The Destroyer - 75 - The Destroyer 075 - Rain of Terror by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

Author:Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir [Murphy, Warren & Sapir, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pulp Action
Publisher: PINNACLE BOOKS
Published: 2010-03-19T14:51:56+00:00

Chapter 18

A week passed.

No fur­ther at­tacks were made on the Unit­ed States of Amer­ica. NO­RAD radar sys­tems picked up no uniden­ti­fi­able ob­jects over the At­lantic. With no on­go­ing emer­gen­cy to sus­tain the cri­sis at­mo­sphere, the mil­itary went back to De­fcon Three and then De­fcon Four. The Wash­ing­ton press corps, af­ter be­ing sup­plied cer­ti­fied copies of the Pres­ident’s lat­est phys­ical, filled news­pa­per col­umn inch­es and air­time with the sto­ry that the Pres­ident had no drink­ing prob­lem af­ter all.

The Pres­ident read the morn­ing news­pa­pers and shook his head.

“They’ve ab­solved me of a drink­ing prob­lem as if they were all buck­ing for Pulitzers. It was a non­sto­ry, for cry­ing out loud.”

At the oth­er end of the line, Dr. Harold W. Smith said, “What? Ex­cuse me. What did you say?”

“Have you been lis­ten­ing to me, Smith?”

“Yes, of course,” Smith said. His voice was vague.

“Smith?”

“Of course, Mr. Pres­ident. I hearti­ly agree.”

“Smith!” the Pres­ident roared. “What are you do­ing?”

“Oh!” Smith’s voice was sud­den­ly at­ten­tive. “I’m sor­ry, Mr. Pres­ident. The ES Quan­tum was down­load­ing new in­tel­li­gence feeds and I was mo­men­tar­ily dis­tract­ed. They’re re­al­ly amaz­ing. I be­lieve I’m get­ting di­rect trans­mis­sions from or­bit­ing So­vi­et satel­lites.”

“They get those at the NSA all the time.”

“With in­stan­ta­neous trans­la­tion and code de­crypt­ing?”

“No. Any­thing hot?”

“All rou­tine. But it’s on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore we pick up some­thing cru­cial. I must tell you, sir, this sys­tem is won­der­ful.”

“You sound hoarse, Smith. Are you all right?”

“I’ve been up for three days. Even with the com­put­er help­ing log and sort and an­alyze, these in­ter­cepts are just too re­mark­able. I guess I’ll get used to it. But I can see that once the cur­rent cri­sis had passed, our op­er­ation will have a far greater sit­ua­tion­al in­ter­dic­tion ca­pa­bil­ity.”

“That’s what I’ve been try­ing to tell you, Smith. The cri­sis has passed.”

“I’m glad to hear that, Mr. Pres­ident,” Smith said, his voice trail­ing off.

“Dammit. There he goes again. Smith!”

“Er, yes. Sor­ry. You were say­ing?”

“I think it was my speech. I scared them off-​who­ev­er they were.”

“I’m sor­ry that I’ve so far been un­able to iso­late the ag­gres­sor, Mr. Pres­ident. But so much da­ta is com­ing in, that even with the sys­tem’s help, we’re just awash in sort­ing and anal­ysis tasks.”

“If there is no im­me­di­ate threat, then we can deal with this lat­er. My oth­er sources have come up with noth­ing ei­ther. I think it’s about time we sent your peo­ple home. When you come up with a tar­get, they’ll be free to seek it out.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Re­mo.

The Pres­ident turned. Re­mo poked his head out from be­hind the Amer­ican flag and gave the Pres­ident a friend­ly wave. The Pres­ident waved back un­cer­tain­ly. He had checked the flags the first thing. He’d been dead cer­tain they were un­in­hab­it­ed.

“Did you get my last ship­ment, Smith?” the Pres­ident asked.

“Thank you, I did.”

“I’ll leave it to you to show your peo­ple how to han­dle the new tech­nol­ogy,” said the Pres­ident, hang­ing up. “Okay, you can go now,” the Pres­ident said to the of­fice flags. When the flags did not re­ply, the Pres­ident got up and looked be­hind them.

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