by Mark Alpert
One of the general’s aides burst into the office. “Sir, we have it! We’re ready to transmit!”
Aryeh rushed to Yaron’s desk. He hit the switch on the radio console and leaned over the microphone. “Shomron? This is Goldberg. We have the message we want you to relay. As soon as you receive it, transmit the signal in a spotlight beam, pointed directly south. It’s time for your tower to start broadcasting.”
CROUCHED ON THE MOUNTAINSIDE, DAVID SAW OLAM’S HELICOPTER PLUNGE into the tunnel. Then he saw the flames and smoke burst out of the tunnel’s mouth. A moment later the tunnel collapsed, snuffing the fire. The sand poured into the underground space, and soon there was a shallow crater above the spot where the X-ray laser had been. Even if David hadn’t seen the helicopter’s tail number, he could’ve guessed that it was Olam, and not Lieutenant Halutz, who’d piloted the MI-8 that dove into the tunnel. You had to be a little crazy to think of a stunt like that. David’s eyes stung as he imagined the man’s last moments. He’d saved the world, but it was a poorer place without him.
Cyrus’s soldiers stopped firing their machine guns. About half of them ran over to the collapsed tunnel and stared blankly at the ground. Some fell to their knees, screaming. Others tried digging holes in the sand with their bare hands. But they quickly gave up.
And then, one by one, they started running away. Throwing down their packs and weapons, they leaped over the trenches and charged into the darkness. They went in random directions, some north, some east, some west. They didn’t have a particular destination, David realized. They were simply running away from the target where the warhead was going to explode. With their leader dead and the X-ray laser destroyed, they knew that the Kingdom of Heaven—or at least the version Cyrus had promised them—wouldn’t be opening for them any time soon. What they faced now was plain old death, ordinary oblivion. And this prospect scared the shit out of them, as it does to most people, so they reverted to their baser instincts and tried to get the hell out of there.
But David didn’t join them. He knew that you couldn’t outrun a megaton blast. It was going to scorch the area for ten miles around and spread radioactive fallout even farther. Exhausted, he stumbled over to Monique, who was perched on the stony slope a few feet away, watching the last of Cyrus’s soldiers abandon their foxholes. She was a physicist, so she knew the futility of running even better than David did. With a tired groan, he sat down next to her.
“Is this spot taken?” he asked.
She leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder. He put his arm around her waist.
“You know what’s funny?” she said. “It’s a lovely night.”
It was true. He looked up at the sky and saw a glorious swath of stars shining over the Kopet Dag. He hadn’t seen such a beautiful sight in years. It was so easy to forget how wondrous the world is, he thought.
He squeezed the soft flesh just above Monique’s hip. He loved that part of her. “I feel bad about breaking my promise to Michael. I promised we’d come back for him.”
“It’s all right, David. He’ll be all right.”
“And Jonah. And Lisa. Jesus, this is going to be hard on them. I don’t know how they’ll—”
“Shhh.” She stretched her hand toward him and put her index and middle fingers over his lips. “Let’s not talk about that.”
Before she could move her hand away, he clasped her wrist. Then he kissed her fingers, the underside of each knuckle. “I love you, Monique. I just wish we could’ve spent more time together.”
She moved her face closer to his. “We’re together now.”
• • •
TWO MINUTES BEFORE THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA ARRIVED AT THE TARGET COORdinates, another voice came over the bomber’s radio. This voice, Colonel Ashley thought, wasn’t as tense as the one that had delivered the last Emergency Action Message. It was an older man’s voice, with a trace of an accent.
“Lima Three Foxtrot Hotel Seven Romeo.”
“Lima Three Foxtrot Hotel Seven Romeo.”
“Lima Three Foxtrot Hotel Seven Romeo.”
Ashley checked his watch. The authentication code was still valid. Nevertheless, he went through the motions of unlocking the safe and opening the codebook and checking the authentication tables again. The procedures had to be followed.
“The Emergency Action Message is authenticated,” he said. “This message is a valid nuclear-control order.”
He passed the codebook to the pilot. Major Wilcox looked jumpy as hell. “I concur, I concur. What’s the message?”
The colonel smiled as he read the first words on the cockpit display. “Mission aborted,” he said. “Return to base.”
“WOOOO-HOOOO!” Wilcox yelled. “Hell yeah!”
“Wait, there’s more. They want us to disable the detonator on the warhead. And then transmit a confirmation that we’ve disabled it. To make sure that the nuke can’t be deployed.”
Wilcox shook his head. “Someone must’ve seriously fucked up.”
“We have to send the confirmation via satellite to the E-4B Nightwatch plane. And there’s an attached message here for the president. His eyes only.”
“You know what this means, don’t you? They’re going straight to the top to get around the Defense Department brass. Someone at the Pentagon fucked up big-time. And now Global Strike Command is blowing the whistle on them.”
“Look, we don’t know—”
“Well, how else would you explain it? We were two minutes away from deploying a nuke, for Christ’s sake! I think that qualifies as a serious fuckup.”
Colonel Ashley agreed. But he didn’t like to encourage speculation. “Let’s just follow our orders, Major.”
“Yes, sir!” Wilcox banked the B-2, putting the bomber into a wide right turn.
The colonel reached for the armaments panel and punched in the code for disabling the detonator. Then he took a moment to look through the cockpit window at the darkened landscape below, the mountains they came so close to bombing. Thank God, he whispered. Thank God.
EPILOGUE
SIX U.S. ARMY RANGERS WEARING WHITE GLOVES AND TAN BERETS CARRIED a flag-draped coffin down the cargo ramp of the C-17 transport plane. Marching in slow, measured steps, they crossed the tarmac of Dover Air Force Base, the sprawling airfield in Delaware that was the receiving point for the bodies of American troops killed overseas.
David watched the solemn ritual from thirty feet away, standing at the end of a long line of officials from the Defense Department and the FBI. It was a hot, humid afternoon in late July, the temperature near ninety degrees. The stolid faces of the Rangers glistened with sweat as they carried the coffin toward a panel truck parked near the C-17. They halted at the truck’s rear door, which was open, and remained motionless for several seconds. As if on cue, all the officials on the tarmac raised their arms in a slow salute, and the soldiers slid the coffin into the truck. Then the carry team did a crisp about-face and returned to the C-17’s cargo hold. There were seven more bodies in the plane.
David raised his right hand to his heart. Monique, who stood beside him, did the same. They’d driven down from New York City that morning, invited to the ceremony by the FBI director, who stood at the other end of the line of officials. Aryeh Goldberg was there, too, having flown in from Israel especially for the ceremony. It was a bittersweet reunion. The airfield was silent as the soldiers unloaded the plane, slowly carrying the coffins to the panel truck.
David glanced at Monique to see how she was doing. She gave him a quick, reassuring nod. For the past five weeks they’d done nothing but try to recover. Luckily, neither of them had any summer classes to teach or major research projects to pursue. They could spend all their time with their children and each other. Every hour on this earth is a gift, David thought. But the odd thing about the gift of life is that you can’t truly appreciate it until you come close to dying.
After the battle outside the Ashkhaneh facility, he and Monique had sat under the stars fo
r half an hour, calmly waiting for the stealth bomber to deliver its warhead. As the minutes passed, though, it became clear that the bomber had been diverted and they weren’t going to be incinerated after all. So they regrouped with the Israeli commandos—three of them had survived the Ashkhaneh battle—and made radio contact with General Yaron of the Israeli signals-intelligence corps. Yaron ordered them to hike several miles south to a remote highway where they could rendezvous with one of his Iranian spies. Over the next forty-eight hours Yaron’s spy managed to smuggle them from the Kopet Dag to the Alborz Mountains, then across the border to Azerbaijan, and finally to Israel. Meanwhile, Michael and Shomron were picked up by the American search-and-rescue team that had been dispatched to southern Turkmenistan. Thanks to Aryeh’s message to the president, relayed via the stealth bomber, the White House had shelved its plans for attacking Iran and begun dismantling Adam Cyrus Bennett’s secret network.
By the time David and Monique got back to the United States, the newspapers were filled with stories about the nuclear catastrophe at Camp Cobra. The FBI had already rounded up the remaining True Believers, although some of them, including General Estey of Special Operations Command, committed suicide before they could be arrested. Then the president gave a prime-time speech explaining how a top Defense Department official had betrayed the nation. He revealed that Bennett had led a group of fanatics who’d collaborated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, using funds from the Pentagon’s classified budget to collect enriched uranium and build nuclear devices. But he didn’t mention Excalibur. He said Bennett had destroyed Camp Cobra to instigate a nuclear war between America and Iran, but he didn’t say anything about X-ray lasers or the universal program or the threat of a quantum crash. The White House had decided not to reveal this vulnerability in the grand design of Creation. If it were well known, another madman might try to exploit it.
For the same reason, the president didn’t reveal the involvement of David, Monique, or Michael. He gave the full credit for stopping Brother Cyrus to the Israeli and American soldiers who’d fought the True Believers at Ashkhaneh. Seven of the coffins in the C-17 contained the bodies of the Rangers who’d died in that firefight. The Pentagon had retrieved their remains after several weeks of diplomatic wrangling, and now the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were at Dover Air Force Base to honor their homecoming. They stood at the midpoint of the line of officials, holding their right arms in stiff salutes until the soldiers in tan berets unloaded the next-to-last coffin from the transport plane. Then another carry team headed for the C-17, a nonmilitary team this time, consisting of four men and two women wearing identical gray suits. A minute later they came down the cargo ramp with the last coffin, which held the body of Special Agent Lucille Parker.
The FBI director stepped forward. So did David, Monique, and Aryeh. They advanced across the tarmac, heading for a shiny black hearse parked next to the panel truck. The carry team of FBI agents also headed for the hearse, marching slowly. David’s throat tightened as he stared at the flag-draped coffin. It was no different from the other coffins that had been taken out of the C-17, but he couldn’t bear to look at it. He turned away and looked at the FBI director, who’d lowered his head and closed his eyes. His lips moved, but he spoke so softly David couldn’t make out what he was saying. Maybe it was a prayer, he thought. Or an apology. David closed his own eyes and remembered seeing Lucille on the deck of the fishing trawler, pointing her Glock at one of the oil derricks in the Caspian Sea. She’d been happy that morning. David wanted to remember her that way.
He opened his eyes just as the six FBI agents slid the coffin into the hearse. Once they closed the vehicle’s rear door, the FBI director shook hands with the carry team, muttering a quiet thank you to each agent. Then David heard the sound of more cars approaching. He turned around and saw three black limousines drive across the airport’s apron and stop near the line of Pentagon officials. More men in dark suits emerged from the cars and briskly reconnoitered the area, positioning themselves around the limousines. They were Secret Service agents, David realized. After another few seconds the agents opened the back door of the middle car, and the president of the United States stepped onto the tarmac.
The officials saluted him, of course. The president saluted back, but he didn’t stop to chat with the secretary of defense or any of his deputies. Instead, he walked straight toward the hearse. David had never seen the president in person before, and he was a bit surprised by the man’s appearance—he looked older and sadder than David had expected. There were patches of gray in his close-cropped hair.
He stepped toward the FBI director and shook his hand. “I’m very sorry for your loss,” he said in a low voice.
The director raised his head. His eyes were wet. “Thank you, sir.”
“I know this is small consolation, but I’m going to award Agent Parker the Presidential Medal of Valor. The country owes her a great debt.”
“That’s for damn sure. She was brave as hell.”
There was an awkward silence. The president waited a few seconds, looking uncomfortable. Then he turned to Monique. “Thank you for your service, Dr. Reynolds. And thank you for not revealing the existence of the universal program. It must be difficult for a scientist to hide the truth, but in this case I don’t think we have a choice.”
Monique shook the president’s hand, but said nothing. For the first time since David had met her, she seemed at a loss for words. After a few seconds the president let go of her hand and reached for David’s. “And you must be Dr. Swift?” he said. “Your name came up a few times in the FBI reports I read.”
David felt disoriented. He watched himself shake hands with the president. “Uh, yeah, that’s right,” he said. “The FBI loves to write reports about me.” He stood there with his mouth open. He couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say. “I’ve got this bad habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“We were all in the wrong place, I’m afraid. But you helped us put things right.” He gave David a sober look. Then he smiled. “So I assume you’re back at Columbia now? And still running Physicists for Peace?”
Jesus, David thought. He couldn’t believe it. The president was making small talk with him. “Yeah, we’re still fighting the good fight. We have another conference scheduled for this fall.”
“Glad to hear it. You’re doing important work. We have to find new ways to reach across borders. Because the old ways aren’t working anymore.”
David nodded. It was true: the need for peace activism was greater than ever. The United States had managed to avoid war with Iran—after Bennett’s treachery was revealed, the Revolutionary Guards surrendered all the U-235 that Cyrus had given them—but the Iranian government was still producing its own enriched uranium at the centrifuge complex in Natanz. Another conflict was sure to break out unless the citizens of both countries came to their senses.
The president moved a step closer. He put one hand on Monique’s shoulder and the other on David’s. “I have a proposal for both of you. I’ve been thinking about this tragedy we’ve suffered and what we could’ve done to prevent it. And I’ve decided that I need better information from the scientific community.”
Monique finally found her voice. “What do you mean?”
“There’s an imbalance. I have hundreds of people giving me advice on military, diplomatic, and economic issues. But my contact with scientists is limited. They’re either buried in the federal bureaucracy or isolated on the college campuses. What I need is a liaison. Someone who could put me in touch with the best minds in each field, particularly during a crisis.” He gazed intently at Monique, then at David. “You think you could do something like that?”
David smiled. This had to be a joke. “You want us to work for you?”
“You wouldn’t have official positions. You’d be more like consultants. I’d call on you only when we need your help.”
“But neither of us
is qualified. We have no government experience and no—”
“I don’t need more bureaucrats. I need smart people who have plenty of contacts in the scientific community. You two would be perfect for the job.”
Slowly, David realized that the president was serious. The commander in chief was asking for their help
“You don’t have to answer right away,” the president added. “Just think about it. My chief of staff will be in touch.”
DAVID WAS STILL THINKING ABOUT IT FOUR HOURS LATER WHEN HE returned to New York City. In a daze, he dropped off Monique at their apartment, then drove to the Upper Manhattan Autism Center to pick up Michael. The past few weeks had been difficult for the teenager; he was still suffering from the trauma of the kidnapping and the terrible things that had happened afterward. Two weeks after coming back to the United States he threw a punch at one of his teachers at the autism center. The next week he smashed one of the center’s computers. David had arranged extra therapy sessions for the boy, but his progress had been slow.
Michael was waiting for him in the center’s recreation room, sitting at a square table under the watchful eyes of the staff members. He was hunched over a sheaf of papers and writing something with a ballpoint pen. Probably copying the words from another science textbook he’d memorized. David watched him for a few seconds, marveling at the look of concentration on the teenager’s face. Then he gently tapped the table. “I’m here, Michael. It’s time to go home.”
The boy stopped writing and put down his pen. But he didn’t look at David. He kept his eyes on his papers. “You’re late,” he said. “You were supposed to pick me up at five o’clock. The time is now five-oh-seven.”
“I’m sorry. There was traffic on the interstate. Come on, let’s go.”
Michael didn’t move. David could tell there was something else on his mind. In these situations he’d learned that it was better not to rush the boy. So David stood by the table and waited him out.
