This news sends a little chill through McPherson. “So,” he says, “we’ve got a General James who didn’t want us to get the contract. Why?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping you could tell me. We’re still trying to find out, but I doubt we will any time soon. Certainly not before the GAO releases their report. It’s due out soon, and from what we hear it’s going to be very favorable to us.”
“Is that right?” After all he has heard so far, McPherson is surprised by this. But Goldman nods.
All of a sudden the possibility of getting these men—James, Feldkirk, the whole Air Force—Parnell—the possibility of taking their corrupt, fraudulent, cheating decision and stuffing it back down their throats and choking them on it—the possibility of forcing them to acknowledge that they have some accountability to the rules—oh it rises in McPherson like a great draft of clean fresh air; he almost laughs aloud. “And if it is favorable to us?”
“Well, if their report is stated in strong enough terms, Judge Tobiason won’t be able to ignore it, no matter what his personal biases are. He’ll be forced to declare the contract improperly awarded, and to call for a new process under the Defense Procurement statutes of 2019. They’d have to repeat the bidding process, this time adhering very closely to the RFP, because the courts would be overseeing it.”
“Wow.” McPherson sips his drink. “That might really happen?”
Goldman grins at his skepticism. “That’s right.” He raises his glass, and they toast the idea.
So McPherson returns to California feeling as optimistic about the whole matter as he has since the proposal went from superblack to white.
Back at the office, however, he has to turn immediately to the problem of Ball Lightning. Things are as bad as ever on that front. McPherson’s role has been deliberately left vague by Lemon, as part of the punishment; he is to “assist” Dan Houston, whatever that means, Dan Houston who has had less time with the company and is clearly not competent to do the job. Galling. Exactly what Lemon had in mind.
But worse than that are the problems with the program itself. The Soviets’ new countermeasure for their slow-burning boosters, introducing modest fluctuations in their propulsion—called “jinking”—has made LSR’s trajectory analysis software obsolete, and so their easiest targets have become difficult. Really, offensive countermeasures to the boost-phase defenses are so easy and cheap that McPherson is close to convinced that their free-electron laser system is more or less useless. They’d have better luck throwing stones. (In fact there’s a good rival program at TRW pursuing a form of this very idea.) But the Air Force is unlikely to be happy to discover this, some thirty billion dollars into the project, with test results in their files that show the thing is feasible. Strapped chicken results.
Dan Houston, bowed down by all these hard facts, has already given up. He still comes into the office, but he’s not really thinking anymore. He’s useless. One day McPherson can barely keep from shouting at the man.
That afternoon, after Dan has gone home early, his assistant Art Wong talks to McPherson about him. “You know,” Art says, hesitant under McPherson’s sharp gaze, “Dan’s having quite a bit of trouble at home.”
“What’s this?”
“Well, he made some bad investments in real estate, and he’s pretty far in debt. I guess he might lose the condo. And—well—his ally has left. She took the kids and moved up to L.A. I guess she said he was drinking too much. Which is probably true. And spending too much time at work—you know he never came home in the evenings when he first started on this program. He really put in the long hours trying to get it to work, after we won the bid.”
“I’ll bet.” Considering the tests that won it. Ah, Dan…
“So… well, it’s been pretty hard on him. I don’t think…” Art Wong doesn’t know what else to say.
“All right, Art,” McPherson says wearily. “Thanks for telling me.”
Poor Dan.
That night at the dinner table Dennis watches Lucy bustle around the kitchen telling him about the day’s events at the church, which as usual he is tuning out entirely; and he thinks about Dan. McPherson has spent much of his life—too much of it—at work. On the weekends, in the evenings… But he can see, just by looking at her, that it has never even occurred to Lucy to leave him because of that, no matter how sick of it she may have gotten. It just isn’t something she would do. He can rely on that, whether he deserves it or not. As she passes his chair he reaches out impulsively and gives her a rough hug. Surprised, she laughs. Who knows what this Dennis McPherson will do next, eh? No one. Not even him. He gives her a wry grin, shakes his head at her inquiries, eats his dinner.
And at work he tries to treat Dan with a little more sympathy, tries to lay the eye on him a little less often. Still, one day he can hardly contain himself. Dan is moaning again about the impossibility of their task, and says in a low voice, as if he has a good but slightly dangerous idea, “You know, Dennis, the system makes a perfectly fine weapon for fixed ground targets like missile silos. We’ve worked up its power so much for the rapidly moving targets that stationary ones wouldn’t stand a chance. Missile silos hit before they launch, you know.”
“Not our job, Dan.” Strategy.…
“Or even cities. You know, just the threat of a firestorm retaliation for any attack—who could ignore that?”
“That’s just MAD all over again, Dan,” McPherson snaps. He tries to control himself. “It wasn’t what they bought this system for, so really, it’s irrelevant. We just have to try to track and hold the boosters long enough to cook them, that’s all there is to it. We’ve done everything possible to the power plant—let’s work on tracking and on phased-array to increase the brightness of the beam, and just admit to the Air Force that the kill process will take longer than expected. Call it a boost phase/post–boost phase defense.”
Dan shrugs. “Okay. But the truth is that every defense system we’ve got works even better at suppressing defenses. Or at offense.”
“Just don’t think about that,” McPherson says. “Strategy isn’t our area.”
And they get back to it. Software design, a swamp with no bottom or border. With the deadline closing in on them.
Dennis is in Laguna when he gets the next call from Louis Goldman. “The GAO report is out.”
“And?” Heartbeat accelerating at an accelerating rate, not good for him.…
“Well, it concludes that there were irregularities, and recommends the contract be bid on again.”
“Great!”
“Well, true. But it’s not really as gung-ho as I expected, frankly. The word is that the Air Force really put the arm on the GAO in the last couple of weeks, and they managed to flatten the tone of the report considerably.”
“Now how the hell can they do that?” McPherson demands. “I mean, what sort of power could the Air Force have over the GAO? Isn’t GAO part of Congress? They can’t possibly threaten them, can they?”
“Well, it’s not a matter of threatening physical violence, of course. But you know, these people have got to work with each other in case after case. So if the Air Force cares enough, they can say, Listen, you lay off us on this or we’ll never cooperate with you again—we’ll make sure any dealings you have with us are pure torture for you, and you won’t be able to fully function in this realm anymore. So, the folks at GAO have to look beyond this particular case, and they’re realists, they say, this one is top priority for them, but not for us. And so the report gets laundered a little. No lies, just deemphasizing.”