Read Online The Negotiator by Frederick Forsyth - Free Book Online Page B

move, radio-controlled. At fifteen thousand feet the Kestrel spotted it at once and reacted.
    “Gentlemen, here is the new revolution, of which we are justly proud. In former systems the hunter threw itself downward on the target, destroying itself and all that expensive technology. Very cost-inefficient. Kestrel doesn’t do that; it calls up a Goshawk. Watch the Despot.”
    The audience swiveled again, in time to catch the flicker of the rocket of the yard-long Goshawk missile that now obeyed the Kestrel’s call and headed for the target on command. Salkind took up the commentary.
    “The Goshawk will scream up to one hundred thousand feet, keel over, and head back down. As it passes the Kestrel, the remotely piloted vehicle will pass on final target information to the Goshawk. Kestrel’s onboard computer will give the target’s position when the Goshawk hits zero feet, to the nearest eighteen inches. Goshawk will hit within that circle. It’s coming down now.”
    Amid all the houses, shacks, trucks, vans, cars, bonfires, angle-reflectors dug into the sand of the target area; amid the decoy rubber tanks, the steel tank (an old Abrams Mark One) rumbled forward as to war. There was a sudden flicker and the Abrams seemed to have been punched by a massive fist. Almost in slow motion it flattened out, its sides burst outward, its gun jerked upward to point accusingly at the sky, and it burst into a fireball. Under the awning there was a collective letting-out of breath.
    “How much ordnance do you have in the nose of that Goshawk?” asked one of the generals.
    “None, General,” said Salkind. “Goshawk is like a smart rock. It’s coming down at close to ten thousand miles per hour. Apart from its receiver for getting information from Kestrel and its tiny radar for following instructions to the target for the last fifteen thousand feet, it has no technology. That’s why it’s so cheap. But the effect often kilograms of tungsten-tipped steel at that speed hitting a tank is like ... well, like firing an air-gun pellet onto the back of a cockroach at point-blank range. That tank just stopped the equivalent of two Amtrak locomotives at a hundred miles per hour. It was just flattened.”
    The test continued for another two hours. The manufacturers proved they could reprogram the Kestrel in flight; if they told it to go for steel structures with water on each side and land at each end, it would take out bridges. If they changed the hunting profile, it would strike at trains, barges, or moving columns of trucks. So long as they were moving. Stationary, except for bridges Kestrel did not know if an object was a steel truck or a small steel shed. But its sensors could penetrate rain, cloud, snow, hail, sleet, fog, and darkness.
    The groups broke up in mid-afternoon, and the Pentagon committee prepared to board its limousines for Nellis and the flight to Washington.
    One of the generals held out his hand to the manufacturers.
    “As a tank man,” he said, “I have never seen anything so frightening in my life. It has my vote. It will worry Frunze Street sick. To be hunted by men is bad enough; to be hunted like that by a goddam robot—hell, what a nightmare!”
    It was one of the civilians who had the last word.
    “Gentlemen, it’s brilliant. The best RPV deep-strike tank-buster system in the world. But I have to say, if this new Nantucket Treaty goes through, it looks like we’ll never order it.”
    Cobb, Moir, and Salkind realized as they shared a car back to Las Vegas that Nantucket was facing them, along with thousands of others in the military-industrial complex, with utter corporate and personal ruin.
    * * *
    On the eve of Christmas there was no work in Alcántara del Rio but much drinking was done and it went on until late. When Antonio finally closed his little bar it was past midnight. Some of his customers lived right there in the village; others drove or walked back to their scattered cottages spread across the