thought, than having a nine-hundred-pound piece of scrap metal in a bad orbit. Masters had no choice but to go along with the Air Force. Either that or face handcuffs at Falcon Air Force Base, where he was now sitting. “He was just about to let my senior staff in his plant office inspect his records, weren’t you, Doctor Masters?” “That’s got to wait, ” Elliott said. “He just lost a satellite and I’ve got to get him out to GENESIS right away. It’s all connected.. There was a slight pause; then, “Oh…” Few things in this world could knock guys like Talbot back on their heels, but GENESIS, Brad Elliott’s classified call sign from Dreamland, was one. Just mentioning the word meant that most of the Pentagon was involved. Which was, Talbot thought, typical of Elliott, who was known to be kicking ass with an array of high-tech toys developed out in his secret labs in Nevada. Rumors had been circulating for months about Elliott’s B-2 bombers and other strange planes flying around the desert. God only knows what he needed Masters for. But the fact that Elliott knew all about a classified satellite launch that had gone wrong only twenty minutes before, told Talbot that Elliott was plugged in right at the top. “Well, you got him, Brad. Now where do you want him?”
“I need him back in his lab in Arkansas soonest. When are you going to be done chewing on him?” “I’m done. I don’t have the time or energy for shit like this anymore, ” Talbot said in a low voice. “His jet is already fueled. He’ll be airborne in thirty minutes and in Arkansas in three hours. Does this have something to do with . . . events this afternoon?”
“It could have everything to do with it.”
“I was afraid of that. The little prick leads a charmed life. You need his satellite intact as well?”
“Have you deorbited it yet?”
“Just about ready to do it-window opens in about an hour.”
“Better leave it, then. The brass hasn’t made up their minds what they want.” Talbot knew the “brass” usually included only men who had collected more than fifty million popular votes. “Whatever you say, Brad. I’ll be glad to jettison that little cocksucker anyway. He’s a pain in the ass.”
“You have that effect on people, my friend.” “Yeah, right. The bastard never stops smiling, too. You notice that? Always with the damned grin on his puss. I don’t trust somebody who grins all the time-it usually means they found someone else to put the blame on.” “If he busted one of your rules, Mike, he’s gotta pay. When GENESIS is done with him, I’ll send him back to you. How’s that?”
“Naw. Keep him outta my sight. Just get the bastards who fried my NAVSTAR satellites and we’ll call it even.”
“Deal, buddy. GENESIS out.” THE WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM The President had been in the Roosevelt Room listening to a planning meeting for a world economic conference when they told him. Lloyd Emerson Taylor, forty-third President of the United States and a descendant of the twelfth President, had made a mental note of what he was doing at that moment. It would, after all, be important for the memoirs he was going to write after he left office. And this, Lloyd Emerson Taylor guessed, was going to be one hell of an important chapter in his book. After his military aide had handed him the Eyes Only message, Taylor had immediately excused himself from the planning meeting and retreated to the Oval Office. From there, over a secure hot line, he began to get a handle on the situation: he learned that Defense, JCS, and the CIA suspected the Chinese of setting off the nuke, but no one had been able to completely verify that. Worse, the President couldn’t get word on how President Mikaso was or what was going on in Manila because all phone lines were jammed and all satellite and HF networks had been disrupted. He also learned that even though the U.S. had been monitoring the situation between the Chinese and the Philippines since their naval skirmish of a few months ago, nobody wanted China or the Philippines to know that the United States had pictures of the explosion. Apparently the pictures were not taken by a regular satellite but by a new, highly classified one called PACER SKY, an experimental system that would allow real-time targeting data for strategic bombers. Whatever the hell PACER SKY was, Taylor knew it had just snapped what might be one of the most famous photographs in thirty years, thanks to a simple stroke of luck. Finally, a more formal, albeit hastily arranged, assessment meeting was scheduled a half-hour later in the Situation Room. As Taylor, his military aide, his official White House photographer, his Secret Service bodyguard, and a civilian-clothed Navy captain who carried his “football, ” the portable scrambled UHF transceiver that Taylor would use in an emergency to order his strategic nuclear forces to war, made their way down the elevator to the Situation Room in the basement of the White House, the enormity and gravity of the situation finally began to sink in. Like his famous great~greatgreat~greatgrandfather, the President was a bull-nosed, laissez-faire bureaucrat who’d done well as president because of his quiet, hardworking, rocksteady style. And like his ancestor, Taylor was an ex-Army general and judge advocate who had retired to enter politics at age fifty-one, soon after pinning on his first star. Taylor had, above everything else, a keen sense of history-and his place in it. He knew, even as he entered the Situation Room and everyone stood up, that he was the first American president to have to deal with a nuclear weapon crisis since John F. Kennedy. And he was determined to handle it better than Kennedy did. He had not been in the Situation Room five minutes when he had his men on the griddle-even as phones rang constantly in the background. His eyes wandered around the table to each and every adviser: Tom Preston, his Secretary of Defense and an experienced politician; General Wilbur Curtis, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Kenneth Wayne, Director of the CIA; and Frank Kellogg, his National Security Advisor. His eyes settled on General Wilbur Curtis, chief military officer of the United States and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was the President’s principal military adviser but a holdover from the last administration. Unfortunately, he was so well respected on the Hill and at the Pentagon that Taylor knew he couldn’t get rid of him even if he wanted to. “General Curtis, even though you got us in this DEFCON Three posture-and I wish I had been in on that decision from the start and not after your commanders went ahead and did it themselves-the ‘bolt from the blue’ theory of strategic warfare has been dead for almost a decade.” Curtis could see this was going to be a long, difficult meeting. “Sir, we were following the OPLAN-the operations planestablished and authorized by you in case of an emergency of this magnitude. DEFCON Three is a very secure posture right now. We’re-“
“If there was no apparent attack in progress, then you had time to notify me and let me make the decision, ” the President interrupted. “That’s what I expect. We will need to change the OPLAN after this to rectify it.”
“Yes, sir, ” Curtis acknowledged. “What else have you got for me, General?” Curtis cleared his throat. “Our strategic forces are in full readiness, so if this is some sort of prelude to an all-out attack against the United States, we’re ready, sir.” Curtis glanced at the Navy captain seated near the door, keeping the “football.” The President disliked having the football around-he had once told the press that he likened it to the Grim Reaper, with scythe in hand, following him everywhere he went-but in this he had no choice. “Well, ” Taylor grumbled, “I guess the question of whether this is a prelude or not will be answered once we have more information, won’t it, General? This PACER SKY thing saw who launched the missile, didn’t it?” “Not exactly, sir, ” Curtis replied. “The NIRTSatpart of the PACER SKY program-saw the nuclear explosion, but we’re trying to keep a lid on that. As you know, we’ve been monitoring the situation between the Chinese and the Philippines since that original skirmish. But because of our past association with the Philippines, we didn’t want it to appear as if we were monitoring anyone-or feeding anyone intelligence information. Still, we do know, thanks to PACER SKY, exactly which ships were in the area. SAC analysts have concluded that only the Chinese could have launched the weapon.”
“Well, then, that brings us to the bigger picture, doesn’t it?” the President said. “I’ve been briefed on the shit going down in the Philippines for some time. And you people tell me the Communists are running rampant in the outlying provinces and that if Mikaso kicks the damned bucket we could lose all ties to the Philippines-our stopover and resupply privileges, our radar sites, our listening posts, our practice bombing ranges. I was also briefed on the skirmish a few months ago between the Chinese and the Philippines, but it was characterized as nothing more than a little tiff. When a fucking nuclear bomb goes off, gentlemen, it’s not just a little tiff. Now what the hell is going on here? Is it the start of a major war, an illegal test by some country, or an accident?” Director of Central Intelligence Kenneth Wayne said, “An accident, sir, seems the only plausible explanation. The Chinese Navy could certainly overtake the Philippine Navy without having to resort to nuclear weapons. Also, we’ve detected only one explosion, which tells us there was no nuclear ex change. Of course, ” the CIA director said, lighting a pipe, “it also could have been a military response by the Chinese, but a response by . . . say, a lone wolf, and not necessarily the Chinese government itself.”
“Lone wolf?” the President asked, raising his eyebrows. “You mean some nutjob in command of a ship?” The CIA director shrugged his shoulders. “Entirely possible. Not a nutjob, per se, but simply a commander who panicked. But I’d put my money on it being a simple accident.”
“JCS doesn’t agree with the DCI’s estimation, sir, ” Curtis said. The look the President, as well as Wayne, gave him could have chilled a polar bear. “We don’t discount the DCI’s theory, but we have evidence of another
