SIXTEEN
“You’re out of options. Admiral.” Senator Williams swiveled away from the tactical display. His presence here in the Joint Chiefs of Staff war room was unusual, but not unprecedented. As a member of the military subcommittee, he had access on a need-to-know basis. This, Williams figured, was the most need-to-know opportunity that had arisen since the original Cuban Missile Crisis incident.
Admiral Loggins’s voice got tight. “Jesus, you are insane!
Nuclear weapons? And in Cuba? If we use the UAV option, the fallout alone will have consequences in the United States.”
Williams shook his head. “Not so. If you’ve been listening to the experts, the chances of radiation reaching American soil are minimal.”
“I have pilots in the air right now,” Loggins thundered.
“What do your so-called experts say about them? Are they in any danger? You know as well as I do that the EMP is liable to knock them all out of the air! I’m not taking that chance not today, not ever.
They don’t deserve that.”
“Hard choices require hard men,” Senator Williams shot back. “You think it was easy for my predecessors, deciding to leave those POWs in enemy hands after each war? To sacrifice men and women in combat? Do you think we’re that heartless?”
And that. Admiral Loggins realized, was essentially the question. Did he really think that the good faith on the part of men such as Senator Williams was sufficient for him to entrust the safety of the men and women under his command to them? Would Williams make good decisions, decisions that would strengthen the nation rather than weaken it? Or did the larger picture” national strategy,” as Williams was fond of referring to it outweigh the safety of the men in the air, and his commitment to keep them alive?
“It’s set up now, isn’t it?” Williams asked.
Loggins nodded. “We’ve already programmed the vector to the command post. And the link between Arsenal and the missile is working well.
All we have to do is authorize the divert and it’ll be on its way. But I think we ought toNO!” Admiral Loggins grabbed at Williams’s hand, which was poised over the execute switch. The admiral’s fingers grazed the back of Williams’s hand as me senator quickly flipped the lever into execute position.
Four rows of green lights flickered on Loggins’s console as the UAV ran its self-check verifying what it had known all along, that everything was in working order and commenced executing its last given instruction.
As an additional safety precaution, the UAV was programmed to lock out further orders after it received a go signal, to prevent the possibility of enemy jamming or cryptological deception making it deviate from its course.
Loggins watched in horror as the UAV gently rolled out of its orbit, shuddered, and pitched its deadly rounded snout up. He saw the exhaust spit a whiff of black smoke, then steady into a clear, turbulent blast of hot gas. Seconds later, the missile was no longer under visual observation and could only be tracked by its small blip on the radar scope.
That, too, was intermittent, given the Stealth technology of the missile.
“Dear God, what have you done?” Loggins gasped. “You had no right to ” Williams leaned back in his chair and smiled, an ugly, twisted parody of a pleasant expression. “If you had the guts, you’d have done it yourself. Remember that, Loggins.
Remember that.”
“Stoney, it’s starting a rollout!” The first trace of excitement entered Tomboy’s voice.
“I see it, I see it I’ve got it now.” Tombstone identified the UAV’s green blip on his heads-up display. “How long?”
“Minutes. Stoney, if that missile detonates on target, we don’t have a chance. Neither do those men in the air to the south.”
“I know it.” Tombstone jammed the throttles forward into full afterburner. “It should be accelerating keep giving me range and bearings to it. Tomboy, as well as a vector to intercept. There’s going to be a very small window when it’s within range.”
“Sidewinder,” Tomboy suggested.
Stoney clicked the mike twice. “Roger. It’s the only one reliable enough to trust for one shot.”
And one shot is all he’d have. One chance to knock the missile out of the air, to send it tumbling helplessly to land before the nuclear warhead armed, to detonate it into a conventional explosion in the atmosphere without invoking the deadly hellfire contained in its nose cone. One chance, one shot.
“You’re insane,” Loggins blurted out. Suddenly, the sheer lunacy of their position struck him full force. How had he gotten involved in this, one part of his mind wailed. To wander so far from the traditional honors and values of the United States Navy, to allow political control to assert itself over the very targeting decisions the military made? If anyone ought to know better, it should be you, he chided himself. After Vietnam, you swore you would never let this happen again. Not only did you let it happen, but you’re part of it.
“They’ll think you did it, you know,” Williams said softly. “Some sort of post-traumatic stress syndrome you should be able to blame it on that. They might even let you keep your retirement.” The senator smirked. “I’ll say I tried to stop you, but if they compare our records, they’ll know who’s really behind it. You were all the way; it was all your idea.”
“No,” Loggins said, his voice strong and firm. “I don’t think so. You see, if nothing else, war has taught me a little bit about being prepared.” He leaned forward, pushed a button on the speakerphone.
“Senator, did you hear that?”
“I surely did,” Senator Thomas Dailey said. The strong Midwestern drawl was unmistakable. “So did the rest of us, Admiral.”
“And Arsenal is taking the appropriate action?” Loggins said, a savage good humor fighting its way up out of the depression that had plagued him for the last several months.
He glanced at Williams, saw the man wilting visibly in the chair. “Has it?”
“The chairman gave the order three minutes ago,” Dailey said. “The warhead is disarmed. Too bad they didn’t build a self-destruct function into it. As it is now, it will impact the target as strictly a conventional warhead.”
“Thank God for the pickiness of nuclear triggering circuitry,” Loggins said.
“You knew all along,” Williams said, his voice defeated.
“Where did I screw up? What made you think I’d really do it?”
“Just a promise I made to myself a long time ago,” Admiral Loggins said softly. “And whatever else happens, those men and women on the front line will know I kept the faith.”
“It’s below us,” Tomboy warned. “Altitude, two thousand feet.”
“Roger.” Tombstone nosed the Tomcat down slightly, quickly trading altitude for speed. Lower altitude, lower speed, as the air created more friction. The airspeed he’d gained by descending would be quickly bled off fighting the thicker air. Still, it wasn’t as though he had much time. Or choice.
He craned his head aft, searching through the clear bubble of the canopy for some sign of the weapon. According to Tomboy’s radar picture, it was almost on them, less than one mile aft. He’d matched altitude with it,
