“What if they don’t detonate?” the other officer hissed.
“Then we’ll surprise some fish,” the Marine replied impatiently. “They’re aimed at the bay, and they’re tiny. They could splash down next to a rowboat and they wouldn’t capsize the boat, though I think whoever was rowing the boat would need to change his shorts. But they won’t hit anything. Where were you this morning when the briefing was going on?”
The officer from Washington sat back in his chair in relief.
“Thank god,” he whispered to the other officer. “I missed the briefing -- I got lost coming out to the base. I thought this was real.”
“It could be real,” the Marine Colonel said grimly. “This time, it isn't.”
“Roger, the President is in the air,” Colonel Olsen said into the Gold Phone. “Impact area DC. The missile type is a probably SS-N-06, multiple warheads likely. Time to impact --” he glanced over at the Space Director's computer screen, “--less than ten minutes. Do I have authority to shoot this down?”
There was silence.
The Colonel stood at attention, one ear to the Gold Phone, the other to the Blue. His face was square and tanned. Laugh wrinkles networked his eyes. A thin line of sweat dropped from his hairline into a wrinkle and disappeared.
“Sir?” Major Torrence, the Ground Director, clenched the table top with his left hand. His right finger hovered over the computer key that gave Weapons Release Authority. His finger trembled slightly. He knew this was a game, but it was a deadly serious one. Major Torrence knew about the nightmare War Game three years ago, where the blundering and indecisiveness of the command staff caused the complete destruction of most of the American East Coast. Several forced retirements followed the debacle. Even simulated deaths weren’t taken lightly, not when they were counted in the millions.
“Less than eight minutes to impact,” the Space Director said without inflection.
Colonel Olsen stood like a statue. The phone at his ear was silent.
“We need weapons release to shoot this down,” The Atlantic Commander said over the radio communications link.
“There's a manned shuttle launch from Russia today at eleven,” a Defense aide said over the same link. “There's a possibility -- if we release the Brilliant Pebbles they might shoot it down.”
“Are the bombers scrambled?” Olsen asked.
“We have two B-1’s in the air, and that’s all we have on alert, nowadays,” Air Command replied from Omaha, Nebraska. During the Cold War hundreds of pilots would be racing to bombers kept ready for just such an event, but not today.
“Seven minutes, thirty seconds,” NORAD reported.
“We have to be prepared for a massive follow-on,” the Atlantic Commander said. “The President has authorized.”
The Colonel didn't say a word. He nodded his head abruptly at Major Torrence.
“Weapons Release authorized,” the Major roared into his microphone. His finger punched the button that would turn the first “key.” There was a faint overload whine from the communications network.
“Brilliant Pebbles released,” barked the Space Weapons officer, pressing his console button and turning the second “key.”
Far above, in a low earth orbit, hundreds of small bullet-shaped objects received a burst of encrypted computer instructions. The Brilliant Pebbles stopped their lazy orbital spin by squirting out tiny jets of hydrogen peroxide. They deployed their sensing eyes. Circular radar dishes unfolded delicately from shielded housings on top of the Pebbles.
Deployment of the sensing eyes was an expensive operation. The lubrication of the folding joints didn’t last forever in the harsh climate of space. The Space Weapon Officer, in his excitement, sent the “All Deploy” command to the Pebbles. Every Pebble in orbit around the earth received the instruction, and opened its radar eyes. This mistake would earn a sharp reprimand from Olsen for the offending officer.
The Pebbles that opened above the Atlantic had plenty to see. The twin radar dishes on each Pebble caught the bright flare of the burning SS-N-06 rockets. The eyes, now in control, sent commands to the tiny peroxide thrusters. To an astronaut floating a few hundred yards away, the Pebbles would have looked comical. Their big goggle eyes seemed to peer intently earthward, shifting back and forth as they tried to acquire the tracks of the nuclear missiles.
The first two missiles finished boost phase and launched the vehicle that contained the nuclear bombs, called re-entry vehicles or RVs. The post-boost vehicle started an irregular burn as it launched off the RVs. To the Brilliant Pebbles, the missiles became harder to track. The second set of missiles were still boosting, leaving telltale flares.
Seven Brilliant Pebbles locked on the remaining missiles. One Pebble, achieving an intercept solution, sent a burst of instruction over the communication link. The instruction was a simple one; it was, essentially, “I've got it!” The other Pebbles, still struggling for an intercept on the missile, received the transmission and stopped calculating.
The winning Pebble shed its power packs and support system, called the lifejacket, and leaped towards the missile. Behind it, another Pebble shouted over the communications link and headed for the other missile.
The velocity at impact was nearly incalculable. The Pebble disintegrated into particles. The fragile electrical impulses that were supposed to set off the bomb vaporized along with inert chunks of steel. In a fraction of a second the warhead was no more. The debris dropped towards the ocean below.
“Got 'em!” crowed the Weapons Officer.
“Can that, Captain,” snapped Colonel Olsen. “What have you hit?”
“Two boosters, three and four. Two Pebbles launched, two hits, no misses. Two busses are currently deploying RVs.”
“Impact time?”
“Two minutes, sir. Impact point is Washington, D.C.”
Colorado Springs Investigations Bureau
Eileen sat at her computer, delaying the moment when she would call up the Pendleton file. She was watching the rainstorm and she was thinking about her time in the military. They were not pleasant memories.
Eileen shrugged and turned away from the rain. Time to think of other things. Like teasing the new rookie, perhaps.
“Hey Rosen,” she said. Rosen was editing. His rapid two-finger typing had ended. He was still intent on his computer screen, looking over his report.
“What?”
“The lights up at Cheyenne Mountain ended. Harben told me it wasn’t a nuclear bomb.”
“Hm, really,” Rosen said dryly. “Like I couldn’t tell by now.”
“No, but they were tracking something big.”
She had his attention now, although he wasn’t looking at her. She would win if he looked over at her.
“Something big?”
“Yeah, Harben said for us to go check out the news channels.”
Rosen sat up in his chair and looked over at her, and she spoiled the joke with her grin. She couldn’t keep it off her face. He knew he’d been had.
“Oh, come on,” he snapped, and turned back to his screen.
“Ha, I got you to look,” she said. “You were about to get up and check out CNN for the big landing of Klaatu and his alien friends.”
“Next time if you can keep a straight face I might even go find a TV,” Rosen said, and started typing on his keyboard again.
Eileen, having lost the game, still felt cheered. She’d been a rookie herself, not so long ago. She turned from her computer and looked out the window. There was another thundershower moving in over Cheyenne Mountain. The flashing lights had ended for good, it seemed. The entrance to NORAD was dark and still.
Space Command, Schriever Air Force Base
“Ground Sensor, what are you tracking?”
The ground based radars on the East Coast were similar to the radar dishes on the Brilliant Pebbles, although the ground radars were much more powerful. Unrestricted by weight or space, the radars had the nuclear reactors along the coast to dra
w power. They scanned over the Atlantic with muscular pulses of energy, finding and tracking the tiny falling bombs with exact precision. Their job was to take out the missiles that the Brilliant Pebbles missed. They were the last line of defense.
The ground interceptors were a descendant of the Patriot Missile system, an advanced smart bullet that could take apart the big city-busting bombs before they had a chance to detonate. The powerful rockets could accelerate at high speeds to intercept their targets. They had weak sensors for eyes; the Ground Based Radars were their eyes, pointing out and aiming them at the incoming bombs.
The interceptors locked onto the incoming RVs.
“Radars are tracking, looks like the ground interceptors are locked on,” the Sensor officer said, a puzzled note creeping into her voice.
The interceptors didn't fire.
“Why aren't they firing, Ground Weapons?” Colonel Olsen swung his head like a nervous bull. The narrow black tracks were closing in on Washington with frightening speed.
“Ground Weapons?”
There was no answer from the Ground Weapons station.
Colonel Olsen dropped the Blue Phone from his ear.
“Major Torrence, detonate those missiles,” he snapped. Torrence reached out so quickly he knocked over an empty Styrofoam cup that once held coffee. He flipped all four buttons on his console. The missiles abruptly puffed into white smoke and arced toward the ocean.
Colonel Olsen was smiling. Deep laugh lines framed his eyes. It was not a pretty smile.
“Game Director,” he said softly. “What the hell is your person doing back there? Sleeping? We have live assets on this Game, goddammit!”
“Debris is down,” crackled a voice over the intercom. The chase pilots in the Atlantic had just verified that the scrap metal from the detonated missiles had landed safely in the ocean.
Major Torrence tore the headset from his head and threw it down in exasperation. Colonel Eaton, the Space Director, took the headset gently from her head, not disturbing a hair of her smooth French roll.
The Gaming Center, Space Command, was a long rectangular room with a raised dais at the far end. Built in a series of steps, the room was like a small theater. Twelve audience members, most of them in military uniform, sat in comfortable chairs. At the front of the room was a large screen projection of the computer simulation. The screen suddenly blossomed with light. The real test missiles had been detonated, but the computer was instructed to continue the simulation if such an event happened. The virtual bombs had just impacted in the virtual city of Washington, DC.
The audience blinked and muttered at the rising nuclear cloud above Washington. The simulation was detailed enough to be horrifying.
Along each side of the room were the narrow doors that held the operations officers. Directly ahead of Colonel Olsen, at the corner of the room, was the Ground Weapons station door. The other doors opened cautiously. Civilians who ran the different computer consoles peered out with puzzled faces.
The Game Director, a tall balding civilian, paced tightly to the Ground Weapon door and flung it open. The audience, muttering and shifting, became still in a slow wave as first the front, then the back of the room became aware that there was something wrong.
The Director backed out of the room. He turned away from the door and the people in the room could see his freckles standing out in a suddenly white face.
Inside the room there was a figure slumped over the console. To Colonel Olsen, without glasses, it appeared as though the woman in the room had a long yellow stick or tube tucked under her armpit. Only as the first muffled screams burst out did Olsen realize the stick was the handle of a screwdriver, and it wasn't tucked under her arm. It was driven deeply into her back, and the sprawled gracelessness of the body could only mean that she was dead.
Chapter Three
Schriever Air Force Base
The time from the discovery of the body behind the narrow door in the Gaming Center to the ringing of Harben's phone was fourteen minutes. Nelson Atkins, Game Director, called Major Jeff Blaine, chief of Security for Schriever Air Force Base. Major Blaine had dealt with murder before in other positions with the military police. Not at Schriever, though. He wasn't set up for a murder investigation at Schriever and he knew it. He called the Base Commander, Colonel Willmeth.
Colonel Willmeth had been the base commander for just three months. He hadn’t even caught up on his paperwork yet. He put Blaine on hold, cursed briefly and fluently, and opened his intercom.
“Roberta?” he asked. “Can you come in here for a moment please?”
Roberta came into the room a moment later and shut the door behind her. She was a woman who had been really beautiful thirty years ago. She would still be beautiful, Colonel Willmeth thought, if she weren’t still trying to look twenty. She had black hair piled high in what was now a trendy do. She wore the latest in high school fashion and her bright pink nails were almost an inch long. She was the Base Commander’s secretary, and Colonel Willmeth hated her with all his heart.
“What is it, Jake?” she asked. Colonel Willmeth winced at her use of his first name, but said nothing. The troops in his last command would have bet their last paycheck that Willmeth could face down a tank or two with his mouth alone, but they had never met Roberta.
“We’ve had a murder at the Gaming Center,” Colonel Willmeth said. Roberta’s large black eyes widened.
“A murder?”
Willmeth nodded. He shrugged with his hands outspread, as he’d done a thousand times in the last three months. Only Roberta knew the rules that were specific to Schriever Air Force Base. Only Roberta knew the filing system. Roberta knew where everything was stored. Roberta was the real Base Commander, and only Roberta and the Base Commander knew it. Colonel Willmeth had wondered at the sigh of relief Colonel Flaherty had given when he took command, but he’d been too excited at his first Base Command to care.
“Hang on,” Roberta said. She left the office and Colonel Willmeth chewed his lip, looking at the blinking light that meant Major Blaine and thinking black thoughts.
“According to Regs we need to call Air Force OSI, Office of Special Investigations,” Roberta said, reentering with a notebook in her hands. “That's Major Stillwell at Peterson Air Force Base.” She flipped a few pages carefully with the pads of her nails so as to keep her polish unmarred. “We're also required to notify the Colorado Springs Police Department.”
“What?” Colonel Willmeth said, distracted from his contemplation of Roberta’s shiny nails. “Civilians?”
“According to Regs this last year, passed by Congress. They've got a military liaison with a security clearance. Detective Eileen Reed. Her Captain, that's Harben. I’ve got all their phone numbers.”
Roberta wrote briefly, tore the page from her notebook, and laid it carefully on Colonel Willmeth’s desk.
“Amazing,” the Colonel said wearily. “Thank you, Roberta. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Roberta smiled her little Mona Lisa smile, the one that made Colonel Willmeth feel like grinding his teeth.
“No problem, Jake,” she said. “If you need anything else, let me know.” She left the room. Colonel Willmeth swallowed hard and punched the light on the phone, opening the connection to Major Blaine.
Colorado Springs Investigations Bureau
“Hey, Rosen,” Eileen said. She’d typed in the access code to the Pendleton file, and had already read the brief summary. It was time to go out to Peterson and take a look.
Rosen had finished editing and was looking over a printout of his file. He’d propped a foot up on a nearby chair and was sipping from a bottle of purified water. Rosen was a health nut. He never drank coffee or soda, which was a mystery to Eileen. How did he get going in the morning?
“Yes?”
“You want to go look at this Pendleton guy? He’s a month dead, been lying in the bushes.”
“Oh boy,” Rosen said. “Is this another one of those so-you-wa
nna-be-a-detective tests you guys keep coming up with?”
“No, I just want to see if you’ll puke,” Eileen said innocently.
Peter O’Brien, hanging up his coat on a hook, snorted with laughter. There were damp rings under his armpits and the back of his neck was beaded with sweat.
“Grow up,” Rosen said. He didn’t smile, but his black eyes glittered. That was his version of a laugh.
“You should go,” O’Brien said. “Who knows? Maybe Eileen will puke.”
Eileen was opening her mouth for a sizzling reply when Harben yelled her name.
“I don’t puke,” she said loftily to O’Brien. “And if I do, I’ll make sure to puke on you.”
“You puke on kiddie rides at the carnival,” O’Brien returned automatically. He was already typing in his own access code and pulling crumpled notes out of his pockets. O’Brien never managed to remember his note book, so he ended up writing notes on any piece of paper he could scrounge. This eccentricity was a great source of amusement to Eileen and exasperation to Harben, but O’Brien managed to do a good job with his little ATM slips and his grocery receipts.
Harben, on the phone again, was holding the receiver away from his ear.
“I'll have a detective out immediately,” he said. Eileen could hear the tiny frantic buzzing from the receiver, the excited tones of the speaker.
“That's fine, she'll sign whatever she needs to, she has a security clearance. Yes, she's our Military Liaison. Yes, she has a lot of experience with these cases.” Harben looked soberly at Eileen, who started grinning. “I'll get her out there. Don't disturb the scene, understand? Don't clean up anything, don't touch a thing.”
Harben hung up the phone gently and the tiny voice, still squawking, stopped.
“Security clearance, sir?”
“There's been a murder at Schriever Air Force Base,” Harben said.
Ground Zero Page 2
