But he growled, “You’re supposed to be the intelligence officer.”
General Scheib’s minicomputer chimed with the ding-dong melody of Big Ben. It sounded like a Munchkin version of the London clock’s sonorous tones.
Scheib hurried from the newly refilled coffee cart to his chair at the conference table. One of his aides from his office in the Pentagon was on the notebook’s miniature screen, a frown of concern etching lines between his brows.
“What’s up, Lieutenant?” Scheib asked, his own face tightening worriedly.
“Can we go to scramble, sir?” Scheib nodded. “Do it.”
The computer screen broke into a hash of colored streaks until Scheib tapped the password code on his keyboard.
The lieutenant’s worried face took form again. “Message incoming from Misawa, sir. Marked urgent.”
Misawa Air Force Base, Scheib knew. In northern Japan.
“Let’s see it.”
The lean, angular face of a captain replaced Scheib’s aide. The man looked more puzzled than concerned.
“We have a KC-135 asking for landing clearance here. They say they’re on a refueling mission but have developed engine trouble. Somebody needs to tell the plane they’re supposed to be refueling that the rendezvous is going to be late, but we have no information on what plane that might be or where it is.”
Scheib sank back in his chair. The timeline hack on the bottom of the screen showed that the message had been sent nearly two hours earlier.
He closed his eyes and suppressed the urge to rip out his aide’s intestines. Two hours to replay an urgent message to me! Scheib raged inwardly. Then he remembered that the commercial commsats were out and the military satellites were overloaded with traffic. The ABL-1 mission was classified Top Secret, Need to Know. Neither the tanker crew nor the base at Misawa knew what the hell was going on.
He sensed someone standing behind his chair. Turning slightly, he saw that it was Zuri Coggins.
“Is that going to ruin the mission?” she asked.
“Could be,” said Scheib. “What can I do to help?”
“Get me real-time comm links with that tanker, with the base commander at Misawa, and with ABL-1. We’re tripping over ourselves with the damned security regs.”
She nodded. “I’ll call my office.”
General Higgins came up, looking bleary-eyed and tired of the situation.
“There goes your laser, Brad,” said Higgins. “Looks like we’ll have to depend on the Aegis ships and the missile batteries in Alaska.”
“I’m not giving up on ABL-1, sir,” Scheib said tightly.
Down at the end of the table Michael Jamil watched the tense little minidrama going on around General Scheib.
Let them play their games, Jamil said to himself. What’s important is to find out who’s behind this crisis. Why have they knocked out the satellites? What do they want?
Again and again Jamil had played out every possible scenario he could think of in his mind. He didn’t need computers; he knew the players and their tactics. But none of this made sense. Why knock out the satellites? Why keep those two additional missiles on their pads when they know that regular troops are rushing from Pyongyang to their launching site? It’s been more than ten hours since they set off the bomb in orbit; why are they waiting to launch those other two missiles?
Every scenario he ran through his mind ended in the same way: they’re going to try to kill the President. They’re going to hit San Francisco with half a megaton of hydrogen bombs, but they have to wait until the President’s there. There can’t be any other explanation for what they’re doing. Knock out the satellites to slow our communications links to a crawl, then wait for the President to show up in San Francisco and blow the city off the map. Maybe the explosions will be enough to trigger an earthquake into the bargain.
Jamil looked up at the two generals and the others clustered around Scheib’s chair. They look grim, he realized. Something must have gone wrong.
The woman from the National Security office looked up and met his gaze. She detached herself from the crowd around Scheib and walked down the length of the table toward him.
Jamil got to his feet, and before she could say a word he urged, “You’ve got to get a warning out to San Francisco. You can’t let them fire those missiles without warning the Homeland Security people.”
Coggins stared at him for a long, silent moment. Then she drew in a breath before replying, “Are you really that sure that San Francisco is the target?”
“Yes!”
She looked away, murmuring, “The city would go apeshit if we told them they’re going to be bombed. Mass panic. God knows how many people would be killed in the rush to get away.”
“They’ll all be killed if we don’t warn them,” Jamil said. Then he added, “And the President, too.”
Coggins shook her head. “I don’t know… I just don’t know.”
“Tell your boss, at least,” Jamil said. “Let him make the decision. He’s the National Security Advisor, isn’t he? Let him earn his keep.”
She smiled thinly. “When in doubt, buck it upstairs.”
The flight operations director put down his phone and made a weak smile for Sylvia, who still stood unmoving before his desk.
“Okay,” he said shakily, “I’ve got a plane to take you to SFO.”
“San Francisco?” Sylvia asked. Nodding, the operations director got up from behind his desk. “It’s a private plane. A friend of mine is flying up there on business and he’s agreed to take you and your daughters.”
“That’s wonderful!”
Mopping his brow with a damp handkerchief, the operations director said, “I had to call in a lot of favors for this. I hope you tell Congresswoman McClintock about it.”
“I certainly will,” said Sylvia.
The operations director glanced at his wristwatch as he said, “You go over to the general aviation terminal. There’s a bus outside that’ll take you there. Be quick now. He said he’ll wait for you, but he wants to take off no later than 4:00 p.m.”
Sylvia grabbed the handle of her roll-on. “We’ll be there. Tell him we’re on our way! And thanks!”
The three women hurried out of the office so fast the operations director didn’t have time to pull one of his cards from his wallet and give it to Sylvia so that she could show it to Congresswoman McClintock.
The President looked up from the text of the speech he would give at the Cow Palace as his chief of staff came into the private compartment and sat in the big comfortable chair facing him.
Leaning toward the President, Norman Foster said, “The pilot says we’re on the approach to San Francisco.”
The President glanced at his wristwatch. “Right on schedule. Good.”
