Adjoining the NMCC is a smaller room in which one can see a set of IBM PC/AT personal computers - old ones with 5.25-inch floppy drives - that constitute the Hot Line, the direct communications link between the American and Soviet presidents. The NMCC 'node' for the link was not the only one, but it was the primary down-link. That fact was not widely known in America, but it had been purposefully made known to the Soviets. Some form of direct communications between the two countries would be necessary even during an on-going nuclear war, and letting the Soviets know that the only readily usable down-link was here might serve, some 'experts' had judged three decades earlier, as a life-insurance policy for the area.

That, Captain James Rosselli, USN, thought, was just so much theoretician-generated horseshit. That no one had ever seriously questioned it was another example of all the horseshit that lay and stank within Washington in general and the Pentagon in particular. With all the nonsense that took place within the confines of Interstate 495, the Washington Beltway, it was just one more bit of data accepted as gospel, despite the fact that it didn't make a whole lot of sense. To 'Rosey' Rosselli, Washington, D.C. was about 300 square miles surrounded by reality. He wondered if the laws of physics even applied inside the Beltway. He'd long since given up on the laws of logic.

Joint duty, Rosey grunted to himself. The most recent effort of Congress to reform the military - something it was singularly unable to do for itself, he groused - had prescribed that uniformed officers who aspired to flag rank - and which of them didn't? - had to spend some of their time in close association with peers from the other uniformed services. Rosselli had never been told how hanging around with a field-artilleryman might make him a better submarine driver, but then no one else had evidently wondered about that. It was simply accepted as an article of faith that cross-pollination was good for something, and so the best and brightest officers were taken away from their professional specialties and dropped into things which they knew not the first thing about. Not that they'd ever learn how to do their new jobs, of course, but they might learn just enough to be dangerous, plus losing currency in what they were supposed to do. That was Congress's idea of military reform.

"Coffee, Cap'n?" an Army corporal asked.

"Better make it decaf," Rosey replied. If my disposition gets any worse, I might start hurting people.

Work here was career-enhancing. Rosselli knew that, and he also knew that being here was partly his fault. He'd majored in sub and minored in spook throughout his career. He'd already had a tour at the Navy's intelligence headquarters at Suitland, Maryland, near Andrews Air Force Base. At least this was a better commute - he'd gotten official housing at Boiling Air Force Base, and the trip to the Pentagon was a relatively simple hop across I-295/395 to his reserved parking place, another perk that came with duty in the NMCC, and one worth shedding blood for.