The Last Jihad (23 page)

“The whole thing is unreal, sir, a nightmare,” said the VP. “But I agree with Marsha. It’s not a game. Saddam has been trying to develop nuclear weapons for the better part of the last thirty years. We know that. We know he came close just before invading Kuwait in 1990. We know UNSCOM found evidence of a very aggressive program to develop weapons of mass destruction—chemical, biological and nuclear. Hell, Jack even helped two of their top nuclear scientists defect, even if one of them went back. So we’ve known for a long time this moment was coming. Maybe Jack’s guys and Burt’s guys were right a couple of years ago. Maybe we should have gone after Saddam from the beginning of this whole war on terrorism. I don’t know. That’s water under the bridge now. But there’s no question we’ve got to do something now. The problem is: How many nukes does Saddam have? We have no idea. What will he do next? Is he really dying? Is he really desperate? We have no idea. What we do know is that we don’t have much time, and the Israelis will strike if we don’t act fast.”

“Osirik?”

“Absolutely, sir. The Israelis attacked and destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirik back in 1981—without, I might add, giving us a head’s up. And, for my part, I say thank God they did. There’s absolutely no reason to believe Prime Minister Doron won’t order a strike in the next hour if we don’t. The bigger question is whether or not he’s really willing to wait that long given the imminent holocaust his people are facing.”

“Bill, are you saying we should do it?” the president queried. “Do we go first?”

“Mr. President,” shouted Paine. “Tell me you are not seriously considering for one moment the possibility of firing a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile at Baghdad, for God’s sake.”

Everyone in the Air Force One conference room and back at the President’s Emergency Operations Center under the White House seemed to recoil. The thought of using a U.S. nuclear weapon for the first time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was almost too unreal to contemplate. But, Bennett thought, that’s precisely what they were doing. And quickly running out of time in the process.

“Well, given that we don’t exactly have a lot of options right now, what do you have in mind, Mr. Secretary?” asked the president.

“Sir, I beg you, for God’s sake, take a deep breath. Step back. Don’t even let the thought cross your mind.”

“Mr. Secretary, I don’t believe I have that luxury.”

“It is
not
a luxury, sir. We are talking about life as we know it. Sir,
think.
More than forty-five thousand people died in Hiroshima on the first day alone. Twenty thousand more over the next few months. That was a quarter of the population of the city at the time, sir. In Nagasaki, if I remember correctly, there were more than twenty-two thousand people who died in the first day, and another twenty thousand over the next few months. And those were small cities, sir. Baghdad is something else entirely. We’re talking about…”

“About five million residents,” said Secretary Trainor.

“Five million people, sir. Five million souls. You cannot hold them responsible for the acts of a madman.”

The Secretary of State’s pasty white face was bright red now. This was no longer about policy. It was personal.

“Tucker, I hear you loud and clear. I have no animus towards the Iraqi people themselves. Indeed, I pity them for what Saddam has done. But what do I tell the prime minister of Israel? What do I tell him? He’s got six million people to protect. He himself is a Holocaust survivor. He’s a former prisoner of war in Lebanon when he was younger. I can guarantee you he’s not going to sit back and do nothing. And what about me? How many Holocaust memorials and religious conferences have I spoken at where I’ve said, ‘Never again’?”

“No,” Paine shouted. “No. We can run some bombing campaigns. We can send weapons inspectors back in there. We can make him pay. But we do not, under any circumstances, attack a foreign power, even Iraq, with weapons of mass destruction. That is not who we are as a people, sir. That is not what God put this great country on the earth to do.”

Bennett watched the president mull his options. They weren’t good, and everyone knew it. The minutes ticked by. No one dared say anything. But everyone knew if the president didn’t make a decision soon, the Israelis would. For his part, Bennett was sympathetic to the Secretary of State’s argument. The thought of using a nuclear weapon—particularly against a capital city—was abhorrent. Paine might be pretentious, but that didn’t mean he was wrong. Aggressive conventional-warfare options were available. But was the president fully considering them, or was he being swept along by the horrifying emotions of the moment? Saddam Hussein clearly had just crossed a Rubicon and declared war. But was it really true that the nuclear option was the only option?

“Stu, what do you think?” the president asked, turning to Iverson.

“Honestly, sir, I don’t think you have much choice. I don’t like it. But I still think you need to do it.”

“How will the Russians react?”

“I think if you explain the situation to President Vadim before you strike, you’ll find him reluctant, but understanding.”

“Jack, how about you?”

“Well, sir, I think we need to do it. But if we do, we’ve got to do it right.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we’ve got to do what Harry Truman did. Mr. President, when it came time to shut down the Japanese in World War II and end their mortal threat to our people and our interests once and for all, Truman didn’t hit just one enemy city with the Bomb. He hit two. Now, Iraq is the most deadly regime on the planet right now. Personally, I’d include Iran in that assessment, but they really haven’t been directly implicated in any of these particular events. They’ll be a very serious future problem, I guarantee that. Especially, if we keep taking actions against their neighbors. But, that said, we need to focus on the immediate problem in front of us: Iraq. It’s the epicenter of evil in the modern age. It’s a breeding ground for terrorism. They’ve been doing everything they possibly can to buy, build, or steal nukes, not to mention chemical and biological weapons. They’re recruiting Russian scientists. They’re threatening to ‘incinerate’ Israel. We need to take out Saddam and his stockpile of weapons once and for all. The world needs to know the price of going to war with us. You try stunts like this, and we will melt you down. If you’re going to do it, Mr. President, do it all the way. Like Truman. A one-two punch.”

“Where else would you hit, Jack?”

“Tikrit, a small city about a hundred and fifty kilometers north of Baghdad on the Tigris River. It’s Saddam’s hometown. He has a presidential palace there. He kicked UNSCOM out of there when they were hunting down his weapons of mass destruction. We believe he’s got huge underground storehouses of chemical, biological, and nuclear materials there. There’s also a site near there called
Al Alam
where he’s been known to be building missile engines. We hit Baghdad and Tikrit, and the world will know we mean business.”

Paine was beside himself, but tried to hold his fire. The president listened carefully, chewed on that for a moment, then addressed Defense Secretary Trainor.

“Burt, how long would it take for one of our ICBM’s to hit Baghdad and Tikrit?”

“Mr. President, for God’s sakes, I beg you not to go there,” insisted Paine. “This is total insanity.”

That didn’t sit well, but the president tried not to be sidetracked.

“Burt?” the president persisted.

Bennett could see the president was fast moving from annoyance with Paine to outright anger, not because of the secretary’s position so much as his smug, self-righteous attitude. That worried Bennett, mainly because he found himself agreeing with—or at least strongly leaning towards—Paine’s position. If Paine blew his credibility now, as Bennett guessed the secretary already had or was close to doing, a critically important viewpoint would be lost and a serious vacuum would be created.

“A Minuteman launch out of one of our underground silos?” continued Trainor. “About twenty-five to thirty minutes.”

“And from a sub?”

“Sir, we have several Sea Wolf nuclear attack subs in the Indian Ocean right now. I’d say, maybe, eight or nine minutes, to either or both cities,” replied Trainor.

“And the impact?”

“Well, sir, Iraq is a country of forty million people. As I said, there’s about five million in and around Baghdad. Tikrit’s fairly small. Big strategically, as Jack says, as Saddam’s birthplace, hometown, and home of several of his most secure underground bunkers. But it’s not much of a population center. So, a strike at both cities? Depending on the size and type of weapon used. I think we’re talking about upwards of one to three million dead by the end of the first week. Minimum.”

“Good God,” said Paine.

“Minimum?” asked the president.

“I’m afraid so, sir.”

Tucker Paine was now on his feet.

“Mr. President, I cannot be part of…”

“Mr. Secretary,
sit down
—or you
will
be relieved of your duties,” snapped the president. “I appreciate your dissent and I welcome it—and that of others if they share it. But I need your advice, not your hysterics, Mr. Secretary. And I will tolerate nothing less. Do I make myself clear?”

“Mr. President, I…”

“
Do I make myself clear?
” MacPherson demanded again with fire in his eyes.

Secretary Paine remained standing, but said nothing.

“Mr. Vice President?” MacPherson called out.

“Yes, sir, Mr. President?”

“I want two more Secret Service agents in that room with you right now. The secretary
will
sit down. He
will
listen. And he
will
participate—peacefully. Or he will be removed, locked up, and face federal charges. Am I clear?”

“Crystal, sir.”

Bennett watched the monitor as two new agents moved into the room and took up positions near the Secretary of State. Stunned, Paine slowly backed down and settled into his seat, beet red and fighting to contain his emotions.

Each wore a bulletproof Kevlar vest.

Two dozen U.S. and Russian commandos took up positions on the fifth floor and the roof of the Hotel National. Each was dressed in black from head to toe. Each was equipped with enough firepower to start a small war. But starting a war was not what they had in mind. Preventing one was.

The U.S. and Russian team leaders checked and synchronized their watches. It was time. Huddled in a stairwell just a few yards from the doors they were about to bust down, they gave each other the thumbs-up sign, and whispered commands in English and Russian into their headsets. Instantly, eight commandos rappelled down the front of the hotel and tossed stun grenades through every window of all four suites. The deafening explosions rocked the building and terrified passersby.

“Go, go, go,”
the American team leader shouted.

He and his Russian counterpart burst into the hallway with a dozen commandos. Seconds later, they’d crashed down all four doors and plunged into the smoke-filled rooms with more stun grenades and guns blazing. Their orders were explicit. Take down the “four horsemen” dead or alive. Given the murderous, barbaric histories of these demons, it was decided to neutralize them immediately, rather than take any chances.

There was just one problem. When the smoke cleared, the team leaders found themselves sick to their stomachs. The lights were on, but no one was home.

CNN was still playing. But the “four horsemen” were gone.

“What do you mean you lost them?”

Mitchell was pacing and screaming into his headset in the Global Op Center deep under CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

“Sir, we stormed the rooms—and they weren’t in there,” said the American team leader on a secure satellite phone from the fifth-floor hallway of the Hotel National.

“Well, where the hell did they go?”

“Sir, we have no idea.”

“So I’m supposed to call the president and tell him my guys just lost the four most dangerous terrorists left on the face of the planet?”

“Well, sir, I…”

“Find them. You wake up President Vadim. You get him to mobilize the Red Army and you tear that city apart until you find them. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then do it—now.”

Bennett splashed cold water on his face and stared into the bathroom mirror.

The president was in his personal airborne office, on the phone with the Israeli prime minister. Corsetti and the rest of the National Security team were also on the phones, gathering more information and discussing their various options. Bennett rubbed his neck and discreetly popped a Valium. His heart was racing. His head was pounding. His neck and back were aching. His eyes were bloodshot. And he was beginning to feel feverish. He just wanted to find someplace to curl up and fall asleep.

A few minutes later, he stepped back into the in-flight conference room and poured himself a mug of coffee, two creams, two sugars. A steward brought in a large plate of sandwiches, a tray of vegetables and dip, small bags of Ruffles and Fritos and a large plate of oatmeal raisin cookies. Suddenly, Bennett felt famished.

He felt a twinge of guilt for wanting to eat at a time like this. But that didn’t stop him from grabbing and wolfing down a ham and Swiss cheese on whole wheat with lettuce, tomato and Grey Poupon, and a big, thick, warm cookie.

Black quickly joined him, taking not one but two such sandwiches, and snagging two Diet Cokes and cookies as well.

McCoy sat in the corner, munching on carrots and celery and quietly sipping a bottle of Evian.

“Bob, it’s Jack,” said the CIA director. “It’s not good.”

The White House chief of staff pressed the secure satellite phone—just handed to him by an Air Force communications specialist—close to his ear as he glanced over at the president.

“What’ve you got, Jack?”

“I need the president.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“We lost them.”

“Who?”

“What do you mean, ‘who’? Take a guess, Bob.”

It took a moment, but suddenly Corsetti snapped out of his fatigue-induced haze and realized what was going on.

“You lost the ‘four horsemen’?”

“I need to talk to the president—
now.
”

Ten minutes later, the president, Iverson, and Corsetti reentered the conference room.

The president was wheeled back into position at the head of the table, and he didn’t look happy. They all took their seats again and reconnected with the PEOC.

“I just talked with Doron,” the president began. “He briefed me on what they know. They’ve got several agents on the ground looking for any sign that Scuds are being moved into position. Nothing yet. And now Jack tells me they’ve just lost the ‘four horsemen’ somewhere in Moscow?”

Everyone winced. Things were quickly going from bad to worse.

Corsetti locked eyes with Bennett for a moment. The two had never been close. Corsetti had always been way too conservative for Bennett’s taste and Bennett had always been way too unwilling to raise money for the president or the party for Corsetti’s taste.

Imagine what Corsetti would do if I ever told him I voted for Dukakis, Clinton twice, and for Gore?
thought Bennett.
He’d personally throw me off this plane—mid-flight.
The Denver Don didn’t do dissenters well.
It was just as well
, thought Bennett. He knew Wall Street. Corsetti knew Washington. They were both loyal to the president. A match made in heaven. Who said diversity was a bad thing?

“Marsha?”

“Yes, Mr. President,” responded Kirkpatrick.

“Get NSA on the line. Tell them I want saturation satellite coverage of every square inch of Iraq starting immediately. I want them snapping pictures of every Iraqi hangar, house, and hut—every tank, truck, and tricycle—every minute of every hour of every day until we know where they’re hiding their missiles and we can target them and take them out. You got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t care what they have to do. If they need to re-task their birds, then do it. If they need Air Force assets—U-2s, SR-71 Blackbirds, Predators, and Global Hawk drones, whatever—make it happen. Doron is very nervous, as you can imagine. He’s ready to strike Baghdad right now. He flat-out told me they’re fueling their missiles as we speak. I all but begged him not to move. I said we’re prepared to act—
decisively
—and we’re moving our forces into position. I told him our National Security Council was meeting right now and we’d let him know precisely what we would do within the hour.”

“What did he say, sir?” asked the vice president.

“He was pretty concise. He said I have fifty-three minutes, twenty-seven seconds—not one second more.”

Iverson couldn’t believe he was here.

For many reasons, the idea of being on Air Force One, with the President of the United States, in the midst of this global nuclear crisis was the last thing he wanted to be doing. He hadn’t been on this job for long, and now all hell was breaking loose.

That said, however, no matter how he sliced it, Iverson couldn’t shake the thought of how much he hated the man he’d helped elect president. Everything he’d been working for, planning for, strategizing for over the past few years had just been robbed from him.

He’d never wanted to be Treasury Secretary. He wanted to be a billionaire, on the Forbes 400 list—at the top of it, if possible.

Now his best-laid plans lay smoldering in ruins. The president had forced him to accept the position by first leaking the news of his impending nomination to the
Wall Street Journal
and then having Corsetti fan the flames of public and political approval until Iverson couldn’t possibly say no. But he wanted to say no. He should’ve said no. Becoming Treasury Secretary meant having to divest all of his GSX and Joshua Fund holdings, just when they were about to make him richer than he’d ever known.

Sure, he was already wealthy. But the Medexco deal would have multiplied that wealth exponentially. And now—in just a matter of months—it was all gone. All of it. Neither the president nor Corsetti had any idea of the rage Iverson felt. But it was real, and it was smoldering, and it couldn’t be bottled up for long.

Suddenly, Iverson felt his BlackBerry vibrate on his hip. He glanced down to check the latest email and couldn’t believe his eyes.

It was them. They weren’t happy. They wanted answers. But how dare they email him here, now.

He quickly hit “delete” and turned off the BlackBerry, fought to regain his composure, and tried to reenter the National Security Council’s discussion in midstream.

“Secretary Trainor,” the president said firmly.

“Yes, sir.”

“I need a recommendation, quickly.”

“Well, Mr. President, let me first say that if you do decide to do this, I would not recommend that you order the use of an ICBM.”

The president was visibly taken aback.

“Why not?”

The Secretary of Defense spoke calmly and carefully, especially in light of the confrontation that had just ensued with the Secretary of State.

“Sir, I believe that all of our strategic nuclear forces are top of the line. But…”

“But what?”

“But I offer you this scenario. What if we try to launch a Minuteman or a Peacemaker and it doesn’t work? What if it blows up in its silo? Or blows up heading up into the atmosphere, like the space shuttle Challenger? Or disintegrates in the stratosphere? Or, sir, what if the ICBM works just perfectly—but misses and hits another country?”

“Burt, what are you trying to say? You’re telling me our strategic nuclear missile forces are unreliable?”

“No, sir. I’m telling you I don’t want to find out. And I don’t want the rest of the world to find out. I believe they work just fine. But I, for one, am not interested in being wrong on a matter of this magnitude. The consequences could be catastrophic, both in terms of lives lost and the complete loss of our strategic nuclear deterrence. Besides, even if everything works just perfectly—as I’m sure it would—it’s just too much firepower.”

The president took a deep breath, then nodded to Corsetti, who quickly poured him a glass of water.

“So, you agree with the Secretary of State. You wouldn’t fire a nuclear weapon at Baghdad?”

“No, sir, I didn’t say that.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I’m saying I wouldn’t fire an ICBM.”

“What would you do?”

“
If
you choose to launch such a nuclear strike—and I repeat, ‘
if
’—I would recommend the use of a tactical nuclear weapon. A cruise missile.”

“Spell it out for me, Mr. Secretary.”

“Sir, on your command, we can launch B-2 stealth bombers out of Whiteman Air Force Base near Kansas City. They could be armed with conventional cruise missiles, but also with AGM-129As. These are air-to-ground cruise missiles that fly at over five hundred miles per hour with a range of some two thousand nautical miles and can deliver a W-80-1 nuclear warhead with pinpoint precision.”

“Walk me through the W-80.”

“Well, sir, the W-80 is actually a nuclear warhead for sub-based ballistic missiles. The W-80-1 is a nuclear warhead designed for use on ALCMs—air-launched cruise missiles. It’s a two-stage radiation implosion weapon. Three feet long, about three hundred pounds each. Delivers a yield of about one hundred and fifty kilotons. Mr. President, that’s essentially the equivalent of detonating three hundred
million
pounds of dynamite in one location.”

Bennett suddenly felt nauseated. Secretary Trainor continued.

“First designed in ’76 at Los Alamos. First deployed in ’81. Production completed in ’90. We built about seventeen hundred of them. After the START II talks, we’ve got about, what, maybe four hundred of them in stock right now.”

“Mr. President?”

It was National Security Advisor Marsha Kirkpatrick.

“Yes, Marsha?”

“Let’s just say for a moment that you order such a strike. You can’t do it unilaterally. You’ll need to consult the leadership of Congress. The allies. Russia.”

“And Doron,” added Mitchell with an air of urgency in his voice. “The prime minister is waiting.”

“I know, I know—Bill, talk to me. What do you think?”

“Sir, it’s not just that. The real question is: What would we do next? I mean, this would be an unprecedented chapter in human history. I think we’d need to have—and explain to Congress and our allies—some sense of how the next chapter might read.”

“OK, one moment on that. But, Bill, what do you recommend we do?”

The vice president was a good man. Bennett respected him enormously. He had far more government experience—particularly federal experience and national security experience—than MacPherson. And he was always calm, cool, and collected in a crisis.

Even more attractive to Bennett, this vice president was a strategist. In the 1980s, he’d been a key Senate ally to President Reagan in helping outflank and outfox the Evil Empire. In the 1990s he’d been a staunch and unwavering voice for strategic missile defenses as well as modernizing our nuclear forces. He’d also applied his impressive intellectual heft to the rethinking of the U.S. role in a post-Soviet world.

This man had the ability to play three-dimensional chess, thought Bennett, the ability to calculate and assess each possible move and countermove and countercountermove when it came to domestic politics and global affairs. And win. No wonder the Secret Service code-named the man Checkmate. The shoe fit snugly.

“One to three million people?” The vice president shook his head slowly. “Most of whom are innocent civilians? Baghdad and Tikrit, uninhabitable for decades?”

“Bill, I get it. I know it’s unthinkable. I’m asking you this simple question: Does it decisively shut down the threat of state-sponsored Iraqi terrorism and the imminent threat of the use of weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein, or doesn’t it?”

“It does, sir.”

“Does it send a message to other nations that are even remotely considering an attack on the U.S. or our allies with such weapons of mass murder that we have the means and the will to obliterate them once and for all?”

“Yes, sir. It does.”

“In your estimation, does it buy the world fifty or a hundred years of peace?”