Op-Center

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

As Ann Farris entered Matt Stoll's office, the operations Support Officer snickered.

"Gee, folks," Stoll said, "don't put too much pressure on me or anything."

Paul Hood was sitting on a small leather couch in the back of the room. There was a twenty-five-inch TV screen in the ceiling and a video-game console on a shelf, and Stoll retired to the well-worn piece of furniture whenever he needed to relax and think.

"Not trying to pressure you," Hood said. "Just want to know the instant you get the satellites back."

"We'll be quiet," Ann said as she sat down. She looked at Hood, her eyes full of sadness. "Paul, I can't lie to you. We're going to get murdered on this, even if we're right."

"I know. Donald meets with the North in a half hour, after which the world press chews the President and Seoul to pieces for escalating when we knew Pyongyang might be innocent. Result? Lawrence has to hold his horses."

"Or look like a warmonger."

"Right. And if it turns out that Major Lee wasn't behind this, then the North has the ears of the world to apologize, punish the guilty party, and clean house themselves. Or if Pyongyang authorized the bombing, they can regroup and attack again. In any case, the President ends up helpless."

"You've pretty well summed it up," Ann said. "I hate to agree with Lowell, but he thinks you ought to tell Donald to postpone the meeting. The North will make PR hay of that too, but we can deal with it. Say he was acting alone."

"I won't do that to him, Ann." He looked at Stoll. "Matty, I need those satellites!"

"You said you weren't going to pressure me!"

"I made a mistake."

"What will reconnaissance do for you now?" Ann asked.

"There are soldiers looking for Lee, but no one's searching for the men who may have gone after the Nodongs. Mike and the Striker team will be there soon. If we can find evidence of an incursion, and Mike can stop them, we prove that we were right— and the President gets a sexy military action that makes him look awfully good. The North will bitch that we sent men in, but it'll blow over like when the Israelis went into Entebbe."

Ann's eyes were wide. "That's brilliant, Paul. That's very good."

"Thanks. But it only works if I have—"

"You have!" Stoll said, pushing his chair back and clapping his hands once.

As Hood ran over, Stoll punched the button to ring the NRO. Stephen Viens came on at once and Stoll put it on speaker phone.

"Steve— you're back on-line!"

"I thought so," he said, "when I saw that old Soviet battleship vanish from the Sea of Japan."

"Steve, this is Paul Hood. Let me see the Nodong site in the Diamond Mountains. Close enough so that I can see all three missiles."

"That'd be about two hundred feet up. Inputting coordinates now and… she's responding. Night-vision lens in place, the picture has been taken, and the camera is digitizing the image now. Starting to scan on the monitor—"

"Send it over here while it's scanning."

"Will do, Paul," Viens said. "Matty, you did a helluva job."

Stoll put the computer on the receive mode and Hood bent down to watch the monitor as the image came. It appeared in swift strokes from top to bottom— like a lightning-fast Etch-A-Sketch he always thought. Ann stood behind him and gently lay a hand on his shoulder. He ignored the arched eyebrow look he got from Matty, was less successful ignoring the electricity from her touch as the black-and-white terrain materialized rapidly.

"The missile on the top is pointed south," Hood said, "the missiles on the left and right—"

"Jesus," Stoll cut in.

"You can say that again."

Ann bent over Hood. ' The two on the sides are pointing in different directions."

"One to the South," said Stoll, "the other—"

"East," said Hood. "Which means someone's gotten in there." He straightened and hurried to the door, not meaning to throw Ann's hand off but managing to anyway.

"How can you tell?" Ann asked.

Hood said over his shoulder as he hurried into the hall, "Because not even the North Koreans would be mad enough to aim a Nodong at Japan."