by Bob Mayer
Inside the LCC Parker watched red warning lights come to life on one of the panels indicating that the matrix had been initiated. She worked harder, typing in every code word she could think of.
While she was doing that, she pulled the mike for the radio close to her lips.
"General Lowcraft, this is Major Parker in the LCC. I know you probably have an attack coming on to this location. Please abort it. It would serve no purpose. The missiles aren't being launched or controlled from here."
Lowcraft's voice came back. "Major, you were supposed to get on that chopper and get the hell out of there."
"I can do more good in here," Parker replied. "If I can get control of REACT back, then I can stop all of this. I need time."
*****
In the War Room, Lowcraft turned to Colonel Hurst. "Order the attack off."
As Hurst reached for the radio, Hill's voice cut through the room. "Hold on there! We continue as planned. Those are the orders of the President of the United States!"
*****
The USS Nebraska was the closest nuclear-missile carrying submarine to Israel when Omega Missile received the target matrix. The sub received the EAM to launch one missile and the crew ran through the proper procedures for launch.
When the final go came, a D-5 Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missile roared out of its launch tube to the rear of the conning tower, burst through the surface of the water, and angled up into the sky.
Israel was just over the horizon.
*****
In the Atlantic Ocean, the USS Wyoming had been chosen by Omega Missile for the Washington launch as it was returning from a tour of duty in the Atlantic and was only four hours steaming out from Norfolk Naval Base. It launched a single Trident II toward the nation's capital, the crew not even aware of the missile's target. They simply did what the electronic codes they received ordered them to do, the target programming done by Omega Missile.
Chapter Twenty-three
"how long until the first one touches down?" McKenzie asked.
"The Israeli one is from a sub in the Med. Tel Aviv will be a parking lot in twenty minutes."
"Good," McKenzie growled. He'd been paid a lot of money by several Arab leaders to launch that missile, money that had funded this entire operation and paid for the Canadians up front, but McKenzie would have launched that missile at the Israeli capital for free.
"When do our friends in the Pentagon get fried?'' he asked.
"Twenty-four minutes."
*****
Bedlam broke out in the War Room as the launches were noted.
"Sir, we've got two launches. Two missiles up!"
"Put it on the screen," General Lowcraft ordered.
In the front of the War Room, two red lines in addition to the red dot showing the missile headed for the Omega Missile LCC appeared. The lines began moving toward their targets.
"Give me the targets," Lowcraft demanded, although it was apparent where they were headed.
"Tel Aviv." The officer paused, as if that wasn't bad enough.
"And?"
"And right here. First missile will touch down on Tel Aviv in nineteen minutes! We get hit in twenty- three!"
"Goddamnit!" Hill exclaimed. "I thought our people were in the LCC!"
"Major Parker and Captain Thorpe said—" Lowcraft began, but Hill silenced him.
"They're in on it," Hill exclaimed. "They're all in on it. You get that strike down on their heads right away. We are going to end this!"
*****
The Nebraska launch was picked up by a U.S. Air Force J-STARR surveillance aircraft flying routine patrol over the Red Sea. The J-STARR was hooked in to the multinational peacekeeping force in the Sinai. As part of that agreement it was also linked to the Israeli Self-Defense Force headquarters.
Thus the first alert that the Israelis received that there was a U.S. nuclear missile inbound came from a U.S. plane.
*****
Thorpe was leaning out the side of the Blackhawk, watching the river surface flashing by less than fifteen feet below. The pilots flew under a set of high-tension wires, narrowly missing them. He figured that McKenzie had a large lead on them, but the chopper was faster than any boat he might have.
*****
The clock in the front of the room was down to sixteen minutes, but the missile heading her way wasn't the highest priority in Parker's mind. She rapidly typed a question for the computer:
How long until first missile strike?
Computer:
Eighteen minutes; Target Tel Aviv
Parker ran her fingers through her hair and then pounded her fists on the console.
"Damn you, Kilten! You didn't want it to turn out like this. You must have had a way into the computer."
Her mind went back to the conference room in Cheyenne Mountain and the mission into Israel that had preceded it.
Parker typed into the computer:
Sanchez
The computer screen dissolved, then two new words appeared:
password accepted
Inside the War Room the countdown was being called out as all eyes followed the red lines on the screen. "Sixteen minutes to touchdown Tel Aviv!"
One red line was over the eastern Mediterranean, approaching the shore of Israel. The other was in the Atlantic, heading toward Washington.
"How long do we have here?" Hill asked.
"Twenty minutes."
"And the LCC?"
"Four minutes until the B-2 strike."
*****
The Israelis reacted promptly. The president happened to be in a meeting with his Self-Defense Force commander when an aide came sprinting in with the word of the inbound Trident missile.
The president sat stunned for a second, then turned to the SDF commander, General Ariel. "Implement the Samson option."
"Why would the Americans—" General Ariel began, but the president waved a hand to silence him.
"It does not matter why. Do as I order. We do not have time to discuss this. We must act."
Ariel pulled his secure cellular phone out.
*****
Parker was reading the computer language, trying to sort through the hidden program. "OK, OK. I see what you did."
She began typing rapidly, trying to wrest control back from Kilten's laptop.
*****
Hill was recovering from the shock of the missile launches. He stared at the screen and then it really came home to him. Tel Aviv.
"Oh my God," he exclaimed as he desperately dialed numbers into the red phone.
"What's wrong?" Lowcraft asked. "The Samson Option," Hill muttered as he pressed the phone to his ear. "The what?" Lowcraft asked.
Chapter Twenty-four
in Washington, the man who waited heard the tone screech and a red light flashed in the basement. He blinked, not believing after almost two years that the unthinkable had happened. He jumped off his cot and ran to the computer that was hooked to the satellite radio.
The decryption coding inside the computer was working on the incoming message. It didn't take long. The message was only two words:
activate immediately
The man, whose name was Isaac, turned to the metal casket that rested in the center of the floor. His fingers were shaking as he flipped up the lid, but his hands settled down as he ran through the routine he had memorized and practiced every day. His mind was detached. Two years of waiting and contemplating the possibility of doing exactly what he was doing now had formed a schism in Isaac's consciousness.
*****
Two blocks away, in the abandoned firehouse, one of the men picked up a cellular phone. He listened to Hill's voice on the other end.
"Prairie Fire alert and execution!" he yelled and the men were grabbing weapons and running for the back ramp of the Abrams Fighting Vehicle.
*****
Isaac knew about the men in the firehouse just as they knew about him. It was all a question of timing.
*****
The Abrams smashed into the old wooden doors and splintered them apart. It roared down the street, shocking the few drivers passing by. A cabbie made the mistake of screeching to a halt in front of the Abrams. The treads rolled up on the taxi and crushed it as the driver desperately rolled out his door and away from the treads. The Abrams continued on its way.
*****
Isaac had a row of green lights glowing on the control panel. He turned back to the computer screen. One by one numbers appeared.
*****
The Abrams roared up to the front of the red house. Forty-mm rounds spewed out of the turret, blowing the front of the house to pieces. The drug dealers next door, thinking they were under attack by the police, opened fire with automatic weapons, the bullets bouncing off the armor harmlessly. The Abrams crunched up through the front of the house.
*****
Isaac could hear the tank above his head. Six numbers glowed on the screen. He began entering them into the numeric keyboard in front of him.
The back ramp of the Abrams dropped and two men carrying a specially designed charge ran off. They slapped it onto the metal plate covering the stairs, then ducked for cover.
The charge blew a four-foot-wide hole in the metal.
*****
The blast knocked Isaac down, but he quickly regained his place. He had one more number to enter. His finger poised above the final key, Isaac paused.
*****
Black-suited figures dropped through the hole, firing, spraying the room with bullets. Isaac's body was slammed up against the bomb casing, then slid down to the floor.
Chapter Twenty-five
in the war Room, Hill was on the phone with the president, telling him not only of the two missiles, but also telling him that it was very likely that the Israelis had exercised the Samson Option.
Lowcraft was listening to him in disbelief. He was stunned that the Israelis had a nuclear weapon secreted in a house in Washington that the U.S. knew about and yet had done nothing.
"It's politics," Hill said in a dull monotone, putting the phone down. "The president will call the Israeli president and square it all away."
"Politics?" Lowcraft was stunned.
"You don't think they stayed out of the Gulf War just because we asked them?" Hill asked. "They snuck that bomb in years ago. We found out about it and realized we could use it for leverage against them by keeping it there. After all, the one you know about is better than the one you don't."
"We also had our Red Flyer teams to keep them on their toes. We sent a Red Flyer mission into Israel every six months or so just to show them we could penetrate their airspace with our Combat Talons any time we wanted to and put a tac nuke on the ground. For the exercises we'd leave a conventional bomb configured as a tac nuke in place as our calling card."
Lowcraft had a dumbfounded look on his face. "The Israelis having a nuclear weapon in Washington was leverage for us! And we've been running training missions into Israel simulating putting an SADM in? That's goddamn illegal!"
Hill wasn't concerned about Lowcraft. Now that the president was truly clued in, Hill knew his political life was over. There probably would be criminal charges, the lawyer part of his brain told him. To have it all end because one old man asked a question.
There was a buzz and Hill flipped open his cellular phone. Hill slumped back in the chair after hearing the report from the other end. "You don't have to worry about it anyway. A CIA strike team has taken out the Samson Option." He looked up. "How long until our airplanes take out the LCC?"
"Two minutes, thirty seconds," Colonel Hurst replied. "Sir, our planes will strike the LCC twelve minutes before Tel Aviv is hit," Hurst said.
"Will that stop the two ICBMs?" Hill asked.
"I doubt it," Lowcraft said.
"But it might?" Hill pressed.
"Anything's possible."
"Give the final go to the B-2," Hill ordered.
*****
Inside the B-2 the pilot and navigator-bombardier listened in disbelief as they received their final authorization to drop their weapon. The Stealth fighter was several miles ahead and already going into its final approach with the bunker-buster bomb in its payload.
"We're going to nuke Louisiana," the nav-bomb muttered.
The pilot said nothing. His concentration was on flying the aircraft. He didn't want to think about what they were about to do. "Arm the weapon," he ordered.
With a shaking hand, the nav-bomb flipped a red switch.
*****
As Kilten's program scrolled up the screen, Parker desperately searched for a way she could wrest control back from the other computer. The clock in the front of the room was down to twelve minutes, but the missile heading her way wasn't the highest priority in Parker's mind. She rapidly typed a question for the computer:
How long until first missile strike?
Computer:
Fourteen minutes. Target Tel Aviv
Inside the War Room the countdown was being called out as all eyes followed the red lines on the screen. "Thirteen minutes to touchdown Tel Aviv! One minute LCC!"
The red line was nearing the shore, closing on the Israeli capital. "How long do we have here?" Hill asked.
"Seventeen minutes."
*****
Parker's fingers were working furiously, her head beginning to nod as she found the program she needed.
She grabbed the phone. "General Lowcraft, this is Major Parker. I can stop them! I can stop the two missiles. Just give me some more time."
*****
Overhead, in the clear blue sky, the pilot of the Stealth fighter pressed a button on the side of his yoke, then pulled back hard on the stick as he kicked in his afterburners. He wasn't worried about getting away from the large black bomb that fell out of the bottom of the plane and was arcing its way toward the small building on the surface. He was worried about the inferno the B-2 thirty seconds behind him was getting ready to let loose.
The bunker-buster landed square on the LCC surface building. The delayed detonation fuse allowed the heavy bomb to crash through the roof and five feet into the floor before it ignited the specially designed charge inside.
A forty-foot-deep crater was ripped into the concrete protecting the LCC.
*****
Parker was thrown against her shoulder straps as the sound of the explosion reverberated through the LCC. A large plume of dust came in the already buckled elevator doors and she could hear rock and earth crashing down in the shaft. She knew she was now buried in the LCC.
Parker prayed that she could still transmit. "General, stop the attack! You've got to trust me!" The message went into a cable then up to the alternate satellite dish that Drake had rigged.
*****
"Twenty seconds until LCC nuclear impact!" Colonel Hurst yelled as Parker's voice faded off the speaker.
In the War Room, Hill slapped his palm on the desk. "She's trying to save her ass. Fry the LCC before that missile hits here!"
"Abort the B-2," Lowcraft ordered.
"Ignore that order!" Hill yelled.
"I'm in command here," Lowcraft yelled back. "You're a damn criminal and I'm not going to listen to you spout orders one second longer."
"I'm in charge!" Hill yelled as he gestured at Lugar. The aide's hand snaked inside his jacket and came out holding a large caliber revolver.
In response, several officers at desks wheeled about, their own pistols in their hands.
Colonel Hurst met General Lowcraft's gaze, then spoke into his headset. "Abort!"
*****
"Jesus!" the pilot yelled as he heard Colonel Hurst's voice.
The navigator-bombardier's thumb was less than an inch from the release button and heading down when the word came.
He jerked his thumb away. "Oh my God, oh my God," the nav-bomb muttered as he very carefully began the process of putting the nuclear weapon in their bomb bay back into an inert status.
"I'm going to have someone'
s ass for this," the pilot swore as he pulled back and banked away from the wreckage of the LCC.
*****
Parker was looking up, waiting for the end. The clock kept ticking, the red numbers winding down. She grabbed the mike.
"War Room, this is Major Parker. Over."
*****
"This is the War Room," General Lowcraft replied. He was watching military police handcuffing Hill and Lugar. "You've got your time, Major. Make it count. You're the only thing that stands between those nukes and Washington and Tel Aviv."
*****
The pilot of the Blackhawk was pushing his skills to the utmost following the river, leaving behind a trail of spray from the rotors' downwash.
Thorpe was looking directly ahead. Less than two miles away he could see that there was a spread of open water. He looked at the map. It was a large reservoir formed by the main channel being dammed. Beyond and around it lay the swamp that stretched to the Intercoastal Waterway. There were several minor routes around the dike into the swamp. If McKenzie made it into the swamp with Tommy— Thorpe didn't want to think about that.
"There's something in the water," the pilot said over the intercom. "Dead ahead."
