Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 (34 page)

           
There was silence in the sedan for
several moments. Then, as though they were thinking the exact same thing, they
handed their folders over to each other.

           
“Holy shit,” Jarrel finally
exclaimed. “This NIRTSat thing—your SPO actually thinks this satellite got
pictures of a Chinese nuclear attack against a Philippine patrol?”

           
“Well, God knows it was possible,”
Elliott said. “If they had the NIRTSat up there, and it was over the
Philippines at the time, it’s more than possible. That might also explain why
the satellite went off the air for McLanahan. Except it didn’t go completely
off... the thing was alive long enough to download the last of its photos to
McLanahan in the B-2 during his bomb run here.”

           
“But McLanahan says here the data
wasn’t transmitted to SPACECOM . .

           
“Space Command wasn’t one of the
users,” Elliott said. “They provided launch and orbiting monitoring and had
backup-performance telemetry but weren’t scheduled to receive the imagery.”
Elliott paused for a moment, then said, “You know, Cal, if you’re in DEFCON
Three . .

           
“Yeah?”

           
Elliott knew that if Jarrel was
going to be in a conventional contingency operation, which was very possible,
he would be deploying, as priority one, the Air Battle Force. “Well, I think
we’ve got the ultimate mission-planning tool in the world available for you if
you want it. All we need to do is hook you up with Jon Masters and his NIRTSat
boosters, and you can build mission packages for the STRAT- FOR so detailed
that you’d think someone already flew the mission.”

           
“Maybe not,” Jarrel said, motioning
to the message from McLanahan. “Your SPO says that SPACECOM will deorbit the
NIRTSat. SPACECOM didn’t know about the nuke—they thought it had
malfunctioned.”

           
“Hal, step on it,” Elliott told
Briggs. “We need to get to the command post five minutes ago.”

           
“Got you covered, sir,” Briggs said.
He tossed a pocketsized cellular telephone into the backseat. “I wasn’t cleared
to peek at General Jarrel’s message, but I was cleared to peek at yours. When I
read the thing about Space Command, I ordered a direct scrambled call to
General Talbot at Falcon Air Force Base. He should be calling back any minute.”

           
True to his word, the phone rang
just as Briggs pulled up to the steel and glass headquarters building, so
Elliott sat in the car and took the scrambled telephone call from there. A
gruff, impatient voice answered, “NORAD, General Talbot,” then added with even
greater brusqueness, “Make it quick.”

           
“Mike, this is Brad Elliott calling
from Ellsworth. How the hell are you?”

           
“Fine, Brad, just fine. Listen,
Brad, can this call wait? I’m up to my ears in ’gators right now.”

           
Brad Elliott knew that was the
understatement of the year. Air Force General Michael Talbot had one of the
most unusual military jobs in the world: he was a “triple hat,” commander of
three major military organizations all at the same time. Because the Air Force
was the lead agency in space-related matters, Talbot, as commander of the Air
Force Space Command, was also commander of the United States Space Command, the
new specified military command that directed all military space functions and
coordinated all space-related activities for the three services; and because
Space Command was the United States’ agency in charge of space defense, Talbot
was also, the current commander of the North American Aerospace Defense
Command, which was a joint U.S. and Canadian organization that commanded all
long-range radars and air-defense fighter bases for the defense of North
America.

           
As such, Talbot was incredibly busy
even during the quiet times—with an air-defense emergency in the works, he was
stretched to the limit. Even through the hiss and pop of the secure phone line,
Elliott could hear the stress in Talbot’s voice. “I know you’re busy, Mike, but
this is important. I need to talk to you about Jon Masters . .

           
“I got young Doctor Hot-Shot Big-Sky
Damn-the- Torpedoes Masters sitting right here, Brad,” Talbot said with audible
contempt. Talbot’s commander of the Air Force Space Command’s Second Space Wing
(which was in charge of all Defense Department satellites from launch to
recovery) had gotten on the phone to Sky Masters’ DC-10 the minute the
satellite went out. Since the NIRTSat had been launched seventy-one seconds
outside of the launch window after disobeying an Air Force request to cancel,
Talbot’s subordinate, the commander of the Second Space Wing, had ordered up a
specifically modified C-130 cargo plane to recover the satellite. Better that,
the commander thought, than having a nine-hundred-pound piece of scrap metal in
a bad orbit. Masters had no choice but to go along with the Air Force. Either
that or face handcuffs at Falcon Air Force Base, where he was now sitting.

           
“He was just about to let my senior
staff in his plant office inspect his records, weren’t you, Doctor Masters?”

           
“That’s got to wait,” Elliott said.
“He just lost a satellite and I’ve got to get him out to GENESIS right away.
It’s all connected . . .”

           
There was a slight pause; then, “Oh
. . .”

           
Few things in this world could knock
guys like Talbot back on their heels, but GENESIS, Brad Elliott’s classified
call sign from Dreamland, was one. Just mentioning the word meant that most of
the Pentagon was involved. Which was, Talbot thought, typical of Elliott, who
was known to be kicking ass with an array of high-tech toys developed out in
his secret labs in Nevada. Rumors had been circulating for months about
Elliott’s B-2 bombers and other strange planes flying around the desert. God
only knows what he needed Masters for. But the fact that Elliott knew all about
a classified satellite launch that had gone wrong only twenty minutes before,
told Talbot that Elliott was plugged in right at the top.

           
“Well, you got him, Brad. Now where
do you want him?”

           
“I need him back in his lab in
Arkansas
soonest. When are you going to be done
chewing on him?”

           
“I’m done. I don’t have the time or
energy for shit like this anymore,” Talbot said in a low voice. “His jet is
already fueled. He’ll be airborne in thirty minutes and in Arkansas in three
hours. Does this have something to do with . . . events this afternoon?”

           
“It could have
everything
to do with it.”

           
“I was afraid of that. The little
prick leads a charmed life. You need his satellite intact as well?”

           
“Have you deorbited it yet?”

           
“Just about ready to do it—window
opens in about an hour.”

           
“Better leave it, then. The brass
hasn’t made up their minds what they want.”

           
Talbot knew the “brass” usually
included only men who had collected more than fifty million popular votes.

           
“Whatever you say, Brad. I’ll be
glad to jettison that little cocksucker anyway. He’s a pain in the ass.”

           
“You have that effect on people, my
friend.”

           
“Yeah, right. The bastard never
stops smiling, too. You notice that? Always with the damned grin on his puss. I
don’t trust somebody who grins all the time—it usually means they found someone
else to put the blame on.”

           
“If he busted one of your rules,
Mike, he’s gotta pay. When GENESIS is done with him, I’ll send him back to you.
How’s that?”

           
“Naw. Keep him outta my sight. Just
get the bastards who fried my NAVSTAR satellites and we’ll call it even.”

           
“Deal, buddy. GENESIS out.”

The White House Situation Room

           
The President had been in the
Roosevelt Room listening to a planning meeting for a world economic conference
when they told him.

           
Lloyd Emerson Taylor, forty-third
President of the United States and a descendant of the twelfth President, had
made a mental note of what he was doing at that moment. It would, after all, be
important for the memoirs he was going to write after he left office. And this,
Lloyd Emerson Taylor guessed, was going to be one hell of an important chapter
in his book.

           
After his military aide had handed
him the Eyes Only message, Taylor had immediately excused himself from the
planning meeting and retreated to the Oval Office. From there, over a secure
hot line, he began to get a handle on the situation: he learned that Defense,
JCS, and the CIA suspected the Chinese of setting off the nuke, but no one had
been able to completely verify that. Worse, the President couldn’t get word on
how President Mikaso was or what was going on in Manila because all phone lines
were jammed and all satellite and HF networks had been disrupted. He also
learned that even though the U.S. had been monitoring the situation between the
Chinese and the Philippines since their naval skirmish of a few months ago,
nobody wanted China or the Philippines to know that the United States had
pictures of the explosion. Apparently the pictures were not taken by a regular
satellite but by a new, highly classified one called PACER SKY, an experimental
system that would allow real-time targeting data for strategic bombers.

           
Whatever the hell PACER SKY was,
Taylor knew it had just snapped what might be one of the most famous
photographs in thirty years, thanks to a simple stroke of luck.

           
Finally, a more formal, albeit
hastily arranged, assessment meeting was scheduled a half-hour later in the
Situation Room.

           
As Taylor, his military aide, his
official White House photographer, his Secret Service bodyguard, and a
civilian- clothed Navy captain who carried his “football,” the portable
scrambled UHF transceiver that Taylor would use in an emergency to order his
strategic nuclear forces to war, made their way down the elevator to the
Situation Room in the basement of the White House, the enormity and gravity of
the situation finally began to sink in.

           
Like his famous
great-great-great-great-grandfather, the President was a bull-nosed,
laissez-faire bureaucrat who’d done well as president because of his quiet,
hardworking, rock-steady style. And like his ancestor, Taylor was an exArmy
general and judge advocate who had retired to enter politics at age fifty-one,
soon after pinning on his first star. Taylor had, above everything else, a keen
sense of history— and his place in it.

           
He knew, even as he entered the
Situation Room and everyone stood up, that he was the first American president
to have to deal with a nuclear weapon crisis since John F. Kennedy.

           
And he was determined to handle it
better than Kennedy did.

           
He had not been in the Situation
Room five minutes when he had his men on the griddle—even as phones rang
constantly in the background. His eyes wandered around the table to each and
every adviser: Tom Preston, his Secretary of Defense and an experienced
politician; General Wilbur Curtis, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff;
Kenneth Wayne, Director of the CIA; and Frank Kellogg, his National Security
Advisor.

           
His eyes settled on General Wilbur
Curtis, chief military officer of the United States and Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. He was the President’s principal military adviser but a
holdover from the last administration. Unfortunately, he was so well respected
on the Hill and at the Pentagon that Taylor knew he couldn’t get rid of him
even if he wanted to.

           
“General Curtis, even though you got
us in this DEFCON Three posture—and I wish I had been in on that decision from
the start and not after your commanders went ahead and did it themselves—the
‘bolt from the blue’ theory of strategic warfare has been dead for almost a
decade.”

           
Curtis could see this was going to
be a long, difficult meeting.

           
“Sir, we were following the
OPLAN—the operations plan—established and authorized by you in case of an
emergency of this magnitude. DEFCON Three is a very secure posture right now.
We’re—”

           
“If there was no apparent attack in
progress, then you had time to notify me and let me make the decision,” the
President interrupted. “That’s what I expect. We will need to change the OPLAN
after this to rectify it.”