The Dragon

Mr. MacKinnon looked at the sparking cabinet that had fallen on the trigger mechanism for the Dragon. Somewhere nearby, a rocket fired.

"Oh, that's not good," he said.

The S-58 Dragon is a clever little weapon. The pet project of President Strauss, it consisted of a small explosive attached to a small and disturbingly accurate guided missile. The operator simply selects a target, fires, and soon after there is only a smoking hole where an enemy official stood before.

Project Potato Chip was a rushed job, with a tiny budget and a disgruntled staff nicknamed "The Cabal." Most of the crew had not volunteered for the project, and resented their assignment. The Cabal felt that, paychecks aside, the Dragon was an excessively wasteful weapon. Indeed, the millions of dollars being spent to kill one person - in a spectacular way, mind you - could be better spent on other things. Raises, for example. Meanwhile, a butter knife and a Ranger could do the job just as well, and be reused later.

While developing the tracking system for the Dragon, the Cabal needed a test target with a verifiable, remote location. They chose President Strauss. It was only a test, after all.

In their hurry to get the missile operational before their deadline, they forgot to clear the tracking system's memory. It wouldn't matter anyway, since the previous target would be cleared when an operator put in a real target.

If the Cabal hadn't been in such a rush to complete the project, it wouldn't have been as disastrous when the last bolt holding a rack of computer equipment let go.

Mr. MacKinnon ran to a still-functional monitor to see where the Dragon was headed. He nearly swallowed his retainer when he discovered its destination. He ran to a phone and began dialing frantically.

No one knows if President Strauss appreciated the irony of being an integral part of the first successful test of his new missile.