Wimberley returned to Van with the abandoned rifle. He checked the action expertly. “No round inside the chamber. Safety still on. He busted the scope when he dropped it, too.” He returned to his screen. “You were right about the no-guns rule, sir. Guns, that’s just not our way.”

  “What does a giant laser death ray run under?” said Van.

  “OpenBSD. And X-Windows.”

  “Awesome.” Van had another huff of oxygen.

  “I can run this console. I’m controlling all the enemy’s software. You know what, sir? I’m about to blow up a spacewar weapon. I’m gonna save an American satellite. Me. William C. Wimberley. This is the most important thing I’m ever gonna do in my whole life, and I’m only twenty-one years old.” Wimberley looked at Van and blinked. “You didn’t have to give me another chance, sir. I broke your head in.”

  Van shrugged.

  “I am such a screwup. I’ve always been a loser. When your phone call came for me to do this, I was drunk and I was crying in my beer. I just thought, maybe he’ll give me some money. I’m a pretty smart kid, Dr. Vandeveer, but I never knew who I was, or what the hell I was doing. I’m finally gonna do something here that really, really matters.”

  Van nodded. He had heard about such things before, but he had never before seen it happen. He was seeing a troubled young man rehabilitated by his military service.

  “The past is over and we’re gonna set it on fire,” Van told him, waving him on with his free left arm. “You carry on.”

  Van watched his laptop screen for Hickok’s video surveillance.

  The observatory’s round wall was bulging. The building warped and began gently smoldering. It was very strange to witness a weapon being demolished on a screen, thought Van. He had just been physically inside that place. He had ordered all the buttons pushed to smash it, but the resulting mayhem could have been anywhere on the planet: North Korea, Iran, Iraq.

  Plumes of red light. Boiling gas was squeezing itself through the curved doors to the heavens. As the gas hit fresh air, it caught in thin, livid flames.

  There was violent flashover as all the laser-blasted fumes within the structure ignited at once. The explosion was sudden and elegant. The walls of packed hay splayed out like a giant child puffing a dandelion. The observatory blew its top. The rounded dome tumbled headlong down the mountainside, twirling like a tossed coin.

  Tufts of flaming hay swirled across the blackened foundation. Bouquets of flame stuck to the molten instrument consoles. The Lady was in agony. She was blackened, on her knees. Her very bones were going. The mirror of Venus, stamped flat by the boot of Mars.

  When dawn broke, the black helicopters had already been and gone. The local civilians were standing around the wreckage of their telescope. Their prized handiwork was a total, tragic loss. Some of them were spraying bits of flaming hay with fire extinguishers. Most were just wringing their hands, mourning in small groups. It was an awful thing to lose a major scientific instrument. It was a cultural calamity. Gonzales offered Van a pair of binoculars. Van refused them.

  Van didn’t care to look at people as the smoke rose from their hopes and dreams. One of them was almost certainly Dottie.

  “You gotta try this MRE, Van,” said Hickok. “A man who’s lost some blood needs to eat a meal. You learn that in combat.”

  “Is that dogface chow?” said Wimberley, sniffing at it.

  “No, man, this stuff’s brand-new. It’s civilian MRE. Made in Brazil! Got this sort of pork loin and pineapple thing going, these really spicy black beans . . . and it’s self-heating!”

  Van put the food across his knees. He used the fork left-handed. The food tasted great. In Brazil, people could really cook. Why did Brazil never have wars? he wondered. Brazil was a really big country on a big American continent. How come Brazil had no enemies? It didn’t make sense.

  Brazilians didn’t invent much. Well, that explained it.

  Van had more oxygen. His tank was low.

  “Here comes the enemy plane,” said Gonzales.

  “Okay,” said Hickok, climbing to his feet. “Now this is the part that an Air Force boy likes best.”

  The Indian actor was flying his newly purchased jet plane. He had just taxied off from the DeFanti airstrip. It seemed a little odd to Van that two groups of Chinese and Indian spies would fly off across the Pacific Ocean together, all polite and collegial, inside the same aircraft. But they were people of two practical nations, thought Van, and the trip here hadn’t been their idea.

  For a moment, Van suspected that the Boeing was out of range of the overriding radio signal. But when it came to forward air-controlling operations in the mountains, Michael Hickok knew his stuff.

  The jet banked hard left and roared over them so sharply that the mountainside shook. Birds exploded from the forest.

  Wimberley had taken off his helmet to eat. He jammed his hands over his ears.

  Hickok caressed his joystick. The captured jet spewed black smoke and rose in a steep arc. “Looka that,” crowed Hickok. “I got ’er. Boys, this is sweet.”

  “Okay,” said Wimberley in a stunned, small voice. “You just used that black box and you pulled a jet out of the sky.”

  Van and Hickok exchanged wary glances. Wimberley and Gonzales had not attended the Summit in Virginia. The general public was not at all up to speed about cyberwar projects to control civilian jets.

  “Yeah, I did that,” Hickok told him, grinning. “Now watch me put ’er into a slow loop over the telescope ground zero there. That aircraft is chock-full of Indian and Chinese space spies. Can you imagine the nerve of those clowns? They’re supposed to hate each other! Everybody knows they hate each other! But here they are, infiltrating our own country, and picking on my favorite satellite. I have got them right by the throat!”

  Wimberley stared at Van. “You can really grab jets out of the sky?”

  Van nodded.

  “Who the hell are you?” Wimberley demanded. He was shaking. “Where did you come from? What world is this?”

  “As long as he’s on our side, what difference does that make?” said Hickok. “It’s time to settle the hash of the Space Invaders here. Hey, Fred! Did you make that Indian Special Ops guy, that actor with the pecs and the biceps?”

  “I saw him,” growled Gonzales. “Those Indians sure like ’em pretty. I hate a pretty spook.”

  “That actor is the pilot up there. Check this out.” Hickok slapped at his joystick. The jet careened violently. “He’s a real hot dog, isn’t he? He loves to push the envelope!”

  “No need to be cornball,” said Gonzales. “Special Ops are ‘the Quiet Professionals.’ So fly them straight out into middle of the Pacific. Fuel runs out, then they go straight into the drink. That’s quick and it’s quiet.”

  “The middle of the Pacific is way beyond radio range,” said Hickok. “And that’s too slow. I’m thinking a fast power dive straight onto the top of that mountain yonder.”

  “We are letting them go,” Van told him.

  “What?” Hickok demanded. “Then why did we just catch ’em?”

  “We are letting them go because only punk-ass al Qaeda losers crash airplanes. We caught them to show that we can catch them. We have destroyed the space weapon here. They see that. We own them. They know that. They have no idea who we are. They only know that we are in America, and that we own them. If we kill them now, that sends a message. It says that their resistance matters, so we want to kill them. If we send them back to their bosses, then they become our message.”

  “What the heck kind of message is that?” said Hickok. “Can’t we just wipe ’em out? That would do.”

  “That message is: Our command of technology is beyond conventional military resistance. The conventional military struggle between nations no longer matters. We are the agents from a new geopolitical arena. It’s time to carry out our struggles in a new, improved way.”

  “What kind of cockamamie war doctrine is that?” Hickok demanded.

  “It’s cyberwar!” said Wimberley.

  “It’s information warfare,” said Gonzales. “It’s like media spin or something. Am I right?”

  “They are human beings in there,” said Van. “We need to convince them of something important right now. They need to believe that it’s cyberwar or it’s bloody-handed terror suicide, and those are the only kind of wars that get allowed. Now we can make that distinction clear to them. Let them fly back home, Mike.”

  “Okay,” said Hickok. “I know that you know that. What I wanna know is—how do you know that?”

  “I was inside that plane once,” Van said. “That’s how I know.”

  PENTAGON CITY, SEPTEMBER 2002

  Van woke up. It was his birthday. He stared at the cigarette-stained ceiling. This was pretty sure to be the worst birthday of his life.

  The federal refund money for the Grendel system had finally come in. That was the pool of cash that he and Dottie were both living on. This was a small miracle, and he was grateful for it, because the CCIAB no longer existed. Quick, quiet, and done with its work, it was not even a Washington memory. Just another blue-ribbon panel, offering wisdom to power. It was as if Van’s labors had never been.

  Van had never expected such a strange reaction from Washington’s establishment. He had run a black-bag operation, shot a man, blown up a multimillion-dollar scientific instrument, and captured and released highly placed agents from two foreign intelligence agencies. Van had imagined that they might either arrest him, and put him on trial, or they would give him a secret medal. It had never occurred to Van that he would blow their minds so badly that they would do nothing at all.

  The ruined observatory was, officially, the victim of an accidental fire. Officially, Tony Carew had vanished. Better yet, he had vanished in India. Strange news about Tony was all over the Bollywood film magazines. According to the tabloids, he had vanished on a hunting trip to the Himalayas. Nobody had gone to India to look for Tony. Nobody seemed to care about a ruined entrepreneur from the Bubble. He’d been a star’s plaything and once she had dumped him, there was nothing left of him but a kind of black vacuum.

  Derek Vandeveer was also a nonperson. Jeb had a new job handling security with eBay. Fawn had a nice federal post. Michael Hickok, as a policy, never explained to anyone what he was doing.

  Van was left alone. Van’s phone did not ring with eager job offers. His e-mail bore no pleas and flattering invitations. Van wasn’t looking for any job in computer security, anyway. Van wasn’t exactly looking for much of anything, really. He was searching.

  He was running a small Web log. Nobody seemed to understand Web logs yet. Van had one. It was a quiet, fast-paced Web log. He used it to absorb and spread ideas. Van’s Web log involved genuine issues. The genuine issues were the issues that political people lacked clichés for. Web logs interested Van. There was no money in them, yet, and the political campaigners were just catching on. Web logs were in combat for attention. That was the most interesting thing about them. Combat for attention. War of ideas.

  In his deep exile, Van was doing a lot of reading. His field of study was war. He was reading Clausewitz. Clausewitz was a dolt. He was reading Lidell-Hart. Lidell-Hart was full of himself. He was reading Miyamoto Musashi. Musashi was a New-Agey Zen mystic. He was reading Sun Tzu. Sun Tzu had some rather interesting stuff going on.

  Official Washington was avoiding Van. Van understood this. He was no more welcome to the official power structure than Watergate burglars and Iran-Contra conspirators. Washingtonians avoided such people while the heat was still on them. The wheel moved back around, eventually. Then the malefactors became talk-show hosts.

  Van was earning a little pin money by working on a rollout of Bastille Linux. He was also drinking rather a lot. It was hard for a warrior not to drink when he was kept away from the action. He had discovered a fondness for big pint cans of Foster’s Lager. Once he had been bright, whimsical, inventive. Now he was dark, dangerous, inventive.

  The loss of her telescope had brought Dottie’s career to a shattering halt. She left Colorado and brought Ted with her to share Van’s life. The family was broke, and living in a tiny, unfurnished duplex in Pentagon City. They had no careers, few prospects, large tax debts, and a host of personal humiliations. They had no offices, and both had to work underfoot in the grimy nook that called itself a living room. That was also where Ted had his playpen.

  If times were hard in computer science, they were brutal in astronomy. Dottie’s people were cutting budgets past the bone. Dottie’s blighted résumé included a lot of public relations work for an astronomical facility that had somehow burned down its telescope. Through no fault or intention of her own, Dr. Dottie Vandeveer had wandered into a world of hurt.

  Dottie looked pale and drawn lately. Her face was lined, her brown hair showing strands of gray.

  Van rose from the bed. He showered, ignoring the mildew in the grout. He went into the soot-stained kitchen in a T-shirt and underwear.

  The four new chairs in the kitchen had red bows on them.

  “Happy birthday, honey,” Dottie told him.

  “Wow,” Van blurted. “Magnesium chairs!”

  “You like them?”

  “They are the best!”

  “I got them secondhand for you!” Dottie crowed. “Barely used! They were so cheap!”

  Van sat in one of the metal chairs. His ass felt metallic and cold through his white cotton underwear, but the chairs had always been a lot more comfortable than they looked. “Four of them, wow!” he said loudly. He sipped his instant coffee. “That’s just great! You are so good to me, babe.” He nibbled some burnt toast.

  Dottie perched in one of the chairs. “Derek,” she said shyly.

  Van looked at his wife. He knew instantly, in his gut, that Dottie was about to tell him something dreadful. She was using her kindest, sweetest voice, the kind she used when tactfully urging him toward something that would have great rusty fangs like a bear trap. Dottie looked pained and greenish—she’d hardly been eating in the mornings, maybe a sip of coffee, a nibble off a stale doughnut.

  He had married a proud, shy, lonely, vulnerable young woman with an intellectual gift. And now, in his care, and due to him, she was reduced to . . . what? She was a soldier’s wife, he thought. A woman who made do. He was one of the world’s secret soldiers. They had become hard, gritty, wounded people with bitter lines around their mouths. What did the future offer them?

  “Derek, something important has happened . . .”

  Van moved to the edge of his new chair. “What?”

  “You’re going to have me around a whole lot. You’re going to have me on your hands all the time.” Dottie rubbed her forehead. “This is my birthday present for you, but you’re really going to have to put up with me now, honey . . .”

  What on earth was the woman rattling on about? Why didn’t she cut to the chase?

  “Derek, I’m pregnant.”

  Van absorbed this input. Where was Ted? he thought instantly. Ted really needed to hear this news. This was going to be of enormous importance to Ted.

  “I know this is a bad time for us to have a baby . . . But, you know, the only job offer I’ve got is in Denmark . . . Oh, God, Derek, I’ve been so careless and stupid . . . I can’t believe that happened. It just ruins everything. After all this, things are so bad for us, and now I’m pregnant.” Dottie burst into sobs.

  Van felt something extraordinary happening within him. A dead black crust was breaking open. He had known no word for that feeling until it began to lift away from him under tremendous internal pressure. But now he knew what that feeling had been. It was grief. It was grief.

  Now the black grief was receding from him. It was blasting away from his heart at half the speed of light. Something inside him that had been tiny and sparklike and bitterly embattled was expanding like a vast red star.

  He was huge inside. He glowed and burned. He had gravity.

  “Baby, that is great news. You are saving our lives here.”

  Dottie lifted her head. Her morale was in visible ruins. “I get so sick, with that morning sickness. I get so helpless . . .”

  “This is the best birthday gift I’ve ever had.”

  She blinked in disbelief. “You really think so?”

  “I don’t think so. I know so. Four people in our family, that is like a little squad. We’ll get really quick, and stop complaining so much from now on. We’ll change our lazy habits. We’ll get things done whenever they need to get done.”

  “Derek, this will ruin our careers.”

  “No it won’t. Your career will move right on. You will take that job in Denmark. I will look after our kids.”

  Dottie’s eyes widened. “We’re moving to Denmark?”

  “Yeah. We’re gonna sell everything here and we’ll move to Europe. Right away.”

  A hectic flush rose to Dottie’s cheeks. “What, even these chairs? But I just bought us this furniture.”

  “Honey, Europe is well known for its furniture. These are European chairs.”

  “What about your career, Derek?”

  “I know what I’m doing. Honey, it is senseless for intelligent people not to have children. Why would I want to vote against the future? What we need is a good strategy. And I’ve got one for us. You will work. I will stay home with the children.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’d make that sacrifice for us?”

  “What sacrifice? I love the idea of two kids. I need this. It’ll be broadening for me. Am I nailed here in Washington, for any reason? I can hit a RETURN key anywhere in the world.”

  Though it was his birthday, Dottie needed consoling. He lavished some on her. That worked. Dottie was still weeping in happiness as they lay in bed together. Van stared silently at the ceiling.

  It was a very good move for him to get out of Washington. A lateral move, very Liddell-Hart, very Sun Tzu. When power avoided you, a counteravoidance move lured power back in.

  His wife didn’t need to know this, but the Administration had way too many people like himself, wandering loose. Now that Van had learned, by startling counterexamples, something about sound and competent governance, he was very aware that the Terror was just the Bubble by another name. It was just as wild, just as turbulent, and just as unlikely to last. No government that was not desperate and totally winging it ever, ever would have asked Dr. Derek Vandeveer to become a warrior.