46
Now that Strategic Command was gone, General Block at Northern Command was suddenly having trouble communicating with America’s three main Minuteman III forces: the 90th Missile Wing at F.E. Warren AFB in Wyoming, the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom AFB in Montana, and the 91st 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.”
47
Jennifer, her hand on the back of the pantry door, didn’t move. She was afraid to come out. What if 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.
But nothing happened. No shots. Just a dirty broom in the snow.
She was puzzled. Why did they leave?
She saw her blanket and radio in the corner and turned on the radio. The nerve-shattering signal of the Emergency Alert System blared.
The EAS announcer said, “This is the Emergency Alert System. The following is a message from the National Command Authority.”
But it was a man who was speaking.
“This is General Brad Marshall,” said the voice, which she suddenly recognized and felt a chill down her spine. “Minutes ago an enemy missile destroyed the plane carrying former President Deborah Sachs.”
Jennifer’s knees buckled. She dropped to the floor.
“This further act of aggression will not go unanswered,” Marshall announced. “I have ordered the United States Armed Forces to respond with their full fury and might.”
Jennifer turned off the radio. She sat on the floor and let loose with tears and then wailed.
She didn’t care who heard her now.
48
Sachs and Captain Li were running toward the diner when the plane exploded with a thunderous KABOOM. She tried not to look back and be turned to ash, but she was worried about Koz, so she began to turn her head over her shoulder as she ran.
“No!” came a shout from behind.
Koz was flying toward her, tackling her like a shield as the force from the plane blew them off their feet and she felt herself hurl through the air over a snow bank. He intentionally landed on top of her, smothering her into the snow.
She couldn’t breathe and struggled for more than a minute until he got off.
Koz asked, “Still in one piece?”
She gasped for breath and brushed the snow off. “You trying to kill me?” she asked when a second thunderous explosion sent a chunk of the fuselage flying over their heads.
Once again Koz face-planted her into the snow.
“Stop it!” she ordered when he let her come up again for air.
“You can court-martial me lat told her as they stood up to survey the damage.
What was left of the Nightwatch plane — Air Force One — burned in smoldering ruins. Engine parts were strewn across the interstate. A broken wing stuck upright out of the frozen ground, glinting in the weak late afternoon sun.
Sachs said, “We need to contact Block at Northern Command and rescind Marshall’s launch authority.”
Koz pointed to his right, and Sachs saw it: Ethel’s Truck Stop Cafe. “But with Air Force One gone, Block is going to assume you’re dead. How are you going to prove your identity?”
“With this,” she said, and began to unzip her flightsuit.
She watched Koz raise an eyebrow and then smile when she flashed the presidential authenticator card he had given her.
49
