Authors: David DeBatto
“She’s a beautiful boat, General,” DeLuca said.
“She is,” Koenig agreed.
“I don’t sail,” DeLuca said. “And I grew up on the ocean. Long Island.”
“I’m from a naval family,” Koenig said. The general waited. So much, DeLuca thought, for drawing him out with small talk and
personal charm.
“How’s Moses 2 going?” DeLuca asked. “If I may ask.”
“It’s going well,” General Koenig replied. “The people we get here are the best at what they do. This is where the cream rises
to.”
“Can I ask what the nature of today’s exercise is?” DeLuca said. “Just so I understand what I’m seeing. I have a TS/SCI clearance,
in case you’re concerned.”
“I know your clearances, Agent DeLuca,” Koenig said. “Today’s exercise posits the catastrophic loss of global positioning
capabilities.”
“Loss from what? Or who?”
“Well that would be the first thing we’d want to find out, wouldn’t it?” Koenig said. DeLuca sensed Koenig was struggling
not to sound condescending, but DeLuca held his ground. It was rare, in the military, to meet someone in authority who possessed
both high intelligence (one memo on Koenig said his IQ had tested in the high 180s at West Point) and the ability to suffer
fools gladly. The psychological evaluation in Koenig’s 201 noted a tendency to micromanage, which, in DeLuca’s experience,
was often accompanied by a lack of patience. His instincts told him he was going to get more out of Koenig if he pretended
to be exactly the sort of annoying idiot Koenig shouldn’t have to explain things to. Plus, he was still pissed off at being
rescheduled, something for which Koenig had yet to apologize. DeLuca’d never cared for those officers who felt rank meant
never having to say you’re sorry. In fact, he never cared much for officers, period.
“At the moment,” Koenig said, “we’re getting intel from ship-based X-band in the Beaufort Sea that suggest a kill-vehicle
launch, but without GPS to reconfirm, sea-based data gets a little fuzzy. In about five minutes, those guys are going to be
digging for charts and sextants.”
“Who’s launching kill vehicles?” DeLuca asked.
“Nobody,” Koenig said. “That’s a decoy. In about ten minutes, someone is going to walk through that door and tell me we have
SBL ASATs. And if all goes well, about five minutes after that, somebody else is going to tell me that’s wrong, too, and that
the lasers that hosed us are ground-based and not space-based. All of which should have happened in about a third the time,
and will, the next time we run this scenario. Am I to understand that I’m here to brief you on STRATCOM def-cons, Agent DeLuca?”
“No, sir,” DeLuca said. “I just need enough to know how to put things in context when I write up my report. ASAT means antisatellite?”
Koenig nodded.
“Just so I understand, our GPS system has been hit by ground-based lasers—is that right? So that would be Soviet? Are you
guys still using the word ‘Soviet’?”
“Russian,” Koenig said. DeLuca waited. Finally Koenig tapped at his computer keyboard. The beachscape on Koenig’s plasma screen
dissolved into a Mercatur-projection map of the world. DeLuca swiveled in his chair. There were lights on the map that the
key identified as dedicated, collateral, and contributing sensors, marking locations at Kaena Point and Maui (Hawaii), Clear
and Cobra Dane (Shemya Island, Alaska), Beale AFB (California), Socorro (New Mexico), Eglin AFB (Florida), Cape Cod (Massachusetts),
Millstone/Haystack (Halifax, Nova Scotia), Thule (Greenland), Ascension Island in the South Atlantic, Fylingdales (England),
Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, and Altair/Alcor in the South Pacific. A caption at the bottom of the screen identified
the display as the SSN or Satellite Surveillance Network.
“This is what we have on the ground, looking up,” Koenig said, “radar and electro-optical.” He clicked on an icon labeled
MSX. “This is what we’ve been using to look down from space. Mid-course Space Experiment, mostly UV and very long-wave infrared.
These systems track about eighty-five hundred man-made objects ten centimeters or larger, of which 7 percent are operational
satellites and the rest is shit. The Russians have about one hundred military satellites active and an unknown number of sleepers,
but we think for every one they light up, they put up another that they don’t, and until they turn ’em on, we can’t figure
out what they’re for. Yet. We know they have space-based lasers, but so far, power demands limit miniaturization, so anything
powerful enough to knock one of our birds down would have to be big enough for us to find, even without lighting it up. On
the other hand, it takes much less energy to simply blind our sensors, from space, and only slightly more from the ground.
We’ve hosed satellites with as low as thirty watts from ground, using chemical lasers. To blow something out of the sky from
the ground, regardless of spin or shielding, you need at least four hundred megawatts, or enough electricity to run a medium-sized
city, because only a tenth of the energy is going to reach the target. That’s still a thousand times more powerful than existing
lasers. Hydrogen-fluoride-powered lasers that size in space would need about two thousand tons of fuel, so they’d be enormous.
Single-use X-ray lasers powered by nuclear explosions would be smaller, but obviously you’re not going to conceal your deployment.
So, when we lose a satellite, we look for hosings first, kill vehicles or kinetics second, and full-power directed-energy
last. And different satellites are shielded in different ways, so to defend, you have to figure out what hit you, how powerful,
from what direction, and exactly when, and then you can start to know what you’re up against and which offensive capabilities
to deploy in retaliation. Is that enough for your report?”
“More than enough,” DeLuca said. “I wasn’t aware that the Russians have lasers they could use from the ground to blind our
satellites. Is this recent?” This was a lie. His son Scott had e-mailed him all the material he needed to read to get up to
speed, though nothing that would qualify him as an expert.
“They’ve had them since at least 1976,” Koenig said. He clicked into archives and called up a new overlay, with four new icons
superimposed over the former Soviet Union. “We got a code ten-ten on a keyhole-eleven that got painted after we sent it to
watch a launch at their missile base at Tyuratam. The first Soviet GBL was at Sary Shagan. Even after the Gorbachev collapse,
they kept funding laser projects in Nurek, Tajikistan, and another in the Caucasus Mountains in Kazakhstan, and one in Dushanbe.
And of course, whenever they sent a bird to watch what the DOD was boosting from Vandenberg, we hosed them out of Maui and
Oahu and a facility in Capistrano, though that one’s been moved to Cloud Croft, New Mexico. It’s one reason we sometimes smile
when the liberal elite starts making a fuss about weaponizing space—they might as well protest nuclear missiles on submarines.
That cow left the barn a long time ago. The question, since the beginning of SDI in the first Reagan administration, hasn’t
been whether. It’s been how to do it right and where to allocate the resources.”
“Most people think the Space Defense Initiative is over. I think I read somebody saying Reagan only proposed Star Wars to
make the Soviet economy go bust trying to keep up with us.”
“Most people don’t know anything,” Koenig said. “Reagan proposed Star Wars because he knew that if all you really want to
do is build a small town in Kansas, you have to tell Congress you want to put a million people on the moon, so that Congress
can step in and say, ‘No, you can’t do that, but we’ll let you build a small town in Kansas.’ And the space program is one
of the few things the Russians ever did right. In my opinion.”
“Your opinion is something I highly respect, sir,” DeLuca said. “So this is still going on? ‘Hosing satellites,’ as you put
it?”
“Not as much,” Koenig said. “Partly because both sides put it on the table at SALT and largely because by then, 1991 or so,
it was easier to jam a satellite’s communications and make it deaf than it was to paint it and make it blind. The battle for
the ultimate high ground, as the media puts it, is still going on. I just got a report recently that said the Russian space
defense budget for next year is going to be 50 percent higher than it’s ever been before. And they’re hardly the only country
up there.”
“I read about Rumsfeld warning against a Pearl Harbor in space,” DeLuca said. “I’m assuming that means you guys are getting
the funding you need, black budget or otherwise…”
Koenig didn’t say anything. Apparently the tutorial part of the interview was over.
“Okay. Very helpful. Moving on. Cheryl Escavedo,” DeLuca said. “Reason I’m here. Did you get a chance to look at the report?”
“I read it last night,” Koenig said, which DeLuca found interesting, because they were supposed to have met yesterday. “How
can I help you?”
“Well,” DeLuca said, “whatever occurs to you, I suppose. I’m still trying to get to know her. She worked in the Systems Center?”
“Major Huston can help you there,” Koenig said. “I’ve briefed him and told him you’ll be visiting.”
“And her duties were… ?”
“She was in archives,” Koenig said. “Again, Major Huston is the one you’ll want to talk to.”
“What does archives do?”
“What do you think they do?” Koenig said. “We’ve been keeping track of everything in the sky for the last forty-five years,
Agent DeLuca. It’s one thing to have the information and another to be able to use it efficiently. Plus, because of our security,
Cheyenne is a repository for other government files beyond our purview.”
“And she had access to all of it?”
“I don’t believe she had access to all of it,” Koenig said. “At least not authorized access, but she definitely handled sensitive
material. Major Huston can help you there.”
“I’ll ask him about that, then,” DeLuca said. “What was your impression of her? Any sense of why she’d be taking documents?”
“My impression of her?” Koenig said.
“Yeah,” DeLuca said. “Did you know her personally?”
“Did I know her personally?” Koenig said. DeLuca noted that this was twice in a row that Koenig had repeated what DeLuca had
just said to him. Such repetitions were usually followed by lies. He waited. Koenig said nothing.
“I guess I was thinking that with only 230 people in such close proximity, eventually everybody would get to know everybody
else, sooner or later. And a girl like her would be pretty hard to miss.”
“I didn’t know Sergeant Escavedo personally,” Koenig said. “You’re right about the proximity. You see people on the bus if
you work the same shift, but people are also transferred or rotated in and out on a fairly regular basis. My impression, without
meeting her and solely from reading her file and looking at her records and awards, would be that she was a good person and
a conscientious soldier who was probably just trying to do her job better by taking work home on her laptop that wasn’t supposed
to leave The Mountain. But that’s just an impression and not a fact.”
“She couldn’t send it to herself?” DeLuca said. “She had to carry it physically?”
“The firewalls protecting our data systems make the two thousand feet of granite over our heads right now look like eggshells,”
Koenig said. “But again…”
“Major Huston,” DeLuca said. “I will definitely ask him about that. I’m just trying to figure out how she got the disks or
the CDs or whatever it was out. I guess since you don’t search people, she just took them with her in her briefcase. That
doesn’t seem terribly secure, though.”
“That is under review,” Koenig said. “That should not have happened. We take the idea of missing files very seriously around
here, Agent.”
“This one is more than just missing files,” DeLuca said. “This one’s a missing person. We found her car in the desert, about
ten miles north of the Mexican border.”
At that moment, just as the general had predicted, an officer in Navy whites knocked on the door to inform Koenig that (if
DeLuca was decoding the mil-speak correctly) preliminary telemetry triangulating from the early warning sensors on two of
the GPS sats indicated space-based lasers, and that a suspect Russian satellite that had turned active a few minutes before
the attack was already being targeted.
“Ensign Stern will take you to systems,” Koenig told DeLuca. “Will you keep my office informed if you learn anything?”
“I will,” DeLuca said. “Thank you for your time.”
In the corridor connecting STRATCOM to the other commands and centers, DeLuca asked Stern to pause while he examined a row
of framed color photographs depicting the officers, noncommissioned officers, enlisted persons, and civilians of the year.
When he came to the year 2002, DeLuca saw a photograph of Cheryl Escavedo, smiling, proud of herself, posed receiving the
award and shaking the hand of General Thomas Koenig, who had just said he didn’t know her personally.
Perhaps he’d forgotten.
He hadn’t asked Koenig, because he didn’t think he’d get a straight answer, why someone with as superlative a service record
as Cheryl Escavedo would be transferred from Cheyenne Mountain to an administrative position filling out forms for new recruits
at the Military Entrance Processing Station in Albuquerque. “This is where the cream rises to,” Koenig had said. There was
something fishy about that, beyond ending a sentence with a preposition.
Major Huston reminded DeLuca of the Ken dolls his sister Elaine had played with as a child, stiff and plastic and a bit effeminate.
His smile reminded DeLuca of the televangelists he’d seen on TV, the Pat Robertsons and the Jerry Falwells, so transparently
unctuous and treacly, accompanied by that pseudo-compassionate tilt of the head that always made DeLuca check to make sure
no one was lifting his wallet. Huston was young, midthirties, and fit, DeLuca allowed, though his handshake was soft and clammy.
“Come in, come in,” Huston said. “Sorry you caught us at such a busy moment. Can I get you a coffee or tea?”
DeLuca asked for a coffee, two creams, no sugar, after noticing there wasn’t a coffee pot in the room. When Major Huston stepped
out, DeLuca had a quick look around. The pictures on Major Huston’s desk were of his children, a boy and a girl, both in white
confirmation robes, and another of the whole family in front of a Christmas tree, Huston with his arm around his wife, a buxom
overweight blonde in a white turtleneck sweater, the tree topped by a large crystal angel. On a bookshelf opposite the door,
DeLuca saw three photographs framed and hinged together in a triptych, the center photograph showing Huston in full deer-hunting
forest camo, with his son on the left side of the triptych and his daughter on the right, both also dressed in camo, and in
each picture, a recently slain deer, the slayer lifting the head of the dead animal by the antlers to display the kill. The
daughter looked like she couldn’t have been more than nine or ten. A mountain with a peak resembling a snow-capped pyramid
rose in the background.