Omega Missile (Shadow Warriors)

by Bob Mayer

  "Ready," McKenzie growled, hopping onto the rubdown table. He pulled off his shirt without being asked and extended the stub of his left arm.

  The arm had been gone when he'd arrived here two months ago, but he'd needed an operation to smooth off the stump and then he'd been confined to his bed as he fought off several infections from what had been a very dirty wound. He had told her he lost the arm to a tank. He'd also said that he and his partner had knocked out that tank as well as another. Stedman had instinctively thought he was lying at first. Marines and SEALs would come up with anything to try to impress a nurse. But she'd checked his medical records and discovered to her surprise that he was telling the truth. There was no hint in the records telling where this had happened but despite her world-weariness, and maybe because of it, Stedman had an itching desire to know McKenzie's story.

  The doctors had been forced to take the arm four inches above the elbow. The mangled joint had still been attached when he'd arrived, the original amputation being below the elbow, but there was too much damage to the joint. Besides, the original surgical amputation had been crudely done. Stedman had checked the records and discovered that that initial procedure had been done by a ship's doctor on board a submarine. She shuddered to think of the scene inside the cramped, insufficiently equipped infirmary onboard that vessel. It must have been a desperate situation for the sub's doctor, a general practitioner, to do the surgery. And the submarine must have been someplace where an aerial evacuation had not been possible, which further fueled Stedman's interest given that there wasn't an ocean in the world where the U.S. Navy couldn't get a medevac helicopter in a few hours' time.

  Stedman picked up the artificial arm which had undergone several adjustments based on their last attempt at fitting. She'd had to stand over the bored specialist to get the job done right, but she felt McKenzie was worth the time and effort.

  "Let's see how it works now." She attached the arm, using a Velcro and leather harness that slipped over both of McKenzie's shoulders and hooks that went into loops left at the end of the stub. The massive muscles in his upper arm had been salvaged and the hope was that the operation of the prosthesis could be linked to those muscles. It took them twenty minutes to get it on.

  "How does it feel?"

  McKenzie looked at her. "Feel? It's metal. I don't feel a damn thing. I feel like my arm is still there, but every time I try to use it I'm reminded it isn't."

  "Your nerves will keep firing as if the arm were there for a long time," Stedman said. "What I meant was how does the prosthesis feel?"

  McKenzie hopped off the table and walked. "Strange. I don't know. Maybe it's normal. It was strange not to have the rest of my arm there. I'll have to get used to the weight. The balance." The arm twitched as he attempted to move it.

  "Sit down, please," Stedman said. She took the metal hand at the end of the arm and carefully lifted the arm up until it was standing straight out. "How does that feel?"

  "Fucked," McKenzie muttered. "It's fucked. It's never going to be the same."

  Stedman was used to that. The feeling of irrevocable loss hit every amputee sooner or later. She sensed a deeper level to what McKenzie was saying though. As she began working him out, teaching him how to use the arm, she questioned him about what had happened.

  "I looked at your file. You weren't B.S.'ing me when you said a tank caused your injury."

  McKenzie stared at her. "Injury? Is that what they call it? An injury? Like I was lifting weights and hurt myself? Tripped over a rock?" He tapped the artificial limb with his good arm and his voice dripped bitterness. "This was a wound sustained in the service of my country."

  "Your VA status and the—" Stedman began, but McKenzie cut her off.

  "I lost my arm in Lebanon," McKenzie said.

  As she worked, he talked, telling the story of what had happened for the first time since he'd been debriefed during the medevac flight from Italy back to the states. He'd been ordered under an oath of secrecy never to discuss what had happened, but such oaths meant nothing to him now.

  "Captain Thorpe got me on board the SDV," McKenzie said as he neared the end of the story. "Then he headed for the sub. Only it wasn't there. Seems like when Loki pulled the plug on us, he pulled everything."

  "The only thing that saved us," he said, "was that the captain of the sub picked up our transponder as he was beating feet out of the area. He didn't check in with anyone higher or else we'd still be out there. He came back and picked us up. I heard he was relieved afterward for disobeying orders."

  Stedman had heard many horror stories in this room but she had to shake her head. "I can't believe they would abandon you."

  McKenzie snorted. "They didn't just abandon us. Someone gave us up to the Israelis and the CIA. If that sub captain hadn't disobeyed orders, Loki would have gotten his wish and Thorpe and I would be dead."

  "Why would we be supplying plutonium to the Israelis?" Stedman asked. A part of her wanted McKenzie to be lying, but her instincts told her he wasn't because there was no bravado in what he said. If his story was true, it was a story she wasn't supposed to know.

  "Politics," McKenzie said. "Why was Oliver North sending arms to the Contras? Why'd we fight the Gulf War? Who the fuck knows why?" he said.

  "I do," a low voice said behind them.

  McKenzie turned. An old man, dressed in a brown wool suit with a wildly colored bow tie, stood behind them. He looked ill, his gray hair missing in spots, his body rail thin, his skin splotchy with red, raw areas.

  "Who are you?" McKenzie demanded.

  "My name is Kilten." The man waved an ID card at Nurse Stedman. "Might I have a few moments alone with Chief McKenzie?" he asked.

  Stedman nodded and walked over to the other side of the room to help a patient working on a Cybex machine.

  "I'm a friend," Kilten said.

  "Friend?" McKenzie said. "I don't have any friends."

  "What about Captain Thorpe? He saved your life."

  McKenzie frowned. "What do you know about me and Thorpe?"

  "I read a classified file, code name Delilah, that contained the CIA's debriefing on your SO/NEST mission into Lebanon."

  "Who are you?" McKenzie asked. "I saw your ID card. You work for the government."

  "I work for the same government you work for."

  "Worked," McKenzie spat. "Get the tense right. I don't work for them anymore. I gave them my arm and damn near gave them my life and it was all just an administrative screw up. That's what they told me during the debriefing. Can you believe that bullshit? They were dealing nuclear materials to the Israelis for God knows what reason and if they happened to kill me in the process of doing that, well, that's just too bad, right?"

  Kilten nodded. "The CIA was keeping it a secret and the Department of Defense accidentally learned of the deal, not knowing exactly who was involved. So there you were, secretly watching our own government at work."

  McKenzie frowned. "How do you know that?"

  Kilten plowed on, ignoring the question. "Then when your commander became aware that the Israelis were involved, he bounced the whole thing up the chain of command until someone who knew what was going on pulled the plug on you."

  "Loki," McKenzie hissed. "Who is he?"

  "He's just a lackey who works for someone else," McKenzie said. "We'll get to that. I've run into him also. We have much in common, McKenzie. It seems we have both become cynics. The source of your dissatisfaction is rather obvious. I suppose mine is more complex. Suffice it to say my eyes have been opened. Better yet, I have a gut feeling that something bad is about to happen."

  "Fuck bad. Look at my arm," McKenzie angrily said.

  Kilten gave a sad laugh. "Your arm?" He rubbed a thin hand, blue veins sticking out, along his chin. "You see my hair? My skin? Radiation poisoning. Someone put a lethal dose of isotopes in my food sometime in the past month."

  "Loki?"

  Kilten nodded. "I would suspect so."

  "Why?"
<
br />   "Because I was asking questions that people don't want asked."

  "Why didn't they just kill you outright?" McKenzie asked, drawing on his own violent background.

  "I suppose they thought this would look like an accident. I work around nuclear materials all the time in the lab and field. Unfortunately for them I'm not that stupid, although they have succeeded in killing me."

  Kilten stared at the angry man wearing the prosthesis. "I believe that you and I together can accomplish much. How would you like to profit from your misfortune as well as ensure the survival of the planet?"

  "Fuck the planet," McKenzie growled. "I want what's due me."

  "I think this is the start of a beautiful but short relationship," Kilten murmured, satisfied that he had found his man.

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 29,1998 Chapter Five

  major parker and her partner, Captain Lewis, walked to the surface entrance of the Launch Control Center, gravel crunching beneath their boots. Parker ran a hand across her forehead, feeling the perspiration despite the early morning position of the sun on the eastern horizon. The humidity was overwhelming. Coming from the low humidity of Colorado to the oppressive heat of Louisiana had sent her internal temperature control into a tailspin. It had only been two weeks, but she hoped she would acclimatize soon.

  The surface entrance to the LCC was set in the middle of an open grassy space, about the size of a football field, surrounded on all sides by thick forest. Thirty feet from the edge of the forest on all sides surrounding the surface building was a twelve-foot-high fence topped with razor wire. One gravel road led to the building. No Trespassing signs were hung every ten feet on the fence. The signs also informed the curious that the use of deadly force was authorized against intruders. Video cameras, remote controlled machine guns, a satellite dish, and a small radar dish were on the roof of the building, the latter two pointing at the cloudless sky.

  Parker and Lewis had arrived moments ago in a blue Air Force pickup from Barksdale Air Force Base—the 341st Missile Wing Headquarters and their home base. The pickup was parked right behind them, waiting to take the off-shift crew back to base.

  Parker punched a code into the outer door and it opened. They stepped into an anteroom and approached a massive vault door guarding the elevator. A crest with a mailed fist holding lightning bolts and the stenciled words Omega Missile was bolted to the elevator door.

  Both Lewis and Parker were dressed in black one-piece flight suits. On their right shoulders they wore a copy of the crest on the door. A Velcro tag on their chest gave their name, rank, and unit.

  Lewis was a skinny, redheaded man, an inch shorter than Parker. He sported Air Force issue black-framed, thick-lensed glasses. Perched on his small nose, the bulky glasses always seemed ready to fall off.

  Parker put her eyes up to the retinal scanner on the left side of the door. A mechanical voice echoed into the room.

  "Retina verified. Major Parker. Launch status valid."

  Lewis followed suit, lifting up his glasses so his eyes could push up against the rubber.

  "Retina verified. Captain Lewis. Launch status valid."

  There was a brief pause, then the computer spoke again.

  "Launch officers on valid status verified. Please enter duty entry code."

  On a numeric keypad next to the vault door, Parker entered the daily code they'd been assigned when departing Barksdale.

  "Code valid. Look into the camera for duty crew identification."

  Parker and Lewis stepped back and looked up into a video camera hanging from the ceiling.

  "On-duty crew identifies," the computer intoned. "Opening door."

  Parker made a mock bow in the direction of the speaker. "Thank you, REACT."

  Lewis shifted the small daypack on his back. "You act like that computer is alive."

  "That computer controls the lives of more people than God. Believe me, it is alive."

  The vault door slowly swung open. They walked into the elevator and the door shut. The elevator hurtled down a hundred feet and abruptly halted, causing them both to flex their knees.

  The elevator opened on the rear of the Launch Control Center and it was the only connection to the surface. To the right of the elevator, a door went to a separate, small room that held four bunks, a bathroom and a kitchen area. A door to the left went to a small area that contained enough stores for a crew of four for three months.

  They walked into the Omega Missile Launch Control Center. There were rows of machinery in the forty-by-forty room. There was a gray tile floor and the walls were painted dull gray up to three feet, and then Air Force blue to the ceiling. Twelve years ago, when Parker started in missiles, the LCCs had been painted colors that psychologists had determined would be conducive to the crew's mental health during their extended tours of duty. That policy had been rescinded because of budget cutbacks and a change in command that had brought in a no-frills policy.

  The entire facility was actually a capsule suspended from four huge shock absorbers, theoretically allowing it to survive the concussion of a direct nuclear strike overhead. The theory had yet to be put to the test and there was much speculation among missile crews as to whether that bit of 1960s engineering was outmoded. In the old days of the Cold War a facility such as this LCC would have had several warheads targeted at it anyway.

  The main feature of the control room were the two REACT consoles at the front of the room. Above those consoles, various screens showed scenes from the surface directly above, as well as the silos that this center controlled. Many of the screens had the brightly colored display that indicated thermal imagery.

  A major, happy to be done with his twenty-four-hour shift, stood up and halfheartedly saluted Parker. "Omega Missile LCC is all yours. Nothing of note in the duty log. Status green."

  He reached inside his flight suit and removed a set of two keys—one red, one blue—on a steel chain from around his neck and handed it to Parker. His partner did the same with Lewis.

  Parker looked over at the large red digital clock overlooking both consoles. "You stand relieved as of zero-seven-zero-four."

  She reached into a pocket of her flight suit and handed him a key attached to six-inch piece of wood.

  The officer being relieved took the pickup truck key with a laugh. "I get a ten-thousand-dollar pickup truck; you get a half billion dollars' worth of computers and missiles and nuclear weapons. I'm not sure I got a good deal in the trade."

  "You get to go home and take a shower," Parker said. "That's a good deal." She looked over at the main console. "How's REACT?"

  On top of the main computer console there was a sign spelling out the acronym: Rapid Execution And Combat Targeting. The system was relatively new, having been brought on line in the past two years as part of an overall upgrade of the entire nuclear missile arsenal. The computer consolidated what six separate systems inside the LCC had previously controlled. Besides being linked back to 341st's Emergency Operations Center (EOC), at Barksdale, REACT was also tied in to the MILSTAR secure satellite communication system and all the other REACT computers at every nuclear weapon control location.

  The officer being relieved pocketed the truck key. "She's running smooth. No glitches. Have a good shift."

  He and the other officer walked to the elevator and got on board. The doors shut and they were gone. Parker and Lewis took the seats at their respective terminals. Parker watched the video screens, seeing the two crewmen get off the elevator in the upper facility. One screen showed the pure video feed, the other the thermal. On the thermal screen the two men were glowing red figures against a blue background. When they got in the truck the thermal sight picked up a perfect outline of their sitting forms. Then the engine started, showing up as a bright red glow in the front of the truck.

  "Surface door secure," Lewis reported. "Hatch secure."

  On the screen, the pickup truck pulled away. The gate in the fence closed behind it automatically.

  "Fence secure,"
Lewis said. "LCC secure."

  "Turn the sensors and automatic guns on," Parker ordered.

  Lewis threw a switch activating the machine guns on the roof of the surface LCC building. They were connected to motion sensors and would fire at anything moving inside the perimeter.

  There was a moment of quiet and in the background Parker could hear the rhythmic thump of the powerful pumps that drained the water flowing from the high water table in this part of Louisiana into the space outside of the LCC. They were only thirty miles from the coastal swamp that extended for sixty miles before hitting the Gulf of Mexico. Not the smartest place to build underground control centers and silos but pork-barrel politics had determined the location, not military practicalities.

  Parker leaned back in her seat and tried to adjust to working silo duty again. Two years ago she had left this type of work when she was selected to be part of the elite Red Flyer nuclear weapons team. Not long after the exercise in Israel she had been transferred off the team and spent a couple of months doing nothing at Cheyenne Mountain until she had been reassigned to this posting. Although Omega Missile was the apex of missile duty, she felt a sense of failure.

  She had filled the previous two weeks with training and study and now that her background knowledge of the Omega Missile system was up to speed, she would have to deal with the inevitable boredom of twenty-four-hour shifts.

  Omega Missile was considered a good career move in the regular Air Force. There were eight officers assigned to man the Air Force's lone Omega Missile LCC and, given its mission, they were the elite of the Missile Corps. Parker had started in missiles upon graduation from the Air Force Academy. Personally, though, the thought of resuming a career in the field was numbing to her.

  When she'd graduated, her eyesight had not been good enough for her to get flight training. Therefore, her options had been limited: she could get a job in support or missiles. At the time, the latter had offered excitement and career potential. After a few years of sitting in silos for twenty-four-hour shifts, though, the thrill had worn off. She'd searched for something more exciting and when the classified request for volunteers for the nuclear weapons Red Flyer team had come down, she'd volunteered. She'd been the only woman to make it through training—check that, she suddenly thought, as she realized she hadn't made it through training since they'd transferred her out. At least she hadn't ended up like Scanlon, she thought with a shudder.