Goliath

Rocky would be an only child, the product of an interracial, interservice marriage. Her father, whom she affectionately called “Papa Bear,” was career Army all the way. The Bear was a barrel-chested light-skinned African American with a short-cropped auburn Afro and broad smile, who had earned his nickname during his years as a commando in the Army’s Special Forces. Those who served under him knew his bark was worse than his bite, Jackson’s gruff personality hiding a deep loyalty toward his men. Rocky’s mother, Judy, on the other hand, was as quiet as the Bear was loud. A white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, Judy had earned her engineering degree at M.I.T., and had been heavily recruited by the United States Navy. She would meet her future husband in Washington, D.C., during a weeklong munitions convention.

Rocky Jackson might as well have enlisted at birth.

Growing up on a military base with other Army “brats,” Rocky soon began displaying her father’s overly competitive spirit. The fair-headed tomboy not only challenged her male classmates on the athletic fields, but more often than not came out the victor. Much of her “need to exceed” attitude was intended to please Papa Bear, who could always be found hooting and hollering from the Little League bleachers, that is, when he wasn’t traveling abroad on some covert mission.

While her father’s “Special Forces mentality” gave Rocky an edge in athletics, her overly competitive attitude did not mix well in her social life. As she blossomed into adolescence, the beautiful blond teen with the cocoa skin and Jackie Joyner-Kersey physique often intimidated guys and girls alike. Even when she did date, her no-nonsense attitude toward sex quickly earned her a reputation as a prude. This was not to say that Rocky didn’t have the usual adolescent desires—it was just that she was picky. Whoever she might eventually give herself to would have to be able to measure up to Papa Bear, and none of the so-called hotshots at her high school ever did. When her prom date, the school’s starting tailback, decided to push things a bit too far on the dance floor, she calmly reared back and punched the high school all-American in the face, her powerful well-practiced tae kwon do jab shattering his nose.

Though Rocky’s physical prowess and leadership style may have reflected the personality of her father, her academic pursuits were strictly guided by her mother, herself a former engineering student. After graduating with honors from the Naval Academy, Rocky entered M.I.T.’s engineering school, her advanced degree eventually leading to a high-ranking position in the Naval Undersea Warfare Engineering Center (NUWC), in Keyport, Washington.

The military was Rocky’s life, but she had no desire to command in the field. As the Gulf War had demonstrated, technology was the key to America’s dominance as a world power, and Rocky wanted to ride the wave that guaranteed her country’s freedom for decades to come. Her ego-driven career goal was simple: She would immerse herself in as many new hyperadvanced technologies available, learning all she could from the country’s top engineers, and rub elbows with all her father’s “muckety-muck” friends in the Pentagon until the opportunity came to oversee one of the Navy’s new high-tech weapon systems.

Her opportunity would come following several long years working on the Navy’s new SSN Virginia-class attack sub. George W. Bush’s victory had pushed the space-based missile defense shield to the top of the White House’s military wish list. Only six months later, the defection of Vermont senator Jim Jeffords from the Republican Party returned control of the Senate to the Democrats, threatening to send the high-tech, high-cost defense initiative back into development hell. A new project was needed, something more feasible and easier to digest financially, while still packing a wallop regarding America’s national security.

Enter the GOLIATH Project, a top-secret venture carrying a price tag in excess of $10 billion. Unlike SDI, this would be an offensive machine developed by NUWC, a machine capable of altering the strategy of America’s Armed Forces for decades to come—and she was the top candidate in line for the directorship.

Three months later it was made official: Rochelle Jackson had become the most powerful woman in this man’s armed forces.

Less than a year later, her father, now a general in the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), would introduce her to his finest recruit, U.S. Army Captain Gunnar Wolfe, a detachment commander in the elite U.S. Army Rangers. It was in this dark-haired, gray-eyed commando that Rocky Jackson would finally meet her match. Gunnar, an engineering major from Penn State, had been given leave from the field to complete his work on an original design for a remotely operated minisub. Believing the vessel’s design was compatible with his daughter’s program, the Bear had arranged for Gunnar’s transfer to NUWC.