Quickly they hammer four little missile stands into the grass, and Arthur aims them at four doors in these buildings. This is the dangerous moment, the semicovert moment, and if the defenses are sensitive enough …

Arthur, Jim has time to think, is connected up with some excellent intelligence sources: he knows the right buildings, the correct doors, he knows the buildings will be empty, the night security forces elsewhere in the complex … Such information must be top secret in the companies involved, so that the espionage involved in getting hold of it must be sophisticated indeed.

Missiles set and targeted, they trail the ignition cords across the tiny park, back toward Arthur’s car. Buttons pushed, run to the car, track away, tear the suits off, dump them down a storm drain. No sign at all of pursuit; in fact, they can’t even tell what the missiles might have done, because they’re on the other side of the hill now, getting onto the Riverside Freeway with all the rest of the cars. They never even heard a siren this time, because the little condo park was over a mile from the Northrop complex. It really is very simple. But one can assume that the little missiles have followed the laser light directly to their targets, and have dissolved the materials in the plant susceptible to the solvents in the payloads.…

Despite the ease of the attack, Jim’s heart is racing, and he and Arthur shake hands and pound the dash with the same sharp exhilaration that they felt in the first raid against Parnell. Jim becomes more certain than ever that he is only really alive, really living a meaningful life, when he is doing this work. “Here’s to resistance!” he cries again. He has a slogan now.

Chapter 34

34

In the month after LSR submits its bid for the Stormbee program, Dennis McPherson flies to Dayton four times to meet various members or subcommittees of the Source Selection Evaluation Board. The questions are tough and exacting, and each session drains McPherson completely. But so far as he can tell, they are faring well. Except for a whole day’s worth of questions concerning the laser system’s abilities in bad weather, the so-called blind letdown issue, he has satisfactory answers for all of their technical questions, and these in turn justify the estimated costs of the system. As for blind let-down, well, there’s nothing much they can do about that. The RFP asked for a covert system, so they’re stuck with the CO2 laser’s inability to see well through clouds. McPherson tries not to worry about it; he figures that the SSEB is merely trying to find out which of the bidders’ proposed systems will deal with this handicap the best.