Free Springboard by Tom Clancy Page A

information packets—and a host of other complicating factors Jay hadn’t even begun to sort out.
    His respect for Major Bretton ratcheted up several notches. If the man could negotiate this mess at all, he was good.
    Next to him a local man, probably seventy, and dressed in a white short-sleeved shirt and a sarong, smiled, showing better teeth than Jay expected.
    “Selamat. You Thai?” the man asked. His voice was raspy and full of phlegm.
    As it happened, that was partially true. “Yes.”
    “You have children? I have five—four sons and a daughter, plus nine grandchildren.”
    “I have a son. Only one.”
    The old man laughed, a cackle. “You young. Plenty of time.”
    He pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket and offered it to Jay. “Smoke?”
    Jay declined.
    The old man lit the coffin nail and inhaled deeply. Gray tendrils rose in the hot and still air. The smoking explained the raspy, phlegmy sound to old man’s voice. Even though Jay had created the scenario, he sometimes fell into a kind of schizophrenic state where things for which he was responsible, such as the old man’s voice, came as a surprise to him, as if somebody else had built the program.
    “Is it always like this?” Jay asked. He waved to encompass the gridlocked traffic.
    The old man shrugged. “This a good day. Some times, much worse.”
    Great. Just what he needed to hear.
    The old man looked out through the open sides of the jitney. “Rain is coming soon. Cool things off.”
    Jay nodded. How bad was it when a tropical storm, with lightning, thunder, and rain blasting down in sheets angled almost horizontal, was something you were looking forward to?
    Ick.
    This was going to be a long, long day. . . .

DMZ, Just North of the 38th Parallel
North Korea
    The U.S. Air Force was doing a terrific job—the thousands of smart antimine bomblets, TDO-A2s, known unofficially as “garden weasels,” had cleared major pathways in the minefields on the NK side of the wire, so when the new M10A3 gasoline-powered heavy tanks began roaring across the line, they were able to make good speed. The tanks’ 105mm cannons added noise and smoke to the already shrouded battlefield, but the tin can drivers didn’t need to see anything outside their sensor screens—fog, rain, smoke, darkness, none of these were impediments to the electronic gear the heavies carried.
    Overhead, the scores of fighters and bombers continued to roar—no need for stealth now—dropping huge pay-loads, ranging from the ten-ton BLU-84a “Big Blue” daisy-cutters that would chop down enemy soldiers like a lawn mower in dry grass, to the GBU-27B smart bombs from the F-111s that could find a chimney and go down it like Santa Claus bringing coal to the bad kids, to the BU- 28 five-thousand-pound bunkerbusters.
    That section of North Korea was, for the moment, the most dangerous place on the planet, more so than an active volcano. You might outrun lava. No way could you outrun 20mm machine-gun rounds from a jet fighter chasing you.
    Yes, the North Koreans had a huge army, and much armor and all, but with the full force of the United States military brought to bear all at once, there was no way anybody on this planet was going to stop it—
    Except that it did stop.
    Just like somebody switching off a lamp . . .

The Pentagon
Washington, D.C.
    Thorn removed the VR headset and blew out a sigh, still astonished by the power of the simulation. It was as if he had been there, standing just behind the action, hearing and seeing and feeling the thrum of all-out war, smelling the gunpowder and cooked earth. . . .
    General Roger Ellis, U.S. Marines, head of Special Projects Command—SpecProjCom—for the Pentagon, and Thorn’s new boss, leaned back in his chair and looked at him.
    “Very impressive,” Thorn said.
    “Yeah, up until the point that it shut down,” Ellis said. “That simulation took a boatload of expensive log-in time and the lion’s share of attention from a