Smith, almost as fast, dropped to the floor. In a jujitsu move, he came up under the second commando, with his pistol barrel just inside the bottom of the SEAL’s bulletproof vest.
Three more commandos spilled in.
Josh positioned himself carefully behind his SEAL to prevent them from getting a clean shot at him. Everyone froze.
Josh knew if Smith hadn’t engaged, they would have shot right by the man Josh was holding. SEALs were never held hostage. Quickly, Josh said, “I’m the man you’re looking for. I’m going to return this pistol to its owner. We are American citizens on a critical and highly classified mission that you are endangering. I ask that we all take a deep breath, and that you lower the barrel of your weapons from my people so we can talk.” As he said that, he slowly rotated the pistol barrel up and away from the SEAL’s neck. Turning it toward himself, he offered it handle-first to the SEAL. Smith did the same as he slowly stood up.
While he was acting, Josh’s mind worked at phenomenal speed. He knew there was no way they’d win a firefight against heavily armed SEALs. He only realized why he had done what he did after the fact. Making a physical move that was almost impossible and then identifying himself as their target earned their respect and, he hoped, a few precious seconds.
Bobinski, the technicians and SEALs scrambled out of the building into the frigid cold. All the building lights in the base were out. The only illumination came from the C-17. The last out was the Senior Chief. Bobinski watched him look around.
Josh put his hands up. The SEAL he returned the gun to frisked him and stepped back, as another SEAL did the same to Smith. The SEAL Commander lowered his weapon slightly, and the other SEALs followed his lead.
As they frisked the others, Josh watched the monitor out of the corner of his eye. It showed the tracking system had finally locked on to the meteoroid. It also indicated the Blaster’s aiming system was moving the Blaster into firing position. The power board was at 98 percent.
The officer said to him, “You are Josh Fuze?”
Josh said, “I am.”
“My orders are to take you into custody immediately and shut down your operation. We are authorized to use deadly force.”
Josh read the subdued insignia on his uniform. He was a Lieutenant Commander. Josh said quietly, “On whose authority, Commander?” Josh doubted they knew where their Command’s orders came from, nor was it relevant, but he needed time.
The SEAL Commander said, “I am acting on orders authorized by National Command Authority. I appreciate the fact that you didn’t put up a fight or attempt to flee and took responsibility, but my orders stand. As long as your people continue to cooperate, I give you my word they will not be harmed. We’ll let the experts sort this out.”
Josh said, “Thank you.” He was dealing with an honorable warrior. He continued, “This operation is highly classified and intended to deflect a large incoming meteoroid. If we don’t initiate the beam in the next few minutes, the meteoroid will destroy London. It’s critical that you contact your Command Authority immediately.”
“My orders are to secure this facility and take everyone into custody. I was told specifically to stop all operations immediately.”
Josh saw the tracking scope sync. The aiming system was now showing green. If everything was working, the Blaster should be pointed in the right direction and slowly tracking the meteoroid. Three down, one more “green” to go; all they needed was full charge. He saw the indicator change to 99 percent ... just a couple more minutes.
Josh continued in a calm voice, “Doing that will result in the destruction of a major city. Your unit and command may take the blame. I know you’re following orders, but you’re an officer in the United States Navy, as was I. You swore an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. The U.S. and world are facing the most powerful enemy. It’s closing at 40 kilometers per second. Every minute we waste reduces the chance of our success. I’m asking you to exercise your authority as on-scene commander. Please contact your command and ask for an immediate review. You know as well as I, blue-on-blue engagements occur. Hundreds of thousands could die.”
He could see the conflict in the officer’s eyes, but the man shook his head and said, “I’m sorry. My orders are very clear. I promise to contact my command as soon as we’ve shut this operation down.” He signaled to start rounding up the control staff.
This SEAL was not going to bend. He just needed a few more seconds. He’d try one last stall tactic. “We can shut it down, but we have extremely high-voltage capacitors with tens of thousands of amps of power. If we don’t shut them down properly, they could explode. Your people and mine could be seriously injured.”
The SEAL Commander paused and then said, “We’re shutting the reactors down now and have experts coming in behind us.” He motioned with his gun for Josh to move toward the door.
He knew the SEAL was finished listening to his monolog. He was 10 feet from the panel with the red button. There were two tables in between and four SEALs with their weapons pointed in his direction. He had no choice. When it hit 100 percent, he’d have to make a run for the button and hope he could hit it before they cut him down.
Bobinski and his men had no coats. The Senior Chief told his team to move their shivering captives to the C-17 as he looked nervously over his shoulder at the reactor building. Bobinski heard him report over the radio that the power was finally off but the reactor could melt down. Bobinski couldn’t hear the response, but the Senior Chief suddenly stopped, turned around and looked up. Seeing the lights on the mountaintop, he swore loudly, pulled his pistol and ran toward Petrov.
Mauna Kea
The VISTA Infrared telescope in Chile was the first to detect the meteoroid. They immediately sent messages to observatories across the world and to NORAD to plot the impact point.
Mount Howe
The charge indicator hit 100 percent and the display turned green. A buzzer went off, and several lights changed color.
Chandra, on the far side of the room, gave him the needed distraction. Pointing at the wall display, she yelled, “Oh my God! Look at the capacitor board!”
All eyes turned to the board.
As Josh was about to launch himself, he saw Smith push the SEAL nearest him off balance, and knew Smith was going for the red button.
Once again, Josh’s mind sped up. He saw the SEAL Commander was still looking at the board. The SEAL Smith pushed wouldn’t recover fast enough, but the other two SEALs were swinging their weapons toward Smith. Josh knew Smith would never make it.
With all his strength, Josh pushed off the wall behind him injecting himself between the SEALs and Smith.
Two bullets caught Josh in the stomach and spun him around as a third grazed his shoulder.
Smith slapped the red button and rolled on the floor, as a fourth bullet just missed his head ricocheting off the armored metal wall.
Josh’s trajectory sent him crashing into a table with laptops.
The SEAL Commander yelled, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!”
Lying on the floor amidst a tangle of laptops and cables, Josh heard the warning siren and the sound of the capacitor primers release. The electronic hum rose to a shriek.
One SEAL shoved Smith to the floor with his boot, pushing the gun barrel to his head.
The Commander grabbed Greg Langlois and yelled, “Shut it down!”
Greg yelled back, “We can’t stop it once it’s started!”
On cue, the capacitors discharged like a fireworks grand finale.
From the tiny porthole window, a brilliant flash lit the control room as the high-pitched shriek ended in a wall-shaking, bone-rattling boom. It felt like a lightning bolt striking inside the room.
In the blink of an eye, millions of amps excited trillions of photons into coherent, perfectly collimated lockstep. Reaching their exit threshold, they departed the Blaster at the speed of light. First, at a frequency absorbed
by air molecules, the three-meter-wide beam superheated the air to incandescence. A millisecond later, the second more powerful train of photons followed the tunnel created by the first. The double beam was a beautiful, brilliant blue-green, so intense that stray reflections could damage unprotected eyes. As the beam left the atmosphere, the vacuum tunnel collapsed with a sonic boom. The photons crossed the distance to the incoming meteoroid in less than a second.
As the Senior Chief dragged the shivering Petrov back toward the reactor building, the landscape lit up with a blinding blue-green flash followed seconds later by a thunderclap.
In the control room, all sound stopped. Only the ringing in their ears remained, along with a smoky haze of black powder and burned insulation. The light coming through the small window faded to a green glow.
On the video feed from the dome’s interior, they saw the Blaster’s tellurium/sapphire core had exploded and the super-conducting mercury cooling lines had burst. A colorful fire grew from the melted electrical components. An exterior camera, pointed above the dome, showed the sky. Disrupted air molecules along the beam’s path fluoresced with a bright green glow. Like an accusatory finger, the long, narrow, artificial aurora pointed toward the deadly meteoroid.
Into the silence, the SEAL Commander said, “What happened!”
Greg’s voice cracked as he spoke. “You just killed the best man I’ve ever known.” With tears in his eyes, he said, “He was telling the truth. We’re trying to prevent the destruction of London.”
Lying on the floor, Josh whispered to himself with a Monty Python accent, “Not quite dead yet.”
The Commander nodded to one of his men, who went to Josh and bent down. Checking the wound and the spreading pool of blood, he said, “He’s still alive, but....” He shook his head.
The Commander said in a softer voice, “Do what you can.”
Josh felt pain but it seemed distant. He felt the blood soaking through his shirt. The bullets obviously missed his heart, but he wasn’t sure what they did to his other organs.
Smith and Musk, daring the SEAL holding the gun to do anything, slid over to where Josh was lying. Josh felt Smith put pressure on the wound to slow the bleeding.
The SEAL said, “I’ll be back with a medic bag.”
Langley
Carl noticed Buster was chewing another piece of gum and watching the main screen with apparent calm. Suspicious, he walked over to the console with the Navy operator and asked how things were going.
The operator said, “Four minutes to impact.”
Carl grabbed the phone next to the Navy officer and switched the line to Davidson, praying he would still be online.
Davidson answered.
“Buster has Tomahawks four minutes out!”
Davidson said, “Give me the Navy guy!”
52
DEFLECT
As the SEAL Commander was trying to contact his Command, he heard the sound of a high-pitched jet engine getting rapidly louder. It had the unmistakable rising Doppler that indicated rapid closure. Recognizing the signature sound, he yelled, “Incoming! Hit the deck!”
As they threw themselves on the floor, the escalating turbine whine was joined by the sound of a second engine.
When it couldn’t get any closer or louder, the Doppler pitch suddenly dropped. The sound receded, and a few seconds later, two deep reverberating booms echoed in the distance.
As they started to get up, Greg was the first to ask, “What was that!”
With a frown, the SEAL Commander shook his head, “I think that was plan B.”
As Katori stood up, he said, “Those were Tomahawk cruise missiles.”
The SEAL Commander looked at him with surprise.
Katori said, “Before Boeing, I worked for Raytheon, the maker of those things. That’s closer than I ever want to get.”
Antarctic Ocean
The Navy Petty Officer sitting at the Tomahawk console said, “We really cut that close.” He looked at his Captain. “I’m surprised the missiles picked up the satellite signal that close to the pole.”
She patted him on the shoulder. “Good job. That was the first operational test of the new Block IV redirect-in-flight capability.” She added softly, “I wonder if we’ll ever know what was going on.”
Turning to the Communication Officer, she said, “Send the abort confirmation to Langley.”
Langley
Still holding the phone and his breath, Carl reported to Davidson that they had been able to redirect the missiles.
Davidson asked him to patch him through to the Director of National Intelligence.
Carl said, “I can do better than that. The DNI came into the Ops Center a few minutes ago. She’s standing against the back wall.”
“Put her on.”
After a short telephone conversation, Carl watched the DNI walk up behind Buster and say, “That was an incredibly dangerous backup plan!”
Buster spun around with irritation until he realized who was talking to him.
She continued, “Did you know that Elton Musk was on the mountaintop?”
His silence said it all.
She continued coldly, “You took a huge risk that the new Tomahawks could be redirected.”
Without thinking, Buster said, “They can be redirected?”
Her eyes narrowed as she shook her head in disgust. Lifting her right hand, she motioned to two agents.
As Buster turned to look at the security agents, she said softly, “Please escort Mr. Johnson out of the Ops Center and pull his access on my authority.” The men didn’t even blink as they flanked the now silent Buster.
As they were escorting him out, a CIA analyst burst into the room, almost knocking Buster over. He yelled, “NORAD and NATO just announced an evacuation order for London. They’re predicting a meteoroid impact in five hours!”
The Director of National Intelligence announced loudly, “This operation is now under my personal control. I’m ordering all forces to stand down and render assistance to the pole base staff immediately!”
Mount Howe
The SEAL Commander received a communication. It had the correct authorization codes. It immediately rescinded the use of deadly force and told them they were to assist the personnel at the base in any way they could. He shook his head swearing. He could have used that information 10 minutes ago, before he blew the guy away.
Chandra, who had been staring at one of the monitors, suddenly pointed at her laptop screen, exclaiming, “We hit it! We actually hit the dang thing dead on!” She added, “The question is, was it enough?” She started to move over to her laptop, but a SEAL restrained her. She looked at the Commander like a mother ready to discipline an unruly child.
The Commander told his team, “We’ve just been ordered to stand down and assist these people in any way possible.” He realized that whatever they were supposed to have stopped — they didn’t, and it was probably a good thing. He read the dossier and knew who Dr. Victoria Chandra was. “I’m sorry, Dr. Chandra. Is there anything we can do to help?”
She ignored him and moved to one of the laptops. Studying several tables of numbers and graphs, her fingers whizzed across the keyboard.
Cho, looking at the remote video feed from the dome, said, “Blaster’s slagged.”
Just then, the power and overhead lights went out and red emergency lights came on.
Katori said, unnecessarily, “There go the reactors.”
The overhead monitors went dark. The laptops, on battery, remained active.
Katori turned to Chandra. “Did you get enough trajectory information before they cut the power?”
Chandra didn’t answer but kept working. She stood up suddenly, startling the SEAL behind her, who raised his gun instinctively. Oblivious, she said, “It’s impossible to be sure this early. Trajectory changes are so tiny, but there’s a chance.”
Cho blurted out, “You mean it worked?”
Greg said, “Yeah, but it blew itself to bi
ts.”
“Who cares, we can build another. I can’t believe it actually worked!”
Chandra and Katori both turned and looked at Cho with surprise.
Cho looked amazed. “You don’t understand. These things never work the first time and certainly not at full power!” He did a little NFL touchdown victory spike, and then stopped, looking apologetically toward Smith and Musk, kneeling next to Josh.
Cheyenne Mountain
NORAD was the first to notice the trajectory change. They recalculated and published the new impact point. They added a new evacuation order for low-lying areas on the southern coast of Ireland and the eastern coast of England, France and Spain. In addition to grounding or rerouting all air traffic in Western Europe, a new order went out to ships in the Eastern Atlantic. They were to move away from the impact area as fast as possible and prepare for a multi-megaton blast with hurricane force winds and seas.
Mount Howe
Smith, still holding pressure on Josh’s wound, leaned over and said quietly, “Josh, I’m sorry.”
Josh whispered back weakly, “Are you serious? Chandra just said you protected hundreds of thousands of people.” He winced but continued, “It was someone else’s turn to protect you.” He paused to take a painful breath. “I also know I ruined your plan to retire yourself.” The emotion he saw on Smith’s face confirmed that he had planned his own accidental death.
Josh was beginning to feel lightheaded, but needed to tell Smith one last thing. With his hand, he weakly motioned him closer.
Smith bent down.
Josh whispered, “This is important.”
He leaned closer.
“Lopez thinks you’re hot.”
Impact (Fuzed Trilogy Book 1) Page 33
