by Bob Mayer
Rigby's voice was implacable. "Sir, I have a confirmed EAM and launch order. I cannot confirm you are who you say you are."
Hill leaned forward toward the mike. "Captain Rigby, this is National Security Adviser Hill. I represent the president and I order you to stand down!"
There was another static-filled pause. Lowcraft could well imagine the scene in the conning tower of the Kentucky. He felt for the bind Rigby was in.
Rigby's voice was firm. "Gentlemen, I have a confirmed EAM with launch in fifty seconds. My missiles have been programmed. I don't have a clue where they're going, but my orders are they go."
Hill's voice was threatening. "Captain, the president is ordering you to stop those missiles from launching."
"Sir, if you want to stop my missiles, you have to get the system to stop the EAM. Sir, my orders are to ignore any other message but an EAM once it comes through."
Lowcraft got very close to the mike and spoke in a calm, resigned voice. "Captain Rigby, terrorists have infiltrated the EAM system. You've got to stop the launch."
"And you could be the terrorist," Rigby replied. "I don't know what's going on, but I have authorized orders to launch. If this is some kind of test, you have twenty seconds to stop the launch! Regulations require I cease transmitting at this time." The hiss ended as Rigby cut the connection.
Hill slammed the mike into the desktop. "Damn it! It's like talking to a wall."
Lowcraft turned and gave him a disgusted look. "I told you these people are just following orders."
Hurst turned in his seat. "Sir, Kilten's back on the line. He says I should put him on now!" Lowcraft nodded.
"Gentlemen, are you ready?"
The screen in front of the War Room went blank, then a new image appeared: a blank expanse of ocean.
"Scale is power of ten," Hurst announced. "Directly over the Kentucky,"
"Kilten, don't do this!" Lowcraft pleaded.
"I think you are beginning to understand my point. Watch carefully."
The surface of the water broke and Trident missiles, one every three seconds, roared up into the sky until the entire ship's complement was away.
"You son-of-a-bitch!" Lowcraft exclaimed. "What's their target?"
"Don't have a coronary, General. I left them on their Broad Ocean Area," Kilten said. "Which for the Kentucky is empty ocean near Johnston Atoll. Relax, the warheads aren't armed. I just fired sixty-million-dollars worth of missile off with the push of a button from my seat here. Do you doubt my sincerity or my ability?"
"I'll give you a few minutes to reflect on it."
Chapter Fourteen
"what can we do?" Thorpe asked. They were lying underneath some bushes on the edge of the clearing around the Omega Missile LCC compound.
Thorpe had reluctantly left Tommy once again with Maysun. He had given his son strict instructions to remain hidden by the wreckage with the wounded aviator.
"There should be a reaction force from Barksdale heading to the LCC," Parker said.
"Kilten knows that, right?"
"Yes."
"You have to assume that everything Kilten knows, he and McKenzie have prepared for." Thorpe had been thinking about the situation. "So far, you and I are the only wild cards in this plan."
Thorpe could tell from the look she gave him that she would have preferred a different card than his and he was stung by the implied criticism. He tried to recall a time when someone had so doubted his abilities and could not. Then he remembered his wife. He pushed those thoughts away and, using years of practice, focused on the matter at hand.
Parker looked out at the Humvees with machine guns mounted on top. "Even if we get past those guards, Kilten will have shut the vault door. We can't get in that way."
"How did you get in this morning?" Thorpe asked.
"I had a duty code. It can only be used once, then the code recycles."
"How would the security forces get in?" Thorpe asked.
"They'd have an override code."
"Can we get them on the radio or by phone and get the override code?" Thorpe wanted to know.
Parker shook her head. "Standard operating procedure for the override code is that it can not be transmitted by any electronic medium for fear of intercept."
"Even when the LCC is taken over by an enemy force and the good guys need to get in?" Thorpe was incredulous.
Parker shrugged. "There are no exceptions that I know of. The chance of the code getting intercepted or the duty officer being tricked into transmitting the code is too great. The other danger is that the same override code controls all of Barksdale's LCCs. You have to remember there are nine other LCCs that control their own missiles around here."
"Jesus!" Thorpe hissed. "The bad guys are already in the only one that counts."
"I didn't make the rules," Parker said.
"No, Kilten did." Thorpe thought for a few seconds. "What good is an override code then?"
"The security force will be given a hard copy of it by the EOC duty officer to take with them. They're the ones who are supposed to get into the LCC if bad guys take it over."
"Is there another way to get to the LCC?" Thorpe asked.
"No."
"There's always a way. You know this place. Think like a bad guy. Speaking of which." Thorpe pulled the cellular phone out. He flipped it open and looked at buttons. "I would be willing to bet that McKenzie's phone is number one in the memory. Want to bet?"
"My last bet was with my mom," she said. "That I couldn't get into the Air Force Academy. I'll pass, thanks."
Thorpe punched in memory one.
*****
McKenzie pulled the phone out of his vest and flipped it open. "McKenzie," he growled.
"McKenzie, you little prick, how are you doing?"
McKenzie glanced around. Kilten was focused on Lewis who was banging away at the computer keys like he was writing Moby Dick. McKenzie walked away from the others and lowered his voice to a low, harsh whisper. "Thorpe, it's quite a surprise hearing from you."
"Wish it would have been enough of a surprise to give you a coronary," Thorpe said.
"I heard about you, Thorpe," McKenzie said. "Shouldn't you be drying out somewhere? Why don't you tell me where you are and I'll send some of my men to pick you up and take you to Betty Ford's."
*****
Thorpe paced with anger. "Shut up, McKenzie. I've never been more sober in my life and right before I kill you, I'll prove it."
Parker was leaning close, listening to the conversation.
Thorpe got himself under control. "Hey, how's Kilten?" Thorpe asked. "You and him hanging together? Getting along OK?"
There was a long pause.
"Cut the shit, Thorpe."
Thorpe glanced at Parker. "All right, McKenzie. Just tell me what the hell you're doing." Parker reached out and tapped his arm, then signaled for him to calm down.
"You wouldn't understand," McKenzie said. "You've got your head so far up the government's ass you can't see reality. Even when it hits you in the face, like on that beach, you blind yourself to the truth. Keep drinking, buddy. Maybe you'll get lucky and it will go away. But I don't think so."
"Why don't you help me see reality?" Thorpe asked.
"I don't need to help you understand, Thorpe. You're not important. You're not a decision maker. It's the people in Washington that have to understand. You wouldn't believe the shit they're into."
Thorpe tried another tack. "Why are you doing this?"
McKenzie's bark of laughter cut through the phone "Why? You should be the last person I have to tell why. They've fucked me over for twenty-two years. Well, now I'm on top. I paid for every dime they're going to give me with my flesh and blood."
"You're nuts," Thorpe said.
"And you're not?" McKenzie replied. "Didn't you see it, there on the beach? Didn't you realize that you would have been one of those guys unloading that hovercraft if you'd been ordered to? You have no personal ethics, no morals. You do
what you're told to do. Well, not me."
"This isn't the way to do it. You don't kill people to help people."
"Tell that to Churchill and the people of Coventry. You saved my butt once, so I'll save yours," McKenzie said. "Stay away."
"You know I can't do that," Thorpe said.
"You can't? Why not? You know what was in that missile your little friend launched?"
"Yeah."
"You want to protect something like that?"
"A lot of innocent people could get hurt," Thorpe said.
"That's exactly why I'm doing this!" McKenzie's voice was louder. "Some are going to have to die so the rest of the world can live. There's no other way. You can't ask people to change, you have to make them. When enough have died, then the world will demand change."
"Come on—" Thorpe began, but he was cut off.
"You try to stop me and I'll kill you, Thorpe."
Thorpe tried putting a lighter tone into his voice and the conversation. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard it before. You've got to catch me first."
McKenzie didn't bite. "Nice try. But I'm exactly where I want to be, and you're not." "You have to come out sooner or later, and when you do, I'll be waiting."
"It'll be much too late by then."
"Say hi to Kilten for me. I'll be seeing him, too." Thorpe flipped the phone shut.
Parker was staring at him. "What now?"
"We see if McKenzie reacts. He's nuts enough, he just might. And if he does, we need to be ready."
*****
McKenzie slowly put the phone back into his vest. He stared across the room at Kilten and Lewis for a few seconds, then walked over to them.
"That other officer. The woman who got away. Did you know her?"
Kilten nodded. "Major Parker. I brought her down here specifically to be on the crew. As I did with Lewis here, except he was on the inside. She was brought here because she would launch, given the right stimulus. It was all part of my plan," he added. He looked at the cellular phone in McKenzie's hand. "She's out there, isn't she? She's still alive?"
"Not for long."
Kilten absently nodded to himself. "She's smart. Very smart."
"Smart can't outrace a bullet." McKenzie said. He opened up his cellular phone and called his senior man on the surface. "Send a patrol out." McKenzie briefly described Thorpe and Parker. "They'll be close by. I'll try to bring them up on the cellular again and you get them on your tracker. Find them and finish 'em."
*****
Hill lit a cigarette and threw the match on the floor. "Can we stop Kilten?"
General Lowcraft figured this wasn't the time to tell the national security adviser that the War Room was a 'no smoking' area. Before speaking, Lowcraft glanced at the main display, which now showed a map of the Pacific. A series of very close, parallel red lines were heading toward empty ocean southwest of Hawaii: the Trident missiles the Kentucky had launched.
"The Omega Missile system, because it was designed as a weapon of last resort, will resist all our attempts to stop the launch codes and orders from being transmitted," Lowcraft said. "Kilten knows the system better than any of us and he knows we can't stop him unless we get to the REACT computer in the Omega Missile LCC and reprogram it."
Hill sighed. "Even I am beginning to see his reasoning. Why have this system if it controls everything and you can't take control back? It doesn't matter that he invented Omega Missile. It would be just as impossible if he were any flake off the street."
General Lowcraft hated hindsight. "It's a catch-22 that we do our best to insure doesn't happen. The launch control system—the REACT computer, the MILSTAR communications system, and the Omega Missile—has to be as secure as possible so that it will work under the most extreme of conditions, nuclear war, yet not so secure that we can't correct an internal mistake."
"Looks like you came out on the wrong side of the equation this time," Hill said. "And I think catch-22 is a very appropriate metaphor. This is insane."
Lowcraft's face was like a slab of chiseled granite. "I didn't invent the world situation. I just do my best to maintain the peace."
"Well, your best obviously wasn't good enough."
Heads in the War Room were beginning to turn again. "Please stop acting as if I designed and built these missiles by hand. Nuclear weapons are the spawn of civilian intelligence. We just keep them safe and in place. Military men have continued to die on conventional battlefields for forty years to keep them from being used." Lowcraft jabbed a finger at Hill. "What's this Operation Delilah that Kilten is talking about?"
"Nothing you need concern yourself with," Hill said.
"If it affects what's going on now," Lowcraft said, "then I ought to know about it. Does it have anything to do with what that SO/NEST team saw in Lebanon?"
"That team should never have made it back," Hill said.
"We don't abandon our own," Lowcraft hissed.
That brought an ironic grin to Hill's face. "You do when it's in the national interest. A couple of lives here and there against the needs of the nation?"
"Who determines those needs?" Lowcraft demanded.
"I do," Hill said. "I take responsibility, which is more than you can say for most people. I do what has to be done."
"Who elected you?" Lowcraft asked.
"General," Hill said, "you don't have a clue about the realities of the world political situation. It's a game of power and nuclear weapons are part of that. I play the game well and I do it with my own country's best interests at heart. Wasn't it a military man, Clausewitz, who said war was a continuation of politics by different means?"
"He said that almost two centuries ago," Lowcraft noted. "The face of war has changed rather drastically since then, particularly since total warfare and nuclear weapons have entered the picture. You can't play political games with nuclear bombs."
"What else are they there for?" Hill asked. "They exist, they are a reality and they exist for a purpose. I use that purpose. As a carrot when I have to and as a threatening stick when necessary."
"So the Lebanon delivery was a carrot for the Israelis?"
"Good guess," Hill said sarcastically, "but if it makes you feel any better, I've held the big stick over their heads, too."
"I ask you again," Lowcraft said. "Who elected you?"
Hill ignored the general and looked at the clock. "We have an hour and twenty minutes to get that cruise missile loaded with the money and flying. Let's at least get that prepared while I brief the president."
"You're not going to pay these terrorists, are you?" Lowcraft was shocked.
Hill pointed at the red lines on the display board. "Like he said, General, he just fired off sixty million dollars worth of missiles and warheads. God knows how much this is going to cost before it's over. Right now, twenty-six million seems cheap compared to what he's already cost us."
Hill picked up the red remote phone and walked into a small room off the main area. Lowcraft looked out at the assembled staff. "Do we have anyone near the Omega Missile control facility?"
Colonel Hurst fielded the question. "I'm in contact with the Barksdale EOC. The blast destroyed the aircraft to carry the reaction force at Barksdale. Even if it hadn't, we can't fly anybody in the five-mile zone covered by their radar."
"What about getting some people in on the ground from Barksdale?" Lowcraft asked. "How far is it to the Omega Missile LCC?"
"Eight miles, sir," Hurst said.
"Get them moving!"
"I'll get them on it, sir." Hurst hesitated. "The situation is pretty confused there. The base has been heavily damaged and apparently there is some panic among the local civilian population. Most people still believe the blast was nuclear."
"Tell Barksdale EOC their number one priority is to get into the Omega Missile LCC. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir."
"What about other forces?" Lowcraft asked.
Hurst gave the report. "Delta Force is alerted, but flight time from Fort B
ragg is too long. This will be over before they get there. The nearest army forces are at Fort Polk, about eighty miles away from Barksdale. We've got them getting some Cobra helicopters up in the air to cover the airspace and make sure there are no accidental intrusions. Also we've got all their Medevac choppers ready to help in case they're needed. Some mechanized and infantry forces are also being mobilized, but again, if you take out landing them by chopper, then they have to get in there by ground and it will take awhile."
Hurst was handed a piece of paper by an enlisted woman. He read it. "This is interesting, sir. It seems there's a Special Operations NEST team at Fort Polk. They were doing some security checks on storage sites in Louisiana."
That was the first piece of good news that Lowcraft had heard since coming to the War Room. "Are they ready to move?"
"Yes, sir. But we still have the problem with the radar."
"Get a C-130 on the airstrip at Polk," Lowcraft ordered. "We can at least get them closer by moving them to Barksdale."
Hurst paused. "Sir, I have a suggestion."
"Yes?"
"We can have our people start dismantling nuclear warheads manually."
Lowcraft stared at him. "Do you know how long that takes? In three hours you could dismantle, what, maybe two or three percent of the total arsenal?"
"About that, sir. But it's better than nothing."
Lowcraft thought about it. "All right. Get your people working on it at every nuke site."
*****
Barksdale was indeed the scene of massive confusion. Fire still burned in a fuel storage bunker and fire trucks were on the scene. Unfortunately, the fire chief didn't believe the senior duty officer that the blast they had experienced was not a nuclear explosion. He insisted on keeping his men in full protective gear which greatly hampered operations.
The Security Police detachment responsible for the 341st LCC and silos had gathered together as many men and women as could be found on a Sunday in addition to the platoon on duty.
The duty officer, Major Mark Ferrel, looked over the military policemen and women gathered in an empty hangar. "All right. Right now all we know is that someone has taken over the Omega Missile LCC. The missile has been launched. No nuclear armed missiles have been launched from our silos, but you and I know that if they control Omega Missile they control all the other missiles.""Therefore, while Alpha Platoon will have the Omega Missile LCC as its objective, the rest of you will be split up with missile maintenance personnel to go to our other missile sites and dismantle all nuclear warheads."
