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pulled. Out of the sand where it had buried itself, immune to hunting fighter planes and downward-looking radar, came the Despot. A great block of gray steel on wheels and tracks, windowless, independent, self-contained, proof against direct hit by all but a heavy artillery shell or large bomb, proof against nuclear, gas, and germ attack, it hauled itself out of its self-dug grave and went to work.
    The four men inside started the engines that powered the systems, drew back the steel screens that covered the reinforced glass portholes, and pushed out their radar dish to warn them of incoming attack, and their sensor antennae to help them guide their missiles. The Pentagon team was impressed.
    “We will assume,” said Cobb, “that the first wave of Soviet tanks has crossed the Elbe River into West Germany by several existing bridges and a variety of military bridges thrown up during the night. NATO forces are engaging the first wave. We have enough to cope. But the much bigger second wave of Russian tanks is emerging from their cover in the East German forests and heading for the Elbe. These will make the breakthrough and head for the French border. The Despots, deployed and buried in a north-south line through Germany, have their orders. Find, identify, and destroy.”
    He pressed another button and a hatch opened at the top of the AFV. From it, on a ramp, emerged a pencil-slim rocket. Twenty inches in diameter, an eight-foot tube. It ignited its tiny rocket motor and soared away into the pale-blue sky where, being pale blue itself, it disappeared from view. The men returned to their screens, where a high-definition TV camera was tracking the Kestrel. At 150 feet its high-bypass turbofan jet engine ignited, the rocket died and dropped away, short stubby wings sprouted from its sides, and tail fins gave it guidance. The miniature rocket began to fly like an airplane, and still it climbed away down the range. Moir pointed to a large radar screen. The sweep arm circled the disk but no responding image glowed into light.
    “The Kestrel is made entirely of Fiberglas,” intoned Moir proudly. “Its engine is made of ceramic derivatives, heat-resistant but nonreflective to radar. With a little ‘stealth’ technology thrown in, you will see it is totally invisible—to eye or machine. It has the radar signature of a strawberry finch. Less. A bird can be radar-detected by the flapping of its wings. Kestrel doesn’t flap, and this radar is far more sophisticated than anything the Soviets have got.”
    In war the Kestrel, a deep-penetration vehicle, would penetrate two hundred to five hundred miles behind enemy lines. In this test it reached operating altitude at fifteen thousand feet, hauled in at one hundred miles downrange, and began to circle slowly, giving it ten hours of endurance at one hundred knots. It also began to look down electronically. Its range of sensors came into play. Like a hunting bird it scanned the terrain beneath, covering a circle of land seventy miles in diameter.
    Its infrared scanners did the hunting; then it interrogated with millimeter-band radar.
    “It is programmed to strike only if the target is emitting heat, is made of steel, and is moving,” said Moir. “Target must emit enough heat to be a tank, not a car, a truck, or a train. It won’t hit a bonfire, a heated house, or a parked vehicle, because they aren’t moving. It won’t hit angle-reflectors for the same reason, or brick, timber, or rubber, because they are not steel. Now look at the target area on this screen, gentlemen.”
    They turned to the giant screen whose image was being piped to them from the TV camera a hundred miles away. A large area had been fitted out like a Hollywood set. There were artificial trees, wooden shacks, parked vans, trucks, and cars. There were rubber tanks, which now began to crawl, pulled by unseen wires. There were bonfires, gasoline-ignited, which blazed into flame. Then a single real tank began to