The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [130]
Van nodded.
“Who the hell are you?” Wimberley demanded. He was shaking. “Where did you come from? What world is this?”
“As long as he’s on our side, what difference does that make?” said Hickok. “It’s time to settle the hash of the Space Invaders here. Hey, Fred! Did you make that Indian Special Ops guy, that actor with the pecs and the biceps?”
“I saw him,” growled Gonzales. “Those Indians sure like ’em pretty. I hate a pretty spook.”
“That actor is the pilot up there. Check this out.” Hickok slapped at his joystick. The jet careened violently. “He’s a real hot dog, isn’t he? He loves to push the envelope!”
“No need to be cornball,” said Gonzales. “Special Ops are ‘the Quiet Professionals.’ So fly them straight out into middle of the Pacific. Fuel runs out, then they go straight into the drink. That’s quick and it’s quiet.”
“The middle of the Pacific is way beyond radio range,” said Hickok. “And that’s too slow. I’m thinking a fast power dive straight onto the top of that mountain yonder.”
“We are letting them go,” Van told him.
“What?” Hickok demanded. “Then why did we just catch ’em?”
“We are letting them go because only punk-ass al Qaeda losers crash airplanes. We caught them to show that we can catch them. We have destroyed the space weapon here. They see that. We own them. They know that. They have no idea who we are. They only know that we are in America, and that we own them. If we kill them now, that sends a message. It says that their resistance matters, so we want to kill them. If we send them back to their bosses, then they become our message.”
“What the heck kind of message is that?” said Hickok. “Can’t we just wipe ’em out? That would do.”
“That message is: Our command of technology is beyond conventional military resistance. The conventional military struggle between nations no longer matters. We are the agents from a new geopolitical arena. It’s time to carry out our struggles in a new, improved way.”
“What kind of cockamamie war doctrine is that?” Hickok demanded.
“It’s cyberwar!” said Wimberley.
“It’s information warfare,” said Gonzales. “It’s like media spin or something. Am I right?”
“They are human beings in there,” said Van. “We need to convince them of something important right now. They need to believe that it’s cyberwar or it’s bloody-handed terror suicide, and those are the only kind of wars that get allowed. Now we can make that distinction clear to them. Let them fly back home, Mike.”
“Okay,” said Hickok. “I know that you know that. What I wanna know is—how do you know that?”
“I was inside that plane once,” Van said. “That’s how I know.”
PENTAGON CITY, SEPTEMBER 2002
Van woke up. It was his birthday. He stared at the cigarette-stained ceiling. This was pretty sure to be the worst birthday of his life.
The federal refund money for the Grendel system had finally come in. That was the pool of cash that he and Dottie were both living on. This was a small miracle, and he was grateful for it, because the CCIAB no longer existed. Quick, quiet, and done with its work, it was not even a Washington memory. Just another blue-ribbon panel, offering wisdom to power. It was as if Van’s labors had never been.
Van had never expected such a strange reaction from Washington’s establishment. He had run a black-bag operation, shot a man, blown up a multimillion-dollar scientific instrument, and captured and released highly placed agents from two foreign intelligence agencies. Van had imagined that they might either arrest him, and put him on trial, or they would give him a secret medal. It had never occurred to Van that he would blow their minds so badly that they would do nothing at all.
The ruined observatory was, officially, the victim of an accidental fire. Officially, Tony Carew had vanished. Better yet, he had vanished in India. Strange news about Tony was all over the Bollywood film magazines. According to the tabloids, he had vanished on a hunting trip to the Himalayas. Nobody had gone to India to look for Tony. Nobody seemed to care about a ruined