The Gold Coast

78

Stewart Lemon is visited by Donald Hereford, out from New York early on the morning after Jim’s rampage. Hereford steps out of the helicopter that has brought him over from John Wayne, and walks out from under the spinning blades without even the suggestion of a stoop or a run. He looks over at the physical plant that he and Lemon inspected together not more than two weeks before.

“What happened?” he says to Lemon.

Lemon clears his throat. “An assault was made, I guess, but something went wrong with it. No one knows why. They got the sign at the entrance to the parking garage. And—and we caught a pair in a boat offshore, but they didn’t have anything on them, so…”

Feeling silly, Lemon walks Hereford from the helipad around the physical plant to the car entrance to the complex. There six round metal poles stick out of two hardened puddles of blue plastic. They’re the signs that used to announce LAGUNA SPACE RESEARCH to the cars passing by. Ludicrous.

Two FBI analysts are at work at the site, and they pause to speak briefly with Hereford and Lemon. “Appears it was a couple of the Mosquitoes that they’ve been using around here. Made by Harris, and carrying a load of Styx-ninety.”

Hereford makes a tkh sound with tongue and roof of mouth, kneels to touch the deformed plastic. He leads Lemon away from the FBI agents, around the building and out in the open ground near the helipad.

“So.” His mouth is a tight, grim line. “That’s that.”

“Maybe they’ll try again?”

Brusque shake of the head.

Lemon feels his fear as a kind of tingling in his fingers.

“Couldn’t we somehow… stimulate another attack?”

Hereford stares. “Stimulate? Or simulate?” He laughs shortly. “No. The point is, we’ve been warned. So now it’s our responsibility to see it doesn’t happen again. If it does, it will look like we let it. So.”

Lemon swallows. “So what happens now?”

“It’s already happening. I’ve given instructions for the Ball Lightning program to be moved to our Florida plant and given to a new team. The Air Force is going to descend on us next month no matter what we do, but hopefully we can indicate to them that we have already acknowledged the problem in the production schedule and taken steps to rectify it.”

Lemon hopes that his face doesn’t look as hot as it feels. “It’s not just a problem in the production schedule—”

“I know that.”

“The Air Force will know it too.”

“I’m aware of that.” Hereford’s glance is very, very cold. “At this point I don’t have a whole lot of options left, do I? Your team has given me a program that could very easily do a Big Hacksaw on us. In fact I would bet now that that’s what will happen, no matter what I do. But I still have to take all the last twists I can. It’s possible that the ballistic missile defense problems that everyone else is having will camouflage us. You never know.”

“So what do I do with my team here?” Lemon demands.

“Fire them.” Calmly Hereford looks at him. “Lay off the production unit. Shift the best engineers somewhere else, if there’s room for them.”

“And the executive team?”

Hereford’s gaze never wavers. “Fire them. We’re clearing house, remember? We have to make sure the Air Force sees that we’re serious. Do the usual things, forced retirements, layoffs, whatever it takes. But do it.”

“All right. All right.” Lemon thinks fast. “McPherson’s gone—he’s been in charge of the technical side of Ball Lightning for the last few months, and anyway, after the Stormbee fiasco our Andrews friends will be happy to see him go, no doubt. But Dan Houston, now… Houston’s a useful fellow.…”

In the face of Hereford’s baleful stare Lemon can’t continue. He begins to understand how Hereford got so high so fast. There’s a ruthlessness there that Lemon has never even come close to.…

Finally Hereford says, “Houston too. All of them. And do it fast.”

And then, as he turns to go back to the waiting helicopter: “You’re lucky you aren’t going with them.”