All Due Respect

by Vicki Hinze

  “You’re not responsible,” he insisted.

  “They died guarding me.”

  “Yes, they did. Because they relaxed and got sloppy,” Matthew said. “They were professionals. They knew their jobs and the risks and considered them worth taking.”

  “They died for me,” she stubbornly insisted.

  Seth turned to her, gripped her by the shoulders. “Yes, they died guarding you. But the reason they were here had nothing to do with you personally. It had to do with the job. The ideals.”

  Like Benedetto’s loyalists. Tears brimmed in her eyes. “To-the-death dedication?”

  Seth nodded.

  “It’s a hell of a way to find out that, eligible for food stamps or not, your side measures up.”

  “Yeah.” He rubbed her arms, shoulders to elbows. “Yeah, it is.”

  The council was there.

  In his house. In his own house, talking about him.

  They knew that hellhound Hyde had buried Julia and Jeff. And they were holding Anthony responsible. You have no honor, Anthony . . .

  He looked around the Green Room, made eye contact with each of the seventeen, and let his gaze stop on Jason Franklin, who was addressing the council. He looked disciplined, sounded authoritarian. Dangerous combination—for Anthony.

  “Considering the flagrant violations,” Franklin said, turning his gaze to Anthony, “I don’t see how the council can request any remedy short of your resignation.”

  Anthony’s blood ran cold. From the corner of his eye, he checked Roger’s reaction. It had always been an excellent gauge of the council climate.

  Stone-cold remote. Roger agreed with them.

  “Shortly, you’ll understand that things are rarely what they seem,” Anthony said. “And that asking me to step down is not in the coalition’s best interests.”

  “I beg to disagree,” Franklin said.

  “You would.” Anthony put an empathetic edge on his tone. “Understandable, considering the circumstances. But within twenty-four hours, even you, Mr. Franklin, will grasp the truth.” Anthony looked away to the other members. “Is twenty-four hours an unreasonable request from a man who has devoted his life to serving you?”

  The council members mumbled among themselves and finally agreed to the wait. Then they departed.

  Roger followed Anthony to his office. “Mr. Benedetto, what happens within twenty-four hours?”

  “Armageddon.” Anthony dismissed Roger, then lifted the phone and dialed the lab. When their friend from Grayton got on the line, he issued the order. “Activate Plan B.”

  “Seriously?”

  “It’s that or Leavenworth.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Anthony hung up the phone, opened his desk drawer, and pulled out the prescription bottle of pills. He started at the bottle and then gave it a little shake. About sixty or so tablets, he estimated.

  He poured himself a glass of water, put his father’s photo directly in front of him on the desk, and then swallowed down the pills, one by one, reliving all the high points of his life. His happiest moments, greatest triumphs, and most sterling successes. Elise giving him her vows at their wedding, her eyes shining love and admiration. Daisy’s birth, her first step, the first time she called him Daddy. His mother’s gratitude the night his father had died. God, but she’d had courage. His father’s had faltered, but his mother had been right there to help him. She’d curled her fingers over his, kissed him good-bye, and then pulled the trigger, keeping his honor intact. Anthony had taken the gun and had held her while they wept and mourned.

  Without hesitation, if not without occasional regret.

  The bottle of pills stood empty. Anthony went up to bed.

  Elise was already asleep. He snuggled to her warmth between the silk sheets, under the comfortable weight of the satin comforter, buried his face in her sweet-smelling hair, and then closed his eyes.

  The battle would not be won in his mariner of choice, but it would be won. The United States had cost him his father. Cost him the respect of his people and the love of his family. It had isolated him. Made him a widower in his heart.

  Now many Americans would be widowers. And widows. And orphans. And many, many more would simply be dead.

  On that final thought, Anthony Benedetto went to sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  At three A.M., the phone rang.

  Seth shook loose from the scented, tangled sheets, reached over Julia to the nightstand, and answered. “Holt.”

  She scooted toward him, nuzzling and complaining at the interruption with a little groan. He couldn’t blame her; they hadn’t slept much.

  “Dr. Holt, this is Lieutenant Swede at the Battle Management Command Center. You and Dr. Warner need to report STAT, sir. THREATCON Delta.”

  Threat Condition Delta was reserved for the most severe threats. “We’ll be there in ten.” Cradling the phone, he shook Julia awake. “Julia, get dressed. All hell’s broken loose.”

  She tossed back the covers, slid to the edge of the bed. “What’s happened?”

  “I don’t know.” There wasn’t a secure-phone line to the house. “THREATCON Delta.”

  “Delta?” She snagged some clothes on her way to the bath. “It’s got to be Benedetto.”

  Jerking on his slacks, Seth agreed with her.

  The command center was hopping.

  Three rows of continuous desks stretched across the dimly lit sixty-foot room. Men and women, wearing a mix of traditional blue uniforms, Class-As, and fatigues, filled every seat, staring at computer monitors. Seth automatically looked to two large illuminated screens on the front wall. Pinpoints flashed red on the world map, depicting current hot spots and active operations. The second screen displayed a map of the northeastern United States, and Seth focused on it. That was the location of their immediate challenge.

  Colonel Kane shouted at some major, picked up the receiver to the red phone—a hot line to the honchos—and began giving a concise briefing. Could be the general, the commander of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, the Joint Chiefs, who were no doubt in the Pentagon’s Tank, or the President.

  Matthew stood beside Colonel Kane, and his expression said more than Seth wanted to hear. Bluntly put, he was scared shitless and, knowing Matthew’s penchant for being cool under fire, that made Seth worry more.

  Seth and Julia caught Matthew’s eye. He rushed over and launched into briefing them. “Benedetto’s gone off the deep end.”

  Seth braced, knowing what was coming. So, he noticed, did Julia; she was already clutching at her left arm.

  “The loyalists demanded Benedetto resign.”

  “Resign?” That didn’t fit.

  “Do the honorable thing.” Matthew cast a worried look back at Colonel Kane, who was still on the red phone. “Suicide.”

  Seth grimaced. Events were unfolding as expected, and as feared.

  “Benedetto refused. He got them to give him twenty-four hours to turn things around,” Matthew went on. “They pushed him, and the crazy bastard pushed back.”

  Julia sucked in a sharp breath. “He launched the Rogue.”

  Matthew nodded and, though Seth expected it, hearing it acknowledged had his heart slamming against his ribs. “From where?”

  “The Chesapeake Bay.” Matthew’s expression soured from grim to morbid. “They launched from a commercial tug. Morse assisted, Seth. That’s verified. One of our operatives was on the boat and reported in before it went down.”

  “Benedetto’s loyalists blew up the tug?” Julia asked.

  Matthew nodded.

  Seth scanned the map. Little change. “With our people on it?”

  “No, they evacuated before the hit.”

  “What’s the distance between D.C. and the launch site?”

  “It’s within a hundred kilometers, Seth.”

  Could the news get any worse? “Has the Puzzle Palace been notified?” Seth automatically reverted to the slang name for the Pentagon.


  “Kane’s on the phone with the Joint Chiefs now. The President will be on line with them momentarily.”

  He should be on Air Force One, out of the line of fire. Why the hell hadn’t he evacuated?

  Kane hung up the phone. “GPS,” he shouted to the global positioning system satellite monitor. “Status report.”

  The third man in the first row of desks answered. “Nothing’s showing up, sir. I’ve got a clear screen.”

  The GPS system was supposed to offer an early warning that a hostile missile had been launched and alert the ground-based radar systems.

  “Ground-based radar?” Kane shouted out.

  “Nothing, sir.”

  Seth’s stomach curled. Nothing on the GPS or the ground-based radar systems?

  Kane stared at the GPS monitor. “Do we have a satellite in the appropriate sector, Sergeant?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We got visual confirmation of the launch from the tug. So why the hell can’t we track the damn thing?”

  “I—I don’t know, sir.” He gave Kane a perplexed look. “There’s nothing there.”

  Julia answered, shouting over to Colonel Kane. “I can fix that.”

  Seth looked at her, and Julia met his gaze. “They’ve enabled the stealth feature.”

  “Can you do that, Dr. Warner?” Colonel Kane yelled back.

  “Yes, I can.” She turned to look at him. “I designed it.”

  Kane nodded. “Then please remedy this situation now. I’d like to know where the son of a bitch is going and how it’s armed.”

  Chemical, biological, or nuclear. That she couldn’t fix or tell him. Where, she could manage. Tense, she looked at Matthew. “I need a computer with full access.”

  “Pick one,” Matthew said. “They’re all wide open in here.”

  Julia went to the first desk. The lieutenant scrambled out of his seat, and she sat down and went to work. She wound through the firewalls, the safeguards and encryptions, and finally got to the Rogue, then disabled its stealth.

  “We got it, sir!” the GPS monitor bellowed.

  Julia looked to the large screen, saw the red blip.

  “We’ve got to intercept that missile, Seth.” Matthew stared at him.

  “If we do, it’ll detonate.” Seth glanced over at Julia. “If the warhead is a WMD, millions are going to die.”

  “We can’t just sit here and let the bastards take out D.C.”

  They couldn’t. They would lose the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon.

  “What about Home Base?” Matthew darted his gaze between Seth and the screen. “We’ve got the prototype.”

  “We can’t use it on this. If we return the Rogue to its launch site, we’ll still lose D.C. and most of the federal government.” Seth tracked the trajectory on the screen, a thin red line. The Rogue had turned west, toward Los Angeles.

  “What the hell is that thing doing?” Colonel Kane demanded to know.

  The radar specialist responded. “It’s erratic as hell, sir. Something’s destabilized it.”

  “Dr. Warner, could disabling the stealth do that?”

  “No, Colonel. It couldn’t.”

  Kane held up his hands. “Then what the hell is happening?”

  “The Rogue is performing as advertised, Colonel,” Seth said. “You aren’t supposed to be able to project its trajectory with standard countermeasures. That’s why it’s called a Rogue.”

  “But the damn thing’s zigzagging.”

  Seth got to a computer, began seeking a pattern. Tense minutes passed, with Kane answering the red-line phone again and again.

  “Give me something to tell them, Holt.” Kane slammed down the phone, frustrated. “Anything to tell them.”

  “Working on it.” Seth didn’t spare the colonel a glance.

  Tension pulsed through the command center. Everyone felt it, and everyone suffered its pressure.

  Finally, the information processed, and the computer had enough data to draw a hypothetical conclusion. A new screen popped up on Seth’s monitor. “It’s not going to L.A. If it maintains its current pattern, it’ll hit in three hours.”

  “Three hours?” Colonel Kane frowned at the screen, and then at Seth.

  He nodded.

  “Where, for God’s sake?”

  “New York City.” Seth grimaced. The most densely populated area in the country. And at eight A.M. Eastern time, it would be damn densely populated.

  Seth looked over at Julia. Their gazes met, and the regret he felt he saw mirrored in her eyes. This morning, normal everyday-average people were feeding their kids breakfast, dropping them off at school, and going into work, thinking this was just another typical day. Except today millions of them would die. Men, women, children. Parents, grandparents, and cousins. Lovers. Friends. And Uncle Lou’s.

  And a nation would mourn the worst tragedy ever suffered on its soil.

  But which millions of blissfully unaware people would die?

  “What are our options, Seth?”

  He looked at Colonel Kane. “New York City, or D.C.—and everything within a hundred kilometers of either one. If the warhead falls into the WMD classification, then, of course, the anticipated damage assessments escalate proportionately.”

  “Can’t we tell if it’s carrying a WMD warhead?”

  “No.” Seth’s bitterness tinged his tone. “The Rogue’s constructed from a new metal alloy that requires a specific sensor to determine warhead type.”

  “Then why the hell don’t we have it?”

  “The budget didn’t allow for it.”

  Julia came over to Seth. “We can’t disarm the Rogue, but we can create interference and scramble its trajectory. We won’t know where it’ll detonate, but odds are in our favor it will be in an area less populated.”

  “We can’t do it.” Seth gave her a level look. “Are you willing to dump bio or, God forbid, chemicals? Because you damn well could be doing just that.”

  “It’s going to hit somewhere, Seth. If it’s biological, we can’t inoculate the entire country before symptoms occur.”

  If it turned out to be chemical or nuclear, there would be no one left to inoculate. “We can’t just intercept it. Not without knowing if it’s live ordnance or a decoy, or its type of warhead.”

  “Home Base can tell us if it’s a decoy.”

  “Yes, but if we disrupt it, it’ll detonate.”

  Matthew lifted his hands. “We built the damn thing. Can’t we disarm it?”

  Seth nodded. “We always build in safety features, factoring in that only we’ll have the technology but preparing just in case someone else gets their hands on it. Yet—”

  “Morse has that technology, too,” Colonel Kane interjected.

  Seth again nodded.

  Julia crossed her arms over her chest. “So what can we do?”

  He looked her straight in the eye. “We’ve got to reprogram the Rogue and change its target.”

  “Can we do that?” Matthew asked.

  “Seth. That’s impossible.” Julia guffawed. “Conventional seekers won’t work. The Rogue’s alloy prevents it. Even with Home Base, we can only reverse its existing trajectory. Any attempt to alter it and we alter the magnetic energy field. The Rogue will detonate.”

  Seth disputed her. “We have the technology.”

  “Then why the hell aren’t we using it?” Colonel Kane stepped into the fray.

  Seth’s chest went tight. If he was right, great. If not, well, he’d be glad to be dead with everyone else. “We’ve got the technology, I said.” He looked at Kane. “But it won’t be operational or incorporated into our defense capabilities for at least five years.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Budget.” Seth let his bitterness show. “Talk to Congress and our Commander in Chief. They get righteous about our lack of preparedness, but they hold the damn purse strings. Without the funding, we’re stymied.”

  “Stymied, hell. We’re screwed,�
�� Matthew said.

  Seth stared at the screen, at the blip. “We’ve got a shot.”

  “What shot?” Julia stared at him, perplexed, then caught the twinkle in his eye. “Your sensor?”

  He nodded. “It’s ready—and it should override the metal alloy in the Rogue.”

  “What are you talking about, Holt?” Colonel Kane folded his arms across his chest.

  “A technology project I’ve been working on for years—on the side. Congress refused to fund it, so I’ve been limping along on my own. I altered the design so it can piggyback on the Home Base system.”

  “And your sensor is operational?”

  Seth hedged on that. “Theoretically, with it, we can determine the type of warhead the Rogue’s carrying. We can also reprogram its trajectory without detonating it—at least, we can in theory and in very limited simulated studies. But—and it’s a big one, Colonel Kane—the studies haven’t been extensive, and the sensor hasn’t been field-tested. At best, deploying it will be a close call time-wise, and it might not work.”

  “Trial by fire,” Matthew said.

  “It has to work.” Julia looked from him to Seth. “We don’t have anything else.”

  “Well, Colonel?” Seth said. “Your call.”

  Kane stared at the screen, the red-lined path, then turned a steely gaze back to Seth. “Do it.”

  “Don’t you want to check with the honchos?”

  “What are they gonna do?” Matthew growled. “Say no when there’s no other option?”

  Ignoring Matthew, Colonel Kane addressed Seth. “I’ll tell them. They’ll just have to sweat it out with the rest of us.”

  “Yeah, well, notify Congress, too, sir,” Matthew said. “They’re the ones who wouldn’t give us the money.”

  Seth turned to Julia. “Get the team in here. We’re definitely going to need Cracker. And make sure Lieutenant Swede”—Seth motioned to the GPS monitor—“keeps a satellite glued to the Rogue. I need as close to zero time delay on transmissions and receptions as he can squeak out—and tell him to find me a ship-free sector in the Atlantic where we can detonate the Rogue, if it’s not WMD and we can reprogram its trajectory.” Seth headed toward the door.