As I remember the story, she was born in Austria and married some rich guy who made munitions and planes. He was into control systems too, so she probably learned a few things from him. But he was a big Nazi sympathizer. He never wanted her to be an actress. He wanted her to stay home and just entertain his friends. Like Hitler and Mussolini.”
“I’ll bet they liked her act,” he said.
“I suppose. But she didn’t like those guys. And it turns out she didn’t like her husband very much either. So she left him. That was before the war. And she finally got to America and got a movie contract.
“Then she met this smart guy who was a concert pianist. I think they were neighbors in Hollywood. Anyway, they got to talking about serious stuff, and she told him about an idea she had about radio control and frequency hopping.”
“Frequency hopping?” he asked. “How did they make it work?”
“They figured out that if you could coordinate rapid changes in radio frequencies, it would be like a whole new secret communication system. And because the guy played the piano, he came up with the idea of piano rolls. You know, those things with little slots in them?”
“So they used these rolls with slots in them to synchronize the frequency changes in the transmitter and the receiver.”
“So each end had a piano roll to use to figure it out.”
“Pretty clever, huh?”
He nodded. “Right!” He was enjoying this.
“Well, later they got into electronics rather than piano rolls. But they got a patent. Our military used their idea much later. We call it Spread Spectrum and it’s still used in all sorts of things.”
Cammy turned back to the computer screen. “Okay, back to business. So we get inside and analyze the missile’s control program. The term is ‘reverse engineering.’ You start at the shell and work back to see what makes it go. At that point, one thing you can do is figure out if it has enough fuel to get back home and not drop down on a friendly site.”
“And if there is enough fuel . . . if it hasn’t gone more than halfway to its target, you can what? Send it back where it came from?” he asked, staring at the screen.
“That’s the general idea. Kind of like a boomerang.”
“Jesus! This is wild. But go back. Go back to where you figure out the frequency and how to communicate with the computer. How do you take control of it?”
She hit a series of keys and pointed to the second screen. “Okay, now watch. Using the same frequency, I send a computer software routine that acts like a virus invading the computer on board the missile. That virus interferes with what is controlling the missile and substitutes the commands I give it. So I become, effectively, the pilot of this weapon.”
He’d seen a lot of guidance systems, but nothing like this. He couldn’t believe it. But as he stared at the screens and started to analyze the process, he began to understand the concept.
“But what if it’s not pre-programmed, but guided real-time by a command and control center?” he asked.
“We’re working on that too. Watch.” She hit more keys and a series of wiggly lines moved across the second screen. “See, it’s like a worm that goes into the missile, crawls around and figures out if it’s communicating with its originator. If it is, the worm, like the other embedded computing routine, can then first invade the originator and put the transmitting program out of commission and just send the missile home. Or it can send signals back to us as to the location of that control center. And then our guys can take it out. You know, bomb it or send some troops over to get rid of it.”
“What if the remote command center figures out it’s been hacked or invaded, before we get around to destroying it?”
“They won’t have time to write new software,” she explained. “They’ve just lost their payloads.”
“But later,” he asked, “when they figure out their system’s got a virus, so to speak, wouldn’t they be able to disable it?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” she said. “Our software has to be so hardened and have such a strong shell that the bad guys can’t hack their way in. Think of it like an illness. The body can’t fight back at a new virus because it doesn’t know how it works. It takes time. And in a battle situation, they simply don’t have the time.”
“Yeah, like Zika or something,” he ventured.
“You got it Colonel.” She turned her chair around and crossed her arms. “So what do you think?”
“What do I think? I think it’s incredible.”
“Now we just need the Armed Services Committee to agree with you,” she said.
“He nodded. “But, does it work? I mean, you said at the hearing that you haven’t had a chance to test it in the field.”
She hesitated. She had explained the system but not how she wrote the software or how she really took control of the missile. How much more should she tell this guy? How trustworthy would he be? Did he have some hidden agenda she had no clue about? He already said he knew the head of Sterling Dynamics. She got that image of Ken again with his everpresent smile. She tried to push the picture away, but it kept intruding in her mind’s eye at the most inopportune times. Like now. Ken had been attentive. Just like Hunt. Ken had seemed so interested in her work. Just like Hunt. And Ken had never been intimidated by her Ph.D. title like so many other guys she had met. What now? What were Hunt’s motives?
She knew that missile defense was high on the president’s list of priorities. He had pushed for an increase in the budget for the Missile Defense Agency at DOD and had highlighted the program in his last State of the Union Address. But hers was kind of a special project. It was new. It was different. And it could be threatening to some of the status quo types, especially to the guys over at Sterling who manufactured the missiles used to shoot down an enemy attack. If her project succeeded and got funded, the Pentagon wouldn’t want to fund Sterling’s new “bullets that hit bullets” as much as hers. Or would they? Again she thought about how Hunt had said he knew the people at Sterling. Of course he’d know them. Was he in their back pocket too and just here to check out the competition?
She suddenly realized that Hunt was looking at her, waiting for her answer.
“Test trial? As I said, we haven’t gotten quite that far yet. It’s worked here in the lab.”
“What’s holding up a test against a live missile?” he asked.
“Well, we’re dealing with a lot of variables here, like what kind of missile will they send up? How soon can we figure out its signature? How fast can we learn to communicate with it? Are the algorithms spending too much time analyzing one series of possibilities when they should be switching to the next, and all of that? I mean, it’s something we’re working on all the time here. And now we’re getting a lot of pressure from the committee to schedule a trial.” To say nothing of the pressure I’m getting from my boss and the CFO to put up or shut up, she thought to herself.
“And?”
“And what?”
“And when do you think that will be? I’d like to be there.”
So he wanted to be there. He wanted to be at a test that just might blow up in her face and send the stock of Bandaq down the tubes.
“Well, we’ve been talking about that. I’m trying to get the kinks out so we can go for the test in less than two weeks now.”
“Two weeks? That sounds good. That means you’ll be just in time for the markup of the defense bill. Anything later than that, and I’m afraid you’ll have a problem. For this year anyway.”
“Yes. I know.”
“And I assume you’ll be using the Atlantic Testing Facility?”
“The Atlantic? Yes. That one.”
The demonstration was over but the colonel made no move to leave. She had given him what he wanted. Most of it anyway. But he had something she wanted. She glanced at the wall clock and made another calculation.
“It’s almost one, and I was just thinking. I’m about to head down to our cafeteria for a quick bite. I can’t take much time. I’m pretty slammed here. But if you want a sandwich or something, the food’s pretty decent.”
He checked his watch, looked up and gave her a slow grin. “I’ve got a bunch of stuff today too, but, why not? A quick sandwich would be good.”
She switched off her computer and grabbed her purse. “Follow me.”
They picked up their trays and silverware. Hunt reached for a roast beef sandwich and bag of chips while Cammy picked up her usual fruit salad and yogurt.
“Here, let me get this,” he said as they walked to the register.
“Oh, thanks.”
They took a small table by the wall. “There are a couple more things I wanted to tell you about Q-3,” she said as she put her food on the table and set the tray aside.
“Such as?”
“Well, first, from a budget standpoint, I wanted to go over the idea that with our system, you don’t have to send up a missile to hit another one. I mean, we’re talking about saving millions of dollars with every launch.”
Hunt stirred some sugar into a glass of iced tea and agreed. “Yeah. I remember that from the hearing. But you still have the cost of the radar and satellite system tie-ins.”
“Well, sure. All of the missile defense systems have detectors. But ours still saves a ton.”
“That is a point. Of course right now the Hill is screaming about deficits. Well, some of the members are anyway.”
“I know. But Q-3 is really different.” She went on to explain how he could think of it as a Trojan horse invading enemy territory. He wolfed down his sandwich as he listened to her explanations.
“And so with the cost savings and the unique capabilities of Q-3, do you think the White House will back us on this one?” she asked.
“You mean with the Hill?”
“Yes. We hear that Davis Metcher hasn’t made up his mind yet on whether to fund the project. We know there are a lot of demands right now, but we need those R&D funds to keep going.” And I need to get the money to keep my division alive, she thought.
He hesitated when he saw her hopeful stare. “I don’t know yet. A lot will depend on that test. Oh, by the way, when you were going through all of this, I thought of one more question. An important one.”
“Shoot.”
He took the last bite of his sandwich. “Let’s say this scheme of yours works. Could it take control of our own cruise missiles? And if it could, what if our adversaries got a hold of it?”
“I’ve thought about that. First of all, remember I told you I’ve been studying all kinds of missile systems. At least what I could find out.”
“Yes.”
“Well, what we’re designing is really aimed at what foreign countries are producing now.”
“And ours are more sophisticated, so you wouldn’t be targeting our stockpile. Is that it?”
“That’s it. At least for now.”
“Okay. Look, I’m going to go back and talk to some people about this.”
She raised her eyebrows, “But . . .”
“Don’t worry. It won’t go further than the NSC. He checked his watch again and said, “It’s getting late. I have to get back to DC.” He reached in his wallet and took out a card. Then he grabbed a pen from his inside pocket. “Here’s my card. And let me give you my private cell.” He wrote down the number. “If you need anything or have any questions or problems, really, anything at all, give me a holler, will you?”
She took the white card and studied the embossed gold emblem on the top. It looked like an eagle with part of a flag below. She read his name and title. There was no address. His office number was on the lower right side. At the lower left, it simply read, “The White House.”
“Nice card,” she said as she slipped it into the side pocket of her purse and got up from the table.
“Standard issue,” he replied.
As they walked out, she never noticed that someone else was watching them. Intently.