Though Rocky’s physical prowess and leadership style may have reflected the personality of her father, her academic pursuits were strictly guided by her mother, herself a former engineering student. After graduating with honors from the Naval Academy, Rocky entered M.I.T.’s engineering school, her advanced degree eventually leading to a high-ranking position in the Naval Undersea Warfare Engineering Center (NUWC), in Keyport, Washington.
The military was Rocky’s life, but she had no desire to command in the field. As the Gulf War had demonstrated, technology was the key to America’s dominance as a world power, and Rocky wanted to ride the wave that guaranteed her country’s freedom for decades to come. Her ego-driven career goal was simple: She would immerse herself in as many new hyperadvanced technologies available, learning all she could from the country’s top engineers, and rub elbows with all her father’s “muckety-muck” friends in the Pentagon until the opportunity came to oversee one of the Navy’s new high-tech weapon systems.
Her opportunity would come following several long years working on the Navy’s new SSN Virginia-class attack sub. George W. Bush’s victory had pushed the space-based missile defense shield to the top of the White House’s military wish list. Only six months later, the defection of Vermont senator Jim Jeffords from the Republican Party returned control of the Senate to the Democrats, threatening to send the high-tech, high-cost defense initiative back into development hell. A new project was needed, something more feasible and easier to digest financially, while still packing a wallop regarding America’s national security.
Enter the GOLIATH Project, a top-secret venture carrying a price tag in excess of $10 billion. Unlike SDI, this would be an offensive machine developed by NUWC, a machine capable of altering the strategy of America’s Armed Forces for decades to come—and she was the top candidate in line for the directorship.
Three months later it was made officiaclass="underline" Rochelle Jackson had become the most powerful woman in this man’s armed forces.
Less than a year later, her father, now a general in the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), would introduce her to his finest recruit, U.S. Army Captain Gunnar Wolfe, a detachment commander in the elite U.S. Army Rangers. It was in this dark-haired, gray-eyed commando that Rocky Jackson would finally meet her match. Gunnar, an engineering major from Penn State, had been given leave from the field to complete his work on an original design for a remotely operated minisub. Believing the vessel’s design was compatible with his daughter’s program, the Bear had arranged for Gunnar’s transfer to NUWC.
For the first two months, they had fought like cats and dogs, Navy engineer versus Army commando—Rocky always hell-bent on keeping the new recruit under her thumb, Gunnar refusing to bend under his beautiful OIC’s fiery will. Project deadlines pushed them closer together, the long days eventually softening the blows, allowing their mutual attraction toward one another to take root. The lab quickly became the forum for late-night dinners, their romance becoming more physical with each encounter. Competition took a backseat to passion, their lovemaking becoming a game of one-upmanship, more lust than love.
Somewhere along the journey, something much deeper blossomed.
Gunnar Wolfe had bridled the Bear’s bucking bronco, an ego-driven woman whose beauty and passion matched her strength and competitive desires. A spring wedding was announced, plans hastily accelerated after Rocky discovered she was six weeks pregnant. The happy couple even found their dream house—a four thousand five hundred-square-foot waterfront home a few miles west of Seattle.
It was shortly after their engagement that her fiance began acting strangely, as if he was harboring some dark secret. Their free time together lessened as Rocky’s trips to the Pentagon increased, Gunnar spending many a lonely night in his lab.
And then, two weeks before their wedding date, Gunnar committed an unforgivable act of treason that broke her heart and changed both their lives forever.
Arriving home from an extended stay in D.C., Rocky learned a computer virus had been downloaded into the terminals housing all of her project’s top-secret schematics. Years of work and countless man-hours had been eradicated in an instant. Worse, David Paniagua, the boy-genius in charge of the project’s nanotechnology (and Gunnar’s best man) reported that $2 billion worth of biochemical nanocomputer circuitry was missing, along with a five-year harvest’s worth of bioengineered silicon-coated bacteria.
The Department of Defense was devastated by the setback. An internal investigation, following on the heels of the acts of espionage discovered at Los Alamos, forced the Navy to shut down the entire project until the spy or spies could be identified and apprehended.
The culprit had broken into the artificial intelligence lab sometime around midnight. Security records revealed only one person had been in the Warfare Center’s A-I division at the time—Gunnar Wolfe.
Within days, the Naval Investigative Service (NIS) found evidence of an offshore bank account in Gunnar’s father’s name. Recent deposits from another offshore bank were traced to Hong Kong, the account totaling just over $1.2 million. Although he denied any knowledge of the money or the stolen computer parts, a lie detector test clearly indicated the former war hero was hiding something from his superiors.
Gunnar was arrested in his lab by NIS agents two days before their wedding day. Because there was no evidence indicating Gunnar had “sold” the schematics to another government, prosecutors were forced to reduce the charges of espionage to destruction of government resources. On June 22, a month after they were to have been married, a court-martial jury of staff rank naval officers found Gunnar Wolfe guilty, the judge (an admiral) sentencing him to ten years in Leavenworth.
Six weeks later, the Republicans lost the White House, in no small part due to the Goliath debacle. Within months, the new president would officially cancel the project altogether.
Rocky was devastated. Her life’s work, her career goals, her future with the one man to whom she had pledged her love—everything was gone. Worse yet, Gunnar’s selfish, inexplicable act had disgraced her forever in the eyes of her peers. Rocky Jackson, a woman who practically draped herself in the American flag, had allowed herself to fall for a man who had stabbed his own country in the back.
The pain was all-consuming, as if her heart had been torn from her chest, her mind from her skull. She felt used. She felt dirty. Weeks later, she would lose the baby.
It was the final straw, too much even for her own superstrength ego to handle.
Three months after Gunnar began serving time, the Bear found his daughter lying unconscious on the bathroom floor, having overdosed on muscle relaxants and barbiturates. It was the first time in her life she had ever cried out for help. It had nearly been her last.
Months of private counseling eventually replaced Rocky’s emptiness with a simmering rage that could explode at any time. Medication made her ill, and a family vacation in Europe only made things worse. The Bear knew his daughter’s collapsed mental state had to be rebuilt, brick by patriotic brick. That required discipline, something the service could provide. While Bear had made sure the military had no knowledge of his daughter’s drug overdose, he also knew a return to the Warfare Center was out.