behind the podium. 'Where would the impact point have been according to the guidance constants active at the time of the last complete telemetry packet? And how long is it going to take us to extract additional information from the intermittent data?'
Lieutenant Todd noted to himself that the commander was sharp. Winters had obviously been associated with anomaly investigations before. Todd then explained that if the active guidance constants had not changed again, the continued firing of the terminal engines would have brought the missile to an impact point about twenty miles south of Key West. 'However,' Todd added, 'the constants were allowed, by the software, to change every five seconds. And they had changed in two of the last five internal data updates. So it's unlikely they stayed the same as they were when our complete telemetry terminated. Unfortunately, although all the constants — even the future predicted ones that are being calculated by the APRS-are stored in the onboard computer, because of bandwidth limitations we only transmit the active constants with the realtime telemetry. We are now going through the dropout data manually to see if we can find out anything more about the constants.'
One of the other staff officers asked a question about the probability of the missile actually having reached Cuba. Lieutenant Todd answered 'very low' and then activated an electronic overlay that placed a dotted and blinking trajectory on the right screen inset map. The blinking dots followed a path that started just off Coral Gables, south of the city of Miami, and then continued across a portion of south Florida into the Gulf of Mexico, across the Keys, and finally into the ocean again. 'It is along this line that we intend to concentrate our search. Unless the bird suddenly changed its mind its general heading would have been consistent with a perceived target located anywhere along this path. And since we have no reports of any land impact near a populated area, we assume that the missile landed in the Everglades or the ocean.'
Lieutenant Todd had consulted briefly with Winters the previous evening on the agenda for the meeting. It had been scheduled to last only an hour, but the number of questions caused it to stretch to an hour and a half. Todd was thorough and precise in his presentation but was obviously dismayed by Winters' continued probing into the possibility of human error. The lieutenant freely admitted that they had blown the procedure to destroy the missile when it went awry, but defended his men by citing the unusual circumstances and the nearly perfect previous record enjoyed by the Panther missile. He also explained that they were going to equip their search vessels with the best possible instrumentation ('including the new ocean telescope developed by the Miami Oceanographic Institute') and begin searching the outlined areas in earnest the next day.
Winters asked many questions about the possible cause of the missile's strange behavior. Todd told him that he and his staff were convinced that it was a software problem, that some new or updated algorithm in the 4.2 version of the software had somehow scrambled both the initialization sequence and the optically stored target parameters. Winters accepted their opinion eventually, but not until he ordered them to prepare a 'top down' failure modes analysis that would list every possible hardware, software, or operational error (Todd winced when Winters mentioned operations again) that could lead to the kind of problem observed.
Toward the end of the meeting Winters reiterated the secrecy of the activity and pointed out that the Broken Arrow project was to remain completely unknown to the press. 'Commander,' Todd broke in while Winters was explaining the press policy. The lieutenant had begun the meeting with confidence but was feeling increasingly unsettled. 'Sir, I had a call late yesterday afternoon from a reporter, a Carolyn or Kathy Dawson I think, from the Miami Herald. She told me that she had heard of some special activity down here and that I was supposedly connected with it. She claimed her source was someone in the Pentagon.'
Winters shook his head. 'Shit, Lieutenant, why didn't you say something before this? Can't you imagine what will happen if the word gets out that one of our missiles wandered over Miami?' He paused. 'What did you tell her?'
'I didn't tell her anything. But I think she is still suspicious. She called the public affairs office after she talked to me.'