Games of State

CHAPTER FIFTY

All requests for information from the RI-Search division were automatically given a job number and timecoded by computer. Job numbers were always prefixed by one, two, or three digits which identified the individual making the request. Since requests were frequently made by someone in a dangerous situation, other individuals were automatically notified when those requests came in. If anything happened to the person in the field, their backup would be required to step in and finish the operation.

When Hood asked for data from RI-Search, Mike dodgers was alerted by a beep from his computer. Had he not been present, the signal would have sounded once every minute.

But he was there, eating a late lunch at his desk.

Between bites of microwaved hamburger from the commissary, he examined the request. And he began to worry.

Rodgers and Hood were unalike in many ways. Chief among the differences was their worldview. Hood believed in the goodness of people while Rodgers believed that humankind was basically self absorbed, a collection of territorial carnivores. Rodgers felt that the evidence was on his side. If it were not, then he and millions of soldiers like him wouldn't have jobs.

Rodgers also felt that if Paul Hood had doubts about the Hausen clan, there must really be cause for concern.

"He's going into France to search for a terrorist group with Matt Stoll as backup," the General said to his empty office. He looked at his computer. He wished he could input ROC and have the Regional Op-Center, fully staffed and with Striker personnel on hand, on site in Toulouse. Instead, he typed in MAPEURO.

A full-color map of Europe appeared. He overlaid a grid and studied it for a moment.

"Five hundred and forty miles," he said as his eyes went from Northern Italy to the South of France.

Rodgers hit ESC and typed NATOITALY.

Within five seconds a two-column menu was onscreen, offering selections from Troop deployment to Transportation resources, from Armaments to Wargame simulation programs.

He moved the cursor to Transportation and a second menu appeared. He selected Air transport. A third menu offered a listing of aircraft types and airfields. The Sikorsky CH-53E was free. The three engined chopper had a range of over twelve hundred miles, and it had room enough for what he was planning. But at 196 miles an hour, it wasn't fast enough. He moved down the list. And stopped.

The V-22 Osprey. A Bell and Boeing vertical takeoff and landing vehicle. Its range was nearly 1,400 miles at a cruising speed of 345 miles an hour. Perhaps best of all was the fact that one of the prototypes had been turned over to the Sixth Fleet for testing in Naples.

Rodgers smiled, then escaped from the menu and called up his phone directory on-screen. He moved the cursor to NATO Direct Lines and selected the Senior NATO military commander in Europe, General Vincenzo DiFate.

Within three minutes, Rodgers had pulled the General away from a dinner party at the Spanish Embassy in London and was explaining why he needed to borrow the chopper and ten French soldiers.