“Yes, sir, we can use the Fairchild-Republic airfield, where they used to build the A-10s.”
“Okay, do that. it'll take me an hour to get to Andrews, and I cannot afford to waste an hour. It's my job to settle this thing down, and I need that hour.”
“That, sir, is a mistake,” Fremont said in the coldest voice he had. It would take two hours to get the aircraft to central Maryland.
“That may be, but it's what I'm going to do. This is not a time for me to run away.”
Behind the President, Pete Connor and Helen D'Agustino traded a baleful look. They had no illusions on what would happen if there were a nuclear attack on the United States. Mobility was the President's best defense, and he had just thrown that away.
The radio message from Camp David went out at once. The Presidential helicopter was just crossing the Washington Beltway when it turned and went back southeast. It landed on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory. Vice President Roger Durling and his entire family jumped aboard. They didn't even bother strapping in. Secret Service agents, with their Uzi sub-machineguns out, knelt inside the aircraft. All Durling knew was what the Secret Service detail had told him. Durling told himself that he had to relax, that he had to keep his head. He looked at his youngest child, a boy only four years old. To be that age again, he'd thought only the day before, to be that age again and be able to grow up in a world where the chance of a major war no longer existed. All the horrors of his youth, the Cuban Missile Crisis that had marked his freshman year in college, his service as a platoon leader in the 82nd Airborne, a year of which had been in Vietnam. War experience made Durling a most unusual liberal politician. He hadn't run from it. He'd taken his chances and remembered having two men die in his arms. Just yesterday, he'd looked at his son and thanked God that he wouldn't have to know any of that.
And now, this. His son still didn't know anything more than that they were getting a surprise helicopter ride, and he loved to fly. His wife knew more, and there were tears streaming from her eyes as she stared back at him.
The Marine VH-3 touched down within fifty yards of the aircraft. The first Secret Service agent leaped off and saw a platoon of Air Force security police marking the way to the stairs. The Vice President was practically dragged towards them, while a burly agent picked up his young son and ran the distance. Two minutes later, before people had even strapped in, the pilot of the National Emergency Airborne Command Post — Kneecap — firewalled his engines and roared down runway, Zero-One Left. He headed east for the Atlantic Ocean, where a KC-10 tanker was already orbiting to top off the Boeing's tanks.
“We have a major problem here,” Ricks said in the maneuvering room. Maine had just tried to move. At any speed over three knots, the propeller screeched like a banshee. The shaft was slightly bent, but they'd live with that for a while. “All seven blades must be damaged. If we try for anything over three we make noise. Over five and we'll lose the shaft bearings in a matter of minutes. The outboard motor can give us two or three knots, but that's noisy too. Comments?” There were none. No one aboard doubted Ricks' engineering expertise. “Options?”
“Kinda thin, aren't they?” Dutch Claggett observed.
Maine had to stay near the surface. At this alert level, she had to be ready to launch in minutes. Ordinarily they could have gone to a deeper depth, if for no other reason than to reduce the horrible motion the ship was taking right now from surface turbulence, but her reduced speed made coming up too time-consuming.
“How close is Omaha?” the chief engineer asked.
“Probably within a hundred miles, and there's P-3s at Kodiak — but we still have that Akula out there to worry about,” Claggett said. “Sir, we can hang tough right here and wait it out.”
“No, we have a hurt boomer. We need some kind of support.”
“That means radiating,” the XO pointed out.
“We'll use a SLOT buoy.”
“At two knots through the water, that doesn't buy us much, sir. Captain, radiating is a mistake.”
Ricks looked at his chief engineer, who said, “I like the idea of having a friend around.”
“So do I,” the Captain said. It didn't take long. The buoy was on the surface in seconds and immediately began broadcasting a short message in UHF. It was programmed to continue broadcasting for hours.
“We're going to have a nationwide panic on our hands,” Fowler said. That was not his most penetrating observation. He had a growing panic in his own command center, and knew it. “Is there anything coming out of Denver?”
“Nothing on any commercial TV or radio channel that I know of,” a voice at NORAD replied.
“Okay, you people stand by.” Fowler searched his panel for another button.
“ FBI Command Center. Inspector O'Day speaking.”
“This is the President,” Fowler said unnecessarily. It was a direct line and the light on the FBI panel was neatly labeled. “Who's in charge down there?”
“I am Deputy Assistant Director Murray, Mr. President. I'm the senior man at the moment.”
“How are your communications?”
“They're okay, sir. We have access to the military commsats.”
“One thing we have to worry about is a nationwide panic. To prevent that, I want you to send people to all the TV network headquarters. I want your people to explain to them that they may not broadcast anything about this. If necessary, you are directed to use force to prevent it.”
Murray didn't like that. “Mr. President, that is against—”
“I know the law, okay? I used to be a prosecutor. This is necessary to preserve life and order, and it will be done, Mr. Murray. That is a Presidential Order. Get to it.”
“Yes, sir.”
38
FIRST CONTACTS
The various communications-satellite operators were fiercely independent companies and very often ruthless competitors, but they were not enemies. Between them were agreements informally called treaties. There was always the possibility that one satellite or another could go down, whether from an internal breakdown or collision with space debris that was becoming a real worry for them. Accordingly, there were mutual-assistance agreements specifying that in the event one operator lost a bird, his associates would take up the slack, just as newspapers in the same city traditionally agreed to share printing facilities in the event of a fire or natural disaster. To back up these agreements, there were open phone lines between the various corporate headquarters. Intel-sat was the first to call Telstar.
“Bert, we just had two birds go down,” Intelsat's duty engineer reported in a slightly shaken voice. “What gives?”
“Shit, we just lost three, and Westar 4 and Teleglobe are down, too. We've had complete system failures here. Running checks now — you?”
“Same here, Bert. Any ideas?”
“None. We're talking like nine birds down, Stacy. Fuck!” The man paused. “Ideas? Wait a minute, getting something… okay, it's software. We're interrogating 301 now… they got spiked… Jesus! 301 got spiked on over a hundred freqs! Somebody just tried to zorch us.”
“That's how it looks here, too. But who?”
“Sure as hell wasn't a hacker… this would take megawatts to do that on just one channel.”
“Bert, that's exactly what I'm getting. Phone links, everything spiked at once. You in any hurry to light them back up?”
“You kidding me? I got a billion worth of hardware up there. Till I find out what the hell clobbered them, they stay down. I've got my senior VP on the way in now. The Pres was out in Denver,” Bert added.
“Mine, too, but my chief engineer is snowed in. Damned if I'm going to put my ass on the line. I think we should cooperate on this, Bert.”
