by Bob Mayer
Parker put her eyes against the retinal scanner and the REACT computer's voice echoed out of a speaker on the console.
"Launch officer verified. You may insert key."
Parker pulled her red key from under her shirt and inserted it into the appropriate slot.
The REACT computer verified Lewis's retina and instructed him to insert his key, which he did.
*****
Thorpe unbuckled with one hand, the other still holding Tommy.
"Daddy!" he yelled, trying to control his fear.
"It's all right, son, it's all right." As soon as he was free, Thorpe picked Tommy up and climbed out of the buckled door. He carried his son thirty feet away and set him down at the base of a large oak tree. "Wait here, Tommy. I'll be right back."
Tommy was wide-eyed, staring at the remains of the chopper.
"Wait here, you understand?" Thorpe repeated, putting his hands on either side of Tommy's head and staring into his eyes.
Tommy slowly nodded.
Thorpe ran back to the chopper and slithered between the seats. He grimaced as he noticed that one of the blades had splintered through the cockpit and hit Kelly in the chest. He reached out and felt for the artery in her throat. Nothing. He felt Kelly's blood soaking into his fatigue pants as he pushed himself farther into the cockpit and turned his attention to the copilot, who was thrashing about. He unbuckled Maysun's belt, then pulled the copilot out the door and dragged him to Tommy's location.
Maysun was blinking, trying to clear his eyes of the bright image that had blinded him. "Where's Kelly? Do you have her?"
Thorpe looked back at the chopper. "I'll get her in a second. Take it easy."
A small fire had broken out in the engine compartment. Thorpe ran back to the cargo bay and pulled out the fire extinguisher he had held at the airfield. He quickly doused the flame.
*****
"On my three," Parker said, staring through the glass at Lewis. "One. Two. Three."
They both turned their keys at the same time.
Inside the Omega Missile silo, the solid first stage of the LGM-118A ignited. Umbilicals fell away and the rocket slowly began lifting on a tail of flame, clearing the silo.
*****
Thorpe was kneeling over Maysun, doing a primary survey of his injuries when he heard a loud, roaring noise to his right rear. Just over the far tree line, a large rocket appeared, accelerating straight up. Thorpe watched, mesmerized.
"What's that noise?" Maysun demanded.
"Dad, look!" Tommy cried out, pointing. "What is it?"
Thorpe continued to watch the rocket as it raced up toward the white clouds. "That's an ICBM from one of Barksdale's silos," he said quietly.
"Oh, man," Maysun muttered. "It was a nuke that took us down." He grabbed Thorpe's arm. "Do you have Kelly? Is she all right?"
Thorpe lowered his voice so Tommy couldn't hear. "She's dead."
Thorpe felt pain as Maysun's hand squeezed tight. "Oh fuck! No! Check her, man. Maybe she's just hurt. She can't be dead!"
"She's dead. There's no doubt."
*****
McKenzie was leaning out the side of the Humvee watching the long red tail of the ICBM. "It worked."
"Of course it worked," Kilten wasn't even bothering to watch. The convoy of Humvees was racing along a gravel road. "Have your people at the LCC reported anything?"
"All secure there."
Kilten nodded. "The crew will need a couple of minutes. We'll be there before they take any further action."
*****
The first stage of the Peacekeeper had finished its sixty-second burn and separated, the second stage immediately taking over. The missile had been going straight up, simply absorbing the upward thrust of the first stage, but the second stage had some thrust-vector and the rocket turned slightly to the north and west, heading up at over a thousand miles an hour and still accelerating.
Chapter Ten
"omega missile is away clean," Parker said, checking the telemetry readouts. "First-stage separation clean and tracking proper vector for command orbit." She leaned back in her seat and wiped the sheen of sweat off her forehead.
*****
"What happened to her? I mean, did she suffer?" Maysun was blinking his eyes, trying to clear the glowing spots that prevented him from seeing.
"No," Thorpe said. "She didn't suffer." He looked over at Tommy who was sitting with his back against the trunk. He had his knees pulled up to his chest. "You all right, Tommy?"
"I want to go home," he said.
"We will," Thorpe assured him. "I have to take care of this man first."
Maysun was rocking back and forth. "Kelly saved us. I was blinded and she took the controls and kept us from inverting. We'd be dead if we'd inverted."
Thorpe pulled the radio out of Maysun's vest. "I'm going to try your survival radio. Call for help."
Maysun's voice was high. "Help? From who, man? Barksdale just got nuked and the survivors are launching missiles in retaliation. Besides, the EMP would have fried the radio."
Thorpe was adjusting the frequency. "My operations sergeant is at Fort Polk, Master Sergeant Dublowski. He's monitoring on a set frequency. Maybe I can get him."
Maysun shook his head, tears coursing down his cheeks. "That radio doesn't have the range to make it to Polk."
"I know that," Thorpe said, "but I'm going to try anyway. Maybe somebody around here is listening."
Thorpe tried the emergency frequency and, as he expected, received no answer. "What's the frequency for the tower at Barksdale?" he asked Maysun. Thorpe set it on that frequency.
Thorpe keyed the radio. "Any station this net, this is Army Helicopter Seven-Eight-Six. Any station this net, this is Army Helicopter Seven-Eight-Six."
There was no response, just a steady dribble of static when Thorpe released the send key. "The radio seems to be working," Thorpe noted. He tried one more time, then put the radio back into Maysun's vest. He looked about, getting his bearings. The forest was thick, just short of being a swamp. Undergrowth cut visibility down to less than forty feet in any direction.
"You need medical attention."
"I'm not worried about my leg," Maysun said. "Kelly's dead. And we probably caught enough rads from that explosion to kill us in twenty-four hours."
Thorpe leaned down. "Take it easy, all right. Don't scare my son any more than he already is.
Maysun shook his head. "There'll be more missiles coming down any minute. You can be sure the Russians have targeted Barksdale for more than one strike."
"How do you know it's the Russians?"
"Well, somebody dropped a nuke on Barksdale. I'll pick the Russians, you pick someone else if you like. Does it really matter?"
Thorpe looked at the wreckage of the helicopter and the mushroom cloud still clearing on the horizon, then over at Tommy. He leaned close to Maysun again and spoke in a low voice into his ear. "Listen, I know your friend is dead. I know you're hurt. But my son is here and he's scared. You've got to get your act together or you're going to scare him even more."
Maysun turned his head toward Thorpe and blinked, trying to see. The pilot took a few deep breaths and then nodded. "All right, Captain. I'll be cool. I'm sorry."
*****
In the wood line surrounding the surface entrance to the Omega Missile LCC, Kilten, McKenzie, and the other men were waiting in the trees, looking at the small building. McKenzie held a large 50-caliber sniper rifle in his hands, the end of the barrel resting on a bipod he had set up. He looked through the high-power scope and slowly squeezed the trigger. The half-inch-diameter bullet smashed into a small satellite dish on top of the building, destroying it.
*****
Thorpe cocked his head as the sound of a shot echoed through the woods.
"What was that?" Maysun asked.
"Someone's firing," Thorpe said. His hand had unconsciously slid down and cradled the handle of his pistol.
*****
"It would be
easier if you let me shoot out the video cameras, too," McKenzie said. "The thermal might pick us up even here."
"We've got our own satellite dish," Kilten patiently replied, "but we'll need the cameras once we get in. Plus the crew needs to feel the surface is secure. The cameras only pan the open area, not into the tree line."
Two of McKenzie's men were slowly making their way across the field, crawling in the knee-high grass. They wore ghillie suits, strips of muslin woven into a camouflage netting, that for all practical purposes made them invisible if one didn't know exactly where to look. To counteract the thermal capabilities of the cameras, the suits were laced with special cooling lines that made the surface thermal image of the men the same as the surrounding grass. It was top of the line and expensive gear but McKenzie had the money to get the best.
"You sure the crew will come up?" Bognar asked. "If they don't open that vault door, there's no way we're ever going to get in there."
McKenzie looked at the younger man. Bognar and all the others besides Kilten and Drake were former Canadian paratroopers. After allegations of severe misconduct by the paratrooper unit, including the killing of civilians under interrogation on peacekeeping missions, the Canadian government had finally reacted the previous year and disbanded the Canadian Airborne Regiment. While the act had removed a severe blight on the international reputation of Canada's armed forces, it had left several hundred extremely dissatisfied, unemployed soldiers wandering the northern country. Out of several hundred, it wasn't hard to find two dozen who were willing to break the law for a high payoff.
McKenzie had worked with the Canadian Parachute Regiment on some joint operations when he was in SEAL Team Two. He'd brought in the selected men three weeks ago and they'd been prepping for this mission ever since, hiding from both their own government and the authorities in the U.S. at a remote site in the New Mexico desert. For security reasons, none of the Canadians had been told the purpose of their training or the target until this morning.
This morning was the culmination of weeks of planning. After their meeting at the VA hospital, McKenzie and Kilten had combined their knowledge. Kilten had watched the digital disk of the beach transfer in Lebanon and given McKenzie the identity of Loki and the man he worked for: National Security Adviser Hill.
"I wrote their rules," Kilten said in answer to Bognar's question. "They'll come up. They've lost all communication with their chain of command. They've launched their primary mission, Omega Missile, according to the orders I sent them. They weren't ordered to launch the ICBMs this facility controls but they won't think that's strange since Omega Missile can still launch those in addition to every other nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal.
"More importantly, I've taken their main computer off line. That's because I have REACT right here with me now." Kilten tapped his laptop computer.
"REACT?" Bognar asked. Bognar was not very bright but followed orders well, which was all McKenzie expected.
Kilten was still explaining things to Bognar, which McKenzie thought was a complete waste of oxygen. "REACT is the acronym for the name I gave the control computer. I invented and programmed it."
"Why can't you get REACT to open the vault door?" Bognar asked.
McKenzie wanted to smash his artificial arm over the man's head. Didn't the idiot realize they would have thought of that in their planning and done it if it were possible?
"The vault door is on a separate, manual system," Kilten patiently explained. "The security people who designed the facility are experts. You never put everything into one system. The vault door works on a code and a retinal scan. It will also open if you have a special override code. It can't be opened through REACT."
Kilten looked at the surface building. "They'll be up soon. Their priority now is to reestablish contact with their chain of command. If they can't do it from the control facility, and I have made that impossible, they have to do it physically."
"And they'll turn off the motion-controlled guns?" McKenzie added.
"Yes, they'll turn them off," Kilten confirmed.
*****
The second stage burned out and explosive bolts fired, causing the large metal casing to fall away. The Peacekeeper was now almost out of the atmosphere as the third stage fired cleanly.
*****
Lewis had been trying the computer while Parker held the satellite phone in her hand. "Satellite is out," she told Lewis. She looked at her telemetry board and blinked in surprise. "I'm not reading anything! Do you have third-stage ignition?"
"I've got nothing," Lewis said. "Our link to Omega Missile is down."
"How about REACT?"
"REACT is off-line."
"Shit!" Parker exclaimed. "We're down and no one knows. We have to get in touch with higher headquarters and let them know we're off-line on Omega Missile!"
Lewis looked up at the security cameras. "Hell, what makes you think there's a higher headquarters left?"
Parker was looking at the same screens. "Everything looks all right up top. Sensors aren't picking up any radiation." She paused. "That's strange."
Parker walked to the back room and opened a wall locker. She pulled a holster and pistol out and strapped them on. Then she put on an Air Force survival vest. Lewis did the same.
"We have to go up," Parker said. "We're cut off in here. We can try our emergency FM radios on the surface. Maybe get Barksdale Emergency Operations Center."
Lewis paused in fastening his vest. "My family lived on post!"
"It'll be all right," Parker said. "If we got a launch alert, they must have gotten some warning and they probably made it to the shelters."
"Shelters? You think those shelters on post can protect someone from a nuke?"
Parker tapped him on the arm. "Come on. Let's go and find out."
Lewis turned and flipped a switch. "I'm turning off the surface guns," he said. "We don't want to get shot by our own weapons," he added.
*****
"I want Mom," Tommy cried out.
"We'll get her," Thorpe said. "But it will take a little while."
Thorpe had bandaged Maysun as best he could, using the first-aid kit from the chopper. He had been thinking about the mushroom cloud. If Barksdale was gone and there had been no warning, then that meant that Lisa had been searching for Tommy at the airfield when the nuke went off. He felt a crack widening in his chest and tried hard to focus on the task at hand. That there had been no answer to his radio call to the tower didn't bode well. Barksdale was easily within range of the survival radio.
"I'm going to check out whoever fired that shot," Thorpe said. "I'll get some help."
Maysun was lying on his back, staring straight up. "I don't think it's going to matter much."
Thorpe knelt at his side. "Hey, you're alive. Hang on to that. I don't know what's going on, but I'm going to find out. You keep trying your survival radio."
Maysun blinked. "I think I can see a little bit."
"That's good," Thorpe said. "I need you to look after my son while I get help."
Maysun turned his head toward the chopper and blinked hard several times. "Oh God." He broke down crying, tears flowing down his cheeks.
Thorpe stood, anxious to get going, but not liking the thought of leaving Maysun in this condition with Tommy. He glanced over at the body then back at Maysun. "Were you two . . . ?"
Maysun cut him off. "It doesn't have anything to do with her being a woman. She was the best damn pilot I've ever flown with. She was my friend!"
"I'm sorry."
Maysun shook his head. "Maybe I'll see if I can get the chopper's radio working once I can see better."
"Good idea. I'll be back in a little bit. Monitor your radio on that frequency." He knelt down next to Tommy. "I've got to go look for help. I'll be back as soon as I can. I need you to stay with this man and help him. Can you do that for me?"
Tommy blinked hard.
Thorpe reached into his pocket and pulled out the green beret he had stuff
ed in there. He pulled the Special Forces crest off the beret and pinned it just above the pocket on his son's shirt. "I need you to be brave, Tommy. I need you to take care of things here."
Tommy reached up and fingered the crest and nodded. "I'll take care of things, Dad."
"I know you will." Thorpe began walking in the direction of the shot.
*****
The third stage stopped firing but did not separate. There was still fuel left, enough for the payload to be further maneuvered, if needed. The Peacekeeper was now in space, at a point above the middle of Kansas. Small thruster rockets fired as the on-board computer checked its position with various satellites to settle the rocket into a geosynchronous orbit.
After a few moments of firing they too fell silent and the Peacekeeper was in place.
*****
Mass confusion raged inside the operations center in the Barksdale Tower as the duty crew regained their stations. Shattered glass covered everything and anything not fastened down had been blown about.
The duty officer and his crew were all dressed in yellow radiation suits and wearing full head masks. He looked out at the flight line and swore. Every aircraft he could see was damaged. Helicopters had been blown up against battered hangers; planes had been flipped like toys.
Emergency crews were racing around the flight line in their own protective suits, putting out fires. Fortunately, the damage seemed confined to the flight line. Looking around, the duty officer could see that some of the hangars were damaged, but the administrative buildings further away, along with the housing areas, seemed structurally undamaged. He had no doubt that windows had been blown out, but thanked God that the blast seemed limited. He could hear the whine of ambulances.
