Tom Clancy's op-center_ acts of war - Tom Clancy [76]
"Don't pull any punches," Hood said. "Give it to me straight."
"Sorry," Bicking said, "but you've got all these ancient hatreds being fanned and interacting--Turkey and Greece, Syria and Turkey, Israel and Syria, Iraq and Kuwait, and various combinations and multiples thereof. The smallest thing can trigger any of them. And once those locusts start hopping--"
"You've got a swarm," Hood said.
"The swarm," Bicking replied.
Hood nodded unhappily. Suddenly, there was going to be a lot more to do in Damascus than save the ROC.
Bicking twirled his hair a little faster. He peered at Hood from under heavily lidded eyes. "Here's a thought," he said. "Let me work on the ROC situation while you and Dr. Nasr concentrate on preventing a major conflagration."
"There may not be a lot of time to work on the ROC situation," Hood said. "If there's even a remote chance that it will be used by the Kurds, the President is going to order the ROC found and destroyed."
"Pronto," Bicking added. "And finding it won't be a problem. As soon as they uplink, the military will have signal to lock on to--"
Hood grabbed the phone and dialed. "That's how we buy time."
"How?"
"If the captors manage to turn on the ROC, the signal has to go through the satellite. When it does, there may be a way Matt Stoll can shut it down. If the ROC is dead in the water, we may be able to convince the President to give us time to negotiate a release."
Bicking twirled rhythmically. "It's good," he said.
Hood waited for the connection to go through. The plan to destroy the ROC was a simple one. There was no self-destruct button. It had to be designed as a completely unarmed facility in order to be allowed into many foreign nations. Instead, wherever it went, it could be taken out by a Tomahawk missile, which could be launched from ground, air, or sea and had a range of over three hundred miles. Equipped with terrain-following computers, it could hit the ROC virtually anywhere.
Stoll's assistant answered the phone. He put Matt on at once.
"Are we secure?" Stoll asked breathlessly.
"No," Hood said.
"All right, then listen," the computer expert told him. "You know that missing rock and roll group?"
"Yes," Hood said. They didn't have code phrases to describe the situation with the ROC, so Stoll was improvising.
"There's an ambient level of juice which radiates out when their amps are on," Stoll said. "Bob lost that when the rockers pulled the plug earlier."
"I understand," Hood said.
"Okay. Now our high-dying friend the ES4 is beginning to pick up a signal again."
The ES4 was the Electromagnetic Spectrum Satellite Surveillance System. The sensors were a component in a chain of mufti-purpose satellites which read terrestrial radiation in frequencies from 1029 to zero hertz and in wavelengths from 10-13 centimeters to infinity. These readings included gamma rays, X-rays, ultra-violet radiation, visible light, infrared, microwaves, and radio waves.
"So we now know exactly where the band is?" Hood asked
"Yes," Stoll replied. "But not what they're doing."
"No audio yet," Hood said.
"Zippo," said Stoll. "What's significant, though, is that the band leader's not in any rush to get on-line again."
"How can you tell?"
"According to the tests we ran back here before they left, you can get from zero to sixty, so to speak, in about four minutes and change. You follow?"
"Yes," Hood replied. The batteries which had been removed inside the ROC could be replaced in a little over four minutes.
"At the gate El Supremo's plugging things in," Stoll went on, "the bandwagon won't be up to full power, nor the wheels turning, for another fifteen minutes or so. That's twenty-five minutes in all."
"Which means the outer band's still in charge of the equipment,"