Out of the Ashes

“What do you find amusing about all this?” Admiral Mullens asked.

The colonel’s smile broadened.

“Because,” Admiral Newcomb said quietly, “there aren’t going to be any elections—right, Colonel?”

The man’s smile faded. “That’s right, Admiral.”

“Why?”

He again glanced at his watch. “Because it’s 1207, that’s why.”

“What?” Driskill barked. “What the hell has the time to do with anything?”

“Brady put it all together much sooner than we expected. I should have received a phone call before 1145 hours. I didn’t. That means our computers have concluded that no one can beat Hilton Logan in the fall elections. It—they—have concluded that even if it’s close, too close, no clear majority, it’ll be thrown into the House. Logan will come out on top, and that liberal son of a bitch will find out we’ve built new nukes and order them destroyed.”

“Son,”—General Saunders leaned forward—“don’t do this. Don’t do it to your country. Logan is just a man. Not much of one,” he grimaced, “but still a man. He’s not going to dismantle the nation. We’ll weather it.”

“No, General. No, we won’t. This country’s had it.” His eyes were sad, his voice low when he spoke. “We’ve had eight years of conservatism, but everything Fayers has pushed through has been a battle. People aren’t interested in the long run; they’re only interested, concerned, with now. The gun-control legislation proved it; we’re moving back to the left, and we can’t allow that to happen. This way is the only way we can get back on top. China will give Russia every missile she’s had hidden for years, then pour half a billion troops across the border. They’ll destroy each other. The two-bit countries will blow each other off the map once we start the dance. Africa will go up like a tinderbox, the Mideast with it.” His eyes grew wild with fanaticism.

“And what of America, Colonel?” General Crowe asked.

“Oh, we’ll take casualties,” he admitted. “Somewhere in the seventy-five to ninety-million range; you all know the stats. But we’ll come out far better than any other major power. And when we’re back on top again, this time, by God, we’ll stay there.”

“You’re crazy!” Sergeant Major Parley blurted. “My God, man—think of all the innocent people you’re killing. You people are fucking nuts!”

Rogers came back into the room. “I used the mobile phone in the car, General, just in case the phone here has a long-range bug on it. The phone company in D.C. got a disconnect order on the number he gave us. Got it about two hours ago. What’s happening here?”

“Holocaust,” a buddy informed him.

Driskill looked at the colonel. “I believe the colonel is about to give us all the details, aren’t you, superpatriot?”

The Air Force man laughed in his face. “Sure, I’ll tell you. Why not? There isn’t a damned thing any of you can do about it.”

Only blow your fucking head off when you’re through flapping your gums, General Crowe thought, his hand tightening on the butt of the .38.

“There won’t be any elections,” the colonel said. “Not for a long time—a very long time. The military is going to be forced into taking over the country: suspending the Constitution and declaring martial law. That’s all we wanted, all along. All we were doing, once we learned Brady was onto us, was buying time. Getting set. We’re five days from launch.”

The men in the room, to a man, sucked in their guts. One hundred and twenty hours to hell.

“I should have gone to the president when my intelligence people first stumbled onto this… treason!” General Saunders said.

The Air Force colonel laughed. He lit a cigarette. His last one. “Well, General, I’ll salve your conscience a bit. It wouldn’t have made any difference. You couldn’t have stopped us. You didn’t really know what was going down until today. You couldn’t have gone to the Chinese to tell them the Russians were going to launch against them. No proof. Big international stink would be all you could have accomplished. Same if you’d gone to the Russians. It all boils down to this: an American sub will launch the missiles—American missiles. Both countries would have turned on you. And… I think most of you know what type of missiles we’re going to fire. Missiles so top secret not even the president knew of their existence. You clever boys got too clever, that’s all. We used your cleverness against you.”

“What type of missiles are you using?” a master chief asked.

“Supersnoop missiles,” Admiral Mullens answered the question. “Thunder-strikes. We started building them on the QT when we realized SALT 5 was becoming a reality. Yes, the Russians knew we were going to build them —before SALT was signed. That’s the main reason Russia agreed to SALT 5.”

“The president and/or Congress know of them?” he was asked.

“No,” he said tersely.

“The lid is being slowly nailed on our coffins,” a Navy officer said. He looked at the Air Force colonel. “What about him?”

General Crowe jacked back the hammer on the .38 and shot the colonel between the eyes, knocking him backward, out of the chair.

“Good shot, Turner,” General Driskill observed.

THREE

Saturday—five days to launch

General C.H. Travee, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sat quietly in his office. He sat for a long, speculative time, drumming his fingertips on the polished wood of the desk top.

Too many rumors being whispered in this city. Entirely too many to ignore. Whispered rumors of a power play. Among the military? Too incredible to believe. Still…

Travee had tried to reach his old friend, Vern Saunders, just that morning—couple of hours ago, after Vern failed to show for their regular Saturday morning golf game. Travee had tried to track down his friend, but had hit a stone wall in every direction he turned.

Odd.

Then he heard rumors that General Crowe was seen climbing into the cockpit of a fighter and taking off for parts unknown. Odd. Crowe was entirely too old to go roaring off into the wild blue yonder like a young buck, cutting didos in the sky.

And General Driskill always worked in his office for a couple of hours on Saturday mornings. But not this Saturday morning.

Travee punched a button on his desk.

“Yes, sir?”

“Get me Major Bass from ASA. Tell him I want him in my office in thirty minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Army Security Agency major was standing in front of the general’s desk in exactly twenty-nine minutes. There were questions in his calm eyes.

“What’s going on, Major?”

“Sir?”

“Come on, Major—you’re in the know. You’ve heard the whispers all over the town. Now you tell me.”

“I… don’t know, sir. We can’t even pinpoint who gave those low-alert orders.”

“But yet it came from the Joint Chiefs?”

“Yes, sir. Sir? We think it was an aide. But the one we have in mind has… disappeared.”

“I won’t ask you who you suspect. Just this: why would he do such a damned fool thing?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

Travee nodded, then said, “I want you to do me a personal favor, Major. Find out where Gen. Vern Saunders was this morning. Pronto. And report your findings only to me.”