Clear and Present Danger

"Bad guys. We were just about out of ammo for our -16s, and I figured we might as well try to fit in, like."

"You're thinking good, kid," Clark told him.

"Okay, what's the plan?" Chavez asked.

"It's your call," Clark replied. "One of two things. We can drive you back to the airport and fly you out, take about three hours to get there, another three hours in the airplane, and it's over, you're back on U.S. territory."

"What else?"

"Chavez, how'd you like to get the fucker who did this to you?" Clark knew the answer before he'd asked the question.

Admiral Cutter was leaning back in his chair when the phone buzzed. He knew who it was from the line that was blinking. "Yes, Mr. President?"

"Come in here."

"On the way, sir."

Summer is as slow a season for the White House as for most government agencies. The President's calendar was fuller than usual with the ceremonial stuff that the politician in him loved and the executive in him abhorred. Shaking hands with "Miss Whole Milk," as he referred to the steady stream of visitors - though, he occasionally wondered to himself if he'd ever meet a Miss Condom, what with the way sexual mores were changing of late. The burden was larger than most imagine. For each such visitor there was a sheet of paper, a few paragraphs of information so that the person would leave thinking that, gee, the President really knows what I'm all about. He's really interested! Pressing flesh and talking to ordinary people was an important and usually pleasurable part of the job, but not now, a week short of the convention, still behind in the goddamned polls, as every news network announced at least twice a week.

"What about Colombia?" the President asked as soon as the door was closed.

"Sir, you told me to shut it down. It's being shut down."

"Any problems with the Agency?"

"No, Mr. President."

"How exactly -"

"Sir, you told me you didn't want to know that."

"You're telling me it's something I shouldn't know?"

"I'm telling you, sir, that I am carrying out your instructions. The orders were given, and the orders are being complied with. I don't think you will object to the consequences."

"Really?"

Cutter relaxed a bit. "Sir, in a very real sense, the operation was a success. Drug shipments are down and will drop further in the next few months. I would suggest, sir, that you let the press talk about that for the moment. You can always point to it later. We've hurt them. With Operation TARPON we have something we can point to all we wish. With CAPER we have a way of continuing to gather intelligence information. We will have some dramatic arrests in a few months as well."

"And how do you know that?"

"I've made those arrangements myself, sir."

"And just how did you do that?" the President asked, and stopped. "Something else I don't want to know?"

Cutter nodded.

"I assume that everything you've done is within the law," the President said for the benefit of the tape recorder he had running.

"You may make that assumption, sir." It was an artful reply in that it could mean anything, or nothing, depending on one's point of view. Cutter also knew about the tape recorder.

"And you're sure that your instructions are being carried out?"

"Of course, Mr. President."

"Make sure again."

It had taken far longer than the bearded consultant expected. Inspector O'Day held the printout in his hands, and it might as well have been Kurdish. The sheet was half covered with paragraphs entirely composed of ones and zeroes.

"Machine language," the consultant explained. "Whoever programmed this baby was a real pro. I recovered about forty percent of it. It's a transposition algorithm, just like I thought."

"You told me that last night."

"It ain't Russian. It takes in a message and enciphers it. No big deal, anybody can do that. What's really clever is that the system is based on an independent input signal that's unique to the individual transmission-over and above the encipherment algorithm that's already built into the system."

"You want to explain that?"

"It means a very good computer lash-up - somewhere - governs how this baby operates. It can't be Russian. They don't have the hardware yet, unless they stole a really sexy one from us. Also, the input that adds the variable into the system probably comes from the NAVSTAR satellites. I'm guessing here, but I think it uses a very precise time mark to set the encryption key, one that's unique to each up-and-down transmission. Clever shit. That means NSA. The NAVSTAR satellites use atomic clocks to measure time with great precision, and the really sexy part of the system is also encrypted. Anyway, what we have here is a clever way of scrambling a signal in a way that you can't break or duplicate even if you know how it was done. Whoever set this baby up has access to everything we got. I used to consult with NSA, and never even heard of this puppy."

"Okay, and when the disk is destroyed...?"