The ELI Event B007R5LTNS

of the device’s potential as a “defensive deterrent,” and was put in charge of development. Even with his attentive leadership, the project had narrowly missed being scrapped several times for lack of results. On this particular Monday afternoon, Pettis was squeezing a last-minute test out of the MDA to use as leverage at the budget committee meeting the next day at NADCOM Headquarters.
    Holt asked to witness the test, mostly for something to do, and of course Pettis could not refuse his new Commanding Officer. After all Holt had read about the man, he imagined that Pettis would seem almost familiar, but he was wrong. When they finally met that morning, he realized the major’s enigmatic reputation was well deserved. Pettis drove them to the bunker himself, and said almost nothing the entire trip.
    Holt watched Pettis cross the small room and bark orders to the technicians, whom he apparently disliked simply because they were civilians. Towering over the seated men, almost standing at attention, he was the very picture of the Air Force career man, shined and pressed, crisp and sharp. His short-cropped hair was straight and jet black, just beginning to show signs of gray at the temples. He seemed neither excitable nor emotional, and maintained his composure at all times.
    Holt knew other men like that. Showing emotions displayed weakness, they believed. It gave the opponent an advantage—and they considered everyone a potential opponent. Obsessively self-reliant, such men attended to each detail of their lives with cautious, determined aggressiveness. Pettis fit the profile perfectly.
    He was the most self-contained officer Holt had ever seen, totally secure in his cool, logical world. He never seemed to be nervous, yet he was never still. Even when Pettis stood listening to the technicians speak, his jaw clenched repeatedly and he occasionally rose ever so slightly on the balls of his feet. His eyes, a steely gray-blue, reflected not so much his own inner feelings as those of the person facing him. Many people, Holt heard, declined to look Pettis in the eye if given the choice. He had a stare that could make one feel naked and vulnerable, and he used it to its fullest extent when necessary.
    Pettis was a stickler, a perfectionist, and he looked the part. Beneath the impeccable uniform, hard muscles stood out from his slender body. Though he was not tanned, his skin was brown and smooth. His movements were quick but taut, graceful, and conservative, as though practiced. His overall appearance was dark, brooding, almost menacing. The fine black hair on the backs of his hands and the rapidly darkening five o’clock shadow enhanced the image.
    A solemn, incredibly energetic man, Pettis had always been a gung-ho, rah-rah-go-fight-win type. His record was impressive: After joining the Air Force at eighteen, he applied himself to the science of weaponry, and attained the rank of Major fairly quickly, becoming competent in computer science and high technology mostly on his own. Pettis had been in charge of the MDA project almost since its inception, and considered it the weapon to tip the balance of power in his country’s favor. It was his personal contribution to the science of war, his dedicated, if overzealous, attempt to turn the United States into, as he was fond of saying, “Fortress America.”
    Holt admired the energy and enthusiasm of the man, his unwavering dedication to cause. But there was something in the glint of those gray-blue eyes that bothered him. Something about the line of Pettis’s mouth when he grimaced with satisfaction—you couldn’t really call it a smile—made Holt uneasy, as if the features belonged to a wild animal about to pounce. Something… disquieting.
    Still, he shouldn’t let Pettis get to him; in three months, he could turn both Pettis and his pet project over to the new Chief, General Malcolm Fletcher. Fletch would be the fourth Brigadier to lead the NADCOM unit in the nine years the MDB project had been in the works, and Holt would not be surprised if Pettis himself had more than a little to do with the rapid turnover.
    He looked up at the bank of monitors. The target, clearly shown on one of the screens, was a modest five-story office-type building the Army had built at the end of a Nevada ghost town called Tybo, fifteen miles off Highway 6 and two and a half northwest of the bunker. The exceptionally sharp picture was provided, Pettis explained, by a powerful video