Red Glare

by Thomas Greanias

  “The land that time forgot,” Koz told her, and she was surprised how clearly she could hear him. “That’s one of the reasons the Safeguard complex closed down. Not much around to support it in terms of people or any kind of economy this far out from the Grand Forks base, which itself is nowhere to the rest of the world. You won’t believe it when you see it.”

  They went over a snowdrift and there was the bleak Safeguard complex, a 435-acre missile field, dominated by a mysterious pyramid structure 80 feet tall and a dozen Stonehenge-like monoliths. It looked positively evil, like the technological ruins of some Cold War Giza plateau.

  She said, “What are those spooky towers?”

  “Intake and exhaust stacks for the missile site’s power plant,” Koz said.

  “And that giant pyramid thing with the weird circles on each side?”

  “The radar building,” Koz said. “The control center for the whole Safeguard system. It housed the computers and radar that could track incoming ICBM warheads and hit back with 30 long-range Spartans.”

  She said, “But it looks so sinister.”

  “It was the era,” he said. “But, yeah, it’s got a 1960’s Dr. Strangelove vibe.”

  The drove straight through the open gate in the chainlink fence, where two slain U.S. Army guards lay in the blood-stained snow, beneath a sign that said: Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex.

  “Vibe?” Sachs repeated. “The era is now, Koz, and Marshall is Dr. Strangelove.”

  “Then he’s probably inside the pyramid,” Koz said and followed the SUV tracks in the snow to the tunnel entrance to the pyramid, where they climbed off the snowmobile and Koz pulled out his M9.

  An SUV sat just outside the tunnel.

  “It’s from the launch control center Marshall hit,” he said, inspecting the vehicle as Captain Li pulled up on her Thundercat.

  Li had the schematics ready on her phone’s display. “The radio room is inside the turret at the top of the pyramid. Marshall and his radio gal Thompson are most likely up there. The other two officers missing from Looking Glass, Harney and Wilson, are his muscle. We’ll probably encounter them before we ever get near Marshall. By the way, the first two levels inside are probably flooded from a few years back when contaminated PCB chemicals were cleaned out. So we’ll have to wade through.”

  Sachs hid her alarm at this matter-of-fact description of the hell she was about to enter. Swimming through toxic waste wasn’t exactly at the top of her life bucket list. But in this moment, such concerns weren’t even worth bringing up.

  “Let’s go,” she said when Koz blocked her.

  “You’re going to need this,” he said, handing her a loaded M18 pistol, just like his own and Captain Li’s. “The safety is off. So know that when you point and shoot, a bullet is going to go flying out. Squeeze slowly, be ready for some kickback.”

  Sachs nodded as she felt the gun. It looked like one of Jennifer’s toys, but there was enough weight to it to betray its authenticity.

  They started through the tunnel into the subterranean levels of the pyramid. At first it was just ice on the ground they had to watch out for. Then the hardness loosened to liquid the further they got inside, rising from ankle-deep to knee-deep to waist-deep in the arena-sized cavern.

  Sachs could barely make out oil storage tanks and industrial waste sumps in the dark of the basement level. And she had to take it on faith from the dim glow of Captain Li’s screen that they were passing the oil pumping room and transmitter cooling area of the pyramid.

  Sachs said nothing and slogged through the foul-smelling chemical swamp until she was almost neck-deep. Never in her worst nightmares had she ever pictured herself in a place like this. They made it to a narrow concrete stairway and, dripping industrial ooze behind them, slowly climbed one crumbling step at a time.

  The thin coat of oil weighed her down like a suit of heavy armor. As she tried to wipe it off, she slipped and almost fell off the steps. Were it not for Koz’s hand, she would have surely plunked into the inky cesspool below, never to come up again.

  “That was close,” he whispered.

  “You’re telling me,” she breathed as they finally reached the second level of the pyramid—the empty and thankfully dry shell of the abandoned command and control areas.

  No Marshall.

  Koz pointed up into the turret above.

  Oh, God, she thought, not another level. Each one seemed more sinister than the last.

  The third level occupied the lower portion of the turret, and it, too, was an empty tomb. This seemed to bother Koz and Li.

  “See,” Koz pointed out to Li. “The Duplexer area is gutted of its microwave devices associated with the radar receivers. Marshall would have had to have replaced them to make this active again.”

  All that remained was the fourth floor in the upper portion of the pyramid’s turret. But because all 16 sets of stairways and elevators were removed when the building was salvaged, there was no way to reach it.

  They skirted along the concrete wall until they reached a new steel ladder running up the wall to the fourth level. Koz pointed up to the dim square of light way up at the top, where a shadow flickered past the light.

  Marshall was up there.

  Koz started climbing the ladder with one hand while his other held up the M9. Sachs started right after him, but Li held her back until Koz was almost out of sight above her. Then Li gave her the go ahead, and Sachs put her boot on the ladder and pulled herself up.

  As she did, one of Marshall’s men emerged from the shadows like a phantom, moving quickly toward the base of the ladder. She heard a cry and looked down in time to see Captain Li fall away, shot in the back, dead.

  Glowing eyes—night vision goggles—looked up at her from below and a red target dot began to move up her body. She struggled to find the gun on her hip but couldn’t get it out of the holster. A shot rang out and the green eyes exploded in front of her and the phantom sank back into the dark.

  She looked up at Koz, hanging on with one hand, the M9 in his other hand. “Look out!” he shouted as he aimed his gun at her.

  Sachs flung herself to the side of the ladder, hanging on for her life while Koz pumped several bullets straight down the ladder at a second phantom. Sachs heard a groan and saw a fleeting shadow before she heard a loud kerplunk three levels below.

  She tried to swing her feet back onto the ladder, but a couple of bullets pinged off the rungs. She looked up. Above Koz, a woman in uniform was leaning over the open ceiling door, firing down at them. Koz fired back one-handed, and the woman cried out and staggered back out of view.

  55

  1640 Hours

  Safeguard Complex

  Inside the 30-foot-tall turret of the pyramid, Marshall was booting up his Defender air traffic controller post when he heard the gunfire erupting below. The only reason he had kept the floor’s door open for the ladder was for Harney and Wilson, but he would close it if he had to and they would have to fry.

  “See what’s going on downstairs with Harney and Wilson, Major,” he ordered Thompson, who was setting up the landline communications system and running a line on the floor.

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  Everything in the turret had been hardened to withstand nuclear impact: The walls, ceiling and floor were lined with an 11-gauge steel liner plate. Mounted on the floor were open frame racks for circuit boards, and built into each of the four slanted walls was a gigantic, 20-foot disc—the complex’s phased-array antenna. Suspended overhead was a shock-isolated platform for Cold War support equipment long gone. The only thing it supported now were the servers that hosted the Red Glare cyberweapon program.

  He turned his attention back to his radar screens and to opening a clear line of communications with his Defenders on the secret frequency. He was using one of Raytheon’s newer STARS, or Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System equipment, to get a clear picture of aircraft operations over the Pacific airpace.


  The digitized blips on the screen represented his ten top-secret Defender 747s armed with laser canons. They were the Tier 3 component of his Defender system, based on America’s Airborne Laser Test Bed program. Each Defender plane could direct energy to attack multiple targets at the speed of light, at a range of hundreds of kilometers, and at a lower cost per intercept than missiles.

  He could only imagine the look on General Zhang’s face any minute now when he launched his DF-5s in response to the incoming American Minutemen nukes. The onboard sensors of the U.S. Defenders would detect the boosting Chinese missiles and track them with a low-energy laser. A second low-energy laser would measure and compensate for atmospheric disturbance. Finally, the Defender would fire its megawatt-class high-energy laser, heating the boosting DF-5 to critical structural failure.

  And General Zhang would see the futility of his response even before the incoming Minutemen killed him.

  Marshall spoke into his headset, “All Defenders report.”

  Defender One reported, “All clear.”

  “All clear,” reported Defender Two.

  Every Defender, save Defender Six, was almost in range to shoot down any outgoing ICBMs from China that General Zhang might launch before he lost them to incoming Minutemen. Zhang’s window was closing fast to make a decision, and so was Marshall’s to make sure the Defenders could take out any Chinese missiles.

  “Defender Six, climb to 38,000 feet,” Marshall ordered.

  Marshall knew from personal experience as a fighter pilot that the hardest part of mission flying was reading the clouds. Aiming a laser canon in flight was infinitely harder. Volatile temperature and barometric pressure might bend the beam just enough to miss an outgoing missile, or jiggle the plane enough to blow the shot.

  Defender Six updated its position. “Barometric pressure stabilizing.”

  Marshall said, “Maintain course, Defender Six.”

  Marshall had trained these pilots well, and the beauty was that nobody in the current situation knew about them. Not General Zhang in China nor General Block at Northern Command. Only President Rhinehart and General Carver at STRATCOM, who allowed Marshall’s program to proceed behind Congress’s back. Now they were both dead.

  Best of all, at this time of year in January, Beijing was cold but dry, with an average of fewer than two days of rain.

  In short, clear skies were perfect for lasers.

  Marshall heard Thompson cry out and turned to see her stagger back from the open door in the floor and collapse. He pulled out his M18 and walked over. She was spitting up blood, suffering, eyes pleading for help.

  Marshall gazed down at her for a moment. She reached up her hand, and he took it in his left even as he lowered his right hand holding his M18.

  “Mission accomplished, Major Tom.” There was pride but no pleasure in his voice, and he put her out of her misery with a bullet to the head. “You are honorably discharged.”

  The light went out of her eyes instantly, and her head rolled to the side.

  Marshall moved to the open door in the floor and peered over the edge, cautiously. He saw none other than Colonel Joe Kozlowski coming up the ladder, with what appeared to be Deborah Sachs some way behind him. Kozlowski was pointing a gun up at him, and Marshall moved back as a bullet whizzed by his ear.

  Marshall stuck his hand holding his gun over the edge and sprayed several bullets straight down until Kozlowski stopped firing.

  56

  1645 Hours

  Safeguard Complex

  Sachs heard the gunshots and called out Koz’s name. But instead of an answer she saw him suddenly lose his grip and fall toward her. She grasped the next rung of the steel ladder with one hand and swung out of the way. She watched in horror as Koz’s body hit the concrete floor at the base of the ladder far below.

  She screamed. “Koz!”

  Above her, Marshall’s face lingered in the opening, gun in hand, but then withdrew from sight.

  She froze on the ladder. She desperately wanted to crawl down to Koz and run away from that monster Marshall above her. But run to what? A world that Marshall destroyed? There was no turning back, she realized. This was either kill or be killed, and she had to keep going. Jennifer and at least a billion American and Chinese lives were counting on her.

  Sachs willed herself up the ladder, one rung at a time, hand over hand, boot over boot, until she reached the opening. She wanted to stick her gun through and start shooting, but she needed both hands to pull herself up and over onto the steel floor of the top-level turret.

  The moment she made it over, she instantly sprang to her feet and whipped out her gun, breathing hard. She looked around turret cautiously, but nobody was there as far as her eyes could see. Nobody but the dead radio operator sprawled against the wall, an M9 on the floor beside her.

  Sachs kicked the pistol over the edge of the floor door and scanned the austere, two-story-tall turret. Dominating the chamber were something like huge loudspeakers in each of the four slanted walls. The effect was like being inside the bell tower of some monstrous cathedral from the Dark Ages—the Church of the Apocalypse. And the altar seemed to be a console with communications and radar instruments.

  She noted the large, square radar screen with a Raytheon logo on the bezel and a large brown keyboard with four different sets of keypads grouped on it, along with the biggest computer mouse—made of metal—that she’d ever seen.

  It was some kind of air traffic controller’s radar screen. There were ten arrow-like icons, and they were moving toward China.

  The Defenders aren’t anti-ballistic missiles. They’re planes.

  And they were poised off China to shoot down any Chinese missiles.

  There was a step behind her. She turned and raised her M18 as Marshall dropped down from an overhead platform, a pistol in one hand pointed at her. He was far more imposing and intimidating in person than on TV, his ice-cold blue eyes revealing an iron will of a warrior on mission, even as his mouth smiled with bemused approval.

  “Why, Secretary Sachs, is that a standard-issue U.S. military sidearm you’re waving at me?” he said. “I didn’t know you had it in you. Better be careful, you might hurt yourself.”

  Sachs raised her gun at Marshall. “I will kill you, Marshall.”

  “I’ve already given my life for my country,” he said, taking a step forward. “You think I’m not ready to die to see this through? I’m a patriot.”

  “Of course you are, Marshall. You’re the Great American Pretender.”

  “Defender, Sachs,” Marshall said sharply, his smile disappearing. “Defender.”

  “Defender,” she repeated, trying to put everything together that she had seen. “You were so confident we could win this war with minimal casualties.”

  “Maybe we can,” Marshall said.

  The radio crackled. “Defender Ten, all clear.”

  “Defender Nine, all clear.”

  Sachs realized Marshall had established the secret frequency she needed to recall the Defenders. If only she could reach the radio. “You actually built your Defender system, didn’t you?”

  Marshall cracked a grin. “I’ve got ten airborne COIL lasers that can pinpoint and destroy enemy missiles hundreds of miles away.”

  “So you blew up Washington?” Sachs said accusingly.

  Marshall grew scarily calm, but his eyes were ablaze with purpose. “It was clean, Sachs. I took out buildings. Not people.”

  “What do you call four thousand Americans?”

  “Not much more than 9/11,” he said. “And what do you call the hundreds of thousands who died worldwide from the Chinese pandemic? Hell, millions for all we know in China alone. Any reasonable president would have launched under attack. But you wouldn’t.”

  “So you blew up SAC headquarters,” she said. “And you went after my daughter!”

  “Something worth thinking about now, Sachs, if you want her to live.”

  Marshall took another step closer, and Sac
hs took a step back. Suddenly she wondered why he hadn’t killed her yet.

  “What do you want with her, Marshall?”

  “Just a little leverage,” Marshall said, raising his gun to her head. “I might need you to make one more address about your attack on the Chinese.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said, realizing that Marshall—and history—was going to blame this apocalypse on her failed leadership.

  “You’re going to take a bullet for America, Sachs,” he told her. “You think the Chinese care about human rights? Ask the people of Hong Kong. You think they care about inclusion and diversity? They don’t even believe in the transcendence of the human soul. The individual doesn’t exist to them, only the collective. Even Carver would tell you they’re the Borg.”

  “If he were still alive,” she shot back.

  “I have to protect western civilization, Sachs. Before people like you piss it away. Now hand over the gun. We both know you can’t pull the trigger.”

  She felt the veins in her hand throb as she gripped the gun. She could barely catch her breath, her heart was racing so fast. One way or another, she told herself, she was going to take a bullet. Whether she took the shot or not, she was going to die. She had to take the shot. She had to pull the trigger.

  “Those who can’t, teach,” Marshall said, coaxing her. “Come on. Give it to me.”

  Sachs, her hands trembling, started to lower her arms. He was only a few feet away now, more confident than ever, his hand swinging up with his gun.

  Sachs jerked up her gun and fired three times fast, one bullet snapping his head back, the others catching him in the chest, driving him against his radar equipment. He bounced off and fell onto the liner plate floor, a stream of blood trickling into a crack like waste in a gutter.