by Isaac Hooke
Sam felt an odd tingly sensation inside her. She almost couldn't believe what she was reading. It had to be a joke.
And yet she knew it was not.
First Russia and then America. Sam could only imagine the hideous terrorist attack that had been inflicted upon U.S. soil. She felt it was partially her fault. She had been tracking the terrorist most likely to initiate an attack and she had failed to find him in time. It was the greatest intelligence failure since 9/11. And the blame lay in her hands.
She fell from her chair, landing on her knees. She bent over, covering her face in her hands, unable to hold back the sobs.
She felt extremely isolated and alone. Everything she knew and loved back home was under attack. It wasn't right that she should be safe in Turkey while the compatriots she had fought for all these years suffered and died back home. The worst part was, she didn't even know what kind of attack had taken place, because of the goddamn fog of war.
Think, Sam, think.
She rubbed her eyes, wiping away the tears.
DEFCON-1 had been issued for the Global Strike forces: nuclear weapons were being prepped for launch against global targets. That could only mean a nuclear strike against the United States had occurred, or was in progress.
Or at least, a perceived nuclear strike.
Sounding rockets...
Her head shot up. She picked up the secure sat-phone and quick-dialed the Secretary of Defense. The call went to voice mail after three seconds. Ordinarily it took at least eight: that meant the Secretary was awake and had refused her connection. She tried again. The call went to voice mail after one second that time.
Sam sent him a secure text via Sunodus.
Pick up, I have urgent information regarding the nuclear attack.
Sam bit her lip determinately and dialed again. She would call him all night if she had to.
47
Hidden Base, Southern Region Suðurland, Iceland
ETHAN FOLLOWED the Saudi into the two-story building and up the stairs to the second floor. He passed several side offices, all of which were currently empty.
Ahead, two AK-wielding men stood beside closed double doors. The Saudi stopped in front of them and nodded in greeting. He held a proximity-type keycard against a black box by the entrance: the lock clicked and he pushed one of the doors open.
Ethan made to follow him.
"Wait," one of the guards said in Arabic. He extended a hand in front of Ethan. "Swipe your access card."
"I left it in the barracks," Ethan said.
"No card, no weapons."
Ethan reluctantly handed over his rifle and hip pistol. He raised his arms, allowing the other guard to pat him down, and finally they let him pass.
When the door clicked shut behind him, Ethan found himself in a command and control center of some kind. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the flat landscape beyond, which was free of any canopy covering. Screens with digital maps of the U.S.A. and Russia resided against the right wall. Parabolic trajectories overlaid the East Coast of the United States.
Three rows of connected desks were stacked between Ethan and the windows; Saudi engineers manned computer terminals at the various workstations. He felt like he'd stepped into the control room of some Middle Eastern NASA.
Another guard waited inside, near the entrance. Besides the Saudi, he was the only armed individual Ethan could see.
In front of the rows, an Arab stood alone by the window, his back to the doors. He was dressed in a long, black flowing robe. A dark turban covered his head. He held his hands behind him, or rather his lone hand—he clasped the stump of his left arm by the wrist.
"Khalīfah" the Saudi said. Caliph.
The man turned from the window, but only sidelong. His black and gray beard was long enough to conceal the front of his neck. The wrinkles on his face betrayed a man well into his senior years.
Al Sifr.
"Tell him," the Saudi said, prodding Ethan forward.
Ethan strode into the small central aisle that had been left between desks, making his way toward Al Sifr. As he closed the distance, he realized the man couldn't have been more than five foot three.
"That's close enough," Al Sifr said in English, his gaze once more on the window.
Ethan froze. Al Sifr must have seen his reflection in the glass. But why was he speaking English?
"You have come to kill me," Al Sifr said.
Hearing those words, the guard by the doors immediately shouted: "Move back!" He was pointing his rifle directly at Ethan, no doubt. The Saudi had probably raised his weapon, too.
Ethan glanced at the window. Yes, he could barely see their reflections in the glass. The Saudi had indeed drawn his pistol, and he was slowly walking toward Ethan via the narrow aisle.
Al Sifr turned to face Ethan fully. His brown eyes appeared oddly sad. The ragged crow's feet and the deeply-incised wrinkles on his forehead seemed etched from terrible tragedy and suffering. Strangely, Ethan found himself feeling sorry for him. He was a sad, small, broken shell of a man.
"I was expecting more, somehow," Al Sifr said. "One lone man. Is that all I am worth to the CIA, or whatever intelligence agency you work for?" He studied Ethan, and those eyes shifted from melancholy to cunning. Ethan no longer felt sorry for the man; his concerns had shifted to himself. He suddenly felt very vulnerable.
"I am a soldier in your employ—" Ethan began in Arabic, but Al Sifr raised a curt hand, cutting him off.
"I vet each soldier personally," Al Sifr said in English. "I know the faces of every last one of them. Yours did not belong. That is why, when I saw your reflection, I knew you were here to kill me." His eyes narrowed. "Even if you had succeeded, it wouldn't have mattered. What I have started here cannot be undone. Not now, not ever. My legacy will outlast my death. The renewal of the world has come. Neither the United States nor Russia will ever harm the sons and daughters of Islam again." He glanced at the Saudi and spoke in Arabic. "Did he come alone?"
"There was another with him," the Saudi said.
"Radio Young Falcon immediately," Al Sifr said. "Warn him an intruder has breached the grounds."
Al Sifr unclipped his own radio.
Ethan glanced at the reflection of the Saudi. The man stood only a meter behind him. His pistol was pointed at Ethan's back, but he was looking down, fumbling for his radio with his free hand.
Ethan spun around and closed the distance before the Saudi could react. He headbutted his opponent, crunching the Saudi's nose cartilage, then wrenched the pistol—a Glock 22—from the stunned man's grip, so that by the time the Saudi took a drunken step backward, Ethan was already bringing the weapon to bear on the guard behind him.
The entrance guard could have easily fired his AK-47 in the time it took Ethan to disarm the Saudi, of course, but he hadn't. In the split second before Ethan squeezed the trigger, he commended the guard's loyalty, which had overcome his self-preservation instinct—if the guard had fired, killing the Saudi, there was a good chance he would have struck Al Sifr, too.
Ethan fired three times, aiming at the guard's face. The torso was a better target, but Ethan was confident he could hit at that close range. He didn't want to risk any hidden body armor deflecting the shots. Three red blooms appeared on the man's features: one above his temple, another his cheek, the third spot-on the nose.
Before the guard went down, instinct reminded Ethan that his back was exposed to Al Sifr.
Ethan wrapped an arm around the dazed Saudi and rotated to face Al Sifr. The Saudi's body shook as bullets riddled his torso.
Al Sifr had drawn a pistol and was firing.
Some of the bullets pierced the Saudi's body and struck Ethan. None of them penetrated the steel trauma plates in his concealed vest.
Staying behind the human shield, Ethan returned fire several times in Al Sifr's general direction.
Ethan paused. Al Sifr had stopped shooting.
The wounded Saudi abruptly toppled.
Al Sifr stood there, his weapon lowered, his expression one of utter surprise. He was holding his chest with a blood-covered hand.
Ethan aimed the Glock at Al Sifr's head and fired a final shot. The bullet penetrated below his right cheek.
Al Sifr, the terrorist leader who had plotted World War III, collapsed to the floor. Dead.
A klaxon sounded.
The terminal operators cowered on the floor under their desks, save for one defiant man, who had no doubt sounded the alarm.
Ethan ducked behind the closest desk and aimed his Glock at the double doors. As expected, the doors burst open a moment later. The two outer guards stormed inside, one going high, the other low. Ethan had anticipated as much. The first guard moved straight into his iron sights: Ethan only had to make a mild adjustment to lodge a bullet in his temple. He shifted his aim up and to the left, and then unleashed another shot, striking the second man in the cranium.
Ethan strode to the double doors and slammed them shut, then shoved the Glock into his hip holster. He retrieved an AK from one of the bodies and pointed it at the terminal operator still at his desk.
"Shut down that alarm!" Ethan said in Arabic above the ringing in his ears.
The man stared defiantly at Ethan for a moment, then fear contorted his features and he quickly entered something into his keyboard. The klaxon ceased.
A radio activated somewhere on Al Sifr's person. There was a lot of static, but Ethan understood enough of the Arabic to realize someone was asking Al Sifr's status.
"You three, barricade the door." Ethan pointed at three men who cowered under the rearmost desks. "Now!"
While the men complied, Ethan retrieved the other two AKs and hung them over his shoulder. His A4 and original Glock weren't with the bodies—the guards must have stowed the confiscated weapons elsewhere.
He hurried to the front of the room and grabbed Al Sifr's handgun: another Glock 22. He didn't have a place for it, so shoved it into the rear of his waistband, raw. He hated carrying a pistol like that but he didn't have an IWB holster, and he'd left his tactical rig in the Hilux.
Behind him, the three terminal operators had successfully moved a desk in front of the doors.
"Another desk!" Ethan commanded them.
He glanced out the window. In the flat plain below, two trailerless semis accelerated toward the base, leaving behind fresh missile platforms. The next launch was imminent.
Ethan stalked over to the operator who had remained at his terminal.
"Terminate the launch," Ethan told him.
"I can't," the operator told him. "Not without the password."
"What's the password?"
The terminal operator glanced helplessly at the corpse of Al Sifr.
Shit.
"You're telling me the launch is entirely automated?" Ethan asked the man.
The operator nodded toward the window. "You see those metal rods sticking out of the rock? Once the trailers are in place, the launch codes are automatically transmitted from the rods."
"Those trucks are going back to get more missiles?" Ethan said.
"Yes. The final two."
"Tell the trucks to abort."
The shaking operator spoke into his desk microphone. "Launch abort. I repeat, launch abort. All semi operators, stand down."
Violent banging came from outside as someone tried to force open the double doors. The desks weren't going to hold very long.
"Reinforce those doors!" Ethan yelled. To the operator: "Can we disable the unlock mechanism?"
The operator shook his head. "Again, not without Al Sifr's password."
A voice came from a speaker in the roof: "This is launch hangar four. On whose authority does the abort order come?"
"Al Sifr!" the operator said into his microphone.
"Speak the abort password, then," returned the voice.
The operator glanced at Ethan helplessly.
"I repeat, speak the abort password," the voice intoned.
Ethan bent over and pressed the transmit button. "The password is: Al Sifr is dead, pigfucker."
There was a moment of shocked silence. Then the voice finally came again.
"I'm sorry, that is not the password. The launch will continue. Burn in hellfire, infidel."
YOUNG FALCON and his team members threw themselves at the double doors to the control room in pairs. Their proximity cards had unlocked the entrance, but someone had barricaded the inward-opening doors from within.
When the emergency klaxon sounded, Young Falcon and his men had rushed back to the tower from launch hangar four. He had made repeated attempts to contact Al Sifr along the way, to no avail.
"Get this door open," Young Falcon exhorted his brothers. "The Caliph is in danger."
Young Falcon suspected Al Sifr was already dead. They had always known their plan might result in the death of one or both of them. At least his friend had the privilege to witness the culmination of his life's work before he died. The launch was a success. They had won.
And if Al Sifr were truly gone, then his death was another among the many that Young Falcon would have to avenge.
In a fit of rage, he unleashed his rifle at the metal doors. Some of the bullets penetrated but most ricocheted.
Two of his companions fell.
His ears ringing from the loud shots, Young Falcon went to the fallen and begged for forgiveness. One man died in his arms. The other, possessing a gut wound, would suffer horribly until the end.
Young Falcon retrieved a pistol from his hip and held it to the man's head.
"I wanted to see the New Caliphate with you, Young Falcon," the young man said.
"You will shortly witness something even more extraordinary," Young Falcon told him, and squeezed the trigger.
Deaths. So many.
The anger seeped back. He had been forced to kill two of his men simply because the others could not open a door. The anger festered into a blind fury. He needed an outlet for it, and fast.
"You fool!" He shot the nearest man in the head.
He was breathing hard by then, though the sound seemed muffled thanks to the gunshots. He turned to face the others. They stepped back, the fear plain on their faces.
Young Falcon froze.
He was once a leader of men. Of armies. He had never ruled by fear. He had never had to.
What have I become?
His mind flashed back to the mounds of dirt where his wife and sons had been buried. He had dug up the graves, refusing to believe they were dead. But when he saw the bloated, mangled bodies, and the pale faces covered in grime, he knew the truth.
The seething rage emanated from deep inside him, fed by hatred.
The Americans. The Americans did this to me.
Fear was all he had now.
"Do you see what your incompetence has made me do?" Young Falcon shouted. "Open this door before I dispatch all of you to jannah!"
48
Washington, D.C., White House Presidential Emergency Operations Center
THE PRESIDENT CRACKED OPEN the opaque shell of the "Biscuit" and retrieved the plastic card inside. Printed on the front were the Gold Codes, arranged in a column. He turned the card over: on the back was the combination to the suitcase. He punched in the digits on the keypad and the latch clicked open. He replaced the plastic card in his breast pocket and reverently opened the case.
An LCD display was affixed to the inside of the upper lid; it mirrored the digital map and missile trajectories of the main screen. On the bottom lid rested a SATCOM radio, a black book, and a laminated sheet. Beneath the book was more paperwork, including plans for continuity of government, and letters he could use to delegate authority to the Vice President and other individuals in the succession list. It was all decidedly low-tech.
Ignoring the book and other items, he removed the laminated sheet, labeled OPLAN 8010. The sheet indicated a set of plans and options based on the target set known as the National Target Base. Looking at the choices available
to him, the President felt uncannily like he was ordering the end of the world from a restaurant menu.
On the first column of the front page, he could choose one or more countries to target. On the right column, he could select from four strategic targeting options: nuclear forces, conventional military forces, military and political leadership, and economic/industrial targets. On the back page, he could further narrow down the targeting by choosing from two options under three categories: Major Attack Options, Selected Attack Options, and Limited Attack Options.
A cold stream of perspiration ran down his ribcage. He was truly doing this. The moment seemed so surreal.
He picked up the handset of the secure SATCOM. "Chairman?"
No reply. The onboard radio wasn't able to penetrate the bunker, of course.
The analyst beside him offered a cord and the President plugged it into the back of the device. "Chairman? This is the President."
"Chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff, at your service," came the answer from the SATCOM. The Chairman didn't appear on the viewscreen in the Emergency Operations Center—he'd muted the teleconference connection for privacy. The President saw no need to mute his own conference connection—for accountability purposes, he wanted everyone to hear.
"What's next, Admiral?" the President said into the handset.
"Authenticate," the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff returned. "Choose from the options, have the Secretary of Defense concur, and I'll direct the officers on duty in the National Military Command Center to release the necessary EAMs to all nuclear forces." EAM stood for Emergency Action Message, an encrypted data parcel that provided instructions to the nuclear launch sites.
"Robert?" the President said hesitantly into the SATCOM.
"I'm here, Will," the Secretary of Defense replied over the handset. Like the Chairman, he, too, did not appear on the videoconference screen.
The President retrieved the plastic card from his pocket and studied the Gold Codes. Generated daily by the NSA, those codes were distributed to the White House, the Pentagon, United States Strategic Command, and TACAMO. Most of the codes were decoys—only specific areas contained valid sequences. He pressed the mute button on the conference phone and glanced at the areas he had memorized, reading out the codes over the SATCOM. When the Chairman confirmed their validity, the President unmuted the conference.
