The two officers had arrived moments ago in a pickup from Barksdale Air Force Base, where the 341st Missile Wing was headquartered. The pickup was parked right behind them, waiting to take the off-shift crew back to base. The LCC was located eight miles from the main air base, one of a dozen launch control facilities scattered about the post. Each control facility was in charge of six silos, each housing an intercontinental ballistic missile.
One of the officers punched a code into the panel next to the outer door and it opened. They stepped into a short hallway and approached a massive vault door guarding the elevator. The Final Option Missile crest was painted on the elevator door. The first officer put his eyes up to the retinal scanner on the left side of the door. A mechanical voice echoed out of a speaker.
"Retina verified. Major Bartlett. Launch status valid."
The second officer followed suit, raising his glasses so his eyes could push up against the rubber.
"Retina verified. Captain Thayer. Launch status valid."
There was a brief pause, and then the computer spoke again.
"Launch officers on valid status verified. Please enter duty entry code."
On a numeric keypad next to the vault door, Bartlett entered the daily code they'd been given when departing Barksdale.
The unemotional voice of the computer echoed in the lobby. "Code valid. Look into the camera for duty crew identification."
Bartlett and Thayer stepped back and looked up into a video camera hanging from the ceiling. The image was relayed below them to the current crew on duty.
"On-duty crew identifies," the computer intoned. "Opening door."
The vault door slowly swung open. They walked into the elevator and the door shut. The elevator hurtled down a hundred feet and abruptly halted, causing them both to flex their knees.
The elevator doors opened to the rear of the launch control center. To the left of the elevator, a door went to a small area that contained enough stores for the crew for three months. To the right another door went to a small room that held two bunks, a bathroom, and a kitchen area. The two men walked Into the Final Option Missile Launch Control Center, a forty-by-forty room filled with rows of machinery. The entire facility was a capsule resting on four huge shock absorbers, theoretically allowing it to survive the concussion of a direct nuclear strike. Like the Space Command facility at Cheyenne Mountain, it had originally been built early in the Cold War, when there were those who thought such a thing was possible. Even with retrofits of stronger armor and better shocks, the crews of the LCC knew their survivability rate would be very low given an all-out nuclear exchange.
The dominating feature of the control room was a wide console at the front of the room, divided in half by a bulletproof glass wall that went from floor to ceiling and extended back eight feet. A chair was on either side of the glass, the duty stations for the crew. The glass prevented one crewman from access to both key controls and also from holding a gun on the other crew member to get him to turn the key.
In front of the console, various screens showed scenes from the surface directly above and the silos the center controlled. Many of the screens had the brightly colored display that indicated thermal imagery. The LCC crews, along with the rest of the military, had been on the highest alert during the recent world war, and the status had only been downgraded one level since the apparent end of hostilities.
A lieutenant stood up and saluted Bartlett. "FOM-LCC is yours. Nothing of note in the duty log. Status green. Still at stage three alert. Targeting matrices are still hot." He reached inside his flight suit and removed a set of two keys, one red, one blue, on a steel chain from around his neck and handed it to Bartlett. His partner did the same with Thayer.
Bartlett looked over at the large red digital clock overlooking both consoles. "You stand relieved as of zero-six-zero-four."
He looked over at the consoles as he passed over the pickup truck's key. "How's the computer acting?"
On top of the main computer console there was a sign spelling out the acronym:
FINAL OPTION COMMAND MATRIX TARGETING AND EXECUTION
The relieved officer pocketed the truck key, anxious to be gone. "Fine. No glitches. Have a good shift."
He and the other officer walked to the elevator and got on board. The doors shut and they were gone. Bartlett and Thayer took the seats at their respective terminals, separated by the glass wall. Bartlett watched the video screens, seeing the two crewmen get off the elevator in the upper facility. One screen showed the pure video feed, the other the thermal. On the thermal screen the two men were glowing red figures against a blue background. When they got in the truck the thermal sight picked up a perfect outline of their sitting forms. Then the engine started, showing up as a bright red glow in the front of the truck.
"Surface door secure," Thayer reported. "Hatch secure."
On the screen, the pickup truck pulled away. The gate in the fence closed behind it automatically.
"Fence secure," Thayer said. "LCC secure."
"Turn the sensors, missiles, and automatic guns on," Bartlett ordered.
Thayer threw a switch activating the machine guns and surface-to-air missiles on the roof of the LCC building. The former were slaved into motion sensors and would fire at anything moving inside the perimeter. The latter were directed by the site radar and could be launched by the crew against any air infiltration.
There was a moment of quiet and, in the background, the two men could hear the rhythmic thump of the powerful pumps that drained the water that flowed from the high water table in this part of Louisiana into the space outside of the LCC. They were only thirty miles from the coastal swamp that extended for sixty miles before hitting the Gulf of Mexico. Not the smartest place to build underground control enters and silos, but pork-barrel politics had determined the location, not military practicalities. It was theorized that if the pumps ever broke down or lost power, the LCC would be submerged within four hours. However, there were backups to the pumps and two powerful generators standing by in case power was lost.
Bartlett pulled out a binder. "Let's run through our checklist and make sure we're running smoothly." He flipped open to the first page. "Cable link to National Command Authority?"
Thayer looked at his console. "Cable link check."
"Satellite dish link to MILSTAR?"
"Satellite dish check."
An alarm chimed, and Bartlett paused.
Thayer looked at the radar feed. "Incoming craft. Range live miles, altitude six thousand feet. Closing fast. It's big."
"Damn," Bartlett muttered as he picked up the microphone for the FM radio. "Unidentified aircraft, you are entering restricted airspace. Veer off on a heading of one-six-zero degrees immediately."
There was no reply.
"Still coming," Thayer reported.
Bartlett flipped a switch, arming the Stinger missiles deployed on the roof of the LCC. "Unidentified aircraft, you will be shot down if you do not immediately veer off."
"I've got a visual," Thayer said.
Bartlett looked at the video display. A lean black form was approaching, definitely not of human origin. "What the hell is that?"
Bartlett hit the button and two Stingers launched. He watched the two missiles roar toward the Talon and hit with no effect.
Bartlett picked up the red phone that linked them with headquarters at Barksdale. He paused as he heard the distinctive sound of a gun's hammer being pulled back. He turned to look right down the barrel of Thayer's 9mm Beretta. The other crew member had left his station and come around the wall.
"What the hell—" Bartlett didn't finish the sentence as Thayer pulled the trigger.
The round hit Bartlett in the forehead, plowing through and exploding out the back, taking with it blood, brain, and bone, producing a gory splatter on the bulletproof glass.
Thayer glanced at the video display. The Talon had landed inside the fence. A door slid open and a gangway extended to the ground. Severa
l heavily armed men wearing an assortment of camouflage uniforms and carrying a spectrum of weapons sprinted off, taking up defensive positions. Then a tall, pale-skinned man walked off and headed into the LCC. Thayer put the gun down on his console and typed an override command into the computer. The steel doors in the surface entrance slowly opened.
Thayer heard the elevator rumble. He turned and faced to the rear as the doors slid open. Aspasia's Shadow walked in. No greetings were exchanged. Thayer was responding as the guardian computer underneath Mount Sinai had programmed him to upon receipt of the proper code word — which had arrived via e-mail less than three hours earlier.
Aspasia's Shadow went to the other console and reached inside Bartlett's jumpsuit, retrieving a red key on a metal chain and placing it around his own neck. Then he pulled Bartlett's body out of the seat, sending it tumbling to the floor. He sat down, ignoring the blood and brain matter staining the back of the chair.
"Are you ready?" Aspasia's Shadow asked. He grabbed a three-ring binder that had a red cover and Top Secret stamped in large letters. He had learned of the Final Option Missile from one of his Guides secreted high inside the United States intelligence community. He had targeted several of the crew members for imprinting and succeeded with three, one of them Thayer, ensuring a good chance that he would always have a Guide on duty in this LCC. It had been a backup plan, one of many that Aspasia's Shadow had put in place around the world, but this was perhaps the most powerful and most desperate.
Thayer looked over his panel. "Final Option Missile silo on-line. Missile systems show green."
"Open silo," Aspasia's Shadow ordered.
"Opening silo."
Four hundred meters from the surface entrance to the Final Option Missile LCC was another fenced compound. Inside the razor wire topping the fence, two massive concrete doors slowly rose until they reached the vertical position. Inside a specially modified LGM-118A Peacekeeper ICBM missile rested, gas venting.
"I've got green on Final Option Missile silo doors," Thayer announced, verifying what one of the video screens showed. He had trained so often to do this that he was acting almost instinctively. The only difference from his training routine was that he was acting under the motivation of the imprinting, not an order from the National Command Authority.
"Green on silo," Aspasia's Shadow confirmed, reading the checklist. He thought it very nice of the United States Air Force to have a step-by-step list of actions to be taken to launch the missile. It always made him feel superior to use humans' own inventions against them.
The tower at Barksdale Air Force Base served two functions. In the top, air traffic controllers ran the day-to-day operation of the airfield itself. On the floor below the top, the duty staff for the 341st Missile Wing ran the day-to-day operation of the LCCs and missiles under their control.
The opening of a single silo door was indicated by a lone red light going on among a cluster of green ones. The duty officer immediately picked up the phone and punched in the number for the Final Option Missile LCC. When the other end rang ten times with no answer, the duty officer put the phone down and hit the large red alarm button. A Klaxon wailed from the top of the tower as the duty officer picked up a different phone that had a direct line to the wing commander.
"What's the targeting matrix for Final Option Missile?" Aspasia's Shadow asked.
Thayer had already checked that information. Since the end of the Cold War the United States and Russia had reached an agreement where all ICBMs would no longer rest in their silos targeted at each other's countries. Instead, the standing targeting information programmed in each warhead was for a site in the middle of an ocean, called a Broad Ocean Area. Its purpose was to prevent disaster in case of accidental launch. In the event that a launch was actually desired and the missiles used in a conflict, a target matrix would be fed by computer into each missile, and they would be quickly reprogrammed with the new destinations for the warheads.
"Resting matrix is the Broad Ocean Area. However, a broad range of firing options was programmed in at the start of recent hostilities," Thayer said. "Primary standby matrix is against mainland China. Secondary matrix is for North Korea. Third priority is the Middle East."
"We can reprogram, correct?"
Thayer nodded. "After we launch the FOM, we can access it through MILSTAR. You can then program the targeting matrix once the missile is up." He tapped a laptop computer that had wires running from the back into the main console. "I've got this on-line and we can use it from a mobile spot as long as we can access MILSTAR." He held up a small green box with a small dish on top. "This is a secure SATCOM link."
Aspasia's Shadow smiled. "Oh, where I have in mind, we most definitely can access MILSTAR." He pulled the red key from under his shirt and inserted it into the appropriate slot. "Insert key." Thayer did the same.
"On my three," Aspasia's Shadow said, staring through the glass at Thayer. "One. Two. Three."
They turned their keys at the same time.
The solid rocket first stage of the LGM-118 A ignited. Umbilicals fell away and the rocket slowly began lifting on a tail of flame, clearing the silo.
Thayer was already moving before the rocket emerged from the silo. He disconnected the laptop computer from its port and slid it into a briefcase. Aspasia's Shadow led the way to the elevator and they headed for the surface.
The wing commander stared in disbelief at the flashing red lights indicating a missile launch. He looked out the tower window and saw a plume of smoke heading up into the morning sky.
"What launched?" he demanded.
The answer was the worst one he could have received. "Final Option Missile silo is empty, sir."
"Get me the LCC," he ordered the duty officer.
"Our link with the Final Option Missile LCC is down. Everything else shows secure." The duty officer reported.
The wing commander turned to the duty officer. "Get me Final Option Missile command computer on MILSTAR."
"I'm not getting an answer, sir."
"Status on Final Option Missile LCC other silos?"
"All other missile silos are still secure and in place."
The first stage of the Peacekeeper finished its sixty-second burn and separated, the second stage immediately taking over. The missile had been going straight up, simply absorbing the upward thrust of the first stage, but the second stage had some thrust vector and the rocket turned slightly to the north and west, ascending at over a thousand miles an hour and still accelerating.
The second stage burned out and explosive bolts fired, causing its large metal casing to fall away. The Peacekeeper was now almost out of the atmosphere as the third stage fired cleanly.
The third stage stopped firing but did not separate. There was still fuel left, enough for the payload to be further maneuvered if needed. The Peacekeeper was in space, at a point above the middle of Kansas. Small thruster rockets fired as the onboard computer checked its position with various satellites to settle the rocket into a geosynchronous orbit.
After a few moments of firing they too fell silent and the Peacekeeper was in position.
Aspasia's Shadow's Talon lifted off and headed directly upward, moving even faster than the missile that had just been launched.
The wing commander grabbed the red phone. "Space Command, are you tracking an ICBM launch from out site?"
"Roger that. We also have another controlled craft heading upward at escape velocity."
"What kind of craft?"
"Profile fits with an alien ship."
"Oh my God," the wing commander muttered. He clicked the phone off, then dialed the war room.
The capsule on the end of the Peacekeeper rocket split in two, both shells falling away. Bolted inside, the Final Option Missile payload activated itself. It was not a warhead. Instead, solar panels slowly unfolded, gathering the energy of the sun to complete the boot-up of the computer and communications system. A boom mast extended, a half dozen satellite dishes attached
to it.
One of the satellite dishes twisted and turned, seeking out the closest MILSTAR satellite. It found one that was in its own geosynchronous orbit two hundred miles away. An inquiry burst was transmitted from Final Option Missile to the MILSTAR satellite on a secure link. A positive link burst was sent back by the MILSTAR computer, indicating that Final Option Missile was now on-line with MILSTAR. The other satellite dishes were oriented toward Earth and they sent out their own checks, linking with submarines, bombers, and launch control centers.
Inside, the master computer checked itself and found all systems to be functioning.
Final Option Missile was ready.
CHAPTER 14: THE PRESENT
* * *
CAMP ROWE
Turcotte returned Captain Manning's salute. The Space Command team had loaded all their gear in one of the cargo bays near the front of the mothership. The dozen men were stowing equipment and performing last-minute checks to make sure they had everything they would need. There were numerous pallets of equipment scattered throughout the bay.
"Are you ready?" Turcotte asked Manning.
"Yes, sir. We had everything packaged on pallets. We flew it here on a C-17 and just rolled it all in here."
Turcotte noted several containers marked with an atomic symbol. "Nuclear warheads?"
Manning nodded. "Yes, sir. Ten tac nukes loaded into Tomahawk cruise missiles."
"What if the target is shielded?" Yakov asked.
Manning shrugged. "Maybe they'll have to turn off the shield when they turn the array on. If so, we might be able to drop one of these in during that window of opportunity."
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