“Nobody,” Busick responded. “Hell, I couldn’t even get the old lady out of bed.”
“I’ll talk to you after I’m airborne, Les.”
“Okay, Thomas. I’ll see you back at the ranch after they’re done screwing with us.” The heaviness in his voice said much more than his words — they both knew that something serious was happening, and they most likely wouldn’t be going back to Washington for quite some time.
“Everything will be okay, Les,” the president said. “I’ll call as soon as I hear anything.”
“You take care, Thomas,” Busick said. Thorn was about to hang up when he heard, “Thomas?”
“Go ahead, Les.”
“You need to be tough now, Thomas,” Busick said. “I got a feelin’ the shit’s hittin’ the fan. I want you to be strong, Thom — I mean, Mr. President.”
“Since when do you call me ‘Mr. President’ when we’re—?”
“Damn it, Mr. President, please listen,” Busick said earnestly. “We may not be able to talk for a while, so just listen. I’ve seen this before, sir—”
“Seen what?”
“Seen this shit that’s happenin’ right now,” Busick said. “The last time was in ’91, when we thought the Iraqis were launching biochem weapons at Israel and we were getting ready to drop a nuke on Baghdad. I was the Senate majority whip. We were hustled out of Washington faster than shit from a goose. And it wasn’t just to the Mountain — we were dispersed to preserve the government, sir.”
“What are you talking about, ‘preserve the government’?” Thorn asked. “This is a precaution, a contingency. With all that’s happening in Turkmenistan and the Middle East, the heightened tensions, the saber rattling, it’s understandable—”
“Mr. President, with all due respect, sir, you have no friggin’ idea what’s about to happen,” Busick said seriously. “As soon as you step aboard Air Force One, you will become the executive branch of the United States government — not just the White House but every department and every executive agency that exists. You may be alone and isolated for days, maybe weeks. You may not be in contact with your cabinet or advisers.
“What I’m tryin’ to tell you is that I think this is it, Mr. President,” Busick went on. “The warning came right from NORAD. They were talkin’ about missile tracks and flight times. They—”
“What are you saying, Les?”
“I’m tellin’ you, Mr. President, I think we just caught the bolt from the blue,” Busick said. “And I’m telling you that you need to be strong and you need to be tough. Because there will be a lot of hurt people in this country very, very soon, and they’ll be looking to you for leadership. You’ve got to give it to them. And sometimes being the leader means doin’ the most horrific thing you can damned well think of.”
“Les…” Thorn tried to tell him again that everything was going to be okay, that this was just some sort of mistake or false alarm, but he didn’t know what it was, and he would sound silly trying to reassure the veteran politician of something he himself knew absolutely nothing about. Finally he said, “Les, my family…?”
“Helicopters picked them up from Rutland minutes ago. They should be launching from Burlington International about the time you go airborne.” The first lady was a former state supreme court justice from Vermont, and she visited her family near the Vermont state capital whenever the president went out on his infrequent political travels.
The phone buzzed, interrupting their conversation — a higher-priority call than the vice president had to be pretty damned important. “I’ll talk to you soon, Les.”
“Yes, sir,” Busick replied. Then he added, “Be tough, Thomas. You’re the fucking president, sir. Shove it down their throats.” Thorn was going to ask him to elaborate, but by then Busick had hung up.
Thorn hit the TALK button. “This is Seance.”
“Mr. President, this is General Venti. I’m en route to the NMCC, but I’ve received the latest from NORAD. I request permission to change your escape routing.”
“Whiteman…?”
“Sir, Whiteman is not secure.” Whiteman Air Force Base, an hour’s drive east of Kansas City in Knob Noster, and the home of the B-2A Spirit stealth bomber, was where Air Force One was based while the president was in Kansas City.
“Tell it to me straight, General.”
There was a slight pause before Venti said, “Yes, sir. NORAD has issued an air-defense emergency. The Missile Warning Center is tracking a number of high-speed, high-altitude cruise missiles, launched by Russian Bear bombers. We count twenty-seven tracks so far. We believe that each missile carries two nuclear warheads, yields unknown. One track is definitely headed for Whiteman Air Force Base. Time to impact, approximately thirty-five minutes.”
“Oh, my God…”
“Other confirmed tracks are headed for Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska; Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota; Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota; Twentieth Air Force headquarters at F. E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming; and several missile-launch control facilities in Wyoming, Montana, and Colorado. It appears that the Russians are attempting to take out all of our land-based strategic nuclear-strike weapon systems — our ICBMs and bombers — in one massive preemptive strike.”
“I…I can’t believe it,” Thorn muttered. “This can’t be happening….”
“It’s confirmed, sir,” Venti said, his voice a bit shaky and strained. “The first missile will hit Minot Air Force Base in less than thirty-four minutes. Minot has thirty-two B-52 bombers, twenty-eight KC-135 aerial-refueling tankers, and other support aircraft; plus, they serve as Ninety-first Space Wing headquarters, controlling one hundred and fifty Minuteman III missiles.”
“Can…can any of those bombers escape?”
There was another slight pause. “We’re trying to get as many aircraft as we can off the ground, sir, any way we possibly can — maintenance troops, students, transient alert crews, anybody who can start the engines and take the controls and have any chance at all of landing it afterward. We have no strategic strike aircraft on ready alert. I’m afraid that the only survivors might be aircraft that are ready to launch on training or operational-support missions, are deployed, or already airborne.”
“My God…”
“Mr. President, our first consideration is to be sure you can escape,” Venti said. “Whiteman is definitely out. The other Air Force base within range of Marine One is McConnell, near Wichita, but it was once an Air National Guard B-1 bomber base and might be a target as well.” He was silent for a moment. “The staff recommends you be evacuated to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. It’s the most secure location nearby. Once Angel escapes, we can arrange a rendezvous.”
“Sounds fine to me,” the president said. “Angel” was the unclassified code word for the Air Force VC-25 transport planes, known as “Air Force One” when the president was aboard. Both planes in the fleet were always deployed with the president on his travels, and at least one was always kept ready to fly at a moment’s notice.
“Is Foghorn with you, sir?”
Thorn looked at the Navy officer with the “football.” “Yes.”
“Sir, I recommend you change the national defense configuration to DEFCON One,” Venti said. “All surviving military forces will begin preparations for war, should you order it in the future. You don’t need to give me an authorization code — your verbal order is enough until we can formalize it in writing.”
“Very well. Issue the order,” Thorn responded immediately.
Venti barked out an order over his shoulder, then returned to the phone: “I also recommend you increase the strategic force posture to red, sir,” he said.
Thorn hesitated. The Defense Configuration, or DEFCON, ordered all military units to various readiness states, with DEFCON One being maximum readiness for war. The “posture” told the units with weapons exactly what state or operational status their weapons and delivery systems should be in. The exact state varied by unit and weapon system but was broken down into three stages: red, yellow, and green, with green meaning that weapons in secure storage and coded documents and launch or enabling devices locked away; to red, which meant that weapons were loaded and the crews had all the documents and devices they needed to prearm and launch live nuclear weapons. The crews still needed the execution order from the president to release live nuclear weapons, but under a Posture Red, the crews were just a few switches away from unleashing hell on the enemy.
