FOREWORD

by Ten To Midnight--Free(Lit)

  Yazov watched tiredly as the final act in mankind’s epic story played itself out. The two launch officers had entered the attack and authentication codes into their communicators. Now their fingers hovered over the flashing buttons that would effect America’s destruction. They watched Yazov, tensely awaiting his final order. Once he gave it, they would press their buttons simultaneously.

  A low-frequency radio link had been established with the Russian naval base at Murmansk. On the other end was an extremely frightened Admiral, who knew that his entire future could be measured in moments. As soon as he confirmed impact at Murmansk – probably by vaporizing in a scorching nuclear firestorm – Yazov would issue the launch order.

  Yazov had considered offering reassurance to the man, but knew that any platitudes he could muster would probably seem empty under the circumstances. What could you say to a man whose only remaining purpose in life was to let everybody know when he had died?

  “Thank you for staying with us, Admiral,” Yazov heard himself say. “You are a true patriot. A good Russian.”

  The Admiral’s voice cracked as he replied. “I have nowhere else to go, General Yazov.”

  FEMA GOVERNMENT BUNKER, MOUNT WEATHER

  Nobody had seen John Huth since the President’s incapacitation. It took two precious minutes for the U.S. Secret Service to determine that he had slunk off to his private quarters, located nearly a quarter of a mile away from the main chamber where everybody else was gathered.

  Fortunately, the Mount Weather complex boasted its own internal transit system, which allowed the two agents responsible for locating Huth to reach his quarters within moments. They knocked on his door, but received no reply. Attempts to open the door confirmed that it was locked from the inside. It took the combined strength of both agents to smash the lock. When they did so, they found -

  - John Huth, laying on his bunk, eyes closed as if asleep. One of the agents attempted to wake him up, but it was immediately apparent that he was no longer alive. The other agent picked up an empty bottle of painkillers that was laying on the floor; the only object out of place in an otherwise tidy room.

  On a cabinet beside the bunk was a half empty bottle of Brandy minus its cap. The same agent who had tried to revive Huth picked up the bottle. Only then did he see the envelope upon which the bottle was placed. Scrawled on the envelope in thick red pen was the word ‘GUILTY’. He picked it up, exchanging an anxious glance with his partner. Upon feeling the envelope, he realized that it contained something.

  “Don’t open it,” the other agent told him, reading his partner’s intrigued expression. “That’s not our job.”

  “No,” he admitted, “I don’t suppose it is.”

  FEMA SPECIAL FACILITY, OLNEY, MARYLAND

  “Come on, come on,” Lewis growled to himself, painfully aware of every passing second. He could feel the tension in every muscle in his body, and sensed that the others in the room felt similarly anxious. He had learned over the years that tension wasn’t just an abstract; it was something tangible. You could smell it. You could feel it.

  He exchanged an uneasy glance with Margaret, whose fingers were drumming on the communications console as she awaited a response from Mount Weather.

  Six minutes to go.

  “Can we put this thing on speaker?” she asked Jago.

  “Yes, Ma’am, of… of course,” the FEMA officer stammered. He reached over her shoulder and flicked a switch. Now everybody could hear the same silence coming from Mount Weather.

  “Where the hell are they?” Jefferson thought aloud. His face was covered with a thin film of sweat. That was partly due to the extreme humidity within the bunker, but it had far more to do with fear.

  A brief burst of static emanated from the loudspeaker. It was followed by a man’s voice.

  “Mrs. Mitchell?”

  Margaret immediately recognized the southern drawl as that of George Halligan. She breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “Yes, George. Is that you?”

  “Yes,” he confirmed testily. “I’ve got the AG and Judge Shaw here with me. What’s going on? And why isn’t Nielsen making this call?”

  “I need you to listen very carefully,” she remarked, her tone amazingly even. She seemed to be handling the situation far better than anybody else, Lewis thought. “I’ve just become aware of certain information that could have a bearing on the validity of any launch orders issued by Nielsen.”

  She went on to explain, in as few words as possible, what Lewis had told her about Nielsen’s involvement in arms smuggling to Ukraine. Halligan listened quietly throughout.

  The next voice was that of Attorney General Kate Winslow. “How did you come into this information, Ma’am?”

  Lewis touched Margaret’s shoulder. She passed the microphone to him, deciding that the explanation would sound better coming from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

  “Ma’am, this is Dr. Stein, National Security Advisor.”

  “Who?” Judge Shaw wondered aloud. Lewis’s appointment had never been made official, coming as it did in the middle of a nuclear war.

  “It’s okay,” Halligan assured his colleagues. “Proceed, Dr Stein.”

  “My source is the very same CIA field officer who’s been delivering this equipment to the Ukrainians. I know this guy. I’ve worked with him in the field. He’s as straight as they come. We knew when this started that Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal was probably stolen from Russia, but we didn’t know how they made it work. Now we do.” He inhaled deeply, beginning to crave for a cigarette. “Mr. Speaker. Even if there’s a one percent chance that there might be something in this, isn’t that enough to bring into question the validity of Nielsen’s authority to exercise command?”

  There was some whispered discussion at Mount Weather; too quiet for anybody to ascertain what was being said. It was Winslow who responded.

  “Where is this” - she spoke the words with obvious skepticism - “CIA field officernow then?”

  Margaret took the microphone back from Lewis. “He’s holed up in our Frankfurt Consulate,” she informed the AG. “Which is, I’m sorry to say, surrounded by the German Army.”

  “The constitutional implications of this,” Judge Shaw noted in a gravely barotone, “are complex to say the least. Even if you had some tangible evidence of Nielsen’s involvement in a conspiracy, it would require an extraordinary joint session of Congress to vote on impeachment.”

  “We don’t have time for that, Marcus,” Margaret hissed through clenched teeth. “Our bombers will start hitting Russia in just over five minutes. After that, it’s all over. There won’t be a Congress. I’m asking for you to bend the rules here. I’m asking for…”

  Halligan cut her off. “Hold on a second, Ma’am. For all we know, you people could be Russian impersonators. I know they’ve got people trained to sound like our own.”

  “Oh, for Heaven’s sake, George,” Margaret retorted. “You don’t really believe that, do you? It’s that sort of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place. John Huth will correlate the details. Where is he?”

  “The Secret Service are trying to track him down,” Winslow reported. “This is an awfully large facility, you know.”

  Halligan returned to the issue at hand. “If I’m hearing you correctly, Dr. Stein, you’re suggesting that we stand down our forces while their bombers and submarines prepare to fire on us. If we go with your suggestion, at the very least we’re triggering a constitutional crisis. At worst, we’re leaving ourselves totally exposed.”

  Lewis leaned over Margaret’s shoulder and spoke into the microphone, struggling to maintain his composure. Just for once, Lewis, he told himself,hold your temper . “That’s not entirely accurate, Mr. Speaker,” he said. “If Nielsen’s authority to exercise command is revoked, you will by default assume National Command Authority. Am I correct?”

  “I imagine so,” came Halligan’s hesitant response. Actually, in the absence of the Vice President, the Speaker woul
d have ordinarily become NCA following Mitchell’s incapacitation. Indeed, there was a precedent for such a scenario in Gerald Ford’s ascension to power. Nielsen, as Secretary of Defense, had taken control through extraordinary constitutional provisions for Presidential succession in wartime.

  “In that case,” Lewis remarked, “you will have full authority to issue a launch order.”

  “Yes I would,” the Speaker replied testily. “What’s your point, Dr Stein?”

  “My point is that as soon as the first Russian bomb hits the United States, you can order our bombers back in, and issue new launch orders to the TACAMO aircraft. The subs will receive those orders the next time they surface. I’m not saying that we should stand down completely. Our nuclear forces will still maintain alert status. I’m just asking for time for us to turn this thing off. If we don’t take our chance now, we’ll never get another.”

  Again, there was some whispered conferral on the other end.

  “Who would issue the order to stand down our bombers?” Winslow asked.

  Margaret answered that question. “That would be the StratCom ‘Looking Glass’ aircraft.”

  “Who won’t even take our call without valid authentication codes,” Halligan pointed out. “Do you see our point? Even if we revoked Nielsen’s authority right now, there isn’t enough time to effect a handover of authentication codes before our bombs start hitting Russia.”

  “You mean you’re just giving up?” Lewis exclaimed. “This isn’t just about constitutional politics, Mr. Speaker. This is about everything.”

  “I’m sorry, Dr Stein,” Winslow remarked sadly. “But we’re simply being realistic.”

  Lewis closed his eyes. Margaret’s head slumped in desolation.

  It was all over.

  ABOARD KNEECAP

  “It’s time, sir,” General Shelley whispered in Westwood’s ear. “Care to come upstairs to watch the show?” He was referring, of course, to the spectacle of Nielsen and Dunster issuing final launch orders to the TACAMO aircraft. That would happen as soon as confirmation was received of the destruction of Murmansk.

  Which would happen in four minutes.

  “What’s the point?” Westwood muttered sourly, still staring through the porthole at the clouds below. “I think I’d rather just enjoy the view. Last time I’ll ever get the chance.”

  Reynolds looked up. “Might also be the last chance we get to stop that old bastard,” he remarked.

  “You really believe that, Jim?” Bishop snorted. “I think we’re long past that.”

  The Chief of Staff chuckled bitterly. “Y’know, I once heard this story about a guy who couldn’t get it up. For twenty years, he lived in denial. For twenty years, his wife didn’t get any. Of course, they maintained the facade of having a normal marriage. Nobody had a clue that the old man was a limp dick. Anyway, one day, his wife decided she’d had enough. She went to this bar and picked up this 21-year-old kid. Took him home, fucked his brains to hell. And then, in her post-coital ecstasy, she died of a massive heart attack. They found her in this young guy’s bed with a big smile on her face. When her husband learned of her death, and the way she died, he put a gun to his head and blew his brains out.”

  Copeland shook his head. “What’s your point, Jim?”

  Reynolds shrugged. “Don’t have one. I just wanted to tell that story to somebody before I died.”

  Westwood allowed himself a smile, knowing that it might be his last. The smile became a chortle, and then a hearty laugh that reverberated off the walls of the cabin. It was an infectious, booming laugh. Even Bishop and Copeland found themselves chuckling. “You know something, Jim?” he said through his tears of mirth. “You are one fucking piece of work.”

  “I’ll take that with the affection with which it was intended, General,” Reynolds smiled back.

  “Oh, what the hell?” Westwood shook his head acquiescently. “We’ve sat through most of the play. Might as well see the final act.”

  The four men, together with General Shelley, headed up to the communications room to watch Paul Nielsen destroy a world.

  FEMA SPECIAL FACILITY, OLNEY, MARYLAND

  “It’s not your fault,” Jefferson told Lewis, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “You did more than anybody else to try and stop this thing.”

  “Yeah,” Lewis snorted skeptically. “That’ll look good on my tombstone. Here lies Lewis Stein – he did his best to stop the fucking world blowing up.”

  Margaret was fighting back tears. She took Lewis’s hand in her own. “Steve’s right,” she said. “You mustn’t beat yourself up about it. We knew we only had a slim chance of success. But at least we tried.” She paused to wipe a tear from her eyes. “For what it’s worth, at least you’ll get to be with your wife at the end.”

  Lewis furrowed his brow in puzzlement. “What do you mean?”

  “She’s here, Lewis. Operating on my husband.”

  “Jo’s here?” I’ll get to hold her one last time, he realized. He had faced death so many times that he had stopped fearing it long ago. His only fear was that of dying without having made his peace with Jo, without having had the chance to say goodbye. He knew that, so long as he could spend his final moments with her, he could face the end with dignity. I’m sorry I couldn’t save the world for you, Jo. I tried…

  But not hard enough…

  Three minutes. Slightly more time than it took to boil an egg, slightly less than to run a mile. How long to send a fax? An idea had just occurred to him. His back stiffened, his expression registering an edge of hope. Maybe, just maybe it’s possible.

  Margaret saw the change in his expression. Her grip on his hand tightened. “What is it, Lewis?”

  He snatched the microphone. “Mrs. Winslow. Are you still there?”

  “Yes,” the AG responded. “We’re still here.” Then urgency crept into her voice as the room at Mount Weather filled with raised voices. “Hold on, Dr Stein, something’s just happened…”

  Lewis’s stomach clenched into a ball of ice. It’s started…

  B-2A BOMBER – SPIRIT SIXTEEN – OVER THE BALTIC SEA

  Once again, McCann mentally catalogued the loved ones she would never see again, although she knew that however this mission panned out, they were probably already dead. What was left for her now, other than the mission? Unlike Logan, McCann hadn’t advised her husband to leave town when the alert was declared. In fact, she hadn’t even been able to contact him. He was at a conference in New York and his cellular phone was switched off. Perhaps New York had been spared, she thought. Unlikely, but possible. She offered a silent prayer that he would be spared the agony of survival, of stumbling sightlessly through the charred ruins.

  Logan was lost in his own thoughts, still wondering if Beth had made it to Iowa. Still wondering if it mattered.

  “What happens to us when we’ve done our job?” McCann said, checking her instruments. Neither her nor Logan knew thatHammer 16 was to be the first American bomber to reach its assigned target. She did know, however, that the target was less than four minutes’ away.

  Logan tightened his lips, pondering the question. “I think you already know the answer to that, Laura,” he said finally. They had discussed this subject before, of course. But such discussions had always been abstract, concerning a situation that neither of them had thought they would ever have to face. They had agreed, long ago, that if they ever found themselves in this kind of situation, they would go down with the last of their nuclear warheads. Instantaneous suicide. Infinitely preferable to ditching in the middle of Siberia and waiting for cold, hunger and radiation to take them.

  McCann nodded. She understood. Her only purpose in life now was to release sixteen nuclear bombs and die. In that respect, her destiny was as certain as the billions of other poor souls out there.

  On Logan’s HUD, a diamond shaped symbol called the CCIP (Continuously Computed Impact Point) appeared near the bottom of the Bomb Fall Line. It began to move steadily up
the line towards the green square that represented the target coordinates. When the two symbols merged, an alarm tone would confirm lock-on, and the first ofHammer 16’ s nuclear bombs would be released on the dual authentication of its crew.

  “Commencing bomb run,” Logan reported. “Target is pickled.” He turned to McCann. His eyes looked as though they were moist. McCann would never know whether they really were, or whether it was just a trick of the light. “Good luck, Laura.”

  She said nothing. Her eyes were fixed on the CCIP, her mind focused on what it represented.

  FEMA SPECIAL FACILITY, OLNEY, MARYLAND

  “Will somebody tell me what the hell is going on?” Margaret yelled into the microphone. Lewis placed a hand on her shoulder, thinking it somewhat ironic that for once he was the one trying to calm somebody down, and not the other way around.

  Winslow’s voice replied almost instantly. “I’m sorry, Ma’am. John Huth is dead. Seems like he took his own life.”

  “Oh, shit,” Lewis hissed. What else can go wrong? Come on God, just give us a chance. “There goes our evidence against Nielsen.”

  “Not necessarily,” Judge Shaw said. “He left a note behind. It’s a full confession, actually, corroborating your allegations against Nielsen. It looks like we have the material evidence we need.”

  “Problem is,” Halligan added, “there isn’t time to organize an emergency vote on his impeachment. Not without bending the rules.”

  Lewis wasn’t listening. His mind had returned to the idea he’d begun to form in his mind just a minute or two earlier. Bending the rules. Think, Lewis. Think… The idea was still gelling in his mind as he voiced it in rapid, machine-gun fashion. “Ma’am. I need from you a note, a note signed by yourself and countersigned by Judge Shaw and the Speaker, revoking Nielsen’s command authority. Scribble it on the back of an envelope if you have to. Can you fax that to me?”