The War Cloud (14 page)

Sachs said, “Still think I made up the attack on my chopper?”

Koz shook his head and studied the bomb. “This is bad,” he said. “The phone still has its battery. That means it’s not a timer. It’s a remote detonator. Probably synced to the VLF receiver. That’s what our submarines use to receive launch orders.”

Sachs said, “Meaning?”

Koz said, “Meaning Marshall can basically blow us up from any point on the planet as soon as we try anything. Hell, he might have been listening to all our internal communications all along too.”

Sachs paused. “Just how easy is it for Marshall to launch our missiles?”

“Once the eight-digit enabling code is dialed into the launch system, the procedure is simple. It’s not like a sub where you need several other officers involved in the launch. The Looking Glass plane is essentially a remote-control unit.”

Sachs said, “But don’t you still need two officers turning their keys at once to launch?”

“Trust me,” Koz said grimly. “Marshall’s already taken care of that.”

“Then we have to somehow override the Looking Glass controls so he can’t launch,” she said.

“Same problem,” Koz said. “Assuming we can pull it off, as soon as he figures it out he’ll vaporize us.”

Sachs looked him straight in the eye. “I have an idea.”

S
achs entered the cockpit, a finger to her lips and whiteboard in front of her. The two pi
lots and navigator looked up in surprise, then gaped as they read the words she had written:

Turn off your headsets.

Don’t say a word.

Enemy listening.

The men exchanged glances, then slowly removed their headsets and turned them off.

Sachs said, “There’s a bomb on board and we need to get off this plane. Preferably after we’ve landed safely on the ground.”

The navigator scrambled to check his charts. “We’re over the North Dakota badlands, ma’am. No airstrips or predesignated alternative bases in the vicinity, and Minot and Grand Forks are too far away.”

“Improvise,” Sachs said. “Find a stretch of highway if you have to. But make sure it’s near a truck stop or some place with food and facilities. If we land in one piece, we’ll need to set up a new command post.”

As she left the cockpit, already she could feel the plane making a sharp descent. She rejoined Koz in the battle staff compartment, where he was poring over an operations manual while battle staffers worked furiously at their consoles.

ed over Koz. “How are you doing?”

“It’s tricky, but I should be able to override the Looking Glass launch procedures without Marshall catching on.” Koz looked up at her. “I just don’t understand why he’d do this. I do but I don’t.”

Sachs said, “Decapitation. By blowing up D.C., Marshall ensures we go to war with China — while we can still win it on our terms.”

“Until you came along,” said Koz, as he started reprogramming the overhead launch console.

Sachs said, “Well, clearly he made contingency plans. You said all Marshall has to do is dial in the eight-digit enabling code.”

“Yep. Once you have the code, it’s simple.”

Sachs asked, “How simple?”

M
arshall waited until they had descended to 18,000 feet before he removed the key he wore around his
neck and inserted it into one of two locks in the red safe next to his desk console in the battle staff compartment. He then removed the second key he had taken from Quinn and opened the second lock.

As soon as he opened the safe, the alarm went off, a clattering sound like a woodpecker. But there was no intelligence officer to stop him now. Nobody.

The launch procedure was so simple, really.

Let Deborah Sachs keep American bombers and subs at bay, he thought. He was going to launch those missiles at China. At least he could be sure
they
would launch under attack. Then the war would be underway. A war the United States would win.

Yes, American civilization would be renewed for another century.

Marshall waited a full minute before the clattering stopped. He then removed two more keys from inside the safe and tossed one to Banks.

“The keys to the kingdom, Major Tom.”

Marshall cracked open the code card with the eight-digit enabling code. He repeated it out loud:

“Tango, Seven, Bravo, Four…”

Banks keyed it into the overhead launch console. “Tango, Seven, Bravo, Four,” she repeated.

The corresponding beeps locked in the code.

Marshall read the final four digits. “…Alpha, One, Delta, Nine.”

“Alpha, One, Delta, Nine,” echoed Banks, and locked in the code.

Marshall then inserted his key into the overhead console. “On my count.”

Banks inserted the second key and nodded.

“Three…”

“Two…”

“One…”

“Turn.”

Simultaneously they turned their keys.

I
t was a white-knuckle landing onto Interstate 29. Sachs felt Air Force One touch ground only to sudd
enly lift again and then set down. The pilots immediately threw the thrusters into reverse to try and stop it. But the plane wasn’t slowing down and she couldn’t see outside from the seat with the five-point harness that Captain Li had strapped her into.

“What’s going on?” she asked, her voice shaking as her seat vibrated like an electric chair.

Captain Li put a finger to her earpiece. “There’s a new overpass across the highway that wasn’t on the maps. We had to jump it and now we’re coming up too fast on another one.”

This might be a real short landing, Sachs thought, but she knew that Marshall might launch missiles at any moment. She unbuckled her harness and stood up, her head immediately hitting an overhead bin she hadn’t noticed before. Captain Li was on her feet and right there behind her.

“What are you doing, Madame President?”

Sachs rubbed her head. “Koz can’t wait for us to stop to override Marshall’s launch authority. He’s got to do it now.”

Li didn’t try to stop her, but instead helped her move through the corridor to the battle staff compartment, where Koz and AF1 battle staffers were locked at their stations.

“Koz! We have to stop Marshall now!”

Koz was reading off his operations manual, punching in new authorization codes into the overhead consoles as the plane began to finally slow enough to make Sachs believe they were going to stop safely. “I think I’ve got it!” Koz shouted above the roar of the engines. “Get off this plane, everybody! You too, Madame President.”

She said, “I’m not leaving this plane without you, Koz.”

“Yes, you are,” he said and motioned to Captain Li and two officers, who grabbed her by the arms and began to drag her away.

J
ennifer backed away from the window as she watched the two Green Berets walk toward the caddy
shack. She ran back to the tiny kitchen that in the summer kept the caddies fed between golf rounds. She opened the pantry next to the refrigerator, which was unplugged. She pulled out the empty, removable stacks and shelves and hid them behind the fridge. Finally, she opened the back door a crack, to make it look like she had escaped. Then she hid herself in the bottom half of the pantry, ignoring the rat droppings. With a shiver she closed the door and held her breath in the dark.

She heard the front door rattle. A second later it was kicked open with a loud crash. She gasped and then clapped her hand over her mouth.

She could hear the soldiers check the sliders of the guns with a couple of loud clicks for effect, to signal they were coming after her, hoping she’d make a sound. She sat stone still.

One of the soldiers whispered, “Look.”

They were at the back door.

Jennifer felt a draft as the back door was fully opened.

“Maybe,” said a second voice. “Check it out.”

Jennifer heard the front door open again, hoping against hope they were leaving, when she heard the floor creak inside the kitchen.

Oh, God, no.

Someone was standing directly on the opposite side of the pantry door. The door began to crack open. She was about to scream when the soldier’s radio popped and the door closed.

She heard his gravelly voice say, “Copy that. We’re out of here.”

She listened to his footsteps walking out of the kitchen. Then she heard the front door open and close shut.

A minute later the heavy thuds of the Suburban’s doors closed. The engine roared to life and then faded in the distance as it drove off.

M
ajor Banks looked at him blankly inside the battle staff compartment.

“Turn!” Marshall repeated.

Banks turned her key again. Still nothing. “She’s changed the enabling codes!”

Marshall stared at the two launch keys, both turned in their respective launch locks. “Goddamn that Koz!” he said, his nostrils flaring as he exhaled. “I think it’s time we remove the final layer of federal bureaucracy.”

Banks nodded and moved to the consoles. She booted up yet another sabotage program. “Crash and Burn, sir?”

Marshall nodded. “Bye, bye, Miss American Pie.”

Banks pushed the delete button on her terminal.

I
t was as bleak as the late afternoon could get in Drayton, North Dakota, population 913.

Especially after two separate nuclear attacks on America. But Ethel’s Truck Stop Café was open for business, as always. The radio by the stove was playing “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” from the old rock group Tears for Fears. Which pretty much summed up the mood at the counter as Ethel with the blue hair poured another cup of coffee to rumpled Joe the truck driver when his cup and saucer started rattling.

Ethel stopped pouring and cocked her ear as she heard an ear-piercing noise outside. She had heard every kind of conceivable aircraft and missile in her lifetime around these parts, and knew it was a 747-200 military converted jumbo jet even before she ran outside and saw it coming straight for the diner.

“Jeez, Louise!” she screamed. “Everybody take cover!”

She ran back inside and ducked behind the counter, staring at Rusty the waitress and poor old Joe who wet his pants. The ground started shaking and plates were falling and crashing on the fverywhere. It sounded like a locomotive was passing straight through the diner.

And then, as suddenly as the roar began, it stopped until there was only the sound of a rolling dish or two breaking.

Ethel cautiously poked her head above the counter and looked out the glass doors as the plane skirted onto the I-29 in three bumps and rolled to a stop about 400 yards from the café.

A moment later it exploded into a giant ball of fire and Ethel ducked for cover again as the force smashed the windows, and shards of glass raked the walls like bullets.

N
ow that Strategic Command was gone, General Block at Northern Command was suddenly having trouble commu
nicating with America’s three main Minuteman III forces: the 90
^th
Missile Wing at F.E. Warren AFB in Wyoming, the 341
^st
Missile Wing at Malmstrom AFB in Montana, and the 91
^st
Missile Wing at Minot AFB in North Dakota. Together they controlled 450 ICBMs, and Block had to ensure transfer of launch authority from Carver at Strategic Command to Marshall aboard Looking Glass.

He worried this was a War Cloud effect. A similar, inexplicable loss of communication between the control center at Warren AFB and 50 of its missiles had occurred months ago. Block had issued a statement at the time saying that the power failure was not malicious and that the Air Force never lost the ability to launch the missiles.

Which wasn’t true.

“I hope you’ve got Marshall on for me,” he said when his grim senior controller walked up.

“General, sir, we’ve lost Air Force One.”

“Damn,” Block said. “We’ve run out of presidents.”

However much he disagreed with Sachs, he admired her pluck.

“Well, there’s no choice now. Tell Marshall he can authorize our B-2s to deliver the Maverick strike on the Chinese high command. Maybe the destruction of their host supercomputers will cut off the War Cloud and release our missiles.”

J
ennifer, her hand on the back of the pantry door, didn’t move. She was afraid to come out. What i
f the Green Berets hadn’t really left? What if one of them stayed behind? What if it was a trick? What if as soon as she opened the pantry door some guy with a gun put a bullet into her? She breathed slowly, listening for the slightest sound outside.

A minute passed.

Then five minutes, it seemed.

Finally, she could take it no more.

She burst out of the pantry and threw herself onto the kitchen floor, hands over her head, and screamed, “Don’t shoot me!”

She heard herself crying and lifted her head, realizing there was nobody else in the caddyshack.

Sl she got up and walked to the front window and looked outside. She could see the twin tracks of the Suburban leaving the club.

She ran to the back window and looked out too. Nobody there either.

She heard a creak overhead.

She looked up at the ceiling and had the terrible thought that maybe one of them was on the roof. Maybe they were waiting for her to pop her head out the front door and they would nail her then.

She looked around and saw a filthy broom in the corner of the main room. She picked it up and with a cringe of anxiety burst out the front door and thrust the broom outside.