Beyond the sitting area and down carpeted steps, we follow toward the mess hall run by the Navy, busy at this hour with the breakfast crowd. As we move past, I hungrily smell bacon, catching glimpses of blue carpet, paintings of naval scenes, and important-looking people sitting around blue-cloth-covered tables. Another short hallway, and this one dead-ends at a heavy oak door, a red phone receiver on the paneled wall.
The agent scans us into an installation of offices and workstations where the most sensitive information on the planet is exchanged. At the reception desk we’re given keys to store our computers, phones, and other electronic devices in lockers. I left my PEEPS in the helicopter but still have on my SPIES and CUFF, and no one seems the wiser.
I recognize the Situation Room from photos I’ve seen, a big conference table surrounded by black leather chairs. The walls are lit up with flat-screens showing live feeds. The International Space Station. The Baikonur Cosmodrome, Russia’s launch facility in Kazakhstan. Images of China from space. Plus, maps of satellites and junk orbiting the Earth like countless electrons spinning around an atom.
Dick avoids the empty chair at the head of the table, and the one to the right of it. He sits down, and Conn and I take seats on either side of him. Most officials I recognize as I look around a sea of paperwork, water bottles, dark suits, white shirts and ties. ART takes it upon himself to inform me in my SPIES who everybody is in case I grew up in a barn.
But then again, I sort of did, and it feels that way as I sit here sockless in my fire-sale suit surrounded by Mount Olympus. The secretary of state, and directors of the expected agencies. NASA. DARPA. The Secret Service. The National Security Agency (NSA). The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU).
Everybody is a lot more important than I am, to say the least, and I feel shadings of what Lex must feel when he visits a food pantry and rides the bus. I turn toward the door at the sound of footsteps as the president and vice president of the United States walk in, taking their chairs, paper rustling, people greeting each other and making small talk.
“Mr. President, Mr. Vice President,” Dick gets started, acknowledging everyone.
He slides over an electronic tablet, the remote control for the data walls, and I can tell he’s been through this routine many times before.
“I think you know from the materials in front of you that last week we had one of the most serious cyberattacks to date,” he begins, and the president raises a finger the way he does when he’s about to interrupt.
“We’re in a cyber war,” he says, not known for beating around the bush. “An armed space race,” unscrewing the cap from his water bottle. “I don’t know what it’s going to take to make the public understand that. It’s not an eventuality, it’s right now,” taking a drink. “We’ve been suffering attacks on our satellites, serious ones for months, and it’s going to stop. That’s why we’re here today. Because it’s going to stop now,” and I must be imagining it when he looks straight at me.
“We assume they’re attacks,” says the CIA. “What we know for a fact is something is causing incorrect data.”
“The most dangerous thing of all,” the vice president concurs.
“I’d rather have a dead satellite than a brain-damaged one,” the NSA agrees, as does the DIA, the Secret Service, NASA and the Pentagon, everybody nodding their heads, flipping pages and jotting notes.
“I’m going to show you an example,” Dick picks up the tablet. “An incident in Syria last summer involving one of our prototypes,” and I wonder who he means. “Incorrect GPS satellite coordinates were given to a Delta Force, and it ended up exactly where it shouldn’t have been. Just watch.”
All eyes are on the data walls as a video begins to play, accompanied by the subwoofer racket of heavy metal, diesel engines and blowing sand in the muddy lime green of infrared. Refugees with haunted faces stare out from the gouged sockets of bombed doorways and windows.
I recognize sacred ruins, the battered province of Raqqa as a helicopter gunship churns in bone-shaking low and slow. A Blackhawk MH-60L Direct Action Penetrator (DAP) flies over at 91.5 meters (300 feet) or less, tricked out with air-to-air missiles and rocket pods, chain guns under the belly, mini-Gatling guns on the wing stubs, and Hellfires.
Peeling off to the Euphrates River, it skims over water, graceful as a predatory bird, and next we’re taken inside the glass cockpit. Radio chatter peppered by gunfire, and there she is, Carme on the flight deck in a combat helmet, flying solo from the right seat, crowded by a stockpile of ammunition amid a dazzling array of technical information and flight data in LCDs.
My sister shrieks into hairpin turns, the instrument readings straining toward the red, our Delta troops surrounded on the ground and about to get slaughtered. Radio exchanges are frantic, the situation critical on the ground.
“Kilo 1-5, our position is compromised. Request immediate Q-R-F!”
“Negative on Q-R-F, Kilo 1-5.”
“Kilo 1-5, request speedball immediately.”
“Negative on the speedball.”
“Then air assist, scramble some F-18s over here now . . . !”
I can see Carme’s CUFF and the unusual sensor-embedded fabric of her flight suit as her black-gloved finger presses the mic trigger on the cyclic.
“Kilo 1-5, be advised in from the north, danger close, three miles,” her voice over the radio just like mine, banking hard to the right, thudding lower.
“Denied. You’re not cleared hot. Do not engage. Repeat. Denied. Do not engage.”
“A little late for that,” Carme comes back.
My heart pounds as I watch her descend into the firefight from hell. Lower and slower, settling into an audacious rock-hard hover, eye to eye with enemy rebels on the ground.
The burping of Gatling guns. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM . . . ! Hellfires streaking. BLAM! BLAM . . . ! Scorched earth, and in the distance the massive up-lit Tabqa Dam . . . , then Dick pauses the video.
“Erroneous information that created a catastrophic situation as you may have gathered,” Dick says, “and the pilot happened to be in the area when all this went down,” he doesn’t mention that the pilot is my twin. “And she disobeyed orders not to intervene, not necessarily what we encourage in the military but in this case effective.”