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A moment later, a fit woh cheekbones appeared on the main viewscreen next to Overholt She looked wide awake and wore pressed Air Force blues The silver oak leaves of a colonel were pinned to her shoulder epaulets

“Hello, Barbara,” Juan said “Thanks for taking our call Are you at Schriever?” Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado Springs was ho, which was in control of the Global Positioning System It looked like she was in some kind of control room, so he hoped that was the case

“It’s good to see you again, Juan,” she said with the flash of a quick sht me at a bad tiure out e’ve lost communications with one of our bases”

“That would be Caht?”

Goodman’s jaw dropped “How do you know that?”

“Because we’re about three hundred and fifty miles northwest of the island There’s a cruisea nasty che to warn the”

“I can’t help you We’re just asI can do”

“Yes, there is Theseus”

She frowned and leaned toward the camera “That is strictly on a need-to-know basis”

“Believe me, everyone here has a security clearance and needs to know”

Theseus was the code name for a special feature of GPS that few outside of Space Command knew about Since GPS was used by nations around the world, including eted at the US using Auidance

During armed conflicts, the military wanted to be able to broadcast incorrect GPS coordinates to spoof other countries’ guidance systems, so Theseus was developed as a hidden control that could be activated without anyone else knowing Not only that, but for a short ti GLONASS, the Russian analog of GPS, and NAVIC, India’s version The software design for Theseus and knowledge of its existence had been stolen when Juan was still in the CIA, and he had teaet it back before it could fall into the hands of the Chinese

“You need to activate Theseus in that region now,” Juan said Because Diego Garcia’s location in the southern Indian Ocean was so isolated, the narrow focus of the GPS change was unlikely to significantly affect air or sea traffic “Redirect theto weather reports, that would put the missile doind of the island

“What?” Goodhast “Theseus has never been used operationally before It’s onlya time of war”

Juan got out of his chair and walked toward the screen “Barbara, if you don’t activate it in the next ninety seconds, over three thousand on Diego Garcia will be killed”