Page 136 of Tom Clancy Line of Sight

The Tomahawk’s terrain-hugging, object-avoidance navigation was possible because of its TERCOM (terrain contour matching) and DSMAC (digitized scene-mapping correlator), aided by GPS and INS guidance systems.

During terminal phase on target approach, the Tomahawk’s onboard radar homing systems would take over.

Three seconds later, a second Tomahawk launched fromanother VLS cell, following in the wake of the first, but taking a slightly different course, programmed to arrive at the same time. Redundancy was key for a mission as critical as this one.

The only problem was, neither missile had a target.

65

Jack glanced at the GPS marker on his phone. Aida’s blue arrow had stopped moving. Thanks to the Renault’s thrumming V6 engine, he made much better time than she did. He was close.

A few minutes later he pulled to the side of the road, where he couldn’t be seen. According to the GPS map, the Volkswagen van was parked in front of a house set back from the main road. Beyond the house, toward the back of the property near a steep hill, was a newly constructed warehouse-style steel building. The whole compound was set in a clearing surrounded by trees.

Jack checked for passing traffic as he slipped his phone’s Bluetooth earpiece on. No vehicles were on the road, so Jack grabbed Emir’s chromed pistol, jumped out of the car, and dashed for the tree line.

—

Jack stood in the trees scanning the compound for movement but saw none. No Aida, no Brkic, and sure as hell no rocket launcher. Only the house with Aida’s van parked infront, about a hundred feet away, and the big steel storage shed a thousand feet back.

He figured Aida must be in the house, but was anybody in the shed?

Come to think of it, that shed was big enough to hold one of the really big Happy Times! tour buses. Or an eighteen-wheeler.

Or a Grad rocket launcher.

If he went for the shed, Aida might slip away. But if he went for Aida, he might be sentencing thousands to their deaths if the rocket launcher was located in that shed and started firing.

He started to run toward the shed but stopped, his mind racing. Something about that live video feed had been nagging at him for the last ten minutes. He called Gavin.

“Jack, it’s Gavin. I’ve patched you in on a conference call with Gerry and—”

“Jack, it’s me,” President Ryan said. “And a few others on VTC. What did you find?”

“I found the van, but no Aida, no Brkic, no rockets, and no launcher—at least not yet. But I’ve got an idea. Gavin, do you still have the live feed on your end?”

“Of course.”

“I can see it on my end, too,” the President said.

“That live feed,” Jack said. “Doesn’t it keep the exact same center point? Like the drone is circling around the stadium, but the center point never moves?”

“Yeah. Looks like a preprogrammed flight pattern,” Gavin said.

“Sure. But maybe it’s not just a video feed, either.”

“What do you mean?”

“You said that Brkic thought he had a way to make thoserockets more accurate. If they were somehow laser-guided by that drone, that would do the job, wouldn’t it?”

“Dang it! Why didn’t I think of that?” Gavin blurted. “That drone probably is shooting a laser guidance beam, along with the video image.”

“The Bosnians need to shoot that thing down,” the SecDef said over Jack’s phone.

“No!” Jack said. “Just the opposite. That drone is a link between the stadium and the launcher.”

“Which means I can find the launch site by tracing the launch computer uplink to the drone, or the drone’s video signal. Well, unless they’re encrypted.”

“Do it, Gav.”