“Yes, ma’am.”
“And find out where the hell Air Force One is.” Just in case, she thought, hoping it wouldn’t come to that.
She glanced at her watch.
One—possibly two—of the bombers would be in the air by now.
She hoped she wasn’t too late.
CHAPTER 64
“Andrew?”
He didn’t answer.
“Andrew! What did she mean?”
The president seemed confused, unable to focus. His body had gone slack in his chair after he’d spoken to Perez. “Jessie?” he said. “I . . . I don’t understand . . .”
“Answer me!” She slapped him. Hard.
The president’s head snapped back, a small string of saliva hanging from the corner of his mouth.
“She asked you if the Aussies were on board. What did she mean?”
The president stared at her like a dog that had just felt its master’s boot in the ribs, not understanding what it had possibly done wrong.
General Metzger leaned against the wall of the cabin. He casually lit a cigarette. “You’ve used too much. He’s too far gone.” The first puff of smoke from his lungs obscured his face.
“Bullshit. He’s still here.” Jessie leaned closer. “Andrew, I need you to talk to me. I need you to talk to me now, okay?”
“Jessie? What did . . . I do . . . wrong?”
She cupped his face in her hands, holding his head steady so he had to look directly into her eyes. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Andrew. But she said something to you, the vice president said something to you, and I need to know what it meant.”
Andrew stared at her. One pupil slightly larger than the other. No response whatsoever.
Another puff of smoke. “It’s not going to work. He’s fried.”
Jessie stood. The president’s chin dropped to his chest. “He shouldn’t be this way.”
“He’s weak. You overestimated him.” Through the cloud of smoke, the ash tip burned bright for a second, and then disappeared.
“No! He’s one of the strongest men I’ve ever met—I had to use more. But there’s something wrong.”
“Okay, so you say he’s not weak, but here we are, flying on Air Force One with a head of lettuce sitting on the throne of the free world, drooling all over himself.” Metzger dropped his cigarette into a water glass, the hot ash dying with a sharp hiss. “You’re the goddamned national security advisor. What the hell did they mean? Are the Aussies on board? We don’t consult with Australia when we order a nuclear strike!”
It didn’t make any sense to her.
Are the Aussies on board with this?
Of course they are. The Aussies are on board.
Suddenly, she knew.
There was no other explanation.
“That bitch! It was a code phrase! It was a fucking code!” He’s still in there, all right, she thought. Andrew—or at least a small part of the man he’d once been—was still in there, floating behind the curtain of obedience she’d wrapped around his mind. He’d reacted to the vice president’s words, momentarily breaking through the curtain in response to the phrase Perez had spoken.
Are the Aussies on board with this?
Quite to Jessie’s disbelief, Andrew still possessed the strength of mind to act on his own, to speak with his own voice. If only for a few seconds.
Of course they are. The Aussies are on board.
He’d communicated something to the vice president, using a simple phrase. Something preplanned. Understood by both, but by no others. A challenge. And a reply.
“A code? For what?”
“I’m not sure. A recall?” she asked.
“Impossible. The bombers have received their orders. There’s no stopping them unless the president directs them to abort the mission using the same process he used to launch them. The order has to go through the proper channels. It has to come from him. I could get on the horn to the pilots right now and order them to return to base, and they would just give me the finger. As long as the commander in chief is alive, they won’t take orders from anyone else. Not even the vice president.”
“We have to be sure.”
“I am sure.”
“You’re underestimating him.” She mashed a button on the edge of the conference table, connecting her to Air Force One’s airborne communications center. “This is the national security advisor. The president wants current status on operation Three Kings.”
The Marine colonel on the other end answered immediately. “Stand by one, ma’am.”
Metzger checked his watch. “The first bomber should almost be to its target. The other two are airborne by now, as well.” He lit another cigarette.
The colonel’s voice sounded from an overhead speaker built into the ceiling of the president’s cabin. “Ma’am, aircraft one is inbound to target, twenty-seven minutes from release. Aircraft two and three are en route to their release points . . . Aircraft two will reach its target in . . .” A pause. “. . . twenty minutes. Aircraft three will reach its target in seventeen minutes.”
“Have there been any attempts to recall the aircraft?” Jessie asked.
“Ma’am?” the colonel answered, obviously confused. He knew only the president could order a recall. There had been no such order given.
“Has anyone tried to interfere with this strike!”
“The missions are progressing as planned, ma’am. No deviations.”
“Thank you, Colonel. Keep us apprised.” She closed the comm channel and turned to the general. “Okay, we know it wasn’t a recall code. But what could it have been for?”
“It really doesn’t matter,” Metzger said, glancing at his watch again. “There’s no stopping them now.” He smiled, thin lips sliding back to reveal small, yellow-stained teeth.
If it was a code between the president and the vice president, Jessie thought, there has to be something happening right now that we’re not aware of. She’d devoted her life to this very moment, the moment when the world would fall into an unrecoverable state of chaos, and she, and those like her, would enable the end of one chapter in history and the start of another.
So, so close.
But something was wrong.
She could feel it.
She couldn’t let it fail now.
She turned to the president and pulled the vial from her blouse pocket, along with another surgical glove.
“How many of those things do you have?”
She ignored Metzger and placed an entire drop into her palm.
Andrew struggled to turn his head to face her, his eyes blank, expressionless. His mouth hung open in a drug-induced sigh.
She tilted his head back and with her thumb and index finger, spread his right eyelid wide open. The eye lolled lazily in the socket, unfocused.
“What are you doing? You’re going to push him over the edge!”
“No. No, I’m not. He needs more . . . persuasion.”
“We still need him,” Metzger said. “He has to be able to function.”
“He’ll sleep after I get what I want. He’ll be fine.” Jessie held her hand over the president’s open eye and tilted her palm. The drop trickled off the glove and into his eye. She closed the eyelid and held it closed.
She quickly repeated the procedure with his other eye.
The drug quickly entered Andrew’s bloodstream. Jessie had never used this much of the substance before.
“It’s time to talk to me, Andrew, time to tell me the truth.” She kissed his slack, open mouth. “Tell me what you meant, Andrew . . . What did you tell her? She’s a threat, Andrew. You need to stop her.”
The president slowly raised his head and opened his eyes. The blankness was gone. They were clear and focused.
“Jessie?”
“That
’s it . . . Tell me, Andrew, tell me now . . .”
Metzger tossed his half-burned cigarette onto the floor and quickly lit another. He leaned back against the cabin and checked his watch for a third time.
Twenty minutes until their time would finally come. Three American cities would soon be incinerated by nuclear weapons.
He watched the second hand sweep across the face of his watch.
There really was no way to stop it now.
CHAPTER 65
“Excuse me, Admiral?”
“What is it, Colonel?”
“We just received an urgent message from Cutter.” Cutter was the code name for the vice president.
“Cutter? Did you happen to ask her why the living hell she’s taken her aircraft off of her prescribed orbit? I can’t keep track of all the aircraft in my airspace with her roaming around on her own and disregar—”
“Sir, you need to see this.”
Keaton Grierson took the message from the colonel’s hand and quickly read it.
The simple, five-letter word immediately chilled him.
When he’d been stationed in Omaha, Nebraska, as part of USSTRATCOM a few years before, he’d run across the term Aksarben a few times. Apparently, it was the name of an old 1920s Omaha indoor horseracing track that had been used for different sporting events in the city over the years. Aksarben, it came to dawn on him, was Nebraska spelled backwards. He’d thought the trick was quite humorous.
This, however, was not.
The message spelled out S-U-T-O-P. POTUS—the acronym for President of the United States—spelled backwards.
Only one person could release this message.
And it had only one meaning.
“Is this verified, Colonel?”
“Yes, sir. Verified. The vice president is coming up on a Flash Immediate Decision Conference within the minute.”
“Jesus Christ. Where are the B-2s right now?”
“Aircraft one is nineteen minutes from release over Minneapolis-St. Paul, aircraft two is twelve minutes from release over Oklahoma City, and aircraft three is nine minutes from release over Little Rock.”
There’s not enough time. “Colonel, I want every fighter in the air that’s close enough to intercept vectored toward those three B-2s now!” He stood and headed toward the conference room two doors down from his office, the colonel a step behind. “Supersonic, weapons hot. Firing orders will come from me. Understood?”
“Most of them aren’t armed for air-to-air, Admiral. They’re striking the—”
“They can ram the friggin’ B-2s if they need to!”
“Got it, skipper.”
Grierson made it to his conference room just as the vice president flashed up on his screen.
“Gentlemen.” Allison wasted no time. “The president is under duress. I have reason to believe that General Thad Metzger and Ms. Jessie Hruska have compromised the president. A short time ago, I challenged President Smith using the Eagle Seven Four codes, and he responded with the duress phrase. This has been verified by my onboard controllers. Because of this, I am exercising my authority under the 1974 Emergency Wartime Command and Control Act, effective immediately. Your orders are to take all necessary and prudent action to stop operation Three Kings.”
The act was devised shortly after the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974. Its purpose was to provide a check and balance over the control—and more importantly, the use—of nuclear weapons. The theory was, a president whose mental faculties were less than reliable—as Nixon’s reportedly were during the Watergate scandal and the days leading up to his resignation—had to be watched like a hawk when it came to using the “nuclear football.” Under the original version of the act, the vice president could keep the president from executing the nation’s nuclear forces if he or she thought the president was acting irrationally. Over the years, the act had been changed to prevent a president under duress from executing nuclear forces; the only way a president’s order could be countermanded would be by a code phrase passed to the vice president from the president. The act was known only by the president, the vice president, and a few select military officers in key positions. The SUTOP message was the end result—a simple five-letter phrase that meant the president was under duress, and the orders he or she had issued were not to be followed. It was one of the most highly classified secrets the nation possessed.
“This is STRATCOM airborne. Ma’am, the aircraft won’t respond to any direction other than from the president. The only way to stop them this close to their targets is to—”
Shoot them down. Keating Grierson broke in. “Ma’am, this is Admiral Grierson, NORTHCOM. I’ve ordered all fighters in the vicinity to proceed at max speed for the bombers. What are their rules of engagement?” If they can make it in time, he didn’t add.
“Stop the B-2s. Any means necessary.” Allison knew she’d just ordered Grierson to kill three aircrews, six highly trained airmen doing their duty. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. But she knew if the death of those airmen meant saving countless innocent lives on the ground, then there was no other choice. “Am I clear?”
“Clear, ma’am.”
“Admiral, I also need you to intercept Air Force One. Orders are to escort the aircraft back to Andrews AFB and keep it on the ground until the president can be taken to a secure area.”
Grierson didn’t want to ask the next question, but he had to. “If Air Force One doesn’t respond?” He knew what the answer would be.
“You are authorized to shoot down Air Force One, Admiral.”
CHAPTER 66
On board Air Force One, General Metzger received an urgent message from the cockpit crew.
“General, we’re being instructed to return to Andrews.”
“By whom?”
“The Northeast Air Defense Sector controller, sir.”
All of a sudden, Metzger knew exactly what the code phrase meant. Somehow, the phrase the president had spoken to Allison Perez had allowed her—no, authorized her—to subvert the president’s authority.
Are the Aussies on board with this?
—Are you under duress? ’Cause you’re acting kinda weird there, mister, dropping nukes all over the place. This is our little secret word game, remember?
Of course they are. The Aussies are on board.
—I’m in a world of shit right now, and you’d better do something about it as quickly as you can, little missy. Now, I have to get back to drooling all over myself. Thanks for the momentary wake-up call!
Smart girl, he thought. A dangerous adversary as well, which was somewhat surprising, considering she was just a fucking Coastie. He’d like to kill her himself, if he got the chance. With his bare hands.
Metzger knew if they were being ordered back to Andrews, they’d eventually—if they refused—be forced to land, by whatever means necessary. The writing was on the wall, and he had to act fast.
“Colonel Jepperson, we have reason to believe the vice president has usurped her authority because she was in disagreement with the president’s execution order for operation Three Kings. Disregard all further orders unless they come from the president, the national security advisor, or me. We may have a coup d’état on our hands, being led by the vice president.”
“Sir?”
Glancing over at Jessie Hruska, he said to the pilot, “And I want you to listen very closely to what I’m about to say . . .”
“Ripper flight is supersonic. Time to intercept, uh . . . seventeen minutes.”
Captain Brian Marshall, United States Air Force, had just pulled off a tanker, refilling his thirsty tanks after a strike against one of the areas of stationary ground wave casings, when he had received his orders, directly from Admiral Grierson himself.
He’d twice asked for confirmation before he realized the admiral was serious. Dead serious.
His flight—two F-35A Lightning II strike fighters—had immediately headed north toward Minneapolis-St. Paul to intercept the B-2 on its bombing run toward the city.
His two fighters were closest, and they’d drawn the short straw.
The bat-winged bomber was armed with a nuclear weapon.
His orders were to stop the B-2. To shoot it down before it dropped its bomb.
Kill two fellow airmen.
Maybe, two guys—or gals—he knew personally.
What a crappy day this was turning out to be.
An electronic voice sounded in his ears. “Ripper, this is Bandsaw. Target is at angels three-zero, heading zero-one-zero based on mission profile and last position report. I have no radar contact at this time. No response to mission abort order. Weapons free, I repeat, weapons free.”
“Ripper lead copies,” Captain Marshall said, answering the controller sitting in an orbiting E-3 Sentry roughly one hundred miles to the south.
If the E-3, with its gigantic rotating radar dome, couldn’t pick up the B-2, his smaller radar wouldn’t have a chance of finding it. The things were built to be invisible to radar in the first place. And they were.
He knew he’d have to spot it visually if he had any chance of killing it before it reached its drop point.
To keep the bomb from falling.
To keep Minneapolis-St. Paul from being obliterated.
He pushed his throttle to the max setting—it was already there, but he couldn’t help but push it. His fighter was slicing through the air at one and a half times the speed of sound, his wingman half a mile off to his right, slightly behind and above his position.
“Ripper Two, lead.”
“Two.”
“Keep your eyes peeled, Harv.”
“I’m lookin’, Brian, I’m lookin’.” A pause. “What the hell do you think is going on?”
The Gemini Effect Page 24