Marshall stood with his juniors Harney and Wilson, staring blankly at the radar screens inside the battle staff compartment: The D-10s were in position, but the first-strike B-2s carrying the bunker-busting Mavericks were turning back.
“What the hell?” he said.
Banks turned from her console, bad news written all over her face. “Bombers turning back, sir.”
“I can see that,” Marshall said. “Put me through to them right now.”
She paused, putting a finger to her ear. “Northern Command is calling.”
He nodded, and she put General Block through on speaker.
“Our bombers are retreating, Block,” Marshall said. “Zhang already surrender?”
“Sachs is alive,” Block said. “Just got the call.”
Marshall didn’t believe it. “You authenticate her?”
“Yep, and voice prints match too,” Block said. “Listen, son. You’re busted. The president wants to ground Looking Glass, pronto. You are to land at Grand Forks AFB, where a reception team will be waiting for you to turn yourself in. You’ll be tried in a military court and executed for your treason.”
Marshall blinked in disbelief. “I don’t know what kind of horseshit Sachs is feeding you, Block. But pulling back our bombers now is going to cost us. Big time.”
Block didn’t like backtalk any more than Marshall. “You heard me, Marshall. Your pilots have been instructed to land Looking Glass immediately. And in case you have any trouble understanding, we’ve got a couple of F-16s on the way to escort you. Over.”
Block disappeared from view, and Marshall was aware that his own, unreadable poker face was still plain to see for Banks and the others. So he kept it that way on the outside. It wasn’t difficult. Because he knew exactly what to do next.
50
Sachs watched blue-hathel pour her a cup of Kona blend coffee while the TV blared the downing of Air Force One and her death. It was freezing with the shattered windows, and a dozen AF1 crew were taping plastic sheets from the surplus store in back to keep out the cold. Koz, meanwhile, was still on the pay phone talking to Block, having been unable to connect his phone with its satellite in space. They were trying to set up a call with General Zhang for her, to confirm he knew the U.S. was standing down and requesting the same.
Ethel, who had an old military tattoo on her arm and a Tea Party pin on her apron, asked her, “You really the president?”
Sachs said, “So they say.”
Ethel snapped her gum. “You spoiled everything, you know. Women have been running the country just fine for two hundred years, only our men didn’t know it.” Then she winked and walked off with her pot of coffee to serve the rest of the AF1 crew. All 48 had been accounted for, thank God.
Koz walked over with a frown on his face. “Looking Glass landed at Grand Forks, but Marshall and three crew were missing.”
Sachs stared at him. “How can they be missing?”
“They must have bailed in flight.”
“From a 747? Is that even possible?”
“Not at 35,000 feet and 500 knots,” Koz said. “But the pilots report that Marshall had ordered them down to 18,000 and 150 knots before everything went berserk. That altitude and speed are about what the top extreme skydivers use, and Marshall and his threesome are trained paratroopers. Looks like they shot their way out the rear transport hatch on the cargo deck. There were lots of bodies on the floor and four sky suits with oxygen masks missing from the racks.”
“But where did they go? What does he hope to accomplish?”
Koz shrugged. “I have no idea. Looking Glass by definition circles the Midwest in a nuke attack, to be close to the missile fields. But there must be a reason he stuck close to the badlands of North Dakota. Only problem is that the only active missile fields are a couple of hundred miles away at Minot. There’s nothing in this immediate area except abandoned missile silos. Maybe he’s going to hide out in one and keep us hunting for him for as many days as possible.”
Sachs heard a grunt. It was Ethel. “He’s right, you know,” she said. “We used to have a full missile wing here associated with Grand Forks AFB, until they closed it down, moved almost everything to Minot. That cost us a lot of jobs.”
“Almost everything?” Sachs asked, glancing at Koz.
Koz said, “They still keep a few weapons storage areas around here that hold nuclear contingency weapons. And there’s the old Safeguard complex in Nekoma, but that’s been abandoned even longer than the silos.”
“You sure about that?” Ethel said, clearly unable to help herself. “I’ve served more than a few strangers in recent—”
The cups and saucers on the counter started shaking again. The whole diner started to shake.
“Lordy, here we go again,” Ethel said.
But Sachs knew there wasn’t another Air Force One about to make an emergency landing outside. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a flame trail on the hor
Koz and Captain Li had already burst outside through the plastic sheet.
She ran out to join them and stopped cold at the sight of a 60-foot Minuteman III ICBM missile lift off into the sky at 15,000 miles per hour like a space shuttle launch. The ground quaked from the Boeing first-stage rocket’s 200,000 pounds of thrust.
“Oh, no,” Sachs said. “Marshall.”
Another Minuteman blasted off.
And another.
And still another.
Sachs counted ten flame trails lifting off from the fields in a ring of fire that turned the evening into day.
51
Marshall’s large, dome-shaped canopy, made from a single layer of triangular cloth gores, blossomed under the clear night. Marshall let the cold wind blow him across the desolate winter fields toward the lonely clapboard farmhouse below.
He looked over at Banks, Harney and Wilson, all doing fine on the descent. His jellyfish chute — the MC1-1C round parachute favored by U.S. paratroopers — had been packed and ready aboard Looking Glass.
Special cuts in sections of the gores gave his chute more speed and greater steering capabilities, enabling him to avoid the grain silo on his right and turn into the wind to minimize horizontal speed as he landed.
He hit and rolled, then quickly detached from his chute. Then, with the others close behind, he pulled out his M9 and headed for the farmhouse.
The MP on the front porch, a grandpa-type in a parka, looked surprised to see visitors and whipped out an M-16. He was talking to somebody through an earpiece but froze when none other than General Brad Marshall walked up the steps. He relaxed and lowered his gun to salute.
“General Marshall,” he said with relief when Harney leveled his own M-16 and spat out a round.
