Executive Intent

“Completely, sir. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

Darzov thought for a moment. Something was not right. The GRU regularly used a heavy hand in their operations, but they did not target foreign civilians without plenty of reason. But there was no time to waste on this matter now. “Very well, Commander,” he said. “Proceed with the operation.”

“Yes, sir,” the commander said, and the connection was broken. He turned to his operations officer. “We are cleared to radiate, Major.”

Minutes later, 260 miles above Earth, the Kingfisher-3 orbiting interceptor spacecraft rose above Socotra Island ’s horizon. The space tracking facility immediately locked onto it, and steering signals were transmitted to the adjacent parabolic antenna, which also began to track it. When the spacecraft was thirty seconds from its highest point above Socotra Island, sensors detected digital radar emissions from the satellite, and the special intelligence unit’s computers synchronized on the digital data stream and began transmitting corrupt digital data instructions that would be received and processed simultaneously with the radar returns.

The corrupt data stream lasted only tenths of a second, but in that span of time Kingfisher-3’s targeting and identification computers received millions of lines of computer code from the Russian computers on Socotra Island. Ninety percent of the code was rejected as corrupt or irrelevant data, but 10 percent was accepted and processed as valid commands. The commands ran the gamut: Some were orders to shut down, power up, reboot, or do all three at the same time; others were for repositioning and realignment with unrecognizable or illogical references such as the moon or some other celestial body instead of with Earth; others were for immediate engagement of nonexistent targets.

Within minutes of trying to sort out all of the contrary or unexpected commands, the spacecraft simply rejected all commands, safed and locked all of its weapons, reported itself as out of service, and shut itself down.

THE WHITE HOUSE OVAL OFFICE

A SHORT TIME LATER, EARLY EVENING WASHINGTON TIME

“What the hell is it now?” the president asked as he strode into the Oval Office. He drank a full glass of water-he had been in a dinner meeting with his reelection campaign staff, celebrating another primary win, and had a couple glasses of wine, and he hoped the water would dilute some of the alcohol.

“The Reagan carrier group went on battle stations in the Gulf of Aden, sir,” National Security Adviser Conrad Carlyle said. “One of its escort ships, the destroyer Rourke, was participating in a search and rescue for the bomber that was shot down a couple days ago. They found a survivor, but couldn’t pick him up because of low fuel, so they put a rescue swimmer in the water and dispatched another helicopter. The destroyer lost contact with the second helicopter shortly after detecting an unidentified high-speed aircraft heading east toward it.”

The president shook his head in confusion. “So the carrier came under attack?” he asked.

“No, sir,” Turner said. “They lost contact with the second rescue helicopter. The captain of the Reagan must have assumed the helicopter was shot down or collided with the unidentified aircraft and went to battle stations.”

“Did they see this plane attack the helicopter?”

“No, sir. They were out of range. The carrier’s Hawkeye AWACS radar plane detected both the aircraft and the helicopter but did not pick up any distress or warning calls and can’t say for certain what happened. The Hawkeye did pick up some radio traffic between the second chopper and the rescue swimmer, and also detected another helicopter from the west of where the survivor was located.”

“One of ours?”

“No, sir, but by the time a patrol plane from the carrier Reagan got on station, it was gone. The patrol plane searched for it until it got within a hundred miles of the Russian carrier battle group, then turned around.”

“Thank God for that,” the president said. “The last thing we need is for the Russians to shoot down another of our planes. But I still don’t see what the emergency is about. A rescue helicopter went down, and the carrier’s captain suspects something with this unidentified aircraft and goes to battle stations? Does he think the chopper was shot down? Why would anybody shoot down a rescue helicopter?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Carlyle said. “It’s preliminary word, a lot of guesstimates. But I asked that the Navy notify the White House anytime one of their battle groups in the vicinity of the Russian or Chinese carrier groups goes to battle stations for real, so they did. I thought you’d like to know.”