Shadow Command

CHAPTER NINE

“Here’s the latest, guys, so listen up,” the SEAL team leader, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Mike Harden, said. The fifteen members of his SEAL platoon, all pre-breathing oxygen in the cargo compartment of their C-130 Hercules cargo plane, stopped looking at charts and turned their attention to him. “Our guy on the inside tells us that the place is virtually deserted. He counts a total of twenty Security Forces personnel, mostly centered on the main computer center next to the headquarters building. The battle staff area has been deserted and there is just a skeleton security force stationed there, about six guys. The hangars have been locked up for a couple days. This checks with our own overhead surveillance. So our objective remains the four main offices in the headquarters building: one squad each going for the security operations center, the battle management area, the communications center, and the flight operations center. Unit Bravo is right behind us, and his guys will take the hangars and the weapons storage area.

“Our guy on the inside says he’s seen just one of those CID manned robot units around the place patrolling the hangars and weapon storage area. We know they had a total of six CIDs. One was deployed to Iran, two deployed to Turkey, and one surrendered when the Rangers assaulted Battle Mountain, so there’s two left, and we have to assume they’re both at Elliott. There are approximately a dozen Tin Man units unaccounted for as well.

“Remember, use regular ammo only against the Security Forces guys if they open fire on you — don’t waste ammo on the CIDs or Tin Man units.” He held up a 40-millimeter grenade round. “These are our best hope of putting those things out of commission: microwave pulse generators, like a direct fucking lightning bolt hit. They tell us it should shut down all their systems instantly. Probably lethal for the guy inside, but that’s his problem if he chooses to fight. These guys are fast, so stay on your toes and concentrate fire. Questions?” There were none. “All right. We have about five minutes to go. Get ready to kick some zoomie ass.” There was a muffled round of “Hoo-ah!” in oxygen masks all around.

It seemed like just a minute later when Harden was notified by the cockpit crew that the jump zone was two minutes out. The SEALs quickly detached themselves from the aircraft oxygen system, hooked up to portable oxygen bottles, got to their feet, and held on tightly to handholds as the rear cargo ramp was lowered. No sooner had the ramp motored down than the red light turned green, and Harden led his platoon out into the frigid darkness. Less than twenty seconds after Harden jumped, all sixteen men deployed parachutes. Harden checked his chute and oxygen, made sure his infrared marker light was operating so the others could follow him in the darkness, then started following the steering indications from his wrist-mounted GPS unit.

This was a HAHO, or High Altitude — High Opening jump. From twenty-seven thousand feet, the team could sail about thirty miles from their jump point to their objective: Elliott Air Force Base, nicknamed “Dreamland.” By order of the President of the United States, the two SEAL units had been ordered to assault the base, neutralize the Cybernetic Infantry Devices and Tin Man units patrolling the base, capture all base personnel, and secure the aircraft, weapons, computer center, and laboratories.

The winds were a little squirrelly, definitely different than forecast, which probably explained the hurried jump. Harden found himself steering his canopy in some rather radical maneuvers to get on-course. Each turn soaked up some horizontal speed, so that meant a little more marching once they got on the ground. They would fly for about ten minutes.

Once finally established on-course, Harden started looking for landmarks using his binocular night-vision goggles. He quickly saw that things weren’t looking quite as planned. The first visual target was Groom Lake, the big dry lake bed south of the base that had the majority of Elliott’s twenty-thousand-foot-long runway embedded in it. It was soon obvious they were too far west — they had jumped way too early. The GPS said they were right on-course, but the landmarks didn’t lie. They had planned for this contingency, but Harden was going to give the flight crew a good chewing-out when this mission was over. He had studied the entire surrounding area in his pre-jump target study and was confident he could find a good place to land, even if it had to be on the dry lake bed itself.

He couldn’t quite reach the dry lake bed, but he was able to find a flat area about fifty yards north of a dirt road. The landing was a lot harder than he anticipated — again, the GPS was lying about the wind direction and he landed with the wind instead of into it, which increased his ground speed and the force of the landing. Fortunately they were wearing so much cold-weather gear for the long HAHO jump, and the extra impact force was mostly soaked up. He formed up the team in less than three minutes, and it took them less than five to get their parachutes, harnesses, and extra cold-weather gear off and stowed, and their weapons, comm gear, and night-vision systems checked and ready.

Harden checked his GPS and motioned their direction of movement, but the assistant officer in charge, who had the backup GPS, waved his hand and indicated a different direction. They put their GPS receivers side by side, and sure enough, their readouts were completely different…in fact, they were different by about three miles!

That explained them being off-course and landing in the wrong direction based on GPS-derived winds: their GPS receivers were being spoofed. Harden knew that GPS jammers were being developed, but a jammed GPS receiver could be disregarded and alternate navigation methods used right away before significant errors were made. On the other hand, a spoofed GPS receiver would appear to be working properly. Even the C-130’s GPS receivers had been spoofed. He had to remember that they were up against a unit that developed and tested next-generation weapons of all kinds, top secret stuff that probably wouldn’t be seen by the rest of the world for years but would revolutionize warfare when it did hit the streets.

The platoon chief pulled out a lensatic compass, ready to take some fixes on terrain landmarks and cross-check their position on his map, but it must’ve taken a hit in the accelerated landing because the compass dial was spinning as if it were attached to an electric motor. Harden wouldn’t be surprised if the eggheads here had developed a way to jam or spoof compasses too! He decided that since they landed west of the edge of the dry lake bed they would just head east until they found the lake, then they’d move north until they found the inner perimeter fence. He again signaled their direction of movement, overriding all queries, and headed off at a trot.

They had stripped off the cold-weather gear and left their parachutes behind, greatly lightening their load, but soon Harden found himself wiping sweat from his eyes. Jeez, he thought, it had to be below freezing out here in the high desert, but he was sweating to death! But he ignored it and kept on…

“Windward,” he heard in his headset. He dropped to his belly and scanned the area. That was the code word for a team member in trouble. He crawled back along his direction of movement and found the platoon chief on his back, with the AOIC checking him over. “What in hell happened?” he whispered.

“He just collapsed,” the assistant officer in charge said. He wiped sweat from his face. “I don’t feel too good either, LT. Would they use nerve gas on us?”

“Stay down,” someone said on the secure FM tactical radio.

Harden looked down the line of SEALs spread out in the desert. “Radios tight!” he whispered. The AOIC passed the word back to the others. He had briefed to use code words only on the radios on this mission unless they were in a firefight and the whole team was compromised.

The platoon chief sat up. “You feeling okay, Chief?” Harden asked. The chief signaled he was, and they prepared to move out again. But this time it was Harden who felt woozy — the minute he stood up, he was bathed in warm, dry heat, as if he had just opened the door to a red-hot oven. The feeling subsided when he dropped to a knee. What in hell…?

And then he realized what it was. They had been briefed on the incident in Turkey, where the guys from Dreamland used nonlethal microwave weapons to knock out the base security personnel — they reported that it felt like intense heat, like their skin was on fire, and soon their brains got scrambled so bad that they passed out. “Crocodile, crocodile,” Harden spoke into his whispermike, the code word for “enemy nearby.”

“Just stay down and don’t move,” they all heard in their headsets.

Shit, the Air Force guys had found their FM frequency, decoded the encryption routine, and were talking over their whispermike channel! He turned and made a hand signal to switch to the secondary frequency, and the word was passed down to the others. In the meantime, Harden pulled out his satellite phone and punched up the other SEAL unit’s secure channel: “Silver, this is Opus, crocodile.”

“Did you know,” they heard in their headsets on the new channel, “that there are no words that rhyme with ‘silver’ and ‘opus,’ just like ‘orange’?”

Harden wiped a rivulet of sweat out of his eyes. Comm discipline completely forgotten, he angrily switched back to the whispermike: “Who the hell is this?”

“Ah ah ah, Lieutenant, beadwindow, beadwindow,” the voice said again, using the old code word warning of inappropriate radio transmissions. “Listen, guys, the exercise is over. We already took down the other unit heading to the flight line and weapon storage area — you guys did much better than they did. We have some nice comfy rooms ready for you. Stand up with your hands in the air and we’ll take a little drive back to base. We have a truck on the way to come get you.”

“Fuck you!” Harden shouted. He got into a low crouch and scanned the area, ignoring the growing pain radiating throughout his body…and then he saw it, a huge robot, less than twenty meters in front of him. He raised his rifle, flicked off the safety, and fired a grenade round. There was a tremendous flash, the smell of high-tension electricity frying the air, and a feeling of millions of ants crawling across his body…but the sensation of heat had vanished, replaced by bone-chilling cold as his sweat-soaked uniform quickly released body heat to the frigid night air.

He trotted back to his men. “Everybody okay?” he whispered. They all signaled they were fine. He checked his GPS receiver — it was completely dead, but the platoon chief’s compass was working properly again, and he quickly plotted their position on his map, got a bearing toward their destination, and headed out.

On the way they passed the robot. It looked as if its limbs, torso, and neck had twisted in different and very unnatural directions all at once, and it smelled of a short-circuited and burned-out power drill. Harden was at first sorry for the guy inside — after all, he was a fellow American and soldier — but he wasn’t going to stick around to check on him in case he was just stunned.

It was completely dark as they approached the inner perimeter fence, a double-layered fifteen-foot-high chain-link fence topped with razor wire. No lights around the fence meant either dogs or infrared sensors, Harden knew. He gave the order for the team to break into squads and begin their approach to…

…and at that moment he heard a whirring sound, like a high-speed fan, and he looked up. Through his night-vision goggles he saw an object about the size of a garbage can about twenty feet in the sky and just thirty or forty yards away, with a wide round shroud on the bottom, long legs, and two metallic arms which held white flags — and incredibly it had a lighted LED scrolling display on the top that read DON’T SHOOT JUST TALK WE’RE LISTENING.

“What the hell is this?” Harden asked. He waited until the flying robot got about ten yards away, then shot it down with a single burst from his MP5 submachine gun. He was sure he hit it, but it managed to fly down in a more or less controlled manner, landing awkwardly a few yards away, the scrolling LED message still visible. He repositioned his whispermike to his lips. “Who is this?”

“This is Brigadier General David Luger,” the voice on the other end replied. “You know who I am. This has got to end, Lieutenant Harden, before anyone else gets hurt or killed.”

“I have orders to take you into custody and secure this base, sir,” Harden said. “I’m not leaving until my mission is accomplished. On authority of the President of the United States, I’m ordering you to deactivate all of your base defenses and surrender yourselves immediately.”

“Lieutenant, there are a dozen more drones flying overhead right now carrying stun grenades,” Luger said. “We can see you and each of your fifteen comrades, and we can hit each one of them with a stun grenade. Watch carefully. In front of you, right near the fence.” A moment later he heard a tiny metallic ping! sound from almost directly overhead…and seconds later there was a tremendous flash of light, followed moments later by an impossibly loud craack! of sound and then a wall of pressure like a hurricane-force wind lasting a fraction of a second.

“Now that was about a hundred yards away, Lieutenant,” Luger said. The ringing in Harden’s ears was so loud he had trouble hearing him over the radio. “Imagine what that’ll feel like just five yards away.”

“Sir, you’re going to have to take me and all my men out, because we’re not leaving,” Harden said after letting his hearing return somewhat to normal. “Unless you want to be responsible for wounding or killing fellow Americans, I urge you to follow my orders and surrender.”

There was a long pause on the line; then, in a sincere fatherly voice, Luger said: “I really admire you, Lieutenant. We were being honest when we said you made it farther than the other SEAL unit. They surrendered the first time we hit them with the microwave emitter, and they even told us your identity when we captured them — that’s how we knew who you were. You guys did good. I know you didn’t mean to kill Staff Sergeant Henry. He was the NCO piloting the CID.”

“Thank you, sir, and no, I didn’t mean to kill anyone, sir,” Harden said. “We’d been briefed on that microwave weapon your robots carry and we knew we had to knock it out.”

“We developed the microwave disruptor grenade because we were afraid the CID technology had fallen into Russian hands,” Luger said. “I didn’t think it’d be used by our own against our own.”

“I’m sorry, sir, and I’ll take responsibility of personally informing his next of kin.” He had to keep him talking as long as he could. The main occupying force, a Marine security company from Camp Pendleton, was due to arrive in less than thirty minutes, and if this guy Luger had second thoughts about attacking more Marines, maybe he’d hold off long enough for the others to arrive. “Should I go back and help the staff sergeant?”

“No, Lieutenant. We’ll handle that.”

“Yes, sir. Can you explain how—?”

“There’s no time for explanations, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir.” Time was running out. “Listen, sir, no one wants this. Your best bet is to stop fighting, get a lawyer, and do this the right way. There don’t have to be any more attacks. This is not who we are supposed to be battling. Let’s stop all this right now. You’re the unit commander here. You’re in charge. Give the order, have your people lay down their weapons, and let us come in. We won’t hurt anyone. We’re all Americans, sir. We’re on the same side. Please, sir, stop this.”

There was another long pause. Harden truly believed that Luger was going to back down. All this was insane, he thought. Have some guts and stop this, Luger! he thought. Don’t be a hero. Stop this or…

Then he heard a whirring sound overhead — the little trash-can robots returning — and then Luger said: “The pain will be more intense this time, but it won’t last very long. Good day, Lieutenant.”

Harden leaped to his feet and yelled, “All squads, fire grenades for effect and make for the fence, go, go, go!” He raised his MP5, loaded a disruptor grenade into the launcher breech, racked it home, and raised the weapon to…

…and it felt as if his entire body had instantly burst into flame. He screamed…and then everything quickly, thankfully went dark.

“I can’t believe this…I fucking can’t believe this!” President Joseph Gardner moaned. He and a handful of Senate and congressional leaders were being briefed by Secretary of Defense Miller Turner on their efforts to detain the members of the Air Battle Force and secure their weapons, and the information was not good. “They knocked out and captured two SEAL teams in Dreamland? I don’t believe it! What about the other locations?”

“The SEAL team sent to Battle Mountain encountered light resistance and managed to capture one of their manned robots, but the robot had apparently either malfunctioned or was damaged and was abandoned,” Turner said. “The aircraft and most of the personnel were gone; the SEALs captured about a hundred personnel without resistance. The FAA couldn’t track any of the aircraft because of heavy jamming or netruding and so we don’t know where they went.”

“‘Netruding’? What in hell is that?”

“Apparently the next-generation aircraft based out of Dreamland and Battle Mountain don’t simply jam enemy radar, but they actually use the radars and their associated digital electronic systems to insert things like viruses, false or contrary commands, false targets, and even programming code changes into the radar’s electronics,” National Security Adviser Conrad Carlyle responded. “They call it ‘netruding’—network intruding.”

“Why wasn’t I briefed about this?”

“It was first put into use on McLanahan’s planes deployed to the Middle East,” Carlyle said. “He disabled a Russian fighter by commanding it to shut itself down. Most digital radar systems in use these days, especially civilian sets, don’t have any way to block these intrusions. He can do it with all sorts of systems such as communications, the Internet, wireless networks, even weather radar. Plus, since a lot of the civilian networks are tied into the military’s systems, they can insert malicious code into the military network without even directly attacking a military system.”

“I thought he shot a missile at the fighter!”

“The Russians claimed he shot a missile, but he used this new ‘netrusion’ system to force the MiG to turn itself off,” Carlyle explained. “McLanahan had his heart thing before he could explain what happened, and we took the Russians’ word on the incident after that.”

“How can he send a virus through radar?”

“Radar is simply reflected radio energy timed, decoded, digitized, and displayed on a screen,” Carlyle said. “Once the frequency of the radio energy is known, any kind of signal can be sent to the receiver, including a signal containing digital code. Nowadays the radio energy is mostly digitally displayed and disseminated, so the digital code enters the system and is treated like any other computer instruction — it can be processed, stored, replicated, sent out over the network, whatever.”

“Jee-sus…” Gardner breathed. “You mean, they could already have infected our communications and tracking systems?”

“As soon as McLanahan decided to embark on this conflict, he could have ordered the attacks,” Miller said. “Every piece of digital electronic equipment in use that receives data from the airwaves, or is networked into another system that is, could have been infected almost instantly.”

“That’s every electronic system I know of!” the President exclaimed. “Hell, my daughter’s handheld game machine is tied into the Internet! How could this have happened?”

“Because we ordered him to find a way to do it, sir,” chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Taylor Bain replied. “It’s an incredible force multiplier, which was important when almost every long-range attack aircraft in our arsenal was destroyed. Every satellite and every aircraft — including his unmanned aircraft and Armstrong Space Station — is capable of electronic netrusion. He can infect computers in Russia from space or simply from a drone flying within range of a Russian radar site. He can prevent a war from happening because the enemy would either never know he was coming or would be powerless to respond.”

“The problem is, he can do it to us now too!” the President exclaimed. “You need to find a way to shield our systems from this kind of attack.”

“It’s in the works, Mr. President,” Carlyle said. “Firewalls and anti-virus software can protect computers that already have it, but we’re developing ways to plug the security gaps in systems that aren’t normally considered vulnerable to network attacks, such as radar, electronic surveillance such as electro-optical cameras, or passive electronic sensors.”

“The other problem,” Bain added, “is that being the unit that developed and is designing the netrusion systems, the High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center has been in the forefront of developing countermeasures to it.”

“So the guys who are employing the thing are the ones who know how to defeat it,” the President said disgustedly. “Swell. That helps.” He shook his head in exasperation as he tried to think. Finally he turned to the two congressmen in the Oval Office. “Senator, Representative, I asked you in here because this has become a very serious problem, and I need the advice and support of the leadership. Most of us in this room think McLanahan is unhinged. Senator, you seem to feel differently.”

“I do, Mr. President,” Senator Stacy Anne Barbeau said. “Let me try talking with him. He knows I support his space program, and I support him.”

“It’s too dangerous, Senator,” the President said. “One man has died, and several more have been injured by McLanahan and his weapons.”

“A frontal assault with armed troops won’t work unless you’re going to attempt a D-Day invasion, Mr. President,” Barbeau said, “and we can’t pen him up inside Dreamland when he’s got spaceplanes, unmanned aerial vehicles, and bombers roaming around inside a thousand square miles of desert, patrolled by gadgets no one’s ever heard of before. He won’t be expecting me. Besides, I think I might have some folks on the inside who will help. They’re just as concerned as I about the general’s welfare.”

There were no other comments made — no one had any other suggestions, and certainly no one else was going to volunteer to stick their heads in the tiger’s jaws like the Navy SEALs had. “Then it’s decided,” the President said. “Thank you for this undertaking, Senator. I assure all of you, we’ll do everything possible to see to your safety. I’d like to speak to the senator in private for a moment. Thank you all.” The White House chief of staff escorted them all out of the Cabinet Room, and Gardner and Barbeau moved to the President’s private office adjacent to the Oval Office.

No sooner had the door closed than Gardner’s arms were around her waist and he was snuggling her neck. “You macho hot bitch,” he said. “What kind of crazy idea is this? Why do you want to go to Dreamland? And who is this guy you say you’ve got on the inside?”

“You’ll find out soon enough, Joe,” Barbeau said. “You sent in the SEALs and they didn’t get it done — the last thing you want to do is start a war out there. Your poll numbers will go down even farther. Let me try it my way first.”

“All right, sugar, you got it,” Gardner said. He let her turn in his arms, then began to run his hands over her breasts. “But if you’re successful — and I have no doubt you will be — what is it you want in return?”

“We have a good deal going already, Mr. President,” Barbeau said, pressing his hands even tighter around her nipples. “But I’m interested in one thing Carlyle was talking about: the netrusion thing.”

“What about it?”

“I want it,” Barbeau said. “Barksdale gets the network warfare mission — not the Navy, not STRATCOM.”

“You understand all that stuff?”

“Not all of it, but I will, in very short order,” Barbeau said confidently. “But I do know that Furness at Battle Mountain has all the bombers and unmanned combat aircraft that use netrusion technology — I want them at Barksdale, along with all the network warfare stuff. All of it. Downsize or even eliminate the B-52s if you want, but Barksdale runs network warfare for anything that flies — drones, B-2s, satellites, the space-based radar, everything.”

The fingers on Barbeau’s nipples tensed. “You’re not talking about keeping the space station?” Gardner asked. “That’s five billion I want to go to two aircraft carriers.”

“The space station can fry for all I care — I want the technology behind it, especially the space-based radar,” Barbeau said. “The space station is dead anyway — folks consider it McLanahan’s orbiting graveyard, and I don’t want to be associated with it. But the nuts and bolts behind the station are what I want. I know STRATCOM, and Air Force Space Command will want netrusion aboard their reconnaissance, airborne command posts, and spacecraft, but you have to agree to fight that. I want the Eighth Air Force at Barksdale to control netrusion.”

The President’s hands began their ministrations once again, and she knew she had him. “Whatever you say, Stacy,” Gardner said distractedly. “It’s a lot of hocus-pocus gobbledygook to me — what bad guys around the world understand is a fucking aircraft carrier battle group parked off their coastline, in their faces, not network attacks and computer magic. If you want this computer-fucking virus thing, you’re welcome to it. Just get Congress to agree to stop funding the space station and give me my two aircraft carriers, minimum, and you can have your cyberwar shit.”

She turned toward him, letting her breasts slide tightly across his chest. “Thank you, baby,” she said, kissing him deeply. She placed a hand on his crotch, feeling him jump at her touch. “I’d seal our deal in the usual manner, but I have a plane to catch to Vegas. I’ll have McLanahan in prison by tomorrow evening…or I’ll expose him as a raving lunatic so severely that the American people will be clamoring for you to take him down.”

“I’d love to give you a big going-away present too, honey,” Gardner said, giving Barbeau a playful pat on her behind, then taking a seat at his desk and lighting up a cigar, “but Zevitin’s going to call in a few minutes, and I’ve got to explain to him that I’m still in control of this McLanahan mess.”

“Screw Zevitin,” Barbeau said. “I suspect that everything McLanahan said about the Russians putting a super-laser in Iran and firing on the spaceplane is true, Joe. McLanahan might be going off the deep end by ignoring your orders, attacking without authorization, and then battling the SEALs, but Zevitin’s up to something here. McLanahan doesn’t just fly off the handle.”

“Don’t worry about a thing, Stacy,” Gardner said. “We’ve got good communications open with Moscow. All they want are assurances that we’re not trying to bottle them up. McLanahan is making the whole world, not just the Russians, nervous, and that’s bad for business.”

“But it’s good for getting votes in Congress for new aircraft carrier battle groups, honey.”

“Not if we have a rogue general on our hands, Stacy. Take McLanahan down, but do it quietly. He could ruin everything for us.”

“Don’t worry about a thing, Mr. President,” Barbeau said, giving him a wink and a toss of her hair. “He’s going down…one way or another.”

Barbeau met up with her chief of staff Colleen Morna outside the executive suites, and they walked quickly to her waiting car. “The trip’s all set, Senator,” Morna said after they were on their way back to her office on Capitol Hill. “I have the billing codes for the whole trip from the White House, and they even gave us authorization for a C-37—a Gulfstream Five. That means we can take eight guests with us to Vegas.”

“Perfect. I got a verbal agreement from Gardner about relocating and centralizing all of the DoD network warfare units to Barksdale. Find out which contractors and lobbyists we need to organize to get that done and invite them along with us to Vegas. That should water their eyes.”

“You got that right, Senator.”

“Good. Now, what about that hard-body boyfriend of yours, Hunter Noble? He’s the key to this Las Vegas trip as long as McLanahan is up in that space station. What did you dig up on him?”

“You had him pegged from day one, Senator,” Colleen said. “Our Captain Noble seems to be stuck in junior high school. For starters: he got a woman six years older than him pregnant in high school — the school nurse, I think.”

“Happens every year where I’m from, sugar. The only virgin in my hometown was an ugly twelve-year-old.”

“He was expelled, but it didn’t matter because he already had enough credits to graduate two years early from high school and start engineering school,” Colleen went on. “Seems his way of celebrating graduation is getting some woman pregnant, because he did it again in both college and grad school. He married the third one, but the marriage was annulled when yet another affair was uncovered.”

“McLanahan he definitely isn’t,” Barbeau said.

“He’s an outstanding pilot and engineer, but apparently has a real problem with authority,” Morna went on. “He gets high marks on his effectiveness reports for job performance but terrible marks for leadership skills and military bearing.”

“That’s no help — now he sounds like McLanahan again,” Barbeau said dejectedly. “What about the juicy stuff?”

“Plenty of that,” Morna said. “Lives in bachelor officers’ quarters at Nellis Air Force Base — barely six hundred square feet of living space — and has been written up many times by base security for loud parties and visitors coming and going at all times of the day and night. He’s a regular in the Officers’ Club at Nellis and piles up a pretty hefty bar tab. Rides a Harley Night Rod motorcycle and has received numerous speeding and exhibitionist driving citations. License just recently returned after a three-month suspension for unsafe driving — apparently decided to race an Air Force T-6A training aircraft down the runway.”

“That’s good, but I need the real juicy stuff, baby.”

“I saved the best for last, Senator. The list of female visitors admitted for on-base visits is as long as my arm. A few are wives of married men, a couple known bisexual women, a few prostitutes — and one was the wife of an Air Force general officer. However, visits on-base seemed to have subsided a bit in the last year…mostly because he has signature credit authority with three very large casinos in Vegas for a total of one hundred thousand dollars.”

“What?”

“Senator, the man hasn’t paid for a hotel room in Vegas in over two years — he’s on a first-name basis with managers, doormen, and concierges all over town, and uses comped rooms and meals almost every week,” Colleen said. “He likes blackjack and poker and is invited backstage a lot to hang out with showgirls, boxers, and headliners. Usually has at least one and many times two or three ladies in tow.”

“One hundred grand!” Barbeau remarked. “He beats out every Nevada legislator I know!”

“Bottom line, Senator: He works hard and plays hard,” Colleen summarized. “He maintains a low profile but has made some fairly high-profile transgressions that have apparently been swept under the rug because of the work he does for the government. He’s contacted regularly by defense contractors who want to hire him, some offering incredible salaries, so that probably makes him cocky and contributes to his attitude that he doesn’t have to play the Air Force’s games.”

“Sounds like a guy living on the edge — and that’s exactly where I like ’em,” Barbeau said. “I think it’s time to go pay Captain Noble a little visit — in his native habitat.”