The Omega Theory (43 page)

David stepped away from the boulder, moving into the open. There was nothing inside him now but pure unholy rage. Before the world ended, he wanted to kill this man. He
needed
to kill this man. He held the Desert Eagle in front of him and it shook in his hands.

And then he heard Lucille’s voice. He heard it in his mind and heart and stomach. He felt one of her hands on the small of his back and the other on his chest, just below his collarbone. She stood right behind him, bringing her lips close to his ear.

Keep your right arm straight,
she said.
Wrap your left hand around your right, with the thumbs crossed. Line up the front sight inside the rear sight and the target just above. Then squeeze the trigger nice and slow.

OLAM AIMED FOR THE TUNNEL. THE ROUNDS FROM THE MACHINE GUNS TORE
dozens of holes in his MI-8, but they couldn’t stop the helicopter’s descent. When he was a hundred and fifty meters away he saw a man in a checkered keffiyeh in front of the tunnel entrance, holding a grenade launcher on his shoulder. Olam’s heart clenched—this was the one thing that could stop him. But then the man shuddered and dropped the launch tube. He fell sideways and lay on the sand. A dark red splotch spread across his keffiyeh.

Ah, Olam thought, this is the instrument of
Keter
! The Crown of the Universe has guided David’s hand!

Laughing now, Olam rolled the MI-8 counterclockwise, turning the helicopter on its side so it would fit through the tunnel. He hit the entrance at more than three hundred kilometers per hour, and the rotor sheared cleanly off the fuselage. The helicopter plowed right through the sandbags and careened down the steeply sloping tunnel, hardly slowing at all as it slid toward the bottom. Olam had time to offer just one more prayer, a hymn of praise to the
Sephirot
that had created the universe.

Keter. Chokhmah. Binah. Chesed. Gevurah. Tiferet. Netzach. Hod. Yesod. Malkuth.

The last thing Olam saw was Adam Cyrus Bennett, standing with his back against a large viewing window. The plump leader of the
Qliphoth
held out his arms, as if he thought he could stop the ten-ton fuselage from smashing into his X-ray laser. But no one can change the laws of physics. The helicopter rammed into the glass and exploded, and as Olam died he saw the husks of the
Qliphoth
split open to let the light of God shine through.

ARYEH CHECKED HIS WATCH FOR THE FORTIETH TIME. BASED ON THE FLIGHT
path and speed of the B-2 bomber, General Yaron had estimated that it would arrive at Ashkhaneh at approximately 9
P.M.
local time. It was now 7:25 in Israel, which meant that it was 8:55 in Iran. But while Aryeh paced across Yaron’s office, the general sat calmly behind his desk and studied a printout of the message they’d just received from Shalhevet.

Ehud ben Ezra, the young zealot in charge of running Olam’s quantum computer, had inputted the data from the intercepted Milstar communications and sent the results of the calculations back to Yaron. The general grinned as he stared at the printout. He’d become so intrigued by the computer’s capabilities that it seemed as if he’d forgotten all about the stealth bomber. “Fascinating,” he muttered. “This machine changes everything. They’ll have to rewrite all the cryptography textbooks.”

Aryeh clenched his hands. “General, how much longer—”

“This is the private key!” Yaron showed him the printout, which was covered with hundreds of digits. “Thanks to that crazy man Loebner, no public-key encryption system is safe anymore. My specialists are using this key right now to decode all the Emergency Action Messages that Global Strike Command sent to the B-2. And EAMs are considered to be the most secure communications in the world!”

“Yes, but how much longer will it take?”

“Soon, soon. There are several steps, you see. This private key will unlock the first message sent to the bomber, the one the air force used to distribute the other keys. Then we have to use one of
those
keys to decipher the Emergency Action Message that our antennas inside Iran picked up. And then we have to code a new EAM using all the same keys so that it looks like it came from the proper authorities at Global Strike Command. It has to have exactly the same TRANSEC and COMSEC encryption and—”

One of the general’s aides burst into the office. “Sir, we have it! We’re ready to transmit!”

Aryeh rushed to Yaron’s desk. He hit the switch on the radio console and leaned over the microphone. “Shomron? This is Goldberg. We have the message we want you to relay. As soon as you receive it, transmit the signal in a spotlight beam, pointed directly south. It’s time for your tower to start broadcasting.”

CROUCHED ON THE MOUNTAINSIDE, DAVID SAW OLAM’S HELICOPTER PLUNGE
into the tunnel. Then he saw the flames and smoke burst out of the tunnel’s mouth. A moment later the tunnel collapsed, snuffing the fire. The sand poured into the underground space, and soon there was a shallow crater above the spot where the X-ray laser had been. Even if David hadn’t seen the helicopter’s tail number, he could’ve guessed that it was Olam, and not Lieutenant Halutz, who’d piloted the MI-8 that dove into the tunnel. You had to be a little crazy to think of a stunt like that. David’s eyes stung as he imagined the man’s last moments. He’d saved the world, but it was a poorer place without him.

Cyrus’s soldiers stopped firing their machine guns. About half of them ran over to the collapsed tunnel and stared blankly at the ground. Some fell to their knees, screaming. Others tried digging holes in the sand with their bare hands. But they quickly gave up.

And then, one by one, they started running away. Throwing down their packs and weapons, they leaped over the trenches and charged into the darkness. They went in random directions, some north, some east, some west. They didn’t have a particular destination, David realized. They were simply running away from the target where the warhead was going to explode. With their leader dead and the X-ray laser destroyed, they knew that the Kingdom of Heaven—or at least the version Cyrus had promised them—wouldn’t be opening for them any time soon. What they faced now was plain old death, ordinary oblivion. And this prospect scared the shit out of them, as it does to most people, so they reverted to their baser instincts and tried to get the hell out of there.

But David didn’t join them. He knew that you couldn’t outrun a megaton blast. It was going to scorch the area for ten miles around and spread radioactive fallout even farther. Exhausted, he stumbled over to Monique, who was perched on the stony slope a few feet away, watching the last of Cyrus’s soldiers abandon their foxholes. She was a physicist, so she knew the futility of running even better than David did. With a tired groan, he sat down next to her.

“Is this spot taken?” he asked.

She leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder. He put his arm around her waist.

“You know what’s funny?” she said. “It’s a lovely night.”

It was true. He looked up at the sky and saw a glorious swath of stars shining over the Kopet Dag. He hadn’t seen such a beautiful sight in years. It was so easy to forget how wondrous the world is, he thought.

He squeezed the soft flesh just above Monique’s hip. He loved that part of her. “I feel bad about breaking my promise to Michael. I promised we’d come back for him.”

“It’s all right, David. He’ll be all right.”

“And Jonah. And Lisa. Jesus, this is going to be hard on them. I don’t know how they’ll—”

“Shhh.” She stretched her hand toward him and put her index and middle fingers over his lips. “Let’s not talk about that.”

Before she could move her hand away, he clasped her wrist. Then he kissed her fingers, the underside of each knuckle. “I love you, Monique. I just wish we could’ve spent more time together.”

She moved her face closer to his. “We’re together now.”

•     •     •     

TWO MINUTES BEFORE THE
SPIRIT OF AMERICA
ARRIVED AT THE TARGET COOR
dinates, another voice came over the bomber’s radio. This voice, Colonel Ashley thought, wasn’t as tense as the one that had delivered the last Emergency Action Message. It was an older man’s voice, with a trace of an accent.

“Lima Three Foxtrot Hotel Seven Romeo.”

“Lima Three Foxtrot Hotel Seven Romeo.”

“Lima Three Foxtrot Hotel Seven Romeo.”

Ashley checked his watch. The authentication code was still valid. Nevertheless, he went through the motions of unlocking the safe and opening the codebook and checking the authentication tables again. The procedures had to be followed.

“The Emergency Action Message is authenticated,” he said. “This message is a valid nuclear-control order.”

He passed the codebook to the pilot. Major Wilcox looked jumpy as hell. “I concur, I concur. What’s the message?”

The colonel smiled as he read the first words on the cockpit display. “Mission aborted,” he said. “Return to base.”

“WOOOO-HOOOO!” Wilcox yelled. “Hell yeah!”

“Wait, there’s more. They want us to disable the detonator on the warhead. And then transmit a confirmation that we’ve disabled it. To make sure that the nuke can’t be deployed.”

Wilcox shook his head. “Someone must’ve seriously fucked up.”

“We have to send the confirmation via satellite to the E-4B Nightwatch plane. And there’s an attached message here for the president. His eyes only.”

“You know what this means, don’t you? They’re going straight to the top to get around the Defense Department brass. Someone at the Pentagon fucked up big-time. And now Global Strike Command is blowing the whistle on them.”

“Look, we don’t know—”

“Well, how else would you explain it? We were two minutes away from deploying a nuke, for Christ’s sake! I think that qualifies as a serious fuckup.”

Colonel Ashley agreed. But he didn’t like to encourage speculation. “Let’s just follow our orders, Major.”

“Yes, sir!” Wilcox banked the B-2, putting the bomber into a wide right turn.

The colonel reached for the armaments panel and punched in the code for disabling the detonator. Then he took a moment to look through the cockpit window at the darkened landscape below, the mountains they came so close to bombing. Thank God, he whispered. Thank God.

EPILOGUE

SIX U.S. ARMY RANGERS WEARING WHITE GLOVES AND TAN BERETS CARRIED
a flag-draped coffin down the cargo ramp of the C-17 transport plane. Marching in slow, measured steps, they crossed the tarmac of Dover Air Force Base, the sprawling airfield in Delaware that was the receiving point for the bodies of American troops killed overseas.

David watched the solemn ritual from thirty feet away, standing at the end of a long line of officials from the Defense Department and the FBI. It was a hot, humid afternoon in late July, the temperature near ninety degrees. The stolid faces of the Rangers glistened with sweat as they carried the coffin toward a panel truck parked near the C-17. They halted at the truck’s rear door, which was open, and remained motionless for several seconds. As if on cue, all the officials on the tarmac raised their arms in a slow salute, and the soldiers slid the coffin into the truck. Then the carry team did a crisp about-face and returned to the C-17’s cargo hold. There were seven more bodies in the plane.

David raised his right hand to his heart. Monique, who stood beside him, did the same. They’d driven down from New York City that morning, invited to the ceremony by the FBI director, who stood at the other end of the line of officials. Aryeh Goldberg was there, too, having flown in from Israel especially for the ceremony. It was a bittersweet reunion. The airfield was silent as the soldiers unloaded the plane, slowly carrying the coffins to the panel truck.

David glanced at Monique to see how she was doing. She gave him a quick, reassuring nod. For the past five weeks they’d done nothing but try to recover. Luckily, neither of them had any summer classes to teach or major research projects to pursue. They could spend all their time with their children and each other. Every hour on this earth is a gift, David thought. But the odd thing about the gift of life is that you can’t truly appreciate it until you come close to dying.

After the battle outside the Ashkhaneh facility, he and Monique had sat under the stars for half an hour, calmly waiting for the stealth bomber to deliver its warhead. As the minutes passed, though, it became clear that the bomber had been diverted and they weren’t going to be incinerated after all. So they regrouped with the Israeli commandos—three of them had survived the Ashkhaneh battle—and made radio contact with General Yaron of the Israeli signals-intelligence corps. Yaron ordered them to hike several miles south to a remote highway where they could rendezvous with one of his Iranian spies. Over the next forty-eight hours Yaron’s spy managed to smuggle them from the Kopet Dag to the Alborz Mountains, then across the border to Azerbaijan, and finally to Israel. Meanwhile, Michael and Shomron were picked up by the American search-and-rescue team that had been dispatched to southern Turkmenistan. Thanks to Aryeh’s message to the president, relayed via the stealth bomber, the White House had shelved its plans for attacking Iran and begun dismantling Adam Cyrus Bennett’s secret network.

By the time David and Monique got back to the United States, the newspapers were filled with stories about the nuclear catastrophe at Camp Cobra. The FBI had already rounded up the remaining True Believers, although some of them, including General Estey of Special Operations Command, committed suicide before they could be arrested. Then the president gave a prime-time speech explaining how a top Defense Department official had betrayed the nation. He revealed that Bennett had led a group of fanatics who’d collaborated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, using funds from the Pentagon’s classified budget to collect enriched uranium and build nuclear devices. But he didn’t mention Excalibur. He said Bennett had destroyed Camp Cobra to instigate a nuclear war between America and Iran, but he didn’t say anything about X-ray lasers or the universal program or the threat of a quantum crash. The White House had decided not to reveal this vulnerability in the grand design of Creation. If it were well known, another madman might try to exploit it.