by Bob Mayer
They tried. A Pan-Atomic Canal across Nicaragua was one concept. Detonating twenty-two nuclear bombs to clear the way for I-40 in the Bristol Mountains was another.
So they blew a 104-kiloton bomb on Yucca Flats that produced the Sedan Crater and also sent a radioactive dust plume across the country that reached the Mississippi River.
After $770 million spent, it was decided Plowshare sort of, kind of wasn’t the smartest idea a bunch of scientists had come up with.
But the weapons testing went on until 1992 when a treaty was signed halting all nuclear testing, the diminutive grandfather of SAD.
Left sitting out in this wasteland were the facilities and devices being prepared for further tests. Orphaned, they were snatched up by Pinnacle, which to that point had been using abandoned missile silos and a scattering of “retired” bombers kept in barely flyable condition at the Tucson “Boneyard.”
Pinnacle was consolidated at Icecap, a large tower that housed the drill needed to tear into the desert floor and position another device for testing. Alongside Icecap stood a warehouse with the gear needed to support the project. Three four-mile-long sections of rail track extended out from the tower, going nowhere in particular. Their purpose was to allow the three diesel engines in the tower to pull their flatbed carrying an ICBM missile out to launch. There was also a missile on the top of the drilling platform, just underneath the retractable roof.
That gave Pinnacle the ability to launch four missiles, which was double the number ever used in actual war. Which meant Pinnacle had the ability to start a war.
The entire facility was manned by three men but defended by an array of automated defenses that had been skimmed from developmental programs over the past decades.
The ultimate defense, of course, was the radiation. The three men were ensconced in a shielded bunker fifty feet under the desolate landscape. Housed above them were twelve other nuclear warheads, all primed with self-destruct. The men spent one month on, two months off, rotating with two other crews. They were all paid top dollar and they were all committed to the cause.
The really scary thing that Neeley had learned from Brennan was that this facility, while the heart of the Pinnacle, wasn’t all there was to it. There were other nuclear warheads wired into it, the exact number even Brennan or the men manning it didn’t know. The years had buried the locations and numbers with the men who’d held the secrets.
The one in Nebraska had been one of those. How many more were out there was anybody’s guess.
With General Riggs delivering the correct password, the tall doors on three sides of the drill house slid up. The automated diesel locomotives began powering up. At the top of the drill house, the roof slid aside, revealing an ICBM.
A button was pushed and the preparation for launch sequence began.
“With the White House compromised and the PEOC occupied by General Riggs,” Ms. Jones said, “we do not have our usual last-ditch backups.”
“She means cruise missiles armed with nukes,” Mac said to Roland by way of explanation.
“We should receive word shortly on the location of Pinnacle,” Ms. Jones continued, “and the optimal solution would be to wipe it out completely, unless, of course, it’s located among civilian targets.”
“I doubt that,” Eagle said. “They’ve hidden this stockpile somewhere deep and inaccessible would be my estimation.”
“I concur,” Ms. Jones said. “But I still believe we are going to have to be surgical with our strike when the time comes. We don’t want word of this to get out. It would cause considerable consternation among the populace to learn there’s been a rogue nuclear arm to our military.”
“It would be a clusterfuck,” Mac said to Roland. The big man smacked the smaller man on the back of his head.
“I get it,” Roland said.
“Yes, Ms. Jones,” Nada said, “but we have to assume they’ve got a self-destruct. They had one in Nebraska. And I don’t think we’re going to get lucky again.”
“Mister Nada…” Ms. Jones began, but hesitated.
Everyone turned to look at the team sergeant. Ms. Jones never hesitated.
“Yes?” Nada prompted.
“I need you to get something from the Vault.”
Nada was on his feet. “Yes, ma’am. And that is?”
And when she told him, they all knew why she’d hesitated.
But Nada didn’t. He gestured at Eagle. “You drive.”
And the two of them headed for the Humvee parked nearby to drive into the bunker built in the side of Groom Mountain where the Vault containing the Nightstalkers’ support was located.
The breach team General Riggs sent down the tunnel to the basement of the White House outnumbered the Secret Service guards in hazmat suits three to one. They also had superior firepower. They also wore the uniforms of the US military, which caused the Secret Service agents to hesitate. The soldiers did not.
Within seconds the three agents were flex-cuffed to a pipe that ran along the wall, cursing at their fellow federal employees and warning of infection as they opened up the barricaded door. Standing on the other side was Major Preston, an unconscious Secret Service agent at his feet.
Preston stepped through and the door was shut again. The party made its way back to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center.
“General,” Preston said as he put the football on the conference table in front of Riggs.
Everyone in the room fixated on the case.
Riggs smiled and touched a blue button set into the tabletop in front of him. The entire wall along one side of the room split apart, each piece rumbling to the side to reveal a massive screen. It was currently dark.
“Good job,” Riggs said as he indicated for Preston to open the case.
Preston unlocked it and flipped the lid up. Riggs grabbed a cable from the interior of the case that came out of the transmitter and plugged it into an outlet on the edge of the conference table. The dark screen flickered and then came alive with an electronic map of the wall. Overlaid in “nonessential areas” such as the South Pacific, Antarctica, most of Africa, Greenland, and other places were boxes filled with data. The data indicated the number of nuclear platforms available at this exact moment: missiles, submarines, aircraft.
At the very top, in the whiteness of the Arctic, was a red digital display. It currently read:
0:00:00
“Seal the room,” Riggs ordered.
His sergeant major pulled a red lever just inside the door. Steel plates slid down with solid thuds.
Riggs sat down and pulled items out of the case: the black book, which he placed in front of him; the list of classified sites, which he tossed in the trash bin; and finally the three-by-five card with the authorization codes.
Riggs picked up the black book. Originally, when the first version was prepared, it was the size of a long screenplay, over 150 pages in very small type and so complicated even the team preparing it despaired of completely understanding all the options.
It was President Carter, the only president with a degree in nuclear engineering, who’d actually spent the time to try to read the black book one day. He’d thrown his hands up in disgust and ordered a simplified version, a “Denny’s breakfast menu” summary so to speak. In keeping with that theme, the target listing was broken down into three main categories: rare, medium, or well done.
Riggs wanted well done.
He flipped through and it didn’t take him long to find the meal he wanted—targeting all known nuclear launch sites in the world in nuclear powers considered “unfriendly” to the United States: Russia, China, and North Korea. Just for shits and grins, he also included Pakistan’s and India’s arsenals because those two prick countries were going to start World War III any day now and he might as well prevent that while he was at it.
At least that was Riggs’s reasoning.
Riggs rattled off the option numbers and the PEOC staffers went to work, fingers clattering on keys. Red triangles began f
lashing on the world map.
“Oh, yeah,” Riggs said, flipping through, searching. “Where the hell is Iran?”
Preston leaned over the general’s shoulder, almost apologetically. Like a good waiter, he flipped two pages and lightly rested his finger on the page. “Here, sir.”
“Let’s take out the ragheads too,” Riggs added. “Make a clean sweep of it once and for all.”
A similar red display in the Pinnacle bunker began to flash and then numbers came alive.
0:10:00
The display clicked to 0:09:59 and the countdown had begun.
“Yucca Flats.” Neeley’s voice was tinny, being relayed from the top of Raven Rock in Pennsylvania through various scramblers and frequency hoppers to the Nightstalkers seated in the rear of the Snake, which was still parked on the ramp at Area 51.
“That’s close,” Eagle said, without having to check a map. “Inside the same restricted space we’re in.” He looked to the southwest and pointed in the dark. “That way.” There was just darkness hanging over the desert.
“That’s the dead zone,” Mac said. “The test area.”
Nada was peering at the display of his iPad, Googling the location, the team looking over his shoulder.
Neeley continued with what she’d learned from Brennan. “They’ve got at least forty warheads, ranging from over sixty years old to current technology hidden in what he called Icecap, whatever the hell that is.”
“Are they deployable by any means?” Mac asked. “Or just stored there?”
“That’s the bad news,” Neeley said. “He said there are three rail line spurs running right through this Icecap building. They’ve got three nuclear-tipped ICBMs loaded on three separate railcars as well as one in the building itself. The plan is if they are needed, they head out along the three spurs and launch at certain intervals. They stripped technology that had been used for Star Wars experiments for this setup.”
“Targets?” Nada asked.
“He didn’t know,” Neeley said. “There’s more.”
Ms. Jones’s voice cut in from the Ranch. “We must assume Area 51 is targeted at the very least since Pinnacle was started as a safeguard against Rifts.”
“Not much flight time from there to here,” Eagle observed. “Three minutes.”
Nada stood. “Then we better get going.”
“You just let him go!” It was more exclamation point than question mark as Moms learned about the military attaché breaking out to the PEOC with the nuclear football. And that the Keep had stood aside. They were in the pantry as the chief of staff and the Secret Service gathered everyone in the Entrance Hall at Moms’s order.
The Keep sighed. “It wasn’t my place to stop him. I thought the Secret Service would be able to, but I was unaware that General Riggs had taken over the PEOC and sent a breach team.”
“Frak,” Moms said. “He’s got the launch codes.”
“He won’t launch,” the Keep said.
Moms closed her eyes, a headache thrumming in her brain. She wondered if she’d missed something, if somehow she’d made contact with an infected person and this was the onset of Cherry Tree.
“What’s going on in there?” the Keep asked, nodding toward the noise coming from the Entrance Hall.
“We’re going to do a group hug,” Moms said, leading the Keep out of the Pantry. “Everyone except you and me and the six agents we’re sure aren’t infected.”
“Intriguing,” was the Keep’s only comment to that course of action.
They were intercepted by Chief of Staff McBride. A sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead. “I say we invite the president-elect here,” he said. “Get her in, have her shake hands with the president, then put both of them in front of the cameras!” It was obvious he thought this was a most brilliant insight. “Then we’ll see through all the bullshit she put out in the debates. I’d put my man against her telling the truth any day.”
Moms halted a safe distance from him. “An intriguing idea.”
One of the uninfected agents hovered behind him. He gave a thumbs-up. Moms and the Keep edged around the crowd. A fight briefly broke out between two staffers, but everyone around them ignored it. Several people were crying. One man was thumping his head, not overly hard, but repeatedly, against the wall.
“I never got that James Bond spy kit I asked for from Santa,” a Secret Service agent was telling a secretary tearfully and she was patting him on the back, consoling him.
Several people stood isolated, making sure they weren’t in contact with those who were obviously infected. Others seemed uncertain if they were infected or not.
Moms climbed up a few steps on the main staircase, the senior uninfected Secret Service agent next to her.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” She had to call out a couple of times to get everyone’s attention. “I have good news!” And bad, she thought, but didn’t say. That assured her she wasn’t infected.
Everyone stared at her expectantly. “What you’ve been infected with, a truth bug, wears out four hours after contact. It has no bad side effects.” A collective sigh of relief rose in the hall. “However,” Moms continued, “we have to get this under control. There is no antidote. And we’re in a circular pattern here, where even if you make it four hours, you’ve likely been reinfected. And on and on. So…” She paused and took a deep breath. “You’re all going to do a group hug at the same time. So everyone’s current infection starts at exactly the same time and will wear off at roughly the same time. We’re going to burn this infection out in the next four hours. Once the hug is over, everyone infected is getting locked in the East Room.”
“Fuck you!” someone in a suit yelled. “Why should—” And an infected Secret Service agent punched the guy in the face with a bit too much satisfaction, spraying blood from a broken nose.
“Anyone who does not participate,” Moms said, “will be locked in the freezer.”
“That’s an order!”
Moms spun about. President Templeton stood at the top of the stairs, his wife on one side, his daughter on the other. “I’ve had enough of everyone whining and complaining.” He looked to the side at his wife, who didn’t meet his gaze. “We have a duty to this country and we need to get back on track.” He strode down the steps, family behind him, and went by Moms and the Keep without even looking at them. He went to the center of the crowd, stretched his hands out and said: “Let’s do this and get it over with.”
And thus the entire White House, minus Moms, the Keep, and six Secret Service agents, were infected or reinfected at exactly the same time. The agents then began herding everyone into the East Room, the president leading the way.
Once everyone was in there, the doors were locked.
The Keep tapped Moms on the shoulder and indicated she should follow. They went up and up, to the very roof of the White House. Because of the restricted airspace, no television helicopters were flitting about, but for the first time in several decades, there weren’t two Secret Service agents armed with surface-to-air missiles on duty here.
“I’m in contact with Hannah,” the Keep said.
“And?” Moms asked.
The Keep pointed to the northwest. “We’ve got help coming.”
A Black Hawk helicopter flared just above the top of the antennas on the roof. A thick Fast Rope tumbled out and a figure slid down, heavy rucksack tilting her almost sideways. The Fast Rope was disconnected, and just as quickly, the Black Hawk raced off into the night.
The Keep stepped between Moms and the newcomer. “Neeley, meet Moms.”
They were at eye level to each other and both were a bit startled to be looking at their own doppelgänger.
“Moms,” Neeley said, with a nod. “Heard of you.”
“I haven’t heard of you.”
Neeley smiled. “That’s good.” The smile was gone. “I hear we’ve got General Riggs in the PEOC with the football. That’s not good.”
“So far he hasn’t—” Moms began
, but the Keep held up a hand for silence as she cocked her head to the side. Moms realized she had to have a transmitter/receiver surgically implanted behind her right ear.
The Keep delivered the bad news. “It’s not good. He’s prepared a target package and is getting ready to initiate a countdown using the authorization codes.” She reached into a pocket and pulled out a watch and showed them a display: 05:50. “This is synched to the Department of Defense alert system. Someone is firing up the launch computer.”
“Can we get into the PEOC?” Moms asked.
“We can try.” The Keep was already moving, heading for the stairs.
In the PEOC, the red digital clock flashed, and then began its own countdown:
0:05:00
0:04:59
One of Riggs’s staff, a colonel, jumped up. “Sir! You can’t do this.”
Riggs regarded him coldly. “I always knew you were chicken shit. You talked a good line, but the truth outs you after all.”
And then Riggs shot him right through the heart.
Outside the sealed door to the PEOC, Neeley and Moms considered the steel. Neeley shrugged her backpack off, pulling out a shaped charge.
“That won’t work,” the Keep said. She glanced at the watch: 04:10.
“We’ve got to try.” Neeley put the charge on the door.
“Do you have a better idea?” Moms asked. “Is there any way to stop the codes from going out?”
The Keep thought for a second, then sighed. “No. The system was built to prevent anyone from stopping it once the president initiated using the codes.”
“But the president isn’t in there,” Moms said. “Can’t he do something? Issue a command?”
The Keep shook her head. “No.”
“I’m going to blow it,” Neeley said. “Let’s take cover.”
They ran back down the hall and around the corner.
Neeley hit the remote and there was the sharp crack of an explosion.