building.'
General Bauer signaled two soldiers, who came and stood at my shoulders. I looked at Bauer and let him see my mistrust.
'Do you intend to go ahead with your EMP strike, General?'
He wore the mask of a veteran poker player, but it didn't fool me for a moment. I knew I had less than thirty minutes to accomplish my goal.
McCaskell walked over to me. 'Dr. Tennant, we're relying on you not to reveal the potential strike to the computer.'
'Of course.'
He offered his hand. 'Good luck.'
The moment I started for the door, alarms began sounding in the hangar.
'Code blue!' shouted a nurse. 'Mr. Godin's coding!'
I hadn't handled a code in years, but my response was automatic. Even Rachel jumped from her chair and raced to Godin's bedside.
Dr. Case and the nurses were already working on the old man. The cardiac monitor showed another coronary event, but Ravi Nara seemed to think obstructive hydrocephalus had finally occurred. When Godin's heart mon¬itor flatlined, Dr. Case climbed onto the bed and began administering CPR. It did no good. The old man's face had the gray pallor of death.
'Look at that!' someone shouted from the table.
I whirled and looked where he was pointing.
On the screen used to display Trinity's messages, chaotic streams of characters flashed by almost too rapidly to be recognized. Numbers, letters, and mathe¬matical symbols merged in a blinding river of confusion. The computer's circuits were clearly in disarray.
'What's happening?' asked McCaskell. 'What does that mean?'
The symbols on the screen went multicolored as Japanese and Cyrillic characters began to appear.
'General!' cried a soldier at one of the consoles. 'The signals from the pipeline running from Containment just dropped to zero. I think the com¬puter's crashing!'
A whoop of triumph came from somewhere in the hangar. Then a new alarm sounded in the room, much louder than the others.
'What's that?' asked Senator Jackson. 'What's going on? Is Godin dead?'
General Bauer walked to one of his computers, then turned to the senators with a nearly bloodless face.
'Sir, one of our surveillance satellites has detected four¬teen heat blooms on Russian territory. The blooms are consistent with the launch of ballistic missiles.' He looked back at the computer screen. 'From the speed and heat sig¬nature of the rockets, NORAD computers have designated them as a combination of SS-18 and SS-20 intercontinental ballistic missiles. Those missiles carry heavy thermonu¬clear warheads.'
Senator Jackson opened his mouth, but no words emerged. The brown eyes blinked in the bulldog face. 'But you said that was impossible.'
General Bauer didn't flinch. 'It appears that I was wrong.'
CHAPTER 41
'Senators, we're approximately twenty-nine minutes from the first impacts,' said General Bauer. 'I ask for your approval to initiate the EMP strike as soon as the bomber is in position.'
Senator Jackson looked uncertain. 'What if that causes more launches?'
I glanced at the screen showing Trinity's output. The chaotic flow of numbers and characters showed no sign of abating.
'Highly unlikely, sir,' said Bauer. 'The computer appears to be crashing. Fourteen missile impacts are survivable. And with the poor state of Russian mainte¬nance, we might only suffer half that number of detona¬tions. Even fewer on target. If we take out Trinity now, we'll survive this in relatively good shape.'
'If the computer is crashing,' said Jackson, 'perhaps we should try to contact the president. He should make the final decision on this strike.'
'NORAD shows seven more heat blooms!' cried a technician. 'Bases are Aleysk, Pervomaysk, Kostroma, Derazhnya.'
'Does that mean more missiles?' Jackson asked.
General Bauer waited for the panicked chatter of the other senators to subside. 'We're now under threat of twenty-one missiles, Senators. Russia has over three thou¬sand viable ICBMs. If we don't act now, we could be look¬ing at numbers like that. The president empowered us to make these decisions. It's time to act.'
Senator Jackson turned away from the camera and took a hurried vote by acclamation. 'The EMP strike is authorized, General.'
General Bauer nodded to his chief technician, who began transmitting coded orders to the B-52 code-named Arcangel.
'Where are these Russian missiles likely to land?' Senator Jackson asked.
'NORAD will compute that, but Washington is almost a guaranteed target. They'll be coming on a polar flight path. You'll need to move to the bomb shelter beneath NSA headquarters very soon.'
'We're already there.'
'Good.'
'But our families…' Senator Jackson's face seemed to deflate, but then steel came into his eyes. 'Should we send a car to the White House? Should the president consider a nuclear response against the Russians?'
'This isn't a Russian strike,' said Ewan McCaskell. 'It's a launch by Trinity. It's the dead-hand system that General Bauer told us didn't exist.'
'We don't know that,' General Bauer insisted. 'The Rus¬sians may be trying to destroy Trinity themselves. Trinity's incursions into their defense computers may have frightened them into thinking Trinity is planning its own preemptive strike against Russia. Remember, they perceive Trinity as an American computer. An American weapon.'
McCaskell was shaking his head. 'The Russians know our missiles aren't under computer control. And the president explained the situation to the Russian lead¬ership before he went under surveillance. As did Trinity itself, with its message to world leaders.'
'That was two hours ago,' General Bauer reminded him. 'Fear has its own reasons.'
'Or none. We can't afford to act out of fear now.' 'Or not to,' Bauer retorted.
'General!' yelled a technician at one of the consoles. 'NORAD shows one of the Russian missiles going down over the ice cap. Looks like a malfunction.' 'Let's hope for more of those,' said Jackson. 'The satellite has detected multiple high-energy flashes,' the tech continued. 'That was a MIRV war¬head, probably from a prematurely detonated SS-18. Spectrum analysis is not yet completed, but yield esti¬mates show ten warheads at five hundred and fifty kilotons each.'
'In twenty-five minutes we'll have that happening over Manhattan,' said General Bauer.
On the NORAD screen, a group of red arcs extended from Russian soil to the edge of the polar ice cap. The arcs continued slowly and steadily toward North America.
'Why did this happen?' asked Senator Jackson. 'Because the computer is crashing? That's what caused the Russian launch?'
'No way to know,' said General Bauer. John Skow stood and spoke in a loud voice. 'I think we should cut power to Trinity while it's in a chaotic state. We've seen its retaliatory response. Let's not give it a chance to do more damage.'
'General Bauer?' said Senator Jackson.
'I'm tempted, Senator, but I've been proved wrong once already. Trinity told us that it exported its retalia¬tory ability to other computers. So neutralizing the com¬puter here doesn't solve our problems. If we cut power, we could be dealing with another twenty-nine hundred inbound missiles. I don't want to contemplate that.'
'Point taken.'
