It was almost noon when David parked near a side entrance of the hospital. Deanna took time to give him a lingering, passionate kiss that promised far more when she got home. There was still love there, in spite of her infidelities. She grabbed her stethoscope and draped it around her neck before she got out of the little pickup. Like most physicians, she had gotten out of the habit of wearing the traditional, white lab coat just as the trend of informal clothing had encouraged her recent habit of wearing a camisole under her scrubs in lieu of a bra. The camisole offered no support and only token restraint. The lack of support confirmed that she was a maturing woman. However; David noticed that he wasn't the only man who was admiring the way her breasts swayed pendulously and bounced as she jogged the short distance to the door. The stirring in his groin helped him to understand why he hadn't ditched the bitch. However; after talking with Doctor Binder he was more confident that his forbearance was motivated by more than mere lust.
David drove his Tacoma back to the grocery store. He needed to buy, now! Back in the good old days, the store might have gotten two or even three semitrailer loads of groceries each day. Now it might be a week before another truck would bring in more freight. He drove past burned out buildings along the way. Last summer's rioting had made the first wave of Black Lives Matter demonstrations seem like the summer of love. The violence had not spared the suburbs.
Things were actually beginning to get better since the impeachment. The rioting that had erupted last winter to protest the midterm elections had provoked a backlash that had compelled President Harris, Speaker Pelosi, and Senator Schumer to acknowledge the will of the voters. Just to add insult to injury, the newly seated Congress had invoked an often misunderstood provision of the Constitution to elect Governor Palin to be Speaker of the House rather than one of their members. People hadn't forgotten how she had defended bystanders rather than herself from a terrorist attack. Since President Harris' nominee for Vice President had never been confirmed, Speaker Palin had been elevated to the Presidency.
The purges of the Deep State bureaucracy and the woke Pentagon had begun. Among her first Executive Orders was a new requirement that agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation be required to wear uniforms and drive marked cars while being prohibited from carrying firearms. Most of the attrition had been the result of resignations rather than assassinations. The purge of the Central Intelligence Agency had been more brutal. The decimation of the self anointed, Praetorian Guard had required the deployment of United States Marines. Never again would Deep State goons be empowered to conduct covert operation against a sitting President of the United States or members of Congress. As a former Governor and Vice Presidential candidate, President Palin had endured the indignities of being gate raped by airport security for to many years. President Palin had renamed the Transportation Security Administration. The humiliation of having to wear uniforms emblazed with the acronym of the Federal Air Traffic Administration Safety Service (FATASS) had resulted in mass resignations. Flying was almost fun again.
As he pulled up to the grocery store, David noticed the work crews that were building a concrete block wall to reinforce the cyclone fencing that had been installed earlier. They were using a line pump to grout the voids in the blocks. The new wall would stop five-five-six and maybe three-oh-eight at an oblique angle as well as handgun bullets. The armed guard at the gate was actually a Black woman. Reconciliation was beginning. The guard checked David's license plate then his concealed weapon permit then a photo from the store's files on her tablet before raising the gate. Only preapproved customers were even admitted into the parking lot much less inside the store. The kinks in the supply chain for food were only beginning to be unraveled. Security had to remain the top priority.
David didn't bother with putting on a jacket to conceal his Beretta in his shoulder holster. Most people now found the sight of an armed citizen reassuring rather alarming. Last winter's riots protesting the results of the election had made the original Black Lives Matter demonstrations seem like the summer of love. The retributions against inner city neighborhoods had been even more violent.
Most of the shelves were empty, of course. Grocery stores no longer wasted their time with shallow facing to conceal their paltry inventory. David concentrated on buying fruits and vegetables, and he bought produce that was canned rather than frozen. Although President Palin was making good on her "Drill Here, Drill Now" slogan, the limited supplies of natural gas still resulted in frequent blackouts. The posters of President Palin wearing a a tee shirt with her favorite slogan, and only a tee shirt, were a best seller even though the mamma grizzly was getting gray around the muff. She was raising a lot of money for President Harris' legions of wounded veterans.
David yielded to the temptation to drive up to the site of the new, Aegis Ashore installation. Although his employer was a private corporation, his military identification got him admitted without argument. His security clearance was far beyond any clearance that anyone on site might have. The steel and reinforced concrete substructures for the phased array radars and the vertical launch cells were just beginning to take shape. The defensive installations were going up around every major city in the United States. A pair of trailer mounted, Goal Keeper point defense gun systems with their thirty-millimeter Gatling guns stood watch over the construction site. The President was unwilling to leave the nascent missile defense installations completely vulnerable while they were under construction.
There was a lot of public debate about how effective the RIM-one-sixty-one and even the much larger and more capable, Ground Based Interceptor missiles might be. People were almost panicking over the threat from the Russian and Chinese Fractional Orbit Bombardment Systems and their hypersonic missiles. David wasn't sanguine, but he knew far to much about the technology to panic. Both technologies seriously reduced the throw weight of the missiles that boosted them. A missile that might be armed with a dozen ballistic warheads could carry only a few FOBS or hypersonic weapons. People were obsessed with the idea that Hypersonic missiles flew at more than Mach five. Intercontinental Ballistic Missile warheads, which had been deployed by the thousands for more than half a century, flew at more than Mach twenty. The only difference was that a hypersonic weapon could maneuver to evade interceptor missiles. Interceptor missiles could also maneuver. More importantly, it was a contest in which maneuverability was more important than mere velocity. A hypersonic missile or maneuvering reentry vehicle that might succeed in evading an interceptor was far less likely to hit its target.
David was even more confident because he knew things that even he should not know. One of President Palin's first initiatives was to order the United States Navy to resume the Cold War practice of shadowing Russian ballistic missile submarines and their Chinese counterparts. It was reminiscent of The Hunt for the Red October. The United States' ultra low frequency radio system enabled limited communications to submerged submarines. When she had judged that the time was right, the President had given her order. Neither Putin or Xi were willing to admit that all of their ballistic missile submarines had been sunk nearly simultaneously. President Palin had effectively castrated them by decimating their strategic nuclear forces. Both China and Russia retained significant nuclear forces, but they were now at an extreme disadvantage which deterred them from trying to screw with the United States.
It was inevitable that David's attention would be drawn to the steel reinforced concrete redoubt that was on a ridge a few hundred yards away from the phased array radar and interceptor silos. While many people were now aware of what a phased array radar was and almost understood what it could do, very, very few people were even aware of the term, "PHased Array laSER" It had been impossible to resist the temptation to barrow the acronym "PHASER" from the old Star Trek television shows and movies. The writers of the old television shows had almost understood the concept if not the physics. The laser beam emitted by a PHASER could be rapidly scanned electronically almost simultaneously at widely divergent targets while the emitter array remained stationary. The most daunting technological challenge had been miniaturizing the phase shifter elements.
Because even an Infrared laser operated at a much shorter wavelength than a radar, the PHASER installation was much more compact. The entire emitter array assemblies which were being built in a secret factory in Area Fifty-one, would be brought in by a heavy haul truck as one piece. While the phased array radars and interceptor silos would be brought on line gradually during the next year or so, the PHASER arrays would suddenly appear almost simultaneously. Putin and Xi would be defecating masonry.
Light propagates tens of thousands of times faster than the fastest hypersonic weapon or ballistic missile. With only a fraction of a millisecond of time lag between when a laser fired on a target and when the laser beam arrived on target, no missile could maneuver to evade it. The redoubt also included the foundations and housing for a pair of twenty-five megawatt gas turbine generator sets as back up for the power grid. Both ballistic missile reentry vehicles and hypersonic missiles were already enduring massive, aerodynamic heating. They relied on thermal radiation as well as ablation to survive. Giving them a mirror coating in a forlorn hope of surviving a laser would only exacerbate the aerodynamic heating. They would be easy pray for a high energy laser.
Satisfied that the defensive fortifications were progressing, David drove back home. He almost wished that his children were there to help him bring the groceries in. He was going to be lonely. However; they were safer at his parents' ranch. David had found himself examining the kids more carefully and methodically during his recent visits. He had been unable to recognize any details that might give him cause to doubt their paternity. He had resisted the temptation to buy paternity test kits on line. He had gradually came to the realization that he loved his children far to much to reject them even if he had evidence that might belatedly refute their paternity.
