'I thought the numbers were very good,' Madison said. 'Eighty-eight percent of our aircraft are combat-ready -'
'This is my meeting, General - don't try to take over the agenda. And don't try making any more smoke. There was enough of that in the readiness report.'
'Mr Secretary, I don't understand why -'
'Oh, you don't? You don't think counting the entire Special Forces order of battle as ready for a Trigger-neutralized combat environment is deceptive?'
'No, sir, I think that's absolutely legitimate. Every one of those men gets extensive and intensive training with alternative weapons, particularly the knife and hand-to-hand.'
'And every one of them is still being issued a gun as their primary weapon. Every sniper is still carrying a gun. Every unit is still giving first priority to proficiency on the firing range. And none of those units, not even the Rangers, are prepared to deploy in force to defeat an enemy that's in the field in force.'
'Mr Secretary, if the situation arose, there's no reason we couldn't use them that way -'
'Come on, Donald, you're not talking to some wide-eyed Iowa lawyer who just got into town,' Stepak said gruffly. 'You and I both know that the natural operational unit for Special Forces is something closer to the platoon than the battalion. You and I also know that using them as primary combat troops means losing them for SpecOps.'
'Why should that matter?' Madison said with undisguised bitterness. The President has had half of them standing post, babysitting, for the better part of two years now - so it's obvious that their primary mission isn't viewed as having any value.'
Stepak was shaking his head. 'General Madison, that's unworthy of you and of this office. But maybe it helps explain the rest of the readiness report. The Army has exactly one company training with bows, one company training with quarterstaves, one company training with electrical weapons, one company training with compressed-air dartguns - as if we were only ever going to need them in SpecOps numbers.'
Those are developmental projects. We're still evaluating the weapons and the training models.'
'Of course you are,' said Stepak. 'But speaking of models - the Navy has given every carrier task force Trigger-equipped ASW pickets and RPVs, but hasn't taken the first step toward creating an alternative force projection model - something that could survive a Trigger attack, which none of our task forces could today.'
'It's impossible. We can put five, six, seven hundred ships in the water, but unless we can arm them, they might as .well be yachts at a regatta. We can't go back to catapults and burning pitch, or rams and boarding parties.'
'Why not? In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. In the new order of things, the primary role of the Navy may turn out to be delivering troops and materiel, and the primary threat may turn out to be small, high-powered, remotely-piloted vessels designed to punch holes in the hull, or tangle the props in a trailing cable.'
'What "new order of things"?' Madison asked, his tone contemptuous. The gun, the missile, the bomb, the torpedo, the artillery shell - those are still the "order of things", and they will be until long after both of us are gone.'
'Seen any horse-mounted cavalry lately, General? Times change. Your problem is that you refuse to see the change that's already here.'
He reached down beside his chair and lifted his oversized black briefcase onto his lap. Pressing his thumbs against the smart catches, he raised the lid, then turned the briefcase a half-turn so Madison could look inside it. The chairman stared uncompre-hendingly.
'This is Terabyte's prototype for a briefcase Jammer,' Stepak said softly. 'A working prototype. I turned it on outside the main security checkpoint, and disarmed every weapon in this end of the building.'
'You did what?'
'I turned it on again just a moment ago. There isn't a working weapon within a hundred meters of this office, up, down, or sideways. If I plugged this into line current, I could make it three hundred meters and keep it that way indefinitely. You can check the pistol you keep in that safe in your desk, if you'd like. Or call in the guard. You're both disarmed.'
'What do you think gives you the right -'
'It's my goddamned responsibility, Donald -just like it was yours. But you bet on the wrong horse. You didn't like the direction things were headed and you took a chance that they wouldn't go any further. Now you know you were wrong.' Stepak closed the briefcase. 'It has gone further, and we're not ready.'
'I don't accept that assessment.'
'Where's your nearest alternative-weapons unit, General? What happens when the Pentagon security detachment reaches for their guns and finds them Jammed? You kept us in a conventional defense posture - which means you've left us vulnerable. You counted on your new explosives and new propellants to preserve the status quo, and you didn't prepare for the possibility of being wrong. That's inexcusable, General.'
Madison's face reddened and his right hand became a fist, but he said nothing.
Standing, Stepak dropped his voice to a level he was certain would not carry beyond the door. 'Now we have to make up for lost time, and transform our defense posture virtually overnight. The President and I need to have full confidence that the person in this office has both the ability and the vision to lead us through that process.'
He paused, giving Madison a chance to make the offer, but the chairman was stubborn to the last, and made Stepak say it.
'Donald, the President sent me to thank you for your service, and ask for your resignation.'
Madison blinked three times, then squeezed his eyes shut for a moment before rising from the chair. 'You may inform the President he'll have it by the end of the day.'
'I know he appreciates your cooperation, General.'
Stepak moved as if to leave, but Madison edged sideways and blocked his way. 'Roland -I did what I thought was right for the country.'
'If this wasn't moot now, I'd ask exactly how dragging your feet in complying with a directive from the C-in-C is more like loyalty than insubordination.'
'I did what my experience told me needed to be done,' Madison said angrily. 'I only wanted to ensure our security.'
'I know that, Donald. The problem is that none of our experience applies. Everything we know is wrong.' Stepak started toward the door once more.
Madison reached out and grabbed the secretary of defense's arm. 'Roland - you should understand. You've worn the uniform. I couldn't be the one to tear it all apart. I don't believe in it. We teach soldiers to love their guns for a reason - a good reason.'
'I do understand, Donald. I understand all of that.'
Emboldened, Madison added, 'I always figured, if you beat all the swords into plowshares today, you're going to find 'em fighting with plowshares tomorrow. You might as well keep the swords, especially if you're already good with them.'
'If swords were the worst of our problems, we wouldn't be having this conversation.' He shook his head. 'It's going to be a new world, and I don't know if fossils like you and me will ever be comfortable in it. But we can't stop it from coming. And if we can't bring ourselves to help, the only honorable thing left is to get out of the way.'
Madison sighed, and in doing so seemed to shrink. 'Yes. Yes, I suppose that's what it will take. Perhaps younger, more flexible minds may find opportunities where I can only see danger.'
'I'm sure they'll pleasantly surprise us,' Stepak said. They are our children, after all.'
Showing a wan smile, Madison retreated out of Stepak's way. 'If I might be allowed to make a suggestion regarding my replacement -'
I'll be happy to convey your thoughts to the President.'
'Thank you,' Madison said. 'Would you tell him, please, that he would do well to consider the Vice Chairman - General Heincer.'
'And your reason for saying this? -'
'I know Bill's held his tongue in front of the President, out of deference. But in the chiefs' private sessions, he's been far and away the most vigorous defender of the President's viewpo
int - so much so that I'm afraid the rest of us started calling him The Lone Ranger. Moving him up would send an unambiguous message. I expect it could change the outlook of the chiefs overnight, without changing any more of the faces.'
At Stepak's questioning look, he added, 'I'm not protecting anyone. The last thing we need now is to create the impression of a revolt of the generals, and to have the aftershocks of that propagating down through the ranks. That wouldn't be conducive to good order and discipline during what we both know will be a difficult transition.'
Stepak nodded appreciatively. 'I'll be sure the President receives the benefit of your perspective.'
Evan Stolta poked his head into Grover Wilman's office and rapped his knuckles on the jamb to get Wilman's attention. 'There's been a little movement in the numbers,' he said, his tone upbeat. 'You should take a look.'
Before Wilman could say anything, the senior strategic consultant was gone again.
Wilman sighed. That was the pace of life now at the Mind Over Madness site in Georgetown - nonstop motion. In less than three months, MOM had doubled in size, tripled in staff, and hived off StreetSmart and The Peace Library into their own facilities. The growth had come at the price of the atmosphere of earnest dedication which had formerly prevailed. It was now more campaign headquarters than foundation, more nerve center than think tank.
Something else had disappeared along with the opportunity for quiet reflection. That was Wilman's ability to maintain a hands-on, face-to-face familiarity with all aspects of domestic operations. There was too much going on in too many places, too many shoulders to peek over, too many obligations tying him to his desk comset, which had become the only window through which he viewed his work and his world.
'Polling, current, trends, on screen,' he said, and sat back in his chair to study the charts. The foundation was buying continuous polling from two different services on six key attitudinals, looking for weakness on either side of the great divide in public opinion.
On one side were those who saw guns as the greater danger, who would gladly live in a residence protected by a LifeShield, and who were reassured by the idea that the police had this technology and that public places were protected by it. After a steady slide from highs of sixty percent or better, those numbers had been stalled in the low forties for months. The demographics of this core group were slanted toward women, college graduates, parents, older adults, and suburban dwellers. The key value that unified them was the importance they placed on community.
On the other side were those who feared the mysterious and unfamiliar forces of the Trigger more than the familiar presence of firearms, who would rather keep and carry a gun than depend on anyone else's protection, or who were more worried about a police state than about crime statistics. The hardcore constituency for unrestricted gun ownership amounted to no more than twenty percent of the adult population - overwhelmingly white men, many of whom had a silent agenda of racism, class warfare, or political dissent.
But this uncompromising nucleus had successfully exploited fear to build a majority allied against both government and private use of the Trigger. Their coalition drew heavily on rural families, single urban men, conservative Christians, the working poor, the disaffected, and young liberals deceived into thinking that they were defending individual liberty. But the true unifying value, the polls revealed, was the community of one - one man, one family, one color, one creed.
Winning back members of this swing group meant addressing their fears and awakening their consciences. Neither was an easy task. All too often, fear was deaf to reason, and conscience insensible to an outsider's plight.
But Stolta was right - the new dailies showed a little movement in the numbers.
Looking at the groups involved, Wilman thought he knew the reason. The Mind Over Madness action committee had been diligently digging up LifeShield success stories from around the globe, and aggressively promoting them to the media. In the last few weeks, the committee had scored several high-profile placements, largely due to events beyond America's borders.
In the Yucatan, the ancient Mayan cities of Uxmal, Labna, and Chichen Itza opened to both tourists and scientists for the first time in nearly a decade. The Trigger had brought an end to the civil war which had enveloped the archaeological treasures, but it had taken the Jammer to clear the sites without further damage to the temples.
Jerusalem, which had fourteen marked and six unmarked Jammer vans patrolling its streets on a daily basis, celebrated the first year in its entire history without a single bombing or shooting death. The highly-rated video columnist Regina Wickman did the best job with that story, demonstrating with dramatic then-and-now footage that the soldier with the submachine gun had disappeared from public view.
I've been living out of a backpack for most of the last sixteen years,' said Wickman, standing in front of the Wailing Wall. 'I've walked the streets of two hundred cities in more than forty countries. But as an American traveler abroad, I've never grown accustomed to the sight of assault weapons slung over the shoulders of policemen, or carried casually in marketplaces.
To some, those very visible weapons represent security - but they've always made me feel anything but secure. No matter how much I might find to like or admire about a Kinshasa or a Seoul or a Buenos Aires, I cannot say that I'm ever comfortable in such places. Guns are a blemish on the face of society - any society
- and I've never seen a cityscape that wouldn't be improved by their disappearance.
'And that is exactly what has happened here in Jerusalem. In a city which has been fought over for millennia, there is now a strange and unaccustomed peace. It is not that the old antipathies have been resolved, or that the old adversaries have grown weary of the fight. But in a city diligently cleansed of firearms on a daily basis, we can see the promise of the new technology - killing has become so much harder here that it just might be easier to learn to live together.'
But even talented journalists found it hard to make news out of events that never happened. It was easier to note the failures than credit the successes. And under the seemingly immutable rules that governed human emotional identification, a thousand lives saved in Ethiopia counted for less than one life lost in Erie - so long as the face of the victim was the same color as the face of the person adding up the damages.
Glad as Wilman was for the good news from elsewhere, he prayed for a success story closer to home - preferably a very public one, with good camera coverage and a photogenic rainbow of grateful near-victims. Something at a marquee sporting event, perhaps, or a threat to Mardi Gras or the Oscars.
But while he was waiting to hear from god, there was more than enough to keep Wilman busy.
'Senator Wilman?'
The floor manager for Mind Over Madness's walk-in services had a curious note in his voice and a quizzical expression on his face. Neither seemed to match the priority cut-in channel through which the page had come.
'What is it, Donald?'
'Sir - could you please come down to the counseling bullpen? Right away, if at all possible -'
'I might. Could I have a reason?'
Frowning, the floor manager glanced sideways. 'Senator - it's the damnedest thing. Do you remember that conversation we had after last Monday's teleconference?'
'I think I do. We were talking about how to handle priority clients -'
In fact, the discussion had been on handling possible security problems, including a building incursion. Wilman brought up the coverage map for the building video intranet and began scanning through the stations nearest the one the floor manager was using.
'That's the one. There's someone down here asking to see you.'
By then, Wilman had found the view he wanted - one that clearly showed the young man with the short black hair and what looked like an Imperial stormtrooper's utility belt under his black-and-red flannel shirt. 'Someone with a serious problem, I take it?'
'Well, Senator, he clearly thinks it's serious.
And he's asking for you specifically.'
'You can tell him I'll be down shortly. I have a couple of calls to make.'
It was not hard to get his calls taken by the right people. Wilman watched from his second-floor office window as the NV25 and ActionCam 17 sedans screeched to a stop at the curb below. Soon after, a SkyEye remotely piloted hovercam - a civilian spinoff from a Hughes battlefield monitor - arrived on the scene and began peering in windows with its low-light camera and audio telescope.
But Wilman lingered, waiting until CNN2 went live with the internal security feed he had offered them. He paused before the wall-mounted flatscreen just long enough to hear the anchor sol-emnly intone the introductory voiceover: This is breaking news from CNN - Pacifists Under Siege in the nation's capital. The quiet, collegial community of Georgetown is holding its breath this morning as a bomb-wielding terrorist holds more than seventy people hostage at the headquarters of -' Satisfied, Wilman headed for the stairs.
Up until the moment he announced himself to the tall man behind the reception desk, everything had gone as David Thomas Mallock had planned.
His ancient Tracker, bought at auction from a Dallas wholesale lot, had held together for the thirteen-hundred-mile drive from Palestine, Texas to Georgetown with only two minor breakdowns. He had kept his speed down and maintained a low profile on the road - though there had been one scare near Knoxville, Tennessee, when a state trooper settled behind him and tailed him for nearly two miles before taking an exit. Mallock had kept to the freeway motels and truck stops and off the money net, stingily doling out the cash he had collected from friends and family for his pickup, his stereo, and his computer.
The meeting in Rock Creek Park had gone off on schedule and without a hitch. With thundering Beltway traffic masking the few words needed for the transaction, Mallock traded the last of his cash for the 500 grams of plastic explosive.