Critical Mass (13 page)

“This is the White House!”

“When I get there, I will contact you again and you will conduct me to the president. Do you understand?”

“No.”

“If we are penetrated, there could be hostiles anywhere along the chain of command. I know the DCIA will back me on this. So will the DD. The deputy director knows me by name. Jim Deutsch. Tell the CIA to isolate information flow—oh, shit, I’m overcontrolling. I’m scared, buddy. Obviously, you need to communicate with the director level across the whole security system. Warn them. Tell them that this could have grown out of the Brewster Jennings problem. That’ll get their attention.”

Jim hung up. He leaned his head against the wall of the old-fashioned telephone booth for a moment, and breathed deeply.

He returned to the flight line to find Ressman sitting in an ancient V-tailed Beechcraft Bonanza.

“Let’s fly.”

“I’ve got the guy’s info right here,” Ressman said, “but you need to give him a call. I don’t know where they keep the keys.”

Jim took the pilot’s logbook from Ressman and returned to the little lobby. He dialed the number in the logbook but got an answering machine. “You have reached the home of—” Then a click. A concerned, older voice: “Hello?”

“Mr. Timothy Whitehead?”

“Yes?”

“My name is Agent James Deutsch. I’m calling on a matter of national importance. I am at the Grand Canyon airport with a pilot. I need to use your airplane.”

“What the hell?”

“It’s a national emergency, Mr. Whitehead. An atomic weapon has been detonated over Las Vegas and—”

“
What?
”

“Sir, please listen to me. I am at the airport. I need your plane.” He thought of the old man in Texas, now without a truck, struggling to survive. At least the owner of a plane wasn’t going to be hurting that bad. “I need to know which keys are yours.” There would be a set at the airport, of course.

“They’re on hook twenty-two in the safe. What’s happening? Are we in any danger?”

“Sir, are you in the Grand Canyon area?”

“We’re in Flagstaff.”

Jim made a mental calculation. That was far enough away to survive the worst of the radiation. “Keep your doors and windows closed. Turn on the radio and follow the alerts. You’ll start to hear them in about ten minutes.”

He hung up the phone. The “safe” was not a safe at all but a lockbox. He’d sprung many heavier-duty setups, and doing this one was no more difficult than rolling down a widow.

Perhaps Nabila could help. She was need-to-know on a thing like this. In fact, his guess was that she’d be getting a call-in within fifteen minutes.

He phoned. It rang. Rang again. “Nabila?”

“Jimmy!”

“The news is bad. Las Vegas was just nuked.”

She did not gasp; she did not cry out. In the background, he heard a male voice.

“Get Rashid on, too.”

“Jim?” His voice was tightly controlled.

“Rashid. Hi. Listen. I’m in Nevada. Las Vegas just took a multikiloton nuke. Plutonium, I think about thirty k’s. Three times the size of the Hiroshima bomb.”

Nabila choked out a cry.

“Nabila?”

“I have a warning! I have a warning that Maggie wouldn’t put in the briefer because we couldn’t confirm!”

“What warning?”

“Women in the West must put on the
hijab
or there will be a serious consequence. It was deployed out of Finland a few days ago.”

“Deployed out of Finland but originating in Russia?”

She was silent. They were violating the law, talking like this to each other and on a clear line and with another party with yet a different set of clearances on the call as well.

“Nabila, I have a need to know.”

“But I have no authority.”

“Where in Russia, Nabila?”

Rashid’s voice interrupted. “She asked me for lookdowns in Helsinki, then St. Pete, then—”

“Jim, is there a Russian connection?” Nabila asked.

“Listen to what I’m going to tell you. There is a penetration of U.S. security forces involved and it is extremely serious. Very high level. Obviously, a Russian connection is possible.”

“The Muslims are surrogates, then?” Rashid asked.

“They were, but they’re in control now, because nobody running them would have a motive to actually detonate a nuke like this, least of all Putin. But the internal system that’s protecting them—it’s still in place and it’s active, because they’re trying to kill me. Probably, whoever’s involved inside is doing it to save their own skin, at this point.”

“These terrorists are insane,” Rashid said. “Not all of us are like this. It’s heresy and it’s madness.”

“I know how painful it is for you guys. All the more motive to do what you can to help, am I right?”

“We will do anything!”

“Okay, here’s what I need. I am under threat pressure and I am moving east in a small plane with about a five-hundred-mile range. I’m going to take it down to Phoenix and I need you to wrangle me a jet out of Deer Valley Airport. I need clearances in order by the time I get there.”

“Consider it done!”

“Rashid,
how
?” Nabila asked.

“Nabby, I don’t know, but we will do this!”

“Travel me as someone too important to divert. The deputy director, say. And this is important—make sure the plane moves, even if nobody’s on it.”

“But . . . why?”

“Just do it. Make certain.”

“How can we even get a plane, let alone convince them to fly it with no passenger?” Nabila asked. “It’s all crazy.”

“We will! Now stop; this is enough. Jim, it will be as you say.”

“Thanks, both of you.”

“Rashid—”

“Enough, sister! Jim, it is done.”

He could imagine Nabby’s eyes, the widening at the edges that came when she felt insecure, or when she was being taken to bed. He could almost feel her body against him. When he was under fire or running hard, she would float into his mind like this, what guys called a battlefield angel. He wanted to say that he still loved her, but he feared that he might insult her, and he would certainly offend Rashid.

Rashid said, “Assalmu Alaykum.”

Jim replied, “Ma’a Salama.”

“Ma’a Salama,” Nabila said. Good-bye, in their formal Arab way, a convention full of the fatalism desert life induces.

Jim went to the little Beechcraft. He gazed into the pure air of the late night, staring for a moment back toward the huge flickers, red and orange and pink, that swept the western horizon. He climbed into the seat. “We good to go?”

“Checks out.”

He pulled down his door, made sure it was latched. The field around them was dark and silent. Or was it? Now, he had to assume the worst. Always. When he spoke, he made sure it was loud enough to be heard from the edge of the apron: “Take me to Deer Valley Airport near Phoenix. Do you know it?”

“I’ve flown in there.”

Ressman started the tiny plane’s engine. It darted down the runway, and rose into the night. For a few moments, Jim let its running lights remain visible; then he told Ressman to cut them. The plane was lost to view.

Jim sat listening to the drumming of the old engine, scanning the meager instruments, watching the altimeter rise. When it reached nine hundred feet he said, “That’s enough.”

Ressman trimmed, throttled back, and dropped the nose. “We got mountains ahead,” he said.

“Not really. I want you to reset the course. We’re not going to Phoenix at all. I’m going down to Piedras Negras. So what I think we need to do here is refuel in Nogales, then take me to P.N. and we’re done.”

His call had been a diversion. He didn’t know who might be listening and he didn’t even know for certain if Nabby and Rashid could be trusted. If by some miracle they actually got an empty plane to fly to Anderson, he might achieve a major misdirection. If not, his pursuers would at least be a little confused for a while.

“I don’t know if I can find Nogales.”

“Out in that desert, it’ll be the only lights.”

“You’re running. Staying below radars.”

“I am running, Mr. Ressman. You got that right.”

When Ressman didn’t respond, Jim allowed himself to close his eyes. If Nabila had understood the silences between his words, a specially cleared jet
would take off from Deer Valley in about two hours and head for Washington. It would be empty, except for the pilots, but hopefully nobody would realize that until it landed. He would be far away by then, on a different route and mission entirely.

EMERGENCY RESPONSE

SYSTEM

Among the first things a president learns is that when his bedside telephone
rings after midnight, the news is never good. He threw back the quilt and sat up. He picked up the receiver. “Yes?”

“Sir?”

“Hit me, Logan.”

“We need to get you in motion; a nuke’s gone off in Vegas.”

The world shuddered; the room swayed. He sucked breath, sucked more. His heart started in, bad. His mouth went so dry he could hardly form words. He grabbed the glass of water on the bedside table and drank it down.

“Sir?”

The president of the United States sat on his bed, a phone clutched in his hand, dying and dying, a million deaths. “Oh, God, God, God.”

He was no kid; he had his share of health problems; his heart wasn’t invulnerable. He took deep breaths until the sensation passed. Then another sensation came—that same heart almost broke with sorrow. His administration was ruined. This was the worst disaster in the history of the United States and it was his watch. He had a place in history and it was a hell of a bad one and—“Those poor people! Are we doing what we should? Where’s FEMA? Where’s the Guard? Where’s the National Emergency Response System?”

“We need to move you, Sir.”

“Where’s my wife?”

“She’s in Newfoundland, Sir,” Logan said. “They landed as soon as they got the emergency signal.”

He forced himself to think. This place could go up any second. He could be about to die—God, in seconds! “Okay. Okay. I’m calm. Is the government disbursing?”

“Across the board. The Emergency Response System is active; the whole country’s being warned—”

The president grabbed the remote off the bedside table and jabbed at it. The television turned on. He tuned to CNN.

At first, the screen appeared black. Then there were stars on it. “We’re eight miles west-southwest of the Strip, Charlie,” a voice said. Then more silence. “I don’t know if I can be heard. We’re eight miles west-southwest of the Strip, Charlie. Are we on the air?”

The stars bulged into blurs, then resolved.

Tom Logan came into the room.

“Oh my God,” President William Johnson Fitzgerald said. “God help us all.”

Hundreds and hundreds of fires turned the screen into a weltering orange glow. Buildings, homes, whole neighborhoods, all were burning. There were dark figures visible here and there in nearby streets. And in the center of it, like some sort of monstrous autumn bonfire, the Strip was sending a tower of fire into the sky.

“Sir, we need to get rolling.”

“I hear you. Get me the governor of Nevada.”

“Sir, we’re under imminent threat!”

“Do it!”

Logan made a call. “Governor Searles, please, this is the president calling.” He gave the phone to the president.

“Mike? . . . Look, I want to know what you need. I’m federalizing the Guard, but not there. You keep them. And if you need any military. Any military. Or planes. Nellis—excuse me? . . . Oh, God. Of course Nellis is gone. All right. Look, I’m going to give you my direct line, but I’ve got to get in motion. They’re afraid we could be about to take a hit. Washington.” He gave Logan the phone.

“Sir, I need to tell you something—”

“Talk to him!”

“Oh yes, Governor, it goes without saying. It’s a disaster area. We’ll make certain that all possible fire equipment, Phoenix, Salt Lake, LA—everything that can be deployed—”

The president grabbed Logan’s arm. “Go slow on that. This could be one of many. They might need their own services.”

“We’ll make sure everything’s moving toward you as soon as possible.”

Two Secret Service men had come in with the coat and shoes that were kept ready for a sudden move in the night. The president put the coat on over his pajamas and put the shoes on and followed them.

Logan said, “Sir, Mr. President—”

From outside, the president heard the helicopter landing. “I don’t want that,” he said. “We’re too vulnerable in that.”

“It’s the protocol we’re using—”

“No. No. We’re going down.” Few people realized just how extensive the tunnel system under Washington actually was. There was not a single embassy without an FBI listening post under it. In fact, the first tunnel had been constructed by L’Enfant during the building of the city. It led from the White House to the Potomac, and was intended as an escape route for the president. During World War II, it had been widened and an electric railroad installed for the use of FDR. Until the advent of presidential helicopter travel in the sixties, it had been the primary escape route. It was why presidential yachts had been so important for so long, and why they had been anchored where they had. Every president from Washington to Kennedy had kept a yacht at the ready.

With the advent of missiles that could reach the city from Siberia in twenty minutes, though, other means had to be found. Thus the current system of moving the president to the National Redoubt by helicopter.

As they hurried down from the residence, the president could see one of the young men speaking into his radio.

At the bottom of the stairs, they were met by an ashen Milton Dean, head of the president’s security detail. “Sir, excuse me, but the tunnels are not safe in this circumstance; you have to understand—”

Among the agreements that a president made was to abide by the orders of his security personnel during times of danger. Was the chopper really safer? Certainly it was fast. They would be in the bunker in twenty minutes.

But that wasn’t enough, and he knew it. “Where’s the Continuity of
Government Act?” he asked Logan. The president had introduced it earlier in the year, but it wasn’t a legislative priority.