They walked into the two-story wooden building, wading through the crowded bar inside. The scene was a blast from the pre-war world. David had been here once before when his sister was winged after flight school. The Florabama was one of the most famous Gulf Coast bars, and it was covered with local charm. Men in camouflage Bass Pro ball caps. Dueling Alabama and Auburn fans. Peroxide-blond women in American-flag bikinis sloshing beer in clear plastic cups.
“I could stay in here forever,” remarked one of the FBI agents as they exited the rear of the building and stepped out onto a beach of sugar-white sand.
The other agent said, “It’s almost like they don’t know there is a war going on.”
David said, “Oh, I think they’re well aware.”
On the beach, a large banner read “Florabama Mullet Toss: End of the World Party.”
David said, “Ah, the fabled Mullet Toss.”
“The Mullet Toss. I’ve heard of this…”
Ahead of them, the crowd density increased. In the center of a large group of beach-drinkers was a short, shirtless man in his late fifties. His chest hair would make Magnum P.I. proud.
“Henry Glickstein,” David said. “He lives.”
Henry had a pair of twenty-something women on each arm, and a smoking cigar between his teeth. Someone had provided him with a butchered mullet-style haircut — business in the front, party in the back. The mullet haircut was, creatively, the official hairstyle of the Mullet Toss.
A huge crowd of beer-guzzling beachgoers were gathered around a line of people in the sand. A master of ceremonies watched as they took large fish — mullet — from a plastic bucket and hurled them as far as they could, the fish landing in the sand. Each toss was measured for distance.
David and the FBI agents couldn’t help but smile at the scene. Thousands of miles away, their country was engaged in the opening salvos of a Central American ground campaign. Even the US news sources were pessimistic, suggesting that the PLA could be in Texas by Christmas. But here, on the beach that joined Florida and Alabama, a crowd of Americans celebrated. Like it was their last chance to do so.
“David! David Manning!”
Henry had spotted his friend and was now stumbling over, cigar in one hand, beer in the other. One of the women at his side was taking her turn hurling the mullet, which slipped and landed in the sand at her feet. The other woman was watching and laughing, still connected to Henry, her hand running through his excess of curly chest hair. David tried to ignore that as they spoke.
“What are you doing here?” Henry frowned slightly, looking like he was trying to get both of the Davids to stay still and in focus. Then he noticed the two men in polos and khakis next to David. “Oh. You still working for them?” Like they were Area 51 men in black.
David said, “Henry Glickstein, it’s good to see you again. Listen, I’ve got something I need you to take a look at. It’s quite urgent. Can you come with us?” David looked him over and smiled. “We can get you some coffee.”
A silver fish landed at their feet, kicking up a cloud of white sand. They all turned to look at the thrower.
“Sorry!” A woman wearing a wet T-shirt that read “War Damn Eagle” jumped and waved at them, her bosoms bouncing.
Henry was looking at her as he said, “David, what do you want me to look at?”
“Uh-hum. Henry, this is important.”
He turned to face David. “Sorry. What do you want me to do?”
“We need your expertise. We can go over the details when we get there.”
“Where’s there?”
“Henry, trust me. It’s a very interesting problem to solve. And you’ll be doing your country a great service.”
Henry’s chin raised a notch higher as he took a pull from his cigar. He let out a cloud of smoke, unknowingly in the direction of one of the FBI agents, who began coughing. “Sounds interesting. Like a chance at payback, maybe?”
David winked.
Henry dropped to one knee and pushed the burning cigar into the dead fish lying in the sand. “I’m in.”
“Henry! They’re ready for you!” A handful of young, buxom women, all clad in matching camouflage bikinis, came running up to him, interlocking elbows and guiding him away. Henry turned his head and said, “But there’s one thing I gotta do first…”
One of the agents said, “Who is this guy?”
The other added, “Yeah, and how do I become him?”
David and the agents watched as Henry was taken onto an elevated stage near the beach. A large contraption resembling a crane was connected to one end of the stage.
“What the hell is that?”
The master of ceremonies had just put a helmet, decorated to look like a fish, on Henry’s head. Henry now sat in a chair with huge rubber bands on either side. A group of large tattooed men began pulling Henry’s chair — with Henry in it — backward, the giant rubber bands getting taut as they stretched.
“What the…”
David said, “Oh shit…”
“That doesn’t look safe.”
David tried to look at the FBI agents but couldn’t take his eyes off Henry. “Guys… should we?”
“I know we should stop this,” one of the agents said, “but I have to see what happens…”
The crowd began chanting with Henry. “MULLET TOSS, MULLET TOSS…”
A guy in a hunting cap screamed, “Screw those damn Chi-com bastards! They ain’t ever gonna take the Florabama!”
The crowd was chanting wildly now as Henry, wearing both the fish helmet and an expression of determination, was pulled back nearly twenty feet in a catapult.
And then the men released their grip in unison.
Henry launched into air, limbs flailing, screaming like a little boy as his body flew toward the Gulf of Mexico.
The crowd roared into a climax.
Later, some local news reports would claim Henry reached an altitude of thirty feet. The Pensacola News Journal recorded the tossed distance as one hundred feet into the ocean. David didn’t think it was that far. But there were a few fleeting moments between Henry slamming into the water and the jet-ski safety observers pulling him out when David wondered if the Silversmith team hadn’t just lost one of the world’s preeminent experts on satellite communications to a Florabama Mullet Toss.
25
The next morning Henry Glickstein sat with his legs propped up on a chair, surrounded by members of David’s special project team. He wore sunglasses as he sipped a cup of tea, listening to the ISR and communications team’s summary.
David was pleased that Henry, after some brief medical attention, made a full recovery from the human catapult he’d undergone in the name of Florabama mullet festivities. But looking at the room of skeptical scientists and defense experts, he wondered if Henry might have done a better job ingratiating himself.
Henry said, “You guys tell me if I’m getting this right. Here is the problem statement. A large Chinese military force is fighting us in Central America, and they are growing stronger by the day. Their mini-satellite constellations allow them a significant advantage over US forces during critical junctions. These mass satellite launches give the Chinese periodic access to GPS and secure datalink.”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“And our own satellite capacity is limited. This is the part that confuses me. It was something I didn’t have to deal with. ASAT, is that what you said?”
One of the Air Force officers said, “Yes. Both the US and Chinese shoot down reconnaissance and communications satellites almost as fast as the other can put them into space. But the Chinese have created somewhat of an engineering marvel. On a small island near Hainan, the Chinese have a space launch system far beyond anything we have operational. It is a mechanism for massive mini-satellite launches. They can launch upwards of one thousand of them at a time. Their rockets, which are reusable, land at a base a few thousand miles away and are shipped back to the space launch facility for maintenance, reload, and relaunch. Each rocket is designed to be launched over fifty times before replacement is necessary. This decreases their cost per launch dramatically. So the constraints are the time to create all those mini-satellites, and the time it takes to get the reusable rockets back and set them up for the next launch. Right now, their cycle supports one mass satellite launch per month. When that happens, it creates a mesh network of datalink communications and ISR capability.”