it. You’re used to being hated, I’m sure. Where did you get that suit?”
Suter was wearing a dark-blue rag that had nothing to recommend it except the crease in the trousers. He reddened and named a department store.
“It looks it. Anyway, I’m sending you someplace else—a place called the Interservice Virtual Intelligence Center.” He grinned. “I’ve made a deal with the devil. You’re going to see he keeps his part of the bargain. That may be just the suit for the devil.” He waved a hand. “Sit, sit; this is going to take a while. What do you know about a project called Peacemaker?”
Atlantic Fleet Headquarters, Norfolk.
“Project Peacemaker!”
In Conference Room B of LantFleet HQ, Alan Craik’s old squadron-mate LCDR “Rafe” Rafehausen was having a briefing. The briefing was part of a larger planning conference for Battle Group Seven, now in its formative stages as it prepared to join Sixth Fleet late that year. Consisting of the CV Andrew Jackson, a Tico-class missile cruiser, and associated destroyers, subs, and support ships, it would carry the flag of Admiral Rudolph Newman aboard the Jackson with Air Wing Five. For Rafe Rafehausen, this would be a make-or-break cruise: he was to join VS-49 as XO only three months before the battle group put to sea, with the awesome certainty that if he did the job well he would become skipper of the squadron two years after he signed on. At the moment, he was sitting in on the planning conference as a guest of the current VS-49 skipper and exec.
The briefer was a captain. Everything about him said he was a hardnose. He was laying it out as if he had been up to the mountain and got the plans on stone. He summarized: “And so this cruise will have two primary responsibilities—Project Peacemaker, in Libya’s Gulf of Sidra in December, and the ongoing support of blockade and air ops in the former Yugoslavia.
“Project Peacemaker will require that we secure the Gulf of Sidra for the Peacemaker launch vessel. This will be a major undertaking involving air and surface elements within fifteen miles of the Libyan coast. We will do a complete, repeat, complete fleet exercise that will mock up the entire operation. Fleetex is currently scheduled for October of this year. That is six-plus months to prepare for units that at this time are not in a high state of readiness!” He glared around the room. Full commanders avoided his hard eyes; lieutenant-commanders blanched. It was no secret that the fleet was below full manpower and that training was behind.
The captain held up a fist, from which an index finger pointed upward like a preacher’s. “Fleetex, Bermuda, October 96.” Another finger pointed. “To sea, November 96.” A third finger. “Peacemaker, Gulf of Sidra, December 96!” He glared. “Questions?” He said it like a man who dared anybody to ask a question.
A courageous commander murmured, “Is that date for Peacemaker firm?”
“Why wouldn’t it be firm?” the captain shouted.
A rash lieutenant, one of the few people in the room below lieutenant-commander, stood up, and Rafehausen groaned inwardly. The lieutenant said, “Bosnia and Peacemaker, that’s it, sir?”
“What else would you like?” the captain snarled.
“Uh—sir, Africa is ready to—” Rafehausen groaned silently again and thought Oh, Christ, another Al Craik!
The captain barked like an aroused Doberman. “Africa’s not even on my map! Bosnia and Peacemaker! Any other questions?”
Rafe had a question, but there was no point in asking it of this guy. It was a question that only Rafe himself could answer, anyway: How am I going to get an under-manned, inexperienced bunch of guys ready for sea in six lousy months? He looked at the man who would by then be his skipper. The guy had a reputation as a screamer and a morale-destroyer. My fucking A! Rafe thought.
Norfolk Naval Base.
“Peacemaker? The hell with it!”
Vice-Admiral Rudolph Newman was the flag commander of Battle Group Seven, which was beginning to take shape. “We’re going to do this right, for once,” he said. He sounded angry, as he always sounded, even when he wasn’t angry. “No Mickey Mouse!” he said.
“No, sir.” His flag intelligence officer was the hardnosed captain who had done the briefing where Rafe Rafehausen had sat in. With the admiral, however, he was sweet as honey. He had served with Newman twice before and knew what the man was like.
“Nothing we can do about this Peacemaker crap,” the admiral growled, “so we’ll have to do it. Keep something in the Fleetex script about it. You know how they scream if somebody’s pet project doesn’t get its due.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But I want a fleet exercise with guts. I want the men and officers who serve under me to know who the enemy is, and I want them to have this experience so they’ll be ready!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Victor-II class submarines. MiG-29s. I want my subs hunted by whatever the latest is that the Soviets have got—the Helix A?”
“Mmm—KA-27PL.”
“Well, extrapolate an upgrade. You know as well as I do the Soviets have one by now. The best, understand? Kirov-plus cruisers. I want an exercise against their best. I don’t want any of this ‘real-world’ crap. ‘Real-world’ means unreal world. Get me?”
“The, um, LantCom Planning Office is scripting a scenario. I’ve been picking their brains. They’re thinking, um, one threat as Libya and the other as Yugoslavia.”
“Negative! See, that’s exactly what I mean. That’s what they’d call ‘real world.’ We can lick those pathetic bastards without a rehearsal. Negative that. You script me a Fleetex that puts me against the Soviets in waters where they can bring their good stuff to bear. Get me?”
The IO nodded. He cleared his throat. “I’ll leave it to you to deal with LantCom, sir?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.”
Interservice Virtual Intelligence Center, Maryland.
“Peacemaker?”
Colonel Han was Chinese-American, an engineer. Suter, fresh from his briefing by his acidic new boss, George Shreed, disliked Han on sight. Han, he could tell, was Mister Nice Guy. Well, screw that.
“Let me put you in the big picture first,” Han said when he had settled behind his desk. “You know what IVI is, or you wouldn’t be here.” He pronounced the acronym for Interservice Virtual Intelligence like “ivy.” The halls of IVI. His round face smiled on Suter.
“Communications research,” Suter replied, “which is why it falls under the Agency’s umbrella.”
Han grunted. He was turning a ballpoint pen in stubby fingers. “The Agency’s mandate inside the US is communications, right.” He smiled again, but Suter suspected he disliked Suter on sight as much as Suter had disliked him. “So your responsibility will include keeping communications separate from anything else, anything that isn’t part of the CIA mandate. Right? I mean, that’s partly why you’re here. Right?”
“What’re
