And that’s how he imagined them, the characters as pins, his superhuman mind the metal pick.
Scott proceeded down the sequence, locking in one character-pin after another, feeling them click sweetly home. When he reached the final character-pin, he hesitated. It wasn’t a pin, not exactly. It was a true-false variable, the equivalent of turning a tension wrench to the right or left. One way would enable him to complete the software upload to the command missile, the other would set off a system breach alert, and all his work would be lost.
His breaths turned shallow in his helmet.
You have plenty of time, he reminded himself. You just need to relax, to concentrate.
When his earpiece vibrated, he was nearly shocked from the system.
“New problem up top,” Jesse was saying. “Bunch of trucks just showed up at the site. Looks like they’re starting a search. Men are fanning out with lights and dogs. Big group of ’em headed this way.”
“Copy that,” Shockwave answered.
Scott could feel his teammate eyeing him urgently as he himself eyed the final variable. True or false? Zero or one? Heads or tails? His heart sped into a bruising, flip-flopping rhythm.
Though five thousand miles from Oakwood, and in a more precarious position, certainly, it was the same decision he’d had to make at the Leonards’ shed door on his and Janis’s very first mission.
Only now the consequences of failure were unimaginable.
Sweat poured from his brow.
Right or left?
The Kremlin
General Dementyev turned the suitcase computer on. As he watched it boot up, he considered how there had been three such suitcases when he had assumed leadership: one for himself, one for the Chief of Staff, and one for the Defense Minister. Now there was only the one. In the event the suitcase holders became incommunicado in a first strike, there had been the Dead Hand—a retaliatory protocol. But Dementyev had changed that system as well.
He ran a finger along the metal edge of the suitcase. The ability to activate a nuclear launch belonged solely to him now. The launches themselves would be automated, the missiles cloaked. By the time the Americans understood what was happening, they would be no more. The Soviet Union would stand as the lone world power, an eventuality history had decreed.
Yes, and you were chosen to make it so, the worms whispered.
A small black screen in the top part of the suitcase blinked on and reported its status as active. Dementyev shoved the worms away—he needed to think for himself—but they wriggled back over the edges of his mind.
He entered his four-digit identification into a small keyboard. His hand roamed the various dials and switches above the keyboard until he found the one he wanted: the launch switch for the Dead Hand command missile. He snapped it up. A bulb beneath it burned red.
The screen prompted him for final confirmation. He punched out four more numbers.
But then his finger hesitated.
Perhaps he should consult with Defense Minister Aksakov, his second in command. A man of good sense. A man he trusted. Surely Aksakov would see the rightness of the action, especially in light of the American’s brazen move—sending their Champions to the motherland.
No, the worms whispered, he is corrupted, too.
“Who?” Dementyev snapped. “Aksakov?”
All of them.
At that moment, footsteps sounded in the corridor outside his office. An urgent murmur of voices accompanied them. Dementyev leaned on his arms, hands braced on either side of the computer. Was there no end to the treachery? He looked up as several military officials stepped into the room, led by Aksakov.
At once, Aksakov’s eyes fell to the open suitcase. He extended a slow, shaking hand, as though to calm a rabid dog poised to strike. “General, what is this? What are you doing?”
Do you see?
With a heavy sigh, Dementyev punched the final confirmation.
45
Dead Hand site
Left or right?
Scott had never felt more paralyzed in his life. He reviewed the other character-pins, each comprised of eight bits of data. So why was this final single-bit variable giving him so much damned trouble?
There was something he wasn’t remembering.
Jesse’s voice sounded in his earpiece. “Search team is getting really close. Some helicopters joining the party now, too.”
“Ah, we’re almost done here,” Shockwave answered shakily.
Are we? Scott wondered, his head a wasp’s hive of desperation.
And then something from his training returned to him. The final variable was a function of the others. It was just a matter of determining whether the sum of their data bits—the zeros and ones—was an even or odd number. Once he knew that, he would be able to upload the software to the command missile. The computation itself would only take him a few—
A roar sounded, and the system shook away. An instant later, Scott found himself back in the tunnel, in what felt like the epicenter of an earthquake. Shockwave was behind him, arms braced to the sides of the walls to remain upright, his headlamp shooting around in alarm.
“What in the hell’s going on?” he cried.
“The command missile,” Scott shouted back. “It’s booster rockets just fired!”
Which means at any second the data cables linking the Dead Hand computer to the missile are going to separate, he thought, and the missile will still be carrying the old software.
Scott knelt for the electricity generator that had fallen to the tunnel floor. Brushing dirt from the electrodes, he pushed it back against the cleared spot of cement. Only the generator was no longer operating.
You’ve gotta be kidding me.
He flicked the on/off switch several times before noticing the lid to the battery compartment had broken on impact. The edges of the batteries peered out. When Scott pressed them in, the generator hummed back to life. He thanked the god of electronics, then turned to his teammate.
“Shockwave,” he shouted above the roaring, “I need you to hold this to the wall.”
Shockwave made his way over like a deckhand on rough seas and palmed the device to the square of cement.
“Should only take a few seconds,” Scott shouted.
Shockwave’s helmet nodded.
An instant later, Scott was back inside the computer, shooting toward the nearly-completed sequence. He just needed to perform a quick number crunch and he’d have the final variable.
A force slammed against his helmet. Then another.
No, God! No!
The tunnel was coming apart. And by the petering current connecting him to the computer, Shockwave was losing his grip on the generator. There would be no time to crunch numbers.
Scott arrived at the code sequence and, without hesitation, guessed a final variable.
The top of the tunnel collapsed over him, pummeling him back to his body, to blackness.
Jesse pressed his back to a thick tree trunk as another chopper swooped low, its spotlight turning the tree tops white. Behind him, the murmuring of Russian soldiers became clearer, punctuated by the sharp barks of military dogs. Twigs snapped under boots.
If Jesse looked, he’d probably see them—and they would see him. Not that he’d mind a brawl, but stealth was the name of the game. Orders of Scott Spruel, team leader. And not a bad one at that.
But where in the hell were those guys?
When the helicopter spotlight receded, Jesse rose onto his toes to peer down the hole fifteen feet away. Still no sign of them. He was considering whether to radio again when the ground began to tremble.
Huh?
The two choppers in the area swept away. Jesse listened but could no longer hear the search party. He chanced a peek around the tree. The guards were running back to the silo, where new lights blazed.
Jesse crept to the edge of the forest. On the silo’s far side, some distance away, smoke billowed through a set of ground lights. The trembling underfoot
was now accompanied by a roar, like a heater cranking to full blast. In a final plume, a rocket rumbled above the silo, climbing into the night.
Jesse knew what that meant—the Dead Hand missile was away.
He returned to the clearing at a lumbering run. He was just breaking into the open space when the ground beyond the hole suddenly depressed in a line. The hole’s mouth filled with dirt. Jesse fell to his knees and plunged his hands into the collapsed tunnel, trying to heave it open.
“Hey!” he called into his microphone. “Can you guys hear me?”
Scott struggled to push himself up, but he was pinned. He didn’t know how much tunnel had fallen over him. Not enough to crush him, anyway, but that could change in a heartbeat.
He grunted into a second attempt, one hand to the ground, the other stuck awkwardly beneath him, like he was reaching for something in his opposite pocket. He relented with a pained exhale. His laser, which he might have used to blow the earth from him, was stuck in a face plant.
“Hold on,” a voice said in his earpiece—Shockwave’s. “This might hurt a little.”
The ground beneath Scott shook, and then a bruising force thundered past. He came free in a burst, the shockwaves pummeling him up the tunnel. When the waves relented, he tumbled to a stop, the space black and claustrophobic around him. He listened for Shockwave.
“You there?” he asked into his microphone.
The wave had blown their communication linkup. He tapped the side of his helmet until his headlamp came on. He rose, body sore as sin, and aimed the light toward the end of the tunnel. It was gone. Buried.
“Shockwave!” he called.
He ran to the collapse, accessing his teammates’ stats on his visor. Jesse’s read out as normal, but Shockwave’s…
H.R.: 0
B.P.: 0/0
R.R.: 0
Scott released a laser blast into the collapse, even as the tunnel continued to shake around him. A huge chunk of earth broke over him. Janis’s sad eyes from that morning appeared in his mind. He recognized the look now. She believed she was seeing him for the last time.
You don’t leave now, Scott’s own voice echoed in his thoughts, and it’ll happen. You’ll be crushed to death, like your teammate.
His light wavered over the collapsed section of tunnel.
Jesse plunged an arm into the bottom of the hole he’d dug until the earth closed around his shoulder. He swam his hand around, already knowing it was hopeless. Those guys had been a hundred meters down, five hundred meters away when the thing collapsed. There was a way to check their health info through his helmet, but damned if Jesse knew how. He was lucky to have figured out the communication system.
He called into his microphone again, but still no response. Maybe that was all the info he needed.
According to the plan, he was to return to the pickup site in the event of mission failure. He crawled his hand deeper and encountered something. He closed his fingers around what felt like a limb and pulled. A gloved hand broke from the ground. A helmet followed.
The person’s other hand emerged and gripped Jesse’s wrist. Jesse leaned back and hauled him the rest of the way free.
“Who is that?” Jesse asked.
The helmet’s visor retracted, and Scott’s eyes stared out. “Thanks,” he breathed, wobbling to keep his balance. He held his other wrist, the one Jesse had pulled him out by. “I just ran and blasted … ran and blasted…”
Jesse looked back at the hole. “Where’s the other one?”
Scott shook his head, which told Jesse everything. Too bad. He hadn’t gotten to know Shockwave, but the kid seemed all right. A bit of a smart ass, maybe, but he’d been one of them, a Champion.
“I saw the missile launch,” Jesse said. “Were you able to do your thing?”
Scott’s eyes blinked as though fighting to focus. “I honestly couldn’t tell you. I took a fifty-fifty shot. For the sake of Shockwave’s sacrifice, and everyone back home, let’s hope so.”
He staggered into the run of someone still in shock. They had two miles to cover to the pickup site.
Jesse looked around, then fell in behind him.
46
Oakwood
“They’re leaving the Dead Hand site,” Janis said.
Minion squealed with excitement and stomped her feet. Erin let out a long breath and massaged the back of her neck.
“So, it’s done?” Tyler asked.
For the past hour, Janis and her teammates had been huddled around the console in the bunker. But while the others monitored the live NORAD map, Minion stress-eating from a container of beef jerky, Janis tried to strengthen her connection to the piece of her that resided in Scott. She caught snatches of triumph, effort, and moments of claustrophobic panic that sent her pacing around the bunker in a clammy sweat. But though Janis sensed completion now, it was a completion tempered by uncertainty and loss.
“I … think so,” she said in answer to Tyler’s question.
“This calls for a drink,” Minion announced, jumping up and disappearing into the ration room. “Tang, anyone?”
“I’ll help mix,” Erin said, following her.
Tyler scooted closer to Janis. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure we can call it a success just yet. They still have to get out of there, one. And two, it feels like—”
The shrill ring of the console phone made Janis jump. She twisted and grabbed the receiver.
“Any updates?” she asked.
“A big one.” Janis didn’t know whether the gravity in Kilmer’s voice was coming from the electronic distortion on the line or from Kilmer himself. “About ten minutes ago, a satellite over the Dead Hand site photographed what appears to be the launch of the command missile.”
Janis felt the blood fall from her face. Her eyes moved to the computer monitor. “The NORAD feed isn’t showing anything.”
“That’s due to the Soviet’s cloaking technology. Seems NORAD’s detection system isn’t capable of penetrating it after all. But listen, one of their radio operators picked up some chatter from the missile.”
“And?” Janis’s voice was almost a whisper.
“And if the operator decoded it correctly … your team did it.”
“Did what?”
“The missile is broadcasting a disabling command.”
Janis shot to her feet. “Are you serious?”
“Well done.”
She could hear his smile, and it was enormous. Tyler turned his hands up in question. Behind him, Erin and Minion appeared from a back corridor. Janis moved the phone from her mouth.
“Confirmation! They did it!” She realized she was bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. “They got to the missile and reprogrammed it in time. They actually fricking did it!”
Cheers went up as Janis moved the phone back to her mouth.
“I just … I don’t know what to say.” She dropped into the chair facing the console, the first phase of worrying leaving her. Now she had to hope Scott and the others made it back safely.
Kilmer chuckled. “As information comes to me, I’ll pass it along.”
There was a pause as he waited for a response.
“Janis?” he prompted.
But her eyes were transfixed on the computer screen. A red bar on the bottom was flashing an alert. And something was happening on the map. At a location southwest of Moscow, four red dots had appeared. All blipping west. And they appeared to be multiplying. Now six, now eight, now twelve.
“Director…?” she said.
Fort Meade, Maryland
“I’ll call you back,” Kilmer told Janis, slamming down the phone in his office.
He trotted down the corridor to his security agency’s war room. It was filling with agents, all of them talking at once. Beyond rows of computers, telephones, and moving heads, a large monitor on the far wall showed the NORAD feed. The missiles, two dozen of them now, were crossing into Eastern Europe.
Kilmer
knelt beside the computer closest to him, where an agent was seated. “What are we seeing?”
“Live launch,” the agent answered, the monitor glowing over his stiff face and frameless glasses. “From the Bryansk ICBM site.”
Kilmer studied the monitor. That was close to the Dead Hand site.
“I thought we had confirmation that the command missile had been corrupted.”
“We did,” the agent said. “The launch wasn’t triggered by the missile. Seems the Dead Hand computer sent out a signal through a ground line.”
“A ground line? There wasn’t any intelligence on that.”
Which meant Scott and his team wouldn’t have known about it either.
“No, there wasn’t,” the agent answered. “Analysts are surmising it was a backup system, in the early phase of development. We could even be looking at a test line.”
Kilmer jutted his chin at the monitor. “Do we know their targets?”
“Population centers along the East Coast.”
Kilmer’s face went numb. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, D.C., Atlanta. Tens of millions would be killed.
“Time to impact?”
“Twenty-six minutes.”
“Wait,” Kilmer said, a new dread spreading through him. “Why are we seeing them?”
“Seeing what?”
“The missiles. They’re supposed to be cloaked.”
The agent shrugged. “These aren’t.”
Kilmer went back over the questions he’d had about Prince Khoggi. Why give the Soviets the means to wipe out the U.S. unilaterally if the prince’s goal was to balance the major powers?
But it was no longer about balancing, was it?
Kilmer thought about Khoggi clearing his accounts, liquidizing his vast properties, the massive outlays for building materials. It then occurred to him that the cloaking technology Khoggi had sold to the Soviets had only worked for the test and command missiles. The technology wasn’t to have cloaked the actual arsenal. The Saudi prince had tricked them, sold them lemons. He had wanted the nuclear missiles to be visible. He hadn’t counted on the Champions disabling the Dead Hand system, no, but he would still get what he wanted: a strike and massive counterstrike. Kilmer stood. At that moment, President Reagan would be planning the second.
XGeneration 7: Dead Hand (XGeneration Series) Page 24