The phone line crackled. “Brad! How the hell are you?”
Lieutenant General Brad Elliott leaned back in his chair and smiled broadly as he recognized the caller. “I was expecting you to send young Andy Wyatt out here to harass me again, sir, but I’m glad to hear from you.”
“Can the ‘sir’ stuff with me, you old warhorse,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Wilbur Curtis said over the snaps and crackles in the scrambled phone fine. “You know better.
Besides, it’s been a long time since we’ve spoken. When are we going to get together?”
“I have a feeling it’ll be soon, my friend. I’ve been getting calls from half the J-staff, a bunch of calls from Space Command — you
“Now how the hell did you know that?”
“Every time I build a new toy, you want it, that’s how I know it.”
“That’s why you’re out there, you stupid bastard. You’re supposed to be developing toys for us to play with, not polishing your three stars. Stop whining.”
“I’m not, believe me.” Elliott chuckled. “I assume you want to use the new Masters NIRTSats, the ones that can downlink radar, infrared, and visual imagery all in one pass in real-time both to the ground stations and aircraft. Right?”
“You’re not telepathic are you?” Curtis joked. “They tell me you can receive satellite images on your B-2 bomber as well as your B-52 Megafortress?”
“We flight-test PACER SKY at the Strategic Warfare Center in a couple weeks,” Elliott said, “but ground tests have gone really well. Let me guess some more: you want pictures of a certain area, but don’t want to use DSP or LACROSSE satellites because you don’t want certain superpower countries to know you’re interested. Am I close?” “Frightfully close,” Curtis said. “We’re watching a Chinese naval buildup in the South China Sea. We think they might be getting ready to plug away at either the Spratlys or the Philippines. If we send a DSP or KH-series bird over the area, we risk discovery.”
“The Philippines? You mean the Chinese might try an invasion?”
“Well, let’s hope not,” Curtis said. “The President is a big fan of President Mikaso’s. We’ve been expecting something like this for years, ever since we realized there was a good possibility we were going to get kicked out of the Philippines — now it might actually happen. We’ve got our pants pretty much down around the ankles as far as Southeast Asia goes right now. What with the buildup in the Persian Gulf and the closing of a bunch of bases overseas, we’ve got zilch out there…
“Well, if you need the pictures, you got ’em,” Elliott said, running his hand across the top of his hair. “We can transmit the digitized data to J-2, or Jon Masters can set up one of his terminals right on your desk there — providing you don’t keep stretching your secretary out over it all the time.” “My secretary is a fifty-year-old Marine Corps gunnery sergeant that could grind us both down into little nubs, you old lech.” Curtis laughed. “No, transmit it to J-2 and J-3 out here at the Pentagon soonest. They’ll give you a call and tell you exactly what they want…”
“I know what you want, sir,” Elliott said.
“Hey, don’t be so sure, big shot,” Curtis said. “Man, some guys — they get on the fast track, tool around the White House for a few months, and it goes right to their heads. And stop calling me sir. You’d have four stars, too, if you’d climb up out of that black hole you’ve built for yourself out there and join the real world again.”
“What? Leave Dreamland and miss the opportunity for some first-class, four-star abuse? No way.” Elliott gave his old friend a loud laugh and hung up.
“Room, ten-HUT!”
Two hundred men and women in olive drab flight suits moved smartly to their feet as Air Force Brigadier General Calvin Jarrel and his staff entered the auditorium briefing room. The scene could have been right out of
