Ballistic Read online

“Lock your board.”

  They both hit switches.

  James nods, and says, “Board locked.”

  “Check your lights.”

  James scans the console. “Lights check.”

  “Launch mode green,” the computerized voice says. “Strategic alert confirmed. All systems check and re-check. Launch is a go. Confidence is high.”

  * * *

  In the STRATCOM War Room, General Corrigan and his staff watch the Big Board where the latest message reads, “MIRV locked on primary targets.”

  “Launch is a go,” the computerized voice says, but all the officers in the room know that.

  The screen blinks with target information. A map of Jerusalem appears, with pulsating crosses on ten targets.

  An aide approaches General Corrigan. “General, the President wants to know if we should advise the Israelis to evacuate Jerusalem.”

  “Not unless they can do it in thirty minutes. All we’ll succeed in doing is having more people caught outdoors.”

  The aide disappears up a set of stairs, and the general studies the map with a rueful smile. “What do the Wailing Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Mosque of Omar have in common?”

  Colonel Farris shrugs. “They’re all religious sites.”

  “One for each of the three great religions,” FBI Agent Hurtgen adds.

  “Right,” General Corrigan says. “What we’ve got here is a non-discriminatory terrorist. He seems to loathe everybody.” The general

  reads off the names of the other sites that are targets of the multiple warheads. “The Dome of the Rock, the Church of the Assumption, the First Station of the Cross, the Great Synagogue, the Chapel of Ascension, the Tomb of the Kings, and the Temple Mount. All of that and a million people. They’ll be gone in the blink of an eye.”

  * * *

  David and James each have a hand on the inserted keys. Behind them, Susan’s eyes desperately dart around the capsule, looking for help, an idea, anything. Owens mumbles a prayer, his lips cracked with dried blood.

  “Clockwise on my count,” David says.

  “If you truly were a man of God,” Susan blurts out, “you couldn’t destroy the holiest city in the world. You couldn’t kill all those innocent people.”

  “As it is written in Corinthians, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’”

  “This isn’t about Resurrection.”

  David swivels in his chair and glowers at her. “Physician, heal thyself!”

  He turns back to the console and nods to James. “Key turn on my mark.” He closes his eyes and counts it down, “Three, two, one. Mark…”

  David and James simultaneously turn their keys. “And hold,” David commands.”

  A buzzer emits an insistent beep.

  David silently counts to five. “And release.”

  Eyes closed, smiling mystically, David releases the key, and so does James.

  * * *

  “One last look,” Captain Pukowlski says, leading the ambassadors into the silo from the tunnel. “Kinda like a country-western song, I just wanna see my love one last time before she leaves me.”

  The group stands just a few feet from the missile, which hangs in its cables over their heads. “And what a shame, ‘cause this baby’s the most modern, most accurate missile in the most secure facility on the face of the—”

  Ka-boom! The SQUIB explosives blow the concrete cap off the silo. The cap, made of solid concrete six feet thick, weighs more than two hundred thousand pounds, and is hurled off the top of the silo like a Brobdingnagian frisbee. It takes out a cyclone fence surrounding the silo and crumbles of its own weight when it hits the ground.Pukowlski looks up at the blue Wyoming sky. The ambassadors are terrified, turning to the captain for an explanation. Speechless, the captain stands beneath the missile, frozen in place.

  Suddenly, Whoosh! The Launch Eject Gas Generator steams to life, pumping a mixture of water and pressurized gases through pulsating tubes into the missile canister. Hoses hiss menacingly and stiffen like angry snakes. The missile sways in its cables.

  Though he is startled, at his core, Pukowlski is a trained officer who believes in duty, honor, and country. He lives by the book and would be willing to die by the book, and the only answer to what is going on must be found in the book.

  “Gentlemen,” Pukowlski says, not even trying to suppress a grin, “stiffen your spines and grab your cocks. We’re at war!”

  * * *

  General Corrigan presides over a War Room of apoplectic officers. The blinking red lights illuminate his face, which is locked into a grimace.

  The computerized voice drowns out the buzz of the officers and technicians, “Countdown sequence initiated. LEGG activated. Confidence is high.”

  All eyes are on the Big Board where a dotted line tracks slowly from Wyoming across the arctic circle, across Greenland and the North Atlantic, across Europe southward toward Africa, finally touching down in Israel. The dotted line disappears, then re-tracks again and again.

  * * *

  In the generator room beneath the silo, a horn sounds and thick hoses throb with heated propulsion gases. Shirtless and soaking wet, Jack Jericho hovers over the keyboard of the generator control panel, unsure what to do.

  “Whoever’s got his finger on the button ain’t one of us,” he says to himself.

  The computerized voice from the speaker startles him. “All systems operational. Ninety seconds to propulsion launch. Confidence is high.”

  Jericho frantically scans the generator control panel. He tears a plastic shield off the keyboard and flicks the “on” switch. The monitor flashes to life with the message: “Launch Sequence in Progress. Generator Access Prohibited.”

  “Shit!” Then he remembers Dr. Burns’ question as to whether he is a leader or follower. Neither one, he knows. And he isn’t even sure what he’s doing now, but he knows he must do something. Jericho hits the “stop” key, and an electrical shock jolts him. The monitor flashes: “Caution. Unauthorized Access Prohibited.”

  More gingerly this time, Jericho touches the same key. With a ka-pow, the shock knocks him down, blue smoke wafting above the control panel. Dazed, Jericho gets to his knees and looks up at the monitor, which mocks him. “Caution. Each shock increases in severity.” Then, in smaller print, “OSHA WARNING: Repeated exposure to electrical shocks causes brain damage in rats.”

  Jericho gets to his feet, his hands dangling over the keyboard. As he tries again, he says, “I ain’t a rat.”

  * * *

  In the launch control capsule, all the lights on the console are green except for one, which flashes amber. Brother David stares at it a moment, his brow furrowing. “What in the name of…”

  “What is it?” James asks.

  “Get over here.”

  James kicks his chair down the rail and studies the computer monitor in front of David where the message appears, “Input S.L.C. Now.”

  “What?” David stares blankly at the screen.

  “Never heard of it,” James says, shaking his head.

  David wheels around in his flight chair, glaring at Owens, who sits uncomfortably on the floor. “Enlighten us!” David orders.

  Owens hesitates, and Gabriel wags the barrel of a rifle in his face.

  “The slick,” Owens says. “Secondary Launch Code. The launch will abort unless it’s entered. It’s a double fail-safe mechanism entered after the Enable Code and the plick, the PLC, are activated.”

  “Since when!” David demands, growing furious. Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Owens says, nervously. “Six, seven months ago.”

  “It was my recommendation,” Susan Burns says. She is turned away from David, sitting back-to-back with Owens, their hands cuffed together.

  “What!” David thunders.

  She turns her neck uncomfortably to face him. “Preliminary tests showed that fifteen per cent of the missileers believed that any order to launch would be a mistake, a computer glitch. Of
that number thirty per cent would refuse to turn the key. I recommended another level of security be added so that missile crews would have confidence that if the S.L.C. came down separately from the National Command Authority, we must surely be at war.”

  “Idiotic!” David thunders. “It complicates and delays the launch. That could be fatal if you’re counter-attacking.”

  “But it thwarts terrorists,” Susan says. “I was afraid you had it. You seemed to have everything else. But then, I guess you’re not perfect.”

  “Input Secondary Launch Code,” the computer orders in the same detached voice.

  David screams at Owens, “The code, damn you!”

  Owens is too terrified to answer.

  “He doesn’t have it,” Susan Burns says, calmly. “It comes from the President after the Enable Code has been entered. That’s what makes it double fail-safe.”

  David slams his fist into the console. “Damnation!” Turning to James, his voice breaks, “Do something! You’re the cyberpunk genius. Do something, goddamit!”

  “David,” Rachel says from the back of the capsule. “Taking the Father’s name in vain will not—”

  “Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” He turns back to James, who already is hunched over the keyboard, banging away like Van Cliburn playing Tchaikovsky.

  The voice of the computer is as calm as a warm breeze on a summer day. “Enter S.L.C.” Launch will abort in thirty seconds.”

  * * *

  Footsteps echo in the tunnel leading from the missile silo. Captain Pete Pukowlski leads the U.N. delegation at double time toward the launch control capsule.

  “We go to DEFCON ONE, and nobody notifies me!” he fumes. “We’re in launch mode, and I’m jerking off some diplomatic goof-balls. Somebody’s ass is grass, and I’m the lawn mower.”

  They pass the door to the Launch Equipment Room, which swings open. Gabriel and three other commandos come out and face the delegation.

  “Who? What? Who the hell are you?” Pukowlski stammers, though it must be sinking in, because as the words come out, he is reaching for the .45 in a side holster. But Gabriel raises a pistol grip shotgun toward Pukowlski’s bulging belly, which seems to flatten just a bit.

  “We’re the messengers of God,” Gabriel says.

  “I don’t think so,” Pukowlski says, raising his hands over his head. “God’s on our side.”

  * * *

  The officers watch the dotted line’s trajectory on the Big Board as it soars from Wyoming toward Israel…then fades away. The computerized voice solemnly declares, “Launch Aborted. Launch Aborted.”

  Sighs of relief, backslapping, a couple of wolf whistles, and more than one, boy-was-that-close.

  Colonel Frank Farris loosens his tie and turns to General Corrigan, who is not sharing in the celebration. “They didn’t have the slick,” the colonel says. “Jeez, we dodged a bullet, a big one.”

  “But they still have the base and the capsule, don’t they?” the general asks. He knows it is not over yet.

  On the board, the dotted line on the screen tracks from Wyoming across the arctic circle, stops, then disappears. “Yes, sir. They have the capsule,” Colonel Farris says. “But there’s no way they could get the S.L.C., is there? I mean, if they don’t have it now, how could they get it before we roust them?”

  General Corrigan gives the colonel a look an animal trainer might show to a slow chimpanzee. “They knew how to capture our missile base, how to re-target the missile and how to enter the plick and Enable Codes, didn’t they?”

  Colonel Farris nods.

  “They hot wired our computer to simulate a message from another launch capsule in order to get dual confirmation, didn’t they?”

  Another nod.

  “Then why in hell wouldn’t they know how to get the Secondary Launch Code?”

  “I have no idea, sir,” the colonel says, straightening up. “I have no idea how they could take over a terrorist-proof nuclear facility.”

  “Neither do I,” General Corrigan says. “But I’m going to find out. Get me the son-of-a-bitch who built the damn thing.”

  BOOK FOUR

  The Professor and the Prodigal Son

  -29-

  MAD

  Professor Lionel Morton, seventy-one years old, wild mane of white hair flowing past his shoulders, sits on the lecture stage in a high-tech wheelchair equipped with a computer and monitor. In front of him, at desks on tiered rows, are fifty of the best and brightest of Stanford University’s students. Behind the professor, the blackboard is filled with lengthy equations and diagrams of every missile in the U.S. arsenal from the old Atlas and Titans to the newest Minutemen III’s and Peacekeepers, called in Air Force parlance, damage limitation weapons.

  A plastic scale model of a rocket sits on a miniature launch pad on the stage. Holding a remote control device that resembles a garage door opener, Professor Morton throws back his head and in a voice that is part Olivier, part Brando, calls out dramatically, “I shot an arrow into the air…”

  He pushes a button on the remote, and whoosh… The rocket blasts off.

  “It fell to earth I know not where.”

  The rocket arcs above the students’ heads, sailing up the tiers where it lands in the top row, squarely in the center of a cardboard bullseye.

  “Horse feathers! Henry Wadsworth Longfellow didn’t know a damn thing about ballistics.”

  The students titter and exchange looks. They have witnessed Professor Morton’s antics before. Part entertainer, part academician, he plays many roles. He knows the students call him Dr. Strangelove and doesn’t discourage it.

  “Why, we could hit Lenin’s tomb or Quadafi’s condominium with a nuclear warhead any time we like,” the professor says with a touch of pride. “Pyongyang, Tehran, Baghdad, Beijing, Moscow…downtown Newark. We can nuke them all.”

  Nervous laughter from the students. They can never tell when the professor is joking.

  “Of course, it wasn’t always that way. On a cold March morning in 1926 on a farm in Massachusetts, Dr. Robert Goddard fired the world’s first liquid-fuel rocket. It was ten feet long and traveled 61 yards before crashing into the snow. And that, I assure you, was an event as significant as Kitty Hawk.”

  Professor Morton pauses, wondering if he should explain the Kitty Hawk reference to these young knowledge seekers, then figures if he has to, it isn’t worth the trouble. “In the following years, Goddard fired hundreds of rockets, always making improvements, gyroscopes for stabilization, movable exhaust vanes for steering, multi-stages to decrease weight and increase distance.”

  A hand goes up, and Professor Morton nods in the direction of an earnest young Asian woman in enormous round eyeglasses. “Professor, weren’t rockets used in battle long before the 1920’s? I mean what about the national anthem, ‘in the rockets’ red glare?’”

  “Quite right,” he says. “There were rockets at Fort Sumter. Hell, the British used Congreve rockets in the War of 1812, but they were little more than self-propelled artillery shells, and they couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. We’re talking about something else here, the ability to launch a rocket with a substantial payload, and using the principles of ballistics, telemetry and inertial guidance, squarely hit a target. Now, after Dr. Goddard’s experiments in the 1930’s, you would think that the American government would pour money into rocketry research, wouldn’t you?”

  The students nod in unison.

  “But you would be wrong!” the professor thunders. “Goddard’s work was virtually ignored here. Not so in Germany, however, where the Nazis built a rocket station at Peenemunde on the Baltic Sea. By September 1944, Hitler was raining V-2’s down on London. At the end of the war, Walter Dornberger, Wernher von Braun and 600 other German scientists came to the United States, and a damn good thing, because the Russians had their own advanced rocket program, even without the Germans they shanghaied.”

  Professor Morton pauses a moment and surveys his class. Some of the fac
ulty complain about today’s X-generation. To Morton, every class was the same. Ten per cent are brilliant and motivated; eighty per cent fall into the bulbous blob at the middle of the bell curve; and ten per cent who gained admission through family connections, computer error or downright bribery should be used for painful medical experiments. “The German scientists who came to the U.S. took the V-2 and modified and improved it into the MX-774, the forerunner of the Atlas and Titan missile systems that kept the Russians at bay before any of you scholars were born.”

  “But the Cold War is over,” pipes up a studious young man in the front row. “What you’re talking about is ancient history.”

  The professor smiles, admiring the lad’s gumption, if not his perspicacity. To the students, ancient history is anything that occurred prior to MTV. “Yes, they say the Cold War is over. They say Mutual Assured Destruction, MAD, is obsolete. Hell, they say I’m obsolete. But they are idiots!”

  The students roll their eyes and drop their pens. No use taking notes. It won’t be on any tests. Besides, they’ve heard it before, a great soaring riff of a diatribe against the National Security Council, various presidential administrations, both Republican and Democratic, the C.I.A., the D.I.A., the Pentagon, Congress, and just about everyone else in Washington except the men’s room attendant in the V.I.P. lounge at Dulles Airport.

  Lionel Morton is at the juncture of tenure and academic freedom, an intersection where the driver has the unbridled right to preach, to rant, to defame and defile. It is, in fact, wondrous therapy for the professor, though it does little to teach theoretical physics to his students.

  “If we let down our defenses, if we downsize and streamline and depend on Special Forces and quick-strike commando operations, we’ll be a second-rate power. We must not only maintain our nuclear weaponry, we must constantly improve and refine it if we are to remain the greatest power the world has ever known.”