Executive Intent

The president hung up the phone, as did the rest of his national security team, then sat back in his seat, staring at nothing on the conference-room table. He looked utterly deflated, like the home football team’s coach suffering a bad defeat in the Homecoming Day game.

“I wouldn’t agree to anything that bastard says, Mr. President,” Ken Phoenix said after a few strained moments of silence. “He attacked without warning. We should demand-”

The president held up a hand to silence the vice president. “I’m not demanding anything, Ken,” he said. “Right now, I’m ordering: All patrol planes stay at least a hundred miles away from the Russian and Chinese fleets. Our radar planes can still keep an eye on them from a hundred miles.” He took another deep breath, then went on: “I’ll have to have a talk with the congressional leadership, explain what happened.” He paused for a moment, then looked directly at Vice President Phoenix and said, “And I’m ordering the Kingfisher satellites deactivated.”

“What?” Phoenix exclaimed. “Sir, you can’t do that!”

“They’re not worth the aggravation, Ken,” the president said wearily. “Truznyev is right: They are fearful weapons. An aircraft-carrier battle group is intimidating when it’s parked off your shore, but when it sails away and disappears over the horizon, it’s not anymore. The satellites are overhead each and every day. If we completed the constellations, there’d be six overhead every minute of every day. How can we expect any sort of friendship or cooperation from any country who’s facing something like that?”

“Sir, Truznyev created this incident, provoking us to react, just so he could accuse you of belligerence and make unreasonable demands of you,” Phoenix said. “He’s hoping to get you to accept full responsibility for this to force you to pull our forces back from engaging or even monitoring them. Then they’ll be free to sail anywhere they please, conduct any operations they care to, completely without supervision.”

“There won’t be any more provocations, Ken,” the president said, “because we will pull back. We kept an eye on the Russians just fine without flying supersonic bombers around their carriers, and we sure as hell won’t shoot down any more Russian fighters with a space weapon. We’ve protected the nation and the world just fine before Kingfishers and hothead bomber pilots arrived on the scene. No more. I want them shut down immediately.” He turned to Secretary of Defense Turner and added, “I want all other military and intelligence operations in the area to stand down for a couple days. The tension level is getting ratcheted up too high. Keep our carrier away from the Chinese and Russians and let’s everybody just cool down.”

“The intel mission on Socotra Island…?” Director of National Security Vista asked.

“I said all missions,” the president snapped.

“Mr. President, that mission to Socotra Island is meant to provide positive proof that Russia is actively attacking our satellites with damaging streams of data,” Phoenix said. “If we call off the mission, we won’t have proof. I recommend we-”

“We don’t need any proof if the Kingfishers are all shut down.”

“So what will prevent Russia from doing the same attacks to other satellites?” Phoenix asked. “Will we shut down our intelligence satellites next because the Russians don’t like them, or just wait for the Russians to attack them, too?”

“Ken, I said I want to ratchet down the tension level, and any ops against a Russian base will just create more headaches and force everyone’s finger closer to the red button,” the president said.

“Everyone just back off, and let’s hope things quiet down.” He lowered his head for a moment, then said, “Keep me up-to-date on the search for the bomber crewmembers, Mil. Thank God we didn’t lose the tanker, too.”

DIEGO GARCIA, INDIAN OCEAN

A SHORT TIME LATER, EARLY EVENING

“ Mission ’s been scrubbed, guys,” U.S. Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Jason Richter said. “No plans to go in the foreseeable future.” Richter was young, tall, and dark, but the stress of this hastily prepared mission had spread concern across his handsome features. He was sitting in the air-conditioned briefing room of the expeditionary bomb wing stationed at the military airfield on Diego Garcia, a former British navy base located 450 miles south of the southernmost tip of India.

Jason Richter was the commander of the Army Infantry Transformational Battlelab at Fort Polk, Louisiana, designing, building, and testing new devices for future Army infantry forces. He was in charge of developing and fielding a specialized weapon system he had designed years earlier called the Cybernetic Infantry Device, a creation that would eventually change the entire face of land warfare-if anyone could ever find money to fund it.