Call to Treason - Tom Clancy [93]
The latter could be particularly devastating. Unlike conventional explosives, which destroyed a plane in the air, an e-bomb would simply shut the engine off and drop the plane, its fuel, and its bombs on whatever was below. An enemy bomber taking off could be used to cripple its own air base. Tactical e-bombs could be fired air-to-air.
A single fighter would be able to destroy entire enemy squadrons and their payload. Mini e-bombs, smaller than the one used against Op-Center, could become effective antiterrorist tools. In a properly shielded nuclear power plant, dam, or passenger aircraft, an electromagnetic pulse could be employed to shut down timers and thereby defuse bombs.
Of course, the reverse was also true. E-bombs could be used against American military assets and domestic infrastructure, just as it was today in Op-Center. Nuclear war had never really been an option. An EMP conflict, a war against binary digits, was probably inevitable.
And we may have just fought the first battle against ourselves, Rodgers thought. There was something unpleasantly biblical about that. It was a new world, and not necessarily brave. Combat would be waged via monitors and grids, not face-to-face or vehicle-to-vehicle. Maybe that was better for the psyche, and soldiers would be better adjusted.
Post-traumatic stress would be reduced to a level of disappointment equal to losing a video game.
Rodgers wondered whether the senator's office had already heard what happened. Not that it mattered. A first reaction would not tell him whether or not they had been involved. He was more interested in going there, integrating himself in the activities of the late afternoon, and watching the people. Rodgers would be looking for exchanged glances when something about the attack was mentioned, or whispered phone conversations. Then there was the best information-gathering technique at all: the direct question. What was said was often less revealing than what was not said. His last talk with Paul Hood was evidence of that. The director of Op-Center knew exactly where Rodgers was going but did not offer advice. There was trust, caution, hope, and even gratitude in Hood's silence.
The senator's office seemed no different than it had been before.
Kendra Peterson was standing outside her office, talking to an assistant. When the woman saw Rodgers, she stopped what she was doing and went to him. Her slender face reflected deep concern.
"General, did you hear about Op-Center?" Kendra asked.
"I was there," Rodgers told her.
"Sweet Jesus."
"How did you find out?" Rodgers asked.
Kendra took him by the elbow and led him to a corner, away from the intern pool. "The senator received a call from Dan Debenport at the CIOC."
"Why would Senator Debenport call here about that?"
"To say that he would request emergency funding so that Op-Center could continue to function," she replied. "Senator Orr is Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Short-Term Funding."
"That makes sense." Rodgers wondered if it was also a warning to Senator Orr that the investigation of William Wilson's death would continue. He could not understand why Debenport would be interested.
Perhaps it was nothing more than backroom drama taking a turn in the footlights. "Is the admiral around?"
"Actually, he is not," she told him. "He left for a meeting with network producers about covering the convention. Do you need to talk to him? His