China Lake - Tapa dura

Both witnesses to a bureaucratic embarrassment, hushed up in 1961, David Harper and Jack Tannis are contacted years later by a man intent on killing them before they spill the beans

the brightest, freshest new voices to appear in the international thriller business in a long time."
USA TODAY
Jack Tannis ended his day like any other. Then the phone rang. The caller, who would not give his name, teased him with another: David Harper.
Suddenly, Tannis was thrust back to his days as security director at China Lake, the U.S. Naval Weapons Center. In 1961, duplicates of the first heat-seeking air-to-air missile, the Sidewinder, began appearing on Soviet MiG fighters. British scientist David Harper was accused of revealing its design to the Russians. Jack Tannis cleared his name. The case was never solved.
With dizzying speed the past comes back to life...a body found in the night desert...a special navy team rushed in to investigte the murder...a beautiful woman's mysterious outpost in the desert...and David Harper, the key to everything, joining Tannis to ferret out the force behind the secret that started it all....
From the Pap