“The court rules on it end of this week or the beginning of next. Did you see the GAO report?” Hereford shakes his head briefly. Lemon describes the report. “It’s pretty favorable,” he concludes, “but our lawyers can’t tell if it will be enough to sway Judge Tobiason. They think it should, but given Tobiason’s background they aren’t making any promises.”

“No.” Hereford sighs. “I wonder about that case.”

“Whether it was…” Lemon was going to say, “a good idea to protest the decision,” when he recalls that it was Hereford’s idea.

Hereford looks up at him from under mildly raised eyebrows, and laughs. “A good idea? I think so. We had to show the Air Force that they can’t just flaunt the rules and walk over us. But we’ve done that, now, I think. They’ve had to kowtow to the GAO pretty seriously. So that whatever Tobiason says, we may have accomplished our goals in the matter.”

“But—winning the contract?”

“Do you think the Air Force would ever allow that, now?”

Lemon considers it in silence.

Hereford says, “Tell me all the latest about the Ball Lightning program.”

Now it’s Lemon’s turn to sigh. In a matter-of-fact voice he describes the latest round of troubles the program has been experiencing. “McPherson has put them onto tracking the ICBMs longer, in a phased array, so that their defenses can be overcome, and it looks as promising as anything we’ve tried. But the Air Force specs don’t really allow for anything more than the first two minutes after launch, so we don’t know what they’ll make of this.”

“You have asked them?”

“Not yet.”

Hereford frowns. “Now the Air Force already has test results that show we could do it in the two minutes, right?”

“Under certain special circumstances, yes.”

“Which are?”

“Well, a stationary target, mainly.…”

Slowly and patiently Hereford drags the whole story out of Lemon. He gets Lemon to admit that the early test results reported by Dan Houston’s team could be interpreted as fraudulent if the Air Force wanted to get hard about it. And since LSR has gotten hard in the Stormbee matter.…

Lemon, squirming in his seat, gets the strong impression that Hereford already knew all these details, that he has been making him go through them again just to bake him a little. Lemon tries to relax.

“McPherson’s involved with this one too?”

“I assigned him to it to help Houston out. McPherson is a good troubleshooter.” And troublemaker, he thinks. Don’t the two always go together?