Free Point of Impact by Tom Clancy Page A

helping the DEA run down some kind of new designer drug that turns the users into temporary supermen. And sometimes it makes them jump off tall buildings."
    Howard said, "Yes, sir, I saw the report. Thor's Hammer."
    Michaels said, "Here's another little twist. I got a call from an NSA guy yesterday. He's made an appointment to come see me today, in about an hour, my secretary tells me. He says it's about this designer drug thing. I'm curious as to why."
    "What's his name?" Jay asked. "The NSA guy?"
    "Last name, George, first name, Zachary."
    Jay shrugged, but tapped it into his flatscreen's manual keyboard. "Never heard of him, but I'll scope him out."
    "John?"
    "Doesn't ring any bells with me, either," he said. "I can check with my Pentagon contacts."
    "Why would the National Security Agency be interested in this?" Michaels asked. "Dope isn't in their mission statement, is it?"
    Howard said, "Mission statements aren't worth the paper they are written on, sir. Everybody stretches them to fit whatever they need."
    Michaels smiled. He had done that himself more than a few times, and everybody here knew it.
    "I suppose I can wait until the man gets here and ask him, but I somehow doubt he'll be entirely forthcoming. Anybody have any thoughts I might pursue?"
    "Overspent their budget and need a little extra cash?" Jay said. "Wouldn't be the first time an agency sold drugs to make up a shortfall."
    "I thought Buddhists weren't supposed to be cynical."
    "Nope, not according to Saji. You can be pretty much anything and still be a Buddhist. Cynical works."
    "Except, apparently, a flesh-eater," Fernandez said.
    "Well, actually, that, too. Some parts of the world, like Tibet, where food is scarce, meat is okay. As long as you do it with the right attitude."
    Fernandez laughed. "Yeah, I can see you praying over a Whopper, chanting and all. Bet they'd love that at BK."
    "You obviously have never been to a D.C. Burger King," Jay said. "You could do a Hawaiian fire dance over your fries there and nobody would look twice."
    Fernandez laughed. He looked at Michaels and said, "Maybe one of their people is into drugs. Could be they are looking at some kind of internal security."
    Howard blew out a small sigh. "There's another possibility that springs immediately to mind. Military applications."
    Michaels looked at him.
    Howard continued. "If you have a compound that makes a man think he's faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive, when you put a weapon in his hands and point him at an enemy, you could have something of military value, assuming there are controls in place."
    "Didn't the Nazis try that kind of thing?"
    "Yes, sir, and other armies have tried it since, from speed to steroids. Nobody has come up with something cheap and dependable enough yet, but if they did, it would certainly have useful applications."
    "Would you use such a thing, General?"
    "If it was safe, if it was legal, and if it would give my people an advantage over an enemy? Bring more of them back alive? Yes, sir, in a heartbeat."
    "From what the DEA has given us, this stuff is neither safe nor legal."
    "But it might be made both. Legal is the easy part, if it's useful enough. Safe might be harder, but it might be possible to make it so, and a lot of services would be willing to explore the possibility. And there are some armies with fewer scruples about testing things on their own people than we have."
    Jay said, "When did the U.S. military develop scruples, General? Remember The Atomic Cafe? 'Here, men, put on these goggles when you look at the nuclear explosion. And don't worry about that glowing dust if it gets on you, just brush it off, you'll be fine.' "
    "That was a long time ago," Howard said.
    "Yeah? What about Agent Orange in Vietnam, or the vaccines against nerve gas and biowarfare in Desert Storm? Or the new, improved, supposedly safe defoliants in Colombia?"
    Before Howard could respond, Michaels said, "Give it a rest, Jay. We didn't