The door gave way with an unexpectedly quiet thump and half a dozen Secret Servicemen swept through, their stubby Italian machine guns tilted toward the ceiling. The Secretary strode through the doorway purposefully, in a tuxedo, followed by a handful of combat-dressed marines with carbines. The President suppressed a grim chuckle.
“Looks like all the burglars are coming through locked doors tonight, huh?” he greeted the Secretary.
The Secretary started to salute and caught himself in mid-gesture. “What was that, Mr. President?” he asked, confused by the half-caustic reference to his own description of the Soviets.
“Nothing.” The President shrugged. “What's it like out there?”
“The best of worlds, the worst of worlds,” the Secretary replied very seriously.
Oh, Christ, the President thought. “Can you be a little more descriptive?”
“The buildings near here are surprisingly intact. The White House, not exactly a hardened facility, is damaged but standing. Windows broken, lot of flotsam kicking around. Your helicopter was blown into the trees along the East fence. I've brought in another. Andrews is six minutes away. Now that you've launched the second attack, I'd suggest we move there immediately and board the command plane.”
The staccato popping noise, much louder now, caromed sharply through the open door. The marines stiffened and turned. The President's body jerked, his nerves shattering like crystal.
“What the hell was that?!”
“We are having some minor trouble above ground,” the Secretary replied matter-of-factly. “The civilian population is somewhat panicky.”
“What do you mean, somewhat panicky?”
“It's controllable. I've deployed two companies of marines, as well as the Secret Service and normal guards, on the White House grounds. Some of the civilians are coming over the fence.”
The President heaved a great sigh.
“A nuclear weapon has exploded in your nation's capital, Mr. President,” the Secretary said, his words suddenly jaggedly edged. The President saw a glint, a glint he had seen before, in the Secretary's eyes. He looked at his Cabinet leader closely and saw, for the first time, why he was so intensely disliked by so many people in and out of his administration.
“Frankly,” the Secretary continued, “I'm surprised you didn't launch before the weapon landed. The opportunity is golden. But not everyone is taking it as calmly as you.”
“Calmly,” the President said. “Mr. Secretary, the world is acting like an hysterical medieval nunnery. Everyone has gone mad. The only calmness I detect anywhere is in Moscow, I'm surprised to hear myself say.”
“Calmness, foolishness,” the Secretary said. “The Soviets' uncertainty has proved to be our opportunity. It has allowed us to unload our silos in the equivalent of a first strike. With moral justification and without the condemnation of history. It will alter the balance of power for centuries.”
“Mr. Secretary, your trousers are bulging,” the President said without smiling. “It is not becoming to a man of your stature.”
The muscles flexed in the Secretary's face. He said nothing.
“I haven't launched a second attack yet.”
The Secretary's face turned grotesque. He took two quite military strides toward the President, looming up against him. The two men stood jaw to jaw, one in his bathrobe, the other in cummerbund and black tie. Neither budged.
“Mr. President, this is . . .” the Secretary sputtered. “This is . . . treasonous!”
“Sir,” the President replied evenly, “the Vice-President is in Sacramento, which has a SAC base in its suburbs. We have not been able to contact the helicopter that attempted to remove him. The Speaker inopportunely chose this time to visit Peking. The president pro tem of the Senate lives in an apartment at the Shoreham Hotel in Northwest Washington. You may be, as they say, a heartbeat away from the presidency. I am, however, finding you uncomfortably close at the moment. I do not need another hysterical nun.”
The Secretary's hands opened and closed slowly at his sides. He stared in disbelief and condescension at the President.
“Mr. Secretary, I suggest that you turn around, sit down, and allow me to continue with my duties. Omaha has about six minutes.”
Slowly the Secretary of State backed away. He lowered himself into a tattered chair, training his glazed stare on the President. The President turned away from him and sat down again, speaking into the phone he had been holding loosely at his side.
“General, sorry about the brief delay. The Secretary of State has arrived to assist me. Give me an update, please.”
“We've had a detonation in Damascus. And several in southern Africa. We hadn't been paying much attention to the southern hemisphere. Only the South Africans have weapons there. One of the explosions, however, was inside South Africa.”
“That's one way to solve apartheid.”
“Everyone seems to be solving their problems, sir.”
“Yes.”
“Except us.”
Icarus had changed moods dramatically. To the President, he sounded disconsolate, like a general assigned to a desk in wartime.
“General,” he asked, “do you allot no credibility whatsoever to the possibility that the Premier's intentions are exactly as he stated them?”
The President ignored the grunt from behind him. On the phone, Icarus sounded almost despondent. “Mr. President, must we go through this?”
“Yes.”
“I allot none. If I did, wouldn't an attack on our missile silos have been much more reasonable, much more humanitarian? They are far more isolated than the bomber bases. Far fewer civilians would have been killed.”
“General, I don't think you believe that. Such an attack would have left us almost naked. Unfortunately, we can afford to lose the people more than we can afford to lose the ICBM's. The Premier knows that.”
“Mr. President, as God is my witness, it does not make any difference. It has gone too far.”
“So, what does SIOP say about the solution to our problem?”
“SIOP has composed a relatively simple two-part sequence,” the general responded eagerly. “The computer recommends launching half our ICBM force from alternating silos. The target would be Soviet silos. The plan has several advantages. If the Soviets respond, even their computers will be hard put to determine which of our silos are empty and which are not. They will be required to deplete a large part of their ICBM force attacking our missile sites, half of which will be empty. If they do not respond, we will have destroyed a significant part of their land-based missiles.”
“And how does our little Russian toy, RSIOP, say it would respond under the circumstances?”
The general paused. “RSIOP,” he said finally, “cannot read what we have to assume is extreme political confusion in Moscow at the moment.”
“How would RSIOP respond, general?”
The general paused again. “In a politically normal situation,” he began slowly, “RSIOP predicts a major launch of Soviet ICBM's—perhaps half their land-based arsenal.”
“The targets?”
“Double targeting of the missile fields, all NATO installations in Europe, the remainder of the military targets in the United States ...”
“And?”
Silence.
“Cities?” the President asked.
“More than likely,” the general replied.
The President closed his eyes once more. His mind felt rubbery again. Damn. He forced himself to think. One ICBM warhead from either of the superpowers could destroy any city in the world. Utterly.
“And the second half of SIOP's sequence?” the President asked.
“If the Soviets respond while our first missiles are in the air, we launch the rest of ours. At other military targets—and some cities, for maximum effect. I believe you know from your briefings what the normal sequence is after that—the programmed pauses for bombers and submarines, the wait to see what they do. . . .” Icaru
s paused. He did not want to go into detail about the problems with communications, preserving a chain of command, all the imponderables about which the President had been briefed but for which no one had certain answers. He saw no choice in the decision. He did not want to clutter the issue. He continued on a positive note. “Even at the end of such an exchange, we would be in a vastly superior military position. The Soviets have used part of their submarine resource. We have not. You also must understand the Soviets are able to launch such an attack at any moment without action by us. You have an opportunity to deter part of that.”
The President's eyes remained closed. He suddenly felt a greater affinity for the Soviet Premier, a man with the same problem he had, than he did for the men around him. He wondered if the Premier, ensnarled in his own trap in some Kremlin hideaway, felt the same pressures he did, the same doubts, the same certainties. He wanted to believe him. Knock the crap, off, bucko. The soppy liberal crap. His mind spun. Did it make any difference? He tried to calculate what already was lost or doomed. Little towns like Utica and Colorado Springs, where the Chambers of Commerce published proud brochures about economies thriving on the magical multiplier effects of defense spending. Cities like Seattle, where men had built missiles for decades and sublimated that reality in the more soothing reality of ranch homes and Winnebagos and Chris Crafts. Farm towns like Omaha that forgot over the years that something else had taken root in their soil. Places like Spokane that the world seemed to pass by but suddenly remembered this morning. “Three minutes, sir.” Little submarine weapons. Toys. Weapons fifty times that size were arriving from Polyarnny, three minutes, in Seattle, Omaha, Colorado Springs. Thousands more were waiting. “Sir.” He had gone to most of those places, thanking the patriots who worked there to keep America secure. He had asked them to do more. To build more. To deter. Now, to deter, he had to use what they built, use the patriots, too. He felt trapped, trapped by his own rhetoric, trapped by a liturgy never questioned. He had talked about limited nuclear wars, heard rational men argue persuasively in this room that such wars could be won. Now the world had at least five limited nuclear wars under way. “Mr. President.” Should he let Icarus go? He shuddered. There was no more time for thinking. He was drifting again, the doomed steer prodded, numbly, dumbly, too many little electric shocks, down the last narrow chute. A world of men. Do you think we can control such a place, Mr. President? Apparently not, Mr. Premier. “No, we cannot,” he mumbled, barely audibly, in answer to the Premier's question.
Through his daze he heard a shuffling noise behind him. Then the thunder knocked him from his chair again. His eyes opened to gaze up at a sign that asked: “Are You EWO Ready?” He nodded automatically, still clutching the phone. He reached for the blue-and-red card that had skittered out of his hand in the fall. He beckoned for the Emergency War Orders officer, whose face remained blank.
Then he turned to look behind him. The Secretary of State lay sprawled on the floor over a carbine he had wrested from a marine. Every other weapon in the room was trained on the Secretary's body. Most had been used. The eyes above them twitched nervously. Wondering if they had chosen the right target, the President guessed sadly. He maneuvered painfully to position the phone. “General?”
“Mr. President?” the general replied uncertainly. “We seemed to have a brief communications problem.”
“Yes, briefly.”
“Mr. President, the Russians launched more land-based missiles thirty seconds ago.”
The President wondered if Icarus was lying. Did it make any difference? In less than three minutes his communications system would be in such disarray he might not be able to respond at all.
“At the Chinese or us?” he asked.
“We can't tell yet.” Icarus sounded despairing. Then he added, with a bite: “Is it really relevant?”
Relevant. Good God. Control such a place? The President slumped, as if in surrender. He began speaking very quietly. “I will go with SIOP. We will do it in the prescribed fashion. We have an assistant secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs in place in the Pentagon. The order will be issued through them. It will not take long.” The President barely heard the last word from Icarus.
His mind had floated a far distance away now. He took the briefcase from the Emergency War Orders officer and handled the details as routinely as he had signed milk-support bills, reading a quick code sequence from the Sealed Authenticator System card that identified him and let the Pentagon know they were dealing with the real thing. The real thing. He shook his head. He looked up and saw the duty officer, the man he knew only as Sedgwick. The President had pain in his eyes.
“Do you think the Premier was sincere?” the President asked the junior naval officer.
“Don't torture yourself, Mr. President,” the young man replied. “We have to leave right now.”
“Do you?”
“I doubt it. The idea was childlike. Impossible.”
“Childlike. Yes. Maybe that's what we needed.”
Sedgwick draped a Navy greatcoat over the President's bathrobe. He could feel the shuddering even through the heavy wool.
“And Alice said to the Queen,” the President said in a detached voice, '“One can't believe impossible things.'“
Sedgwick, worried, looked around for help.
“And the Queen said to Alice, 'I daresay you haven't had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'“
The voice of Icarus scratched into the radiophones of his two airborne command posts.
“You got the SIOP battle-order changes? Alice? Harpoon?”
“Instantly, sir,” replied Alice. He was flying the Looking Glass east now, away from Omaha and the missile fields to the west and north.
“Clear as a bell, sir,” replied Harpoon. He was taking the giant E-4 south with its staff of sixty men and women.
“The new target projections in the Soviet Union?” Icarus asked calmly but quickly. “Our launches? Successes? Failures? Alice, does your board show Quebec Three at Minot?”
Inside the Looking Glass, the general hurriedly scanned his computer data. Quebec Three. Minuteman launch Control Capsule. Seventeen miles northwest of Minot, North Dakota. SIOP orders to the two-man crew: launch five of the ten missiles under their command. Data: none launched.
“Fizzle,” Alice said.
“The hell it was a fizzle,” Icarus said. “They chickened out. Override the lily livers and launch 'em from the plane.”
“General,” Alice said, “I need those orders from a National Command Authority.”
Hzzzzzzz.
“You looking at your clock, old buddy?” Icarus asked blandly.
“Yes, sir.”
“Override 'em.”
Inside the Looking Glass, the general paused just briefly, the low hzzzzzz becoming a roar. He thought of the oath he had taken so long ago. He thought of the briefing on electromagnetic pulse he had received so recently in Albuquerque and knew Quebec Three's missiles wouldn't go if they didn't go now. He thought of the two young airmen sitting in the tomb of their command capsule outside Minot. Cowards? Rebels? He thought of Icarus in his doomed blue tomb beneath Omaha. The orders were illegal but logical. He turned and gestured to a colonel sitting several seats away. “Sam,” he said, “Quebec Three at Minot.” The colonel flitted quickly through the combination on a red lock box. The general did the same. Each pulled out a key. Each punched in a code. Each inserted a key. “Three . . .” Alice said. “Two . . . one . . . mark.” They turned the keys simultaneously. The data board changed, showing five more launches in progress out of the frozen prairies. Alice sighed.
“Geronimo,” Icarus radioed upward.
Alice looked at his watch. 0630 Zulu.
“Your computers show the projected impact areas in the United States?” Icarus asked.
Alice ran his eyes across the computer data. He frown
ed, pausing again, even more briefly this time, as his eyes landed on the puzzling sequence of missile launches—first the limited Soviet attack, then our limited response, then the craziness around the world, then . . . why the devil had we let half our ICBMs go in response to a small Soviet retaliatory attack on the Chinese? A fuck-up? Murphy's Law—If something can go wrong, it will? Something he didn't know? He shook his head slightly and looked at Sam.
“Alice!” Icarus barked into the phone.
Sam's face was impassive.
“Affirmative,” Alice replied.
“Print 'em out. You aren't gonna have your computers long.”
“It's been done, sir.”
“Old buddy?” Icarus said hurriedly to Alice. “You see General Moreau again, you tell him any apology that ends with 'fuck you' ain't an apology.”
Alice felt his baritone voice catch, but he covered it and hurried. “He won't hold you to it, sir.”
“Happy hunt—”
Alice heard no hzzzzzzzz. Just a snap, like a twig breaking. And silence. He cradled the phone. Good-bye, old friend, he said silently. Then he heard the noises. Low popping sounds. Subtle electric crackles. Grunts from his surprised crew. He looked down the aisle of the Looking Glass plane and saw his computers flaring and dying, the men and women of his battle staff shouting futilely into radios that didn't work.
To the south, in the more sophisticated E-4, Harpoon also heard the twig snap and saw the lights blink out on all his multicolored phone consoles. He felt the same tickling sensation he had felt on the palm-print authenticator. But again he knew it was his imagination. The plane did not even ripple in flight. He had felt nothing. So this is EMP. They knew a lot about nuclear effects, but very little about electromagnetic pulse. All they knew was that, unlike most nuclear effects, the massive power surge from EMP passed harmlessly through humans. It ate communications gear instead, moving thousands of miles in microseconds. He had a helluva mess to clean up inside America's premier communications plane.
Sedgwick reached under the President's arms and hoisted him to his feet. Then he pushed him forcefully toward the Situation Room exit, following a detachment of Secret Servicemen over the flattened door and up the stairs. On the first floor they moved quickly, maneuvering around broken plaster and shards of glass, an occasional overturned chair, a fallen chandelier. At the Oval Office the President fought to a stop. The door was blown open, the great windows shattered behind his desk. The office was dark, illuminated only by twenty-two pinpoints of light from the phone console hanging powered, but powerless, over the side of his desk. Sedgwick pushed him on, past the Cabinet Room and finally through the broken French doors leading out to the Rose Garden. The din staggered him.
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