Sixty feet beneath the farmhouse in the launch control center, red warning flashes lit up the consoles like the Fourth of July. The two launch officers in blue uniforms and yellow ascots sat tight in their aircraft-style seats, trapped by their shoulder belts designed to keep them from being thrown by the shockwaves if they ever launched ICBMs.
“Shit,” said the first launch officer as elevator cameras showed four armed and unfriendly figures on their way down.
Both launch officers desperately tried to unhook their belts as the vault door opened and Marshall entered with his crew. Wilson and Harney unloaded two shots, and the launch officers slumped in their chairs. Then Banks followed up by relieving them of their launch keys.
The second launch officer was still alive, barely, and Marshall glared at Harney. Too many video games for these younger officers. They shot at faces to save bullets, but the effect was dehumanizing the enemy. And these launch officers were anything but. They w American patriots, and he needed at least one of them alive.
The launch officer groaned in his seat. “General Marshall?”
“It’s OK, son,” Marshall said. “We’ll get you some help. Don’t worry.”
The launch officer relaxed in his chair, blood draining out of him. Marshall knew he had only a minute if that with the kid.
“OK,” Marshall said. “We’ve got ten Minutemen III missiles. Each can be sent to any one of four preset targets. Now where are these warheads targeted?”
“Don’t know,” said the launch officer. “Didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to dream about the impact area.”
Marshall was disappointed. “I understand, son,” he said and then popped the kid in the head with his M9 pistol. The launch officer went limp.
Marshall told the rest, “He was useless anyway. How long will it take you to retarget, Major Tom?”
Banks looked at her console. “Thirty-six minutes using the Command Data Buffer system.”
“You have ten,” Marshall told her. “Harney and Wilson, you’ll need to strip some equipment here. I saw an Explorer parked outside. See if old grandpa has the keys in his pockets.”
As they left, Marshall hovered impatiently as Banks calculated the retargeting information.
“You’re taking too long, Major Tom.”
“More than two hundred attack options have been programmed into this computer, sir,” she replied. “We just need to dial up the right war scenario. Those missiles that are supposed to go, go. Those that aren’t, don’t.”
“You don’t get it. I want them all going.”
“Oh, the than won’t even take a minute then — if you can live with collateral strikes.”
“The Chinese can’t, but I can, Major.”
Marshall pushed the launch officer he had killed off his seat and strapped himself in. Banks did likewise in the other chair and then made the final adjustments.
“Missiles are retargeted,” she announced.
Marshall gave the order, “Insert launch keys.”
Banks inserted her launch key into her console at the same time he did.
“On my mark,” he told her. “Three…two…one…turn.”
They turned their keys simultaneously.
The shaking began, and Marshall tightened his belt with satisfaction. Missiles on screen filled the silo cameras with their exhaust flames.
Finally, thing were going according to plan.
52
Jennifer had decided she had had enough of herself crying over her mother and the end of the world. If this was the end of all things, she didn’t want to go out like a scared rat in a crap shack. She would face the future full- on, it was a mushroom cloud.
She rose to her feet with the old beach blanket around her shoulders for warmth. The floorboards creaked as she walked to the front door. She paused at the door and took a deep breath. She wrapped herself tighter in the blanket with one hand and flung open the door with the other and shrieked.
Standing inches from her face was one of the Green Berets, so close they shared each other’s frosty breath. There was alcohol on his. She then saw the open bottle in his hand.
“We knew you were here and were just waiting for you to come out,” he told her, pushing her back inside and slamming the door shut. “But now that your mom is dead, I thought you could use some comfort.” His lips twisted into an ironic smile. “You see, I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.”
Jennifer was terrified. “Where’s the other guy?”
“Ran home to mommy and the kids, seeing as this is the end.” There was a wild look in his eyes. He believed it, and this terrified Jennifer even more. “It’s a terrible thing when discipline in the ranks break down in a crisis. But I’m getting one last hurrah before we pop.”
She took a swing at his face but he caught her hand and twisted it back until she cried out in pain. Then he pulled her head back by her hair and started dragging her kicking and screaming across the floor.
“Stop it!” she screamed. “You’re hurting me! Stop!”
He turned her over and thrust the neck of the bottle into her mouth painfully so that she choked as the fiery liquid poured down her throat. He laughed again, his eyes on fire as she struggled to breathe, feeling like she was drowning.
53
Sachs stared at the ten missiles as they arched into the twilight. Disbelief dissolved into despair as she recognized the world as she knew was ending. A black hole seemed to open up under her feet and suck the soul out of her, leaving her void of hopes of a tomorrow.
“God, no,” she breathed.
Koz, standing next to her, sounded flat and distant. “Minutemen out of the Nekoma missile field. It was supposed to be inactive.”
Sachs simply could not believe what she was seeing. “They’re going to China, aren’t they?”
“Can’t tell you until they explode,” Koz said, looking grief-stricken. “But at fifteen thousand miles per hour, they can reach their targets in less than 30 minutes.”
She said, “We have to destroy them.”
The look on Koz’s face didn’t inspire hope. “Only way to abort is from the launch control center. We could try our sea-based AEGIS ABM systems with the Seventh Fleet, but they can’t take out all 10 Minutemen. Our best bet would have been the Tier 1 Defender complex in Alaska.”
Sachs grew icy calm. “What about this abandoned Safeguard complex nearby that you talked about? What did that use to be for?”
“It was the original Defender system,” Koz said. “Safeguard was designed to deMinutemen silos around here from a Soviet or Chinese counterforce attack during the 1960s.”
“By ‘counterforce’ you mean nukes like the ones the Chinese are about to launch in answer to the Minutemen that Marshall just fired?”
“That’s right,” Koz said. “The Safeguard missiles would hit the incoming Soviet or Chinese nukes, giving us
