exactly he’s up to. Then we make a further decision.”
“What about my murder case?” Provalov demanded.
“What about it? This is an espionage case now, Comrade Lieutenant, and that takes precedence.”
Which was true, Oleg Gregoriyevich had to admit to himself. The murder of a pimp, a whore, and a driver was a small thing compared to state treason.
His naval career might never end, Admiral Joshua Painter, USN (Ret.), thought to himself. And that wasn’t so bad a thing, was it? A farm boy from Vermont, he’d graduated the Naval Academy almost forty years earlier, made it through Pensacola, then gotten his life’s ambition, flying jets off aircraft carriers. He’d done it for the next twenty years, plus a stint as a test pilot, commanded a carrier air wing, then a carrier, then a group, and finally topped out as SACLANT/CINCLANT/CINCLANTFLT, three very weighty hats that he’d worn comfortably enough for just over three years before removing the uniform forever. Retirement had meant a civilian job paying about four times what the government had, mainly consulting with admirals he’d watched on the way up and telling them how he would have done it. In fact, it was something he would have done for free in any officers’ club on any Navy base in America, maybe for the cost of dinner and a few beers and a chance to smell the salt air.
But now he was in the Pentagon, back on the government payroll, this time as a civilian supergrade and special assistant to the Secretary of Defense. Tony Bretano, Josh Painter thought, was smart enough, a downright brilliant engineer and manager of engineers. He was prone to look for mathematical solutions to problems rather than human ones, and he tended to drive people a little hard. All in all, Bretano might have made a decent naval officer, Painter thought, especially a nuc.
His Pentagon office was smaller than the one he’d occupied as OP-05—Assistant Chief of Naval Operations for Air—ten years earlier, a job since de-established. He had his own secretary and a smart young commander to look after him. He was an entry-port to the SecDef’s office for a lot of people, one of whom, oddly enough, was the Vice President.
“Hold for the Vice President,” a White House operator told him on his private line.
“You bet,” Painter replied.
“Josh, Robby.”
“Good morning, sir,” Painter replied. This annoyed Jackson, who’d served under Painter more than once, but Josh Painter wasn’t a man able to call an elected official by his Christian name. “What can I do for you?”
“Got a question. The President and I were going over something this morning, and I didn’t have the answer to his question. Can an Aegis intercept and kill a ballistic inbound?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t think so. We looked at that during the Gulf War and—oh, okay, yeah, I remember now. We decided they could probably stop one of those Scuds because of its relatively slow speed, but that’s the top end of their ability. It’s a software problem, software on the SAM itself.” Which was the same story for the Patriot missiles as well, both men then remembered. “Why did that one come up?”
“The President’s worried that if the Chinese toss one at Taiwan and we have a ship alongside, well, he’d prefer that the ship could look after herself, y’know?”
“I can look into that,” Painter promised. “Want me to bring it up with Tony today?”
“That’s affirmative,” TOMCAT confirmed.
“Roger that, sir. I’ll get back to you later today.”
“Thanks, Josh,” Jackson replied, hanging up.
Painter checked his watch. It was about time for him to head in anyway. The walk took him out into the busy E-Ring corridor, then right again into the SecDef’s office, past the security people and the various private secretaries and aides. He was right on time, and the door to the inner office was open.
“Morning, Josh,” Bretano greeted.
“Good morning, Mr. Secretary.”
“Okay, what’s new and interesting in the world today?”
“Well, sir, we have an inquiry from the White House that just came in.”
“And what might that be?” THUNDER asked. Painter explained. “Good question. Why is the answer so hard to figure out?”
“It’s something we’ve looked at on and off, but really Aegis was set up to deal with cruise-missile threats, and they top out at about Mach Three or so.”
“But the Aegis radar is practically ideal for that sort of threat, isn’t it?” The Secretary of Defense was fully briefed in on how the radar-computer system worked.
“It’s a hell of a radar system, sir,