Dr. Lee burst back into the Situation Room.
“I’ve just gotten off the phone with the PDCO,” he said. “They’ve lost contact with the crew on the asteroid. They’re trying to track its trajectory now, but it’s too soon to know if they successfully diverted it before it reached the limit.”
Almost in unison, every head in the room turned to the president. At first, he felt ill, but then that sickly feeling was replaced with a kind of resolve. He took a breath and looked hard at Alan Kittredge.
“Get on the line with the United States Strategic Command,” he said. “Let them know we’re deploying the nuke.”
Although Earth was still intact, on the Thresher it was the end of the world. The asteroid continued to be rocked by the force of the blasts from the lightning bugs and the resultant steam. Shaw’s plan worked like a dream, Caitlin thought, maybe even better than expected. Caitlin looked at the chaos around her and then down at her wounded friend.
“Sorry, honey,” she said. “You don’t get to play the martyr today.”
She pulled Vee up, draping her arm around her shoulders, and continued to hop-walk back to the lander as the asteroid shook and burst around her. Arriving at the Alley Oop, she forced open the hatch and hoisted Vee inside. Once she’d climbed in herself, she helped Vee into one of the seats and out of her suit. Vee screamed in pain as she did and Caitlin apologized profusely, assuring her friend that it had to be done. When Vee’s EMU suit was off, Caitlin took a look at her leg.
“The good news?” she said. “It isn’t broken. Your kneecap is just dislocated. The bad news? I’m going to have to try and pop it back into place. And you’re not going to like me for it. Ordinarily, I’d leave this to a specialist for fear of tearing tendons and whatnot. But we’ve got a long way to go, and you’ve got to be as close to one hundred percent as I can get you, OK?”
As she talked, the asteroid was rocked by more explosions of steam.
Jesus, can they give it a rest?
“Just do what you’ve got to do,” said Vee.
“All right,” said Caitlin. “Straighten out your leg for me and sit up.”
Vee did as Caitlin had asked, and trying to work fast, Caitlin grabbed the side of her friend’s knee and slowly began to slide the kneecap back into place. Vee gasped sharply as Caitlin worked, squeezing her eyes shut and clenching her teeth.
“I know,” Caitlin said. “Kind of redefines the word ‘pain,’ doesn’t it?”
“Oh yeah,” said Vee, her eyes still closed.
“Just don’t pass out on me, OK?” Caitlin said. “I’m gonna need you to get us home.”
A few more attempts at moving the kneecap, each of which obviously sent the needle on Vee’s internal pain meter well into the red, and it was back in.
“There,” Caitlin said, giving the injured knee a gentle pat. “You’re not going to be able to put much weight on it for now, but it’ll do until we get you home. Now let’s try and find you some kind of brace.”
Searching around the cabin of the Alley Oop, Caitlin sighed in relief as she found the perfect solution. No matter how advanced human society became, she thought, the need for duct tape would remain eternal. She scrambled for the med kit. Fumbling it open, she dug through the box before she came across what she was looking for, a morphine tab. Sometimes the old ways were still the best. Clambering back over to Vee, she handed the tab to her friend and began wrapping her knee with the tape.
“Here,” Caitlin said, as Vee began to squirm in pain from the wrapping. “Put half under your tongue. It will help with the pain but still keep you alert enough to help me fly this thing home.”
Vee nodded and grabbed half the tab and slid it into her mouth, where it dissolved instantly under her tongue. Almost immediately, her face changed as the pain drained away. Caitlin patted Vee on the shoulder.
“There we go,” she said. “Now sit tight while I try and get us out of here.”
“Caitlin?” Sara said suddenly on the Tamarisk’s comm. “Caitlin, are you there?”
“Yeah,” said Caitlin. “I’m here and we’re about to take off.”
“Thank God!” said Sara. “We thought you were all dead.”
“No,” said Caitlin, thinking of Shaw. “Not all of us.”
“If you’re planning on getting out of there, you’d better do it now.”
“I know,” said Caitlin. “The asteroid is really rocking . . .”
“It’s about to get a lot worse,” Sara said. “The president has given the order to deploy the nuclear warhead. It’s about to launch!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
After the president had officially authorized the use of the nuclear weapon, things began moving very fast. Since they were in the White House, there was no need for his military aide to produce the Football, the case that traveled with the president at all times and contained the nuclear launch codes as well as the authentication codes for the nation’s entire nuclear arsenal. In addition, given that this was a special set of circumstances, the president was not required to review the attack options, which were specific orders designated for specific targets. Instead, he needed only the Gold Codes, a series of numbers that identified the president as commander in chief and allowed him to authenticate a nuclear launch. The codes changed daily, and as such the president was required to memorize his personal number. The codes were kept on a small plastic card called the Biscuit, which the president was required to keep on his or her person at all times. For all the security around the Football, precautions regarding the Biscuit were somewhat less stringent. When President Reagan was nearly assassinated by John Hinckley in 1981, his clothes and personal possessions were taken by the hospital staff before surgery. It was only hours later that his staff found the Biscuit tossed into a bag with the rest of his items. There were also rumors that Bill Clinton had misplaced the Biscuit during the last days of his presidency in 2000.
Now, with the launch of the largest nuclear weapon ever built about to take place on his watch, the president reached into his pocket and withdrew the Biscuit. He snapped the card’s plastic covering in two, removing it and unveiling the list of codes. Scanning down the list, he found and identified his code to Roger Bennett, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Bennett nodded, acknowledging the president’s authentication, then asked for confirmation of his order.
“I give the order to deploy,” said the president.
“Under the two-man rule, the order to deploy must be confirmed,” said Bennett.
At this point, Alan Kittredge, who as secretary of defense formed the other half of the two-man unit known as the National Command Authority, stepped forward. He confirmed his name and title and authenticated his own code on the Biscuit. Although he had been advocating for this course of action, now that it was upon him he looked green and uneasy, the pallor of someone who has helped to set in motion events whose consequences he only partially understood. Once his code was confirmed, the order to deploy was relayed to the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon and then on to the crew of the missile silo.
More than two hundred feet below the Iowa pastureland, the crew of the missile silo enacted a procedure that had gone unchanged for more than a century. The technology had become more sophisticated, but the steps needed before a nuclear missile could be launched remained the same.
Over the silo’s primary alerting system, the crew received an Emergency Action Message, authorizing the use of nuclear weapons. The EAM squawked out a coded message using numbers and letters from the NATO alphabet, which two crew members were then required to take down. After receiving the message and writing it in their separate notebooks, both men immediately compared what they had written. The codes matched, which meant the message was authentic. From this point on, training kicked in and the two were focused only on the job that needed to be done.
They raced over to the safe at the far end of the silo’s command center, retrieving the authenticator cards they would need to
further verify the message’s authenticity. Once they had that verification, the two inserted their launch keys. The keys were placed on two different control panels spaced far enough apart that it would be impossible for one person to turn them simultaneously. This had to be a two-person operation, and both had to be completely in agreement. The missile commander turned to his deputy.
“On my mark,” he said, his face completely neutral. “Three . . . two . . . one . . . turn keys.”
Both men turned their keys at once, and the panel lit up with the green message light: “READY TO LAUNCH.”
The keys were spring-loaded and had to be held for five seconds before the launch could be completed. After five seconds, the display flared again with a second message: “LAUNCH ENABLED.”
Inside the silo, sunlight filtered in as the massive overhead door was retracted. The missile slowly began to smolder as power was transferred from the silo to the missile’s internal systems. The internal guidance systems were then activated, directing the weapon toward the asteroid. A few seconds later, the main engine kicked in and fire burst from the missile’s massive engines, slowly pushing it upward into the morning sky.
In the White House, Kittredge received confirmation from Strategic Command.
“Launch confirmed, sir,” he said.
The president took a seat and folded his hands involuntarily in prayer. “If I’m right, let me be right,” he said quietly. “And if I’m wrong, let me be forgiven.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“He what?” Caitlin shouted.
“He’s launching the Thunderclap!” said Sara. “It’s probably on its way to you now.”
“Jesus Christ,” Caitlin muttered to herself. “Could just one thing go right on this mission?”
“You need to get out of there now!”
“I’m working on it, I’m working on it!” shouted Caitlin. She turned to Vee.
“You ready to get out of here?”
Vee smiled and nodded weakly.
“Then let’s do it,” said Caitlin. “Sara, we’re preparing for launch. We will try and contact you when we’re off this rock.”
“Good luck,” said Sara. “And God bless . . .”
Caitlin started the launch cycle, pressing screens and swiping madly as she prepped the ship for takeoff.
“How are you feeling?” Caitlin asked Vee. “Are you clearheaded enough to give me a hand?”
“I think so,” Vee said. “The morphine’s keeping the pain at bay for now. But what about that pyro problem? Are you sure you fixed it?”
“I think so,” said Caitlin. “I’m pulling power from some other systems long enough to push a sufficient charge through the separation system to hopefully fire the blade.”
“What other systems?”
“Guidance and navigation, life support . . .”
“Life support?”
“It’s just until we’re off the surface,” Caitlin said. “Then everything should even out.”
“OK,” said Vee. “But will it work?”
“We’ll find out when we launch.”
“Wonderful,” Vee said.
The two women ran through the prelaunch checklist as quickly as they could, the asteroid heaving around them.
“Valentine,” Vee said suddenly, her eyes not leaving the control panel.
“What?”
“Valentine,” she said again. “That’s my name. Valentine.”
Caitlin gave her friend a look. “That’s not so bad,” she said. “The way you kept it hidden, I thought it was going to be much, much worse.”
“It was pretty bad to me,” said Vee. “Got teased about it every day in middle school. I know you know what that’s like.”
“I do,” said Caitlin, hearing an echo of “Moon girl” rebound in her memory.
“Anyway, figured if I’m going to die, I may as well die without any secrets.”
“You’re not going to die,” said Caitlin, continuing to prepare the Alley Oop. “Ascent engine is armed. Get ready . . .”
“What about you?” said Vee. “What’s your big secret?”
“Oh,” Caitlin said absently, still focused on the tasks in front of her. “I was a virgin until I was twenty-five.”
Vee leaned back against her headrest. “Shoot,” she said, closing her eyes. “Some secret. I could have told you that.”
“Nice,” said Caitlin. “Hold on. In three . . . two . . . one . . . ignite!”
Caitlin hit the switch, and all the lights inside the cabin dimmed as available power was funneled into the umbilical severance system. There was a hollow bursting sound as, in an instant, the pyros fired and the wires tethering the two stages were severed. For a moment, the Alley Oop sank down instead of up. Vee and Caitlin had a second to look at each other in terror before the engine ignited fully and the lander sprang upward, now fully free of its moorings. In one swift motion, like a shot put hurled from the hand of an invisible giant, the Alley Oop burst up and away from the surface of the Thresher for the last time.
“Are they away?” asked Alex.
“Yeah,” Sara said, “I think so.”
“Well that’s some good news. And here’s some more.”
He handed Sara a printout, grinning widely.
“The force from the last burst, combined with everything we’ve been doing over the past several days, has diverted the asteroid by a velocity of about twelve centimeters per second! We did it!”
Alex looked at Sara’s stricken face and tilted his head slightly in confusion.
“Um, the way I played it out in my head, this was the part where you jumped up and down in excitement, maybe cheered a little bit,” he said. “Did a dance, you know? I wouldn’t even have said no to a hug . . .”
“Haven’t you heard?” she asked him.
“No,” he said. “I’ve had my head down trying to get these numbers back from the asteroid. What’s going on?”
“The president,” Sara said. “He’s launched the Thunderclap. It’s on its way to the asteroid now.”
Alex’s expression changed so that it matched Sara’s harried face.
“We’ve got to call the White House,” he said.
In the Situation Room, the president and his advisors were watching the Thunderclap pull up and away from the silo when Dr. Lee came bursting in, red-faced and panicked.
“The PDCO just called!” he said. “The asteroid has been diverted. It’s going to skip harmlessly off the atmosphere!”
“My God,” said the president. “We’ve got to abort the missile strike.”
“We can’t do that, sir,” said Kittredge. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“What do you mean?” the president asked. “You don’t have some button or an abort code? Something that stops it cold or causes it to self-destruct?”
“Maybe in movies, sir,” said Kittredge. “But only an insane person would actually put something like that in a nuclear missile. What if the abort codes fell into the hands of the enemy?”
“So what are our options?”
“I’m afraid we don’t have any,” said Kittredge. “The missile will detonate when it reaches the designated altitude. We can only hope now that the effects will be relatively harmless. All space stations and functional orbital platforms have been alerted and have EMP countermeasures in place, and all transit from Earth has been temporarily suspended.”
“What about the asteroid?” asked Lee. Everyone turned to look at him.
“Come again?” asked the president.
“The asteroid,” Lee repeated. “Yes, it’s been diverted for now. But if the nuke detonates on the wrong side of the asteroid, the force of the blast could shift its course again, sending it right back into our atmosphere.”
“Explain it to us like we’re six-year-olds, Dr. Lee,” said Kittredge. “How exactly can that happen after everything we’ve done?”
“It’s because of everything we’ve done,” Lee said. “The heat from the lightning bugs and
all the discharged steam from the craters has resulted in a ton of material being ablated from the asteroid’s surface. It’s now belching out rock, water vapor, and ice particles as it moves by us. All of those are enough to confuse the missile’s radar system and cause it to detonate too early or too late. And if that happens, there is a chance it will send the Thresher back to Earth.”
“Jesus Christ,” said the president. “What I wouldn’t give to be back in Alabama right now . . .”
“I may have a solution,” Lee said. “Secretary Kittredge is right. The missile doesn’t have an abort code or fail-safe button, but that doesn’t mean we can’t create one.”
“Go on,” the president said.
“Every missile is equipped with an internal clock,” said Lee. “The clock specifies when each ascent engine should ignite and cut off. If we can hack into that clock, we can reset it.”
“Reset it?” asked the president. “What the hell will that do?”
“We can trick it, Mr. President. The missile is set to ignite the second stage four minutes from now. If we can reset the clock and make it think that it’s later, we can trick it into firing three minutes from now while the first stage is still attached.”
“Destroy the missile in flight?” the president said. “Won’t that set off the nuke?”
“I’m not going to lie to you, Mr. President. I’m not entirely certain,” Lee said, a look of honesty on his face. “If the explosion is hot enough or powerful enough, it definitely could. But the chances are unlikely. Back in the twentieth century, a Titan missile exploded in its silo in Arkansas and nothing happened, so . . . fingers crossed, Mr. President.”
“So, just so I’m clear on what’s being pitched here, you’re talking about a possible nuclear explosion in the upper atmosphere of the planet?” the president asked. “Won’t that be just as disastrous?”
“Not necessarily,” Kittredge opined. “It’s been done before. During the First Cold War in the 1960s, American bombers detonated a series of nuclear bombs about two hundred and fifty miles above the planet in what they called fishbowl events. It’ll play hell with the electronics on the surface, but there’s nothing we can do about that I’m afraid.”
Zero Limit Page 24
