Arc Light (12 page)

The aircraft began to move, and the President said to the flight crew taxiing the great aircraft in a cheerful, campaign voice, “Don't you think you boys oughta open the shades?”

Lambert craned his neck to see into the cockpit. The windows were all covered with a thick, white shade. Mounted between the pilot and copilot, a glowing television screen showed the tarmac roll by in front of the plane.

“Those curtains are made of aluminized fabric, sir,” General
Sherman replied. “It's standard procedure.”

“You mean they're going to take off with the curtains drawn?” the First Lady asked.

“Yes, ma'am,” Sherman said. “It's . . . it prevents, well, tissue dehydration and . . . and chlorioretinal burns if . . . ” He didn't finish his sentence—he just smiled. “It beats the system our tanker crewmen use. They use shaded goggles in daylight, but right now—at night when it's too dark to wear them—they put zinc oxide on their exposed skin and fly with an eye patch on to keep at least one eye, uh, unburned.”

There was an uncomfortable silence.

Leading the tour back down the hallway to the rear, Sherman said, “In addition to the crew, we've got the sixteen armed air policemen you saw outside.”

“Why so many?” the First Lady asked. Some, Lambert had noticed, had grenade launchers mounted underneath their rifles, and others carried light machine guns.

“Well, ma'am, we really don't know just where we might have to land,” Sherman said, choosing his words carefully. “I mean, what kind of security there will be there. This just gives us . . . widens our options.” After pausing to ensure that his response was satisfactory, General Sherman said, “The aircraft has four thousand six hundred and twenty square feet of main deck divided into six areas. Immediately behind the cockpit here, in what would be first class, are your private quarters, Mr. President.” The group peered into the cabin at bunk beds trimmed in gold.

Walking down the corridor, Sherman said, “Next we've got your conference room,” and the group filed by the doorway. Lambert saw the Joint Chiefs—some in uniform, others in civilian clothes—seated about the rectangular table. There were telephones between every seat and at the head, which presumably was the President's seat, facing the display screen.

“Then, moving on back,” Sherman said, “we have the briefing room.” They walked through an empty auditorium-style room with a couple of dozen seats facing a large screen and into a room filled with consoles, busy people working at each one. “This is the battlestaff work area,” Sherman said to the President. “We can monitor and update all of the information that is fed into the
NORAD
Command Center Processing and Display System, more commonly known as the ‘Big Board,' to keep you informed of events around the world.”

Moving into another compartment, the general turned to an officer who was monitoring a computer console and asked, “Is General Thomas still in conference?”

“Yes, sir,” the man said after checking the screen.

“And finally,” Sherman said, obviously extending his tour to stall for time, “this is the communications control center.” As the plane, taxiing at high speed, turned and everyone stepped to one side to rebalance, the general said, “When we get airborne, we'll play out a five-mile-long trailing wire antenna for very low frequency transmissions. The several-mile wavelength allows penetration directly through the earth to similarly equipped aircraft, ships, and ground installations. It's not perfect—the wave-formation time slows our rate of transmission significantly—but it gets through. Usually.”

General Sherman waited, getting only raised eyebrows from the First Lady, and then continued. “For regular high-speed communications, which are subject to some interference under certain . . . in certain situations, we have a full range of high frequency transceivers. We also have a super high frequency system and satellite transceivers housed in a dorsal blister—that little bump on top of the aircraft just behind the big ‘hump' of the 747. All our systems broadcast random information continuously to keep from alerting anyone to an increased pace of communications. When we want to talk to somebody, we just input the designated interrupt code and follow it with the message. We can basically talk to anybody you want—anywhere, anytime.”

“Too bad Jack's not here,” President Livingston said to his wife, referring to their son at Amherst. “He'd eat this up.”

“Oh, uh, if you'd like to speak to your son or daughter, sir,” Sherman said, and then turned back to the officer at the console next to him. “Where is the First Family now?”

The officer tapped at his keyboard for a second. “A-3 is airborne on a Guard helo, sign Crown Three, and A-4 is”—he hesitated and tapped again—“she's . . . ” The man again hesitated as he read, and then he sat back and pointed at the screen for Sherman to read.

“Are you talking about Nancy?” the First Lady asked, stepping up to stare at the screen but without a glimmer of comprehension of the information displayed on it.

“Apparently ma'am, sir, your daughter does not want to, uh, participate in the evacuation. Secret Service agents are talking to her now, but . . . ”

“Where are they being evacuated?” the President asked.

“Your son,” Sherman said as he ran his finger across a line on the screen and asked the console's operator, “Alpha Lima 51, is that . . . ?”

“Burlington, sir.”

“Your son is aboard an Air National Guard helicopter heading
for the secure Presidential Emergency Facility outside Burlington, Vermont,” Sherman said, and squinted to read the screen again. “Why the abort on A-4?” Sherman asked.

The console operator said, “They missed the time line for Tahoe, sir.”

Sherman straightened up, stretching his back, and said, “Your daughter was supposed to go from her home in San Francisco to the Presidential Emergency Facility in the northern Sierra Nevadas near Lake Tahoe, but because of the delay they've had to reroute her to Task Force 37—to the U.S.S.
Enterprise
—as a temporary measure until . . . until further transportation is deemed appropriate.”

The President hesitated, and then he burst into hearty laughter. Lambert felt a smile creep onto his face. “You're trying to take Nancy to an aircraft carrier?” he asked, and laughed again.

Lambert noticed, however, that the First Lady was not smiling. “Is it necessary that she go?” she asked.

General Sherman shrugged, his mouth opening a full second before the words came out. “It would make things simpler, ma'am.”

“Then let me speak to her,” the First Lady said without a hint of good humor. The President had grown somber, and Lambert wiped the smile off his face.

General Sherman sent an airman off with the First Lady to the President's cabin. He turned back to the group, and an awkward pause ensued. “Oh,” Sherman said as if suddenly remembering, “and if all our other communications systems fail, we've got meteor burst communications capabilities. Every few seconds, small meteors collide with the earth's atmosphere within line of sight of our aircraft. The friction causes ionization of the atoms making up the meteor and leaves a ten- to twenty-mile trail of free electrons at an altitude of fifty to seventy-five miles. An antenna monitors the sky for the trail, which dissipates after half a second, but in that time finds the trail with the correct angle from the source to the target and bursts a radio signal, which bounces down to a receiver at the target.”

Lambert could feel the aircraft taking off, and it felt strange that he, and everybody else, was just standing around during the roll-out instead of being strapped in.

“Good evening, Walter,” the Secretary of Defense said, walking up to the President and shaking his hand. “Greg,” he said as they shook also. The group followed him up to the conference room.

“Good evening, sir,” General Thomas said as he and the other Chiefs—less Army Chief of Staff Halcomb, who had issued the televised call-up orders from the White House Briefing Room—stood around the conference table. “We're finishing up a Commander's Availability Check. We're internetting all the major commands, tying
everybody together over open links on different communications nets.”

The President sat at the head of the table as a scratchy voice on the speakerphone said, “Island Sun Six is five by five.”

“That's the Ground Mobile Command Center with the Speaker of the House in it,” General Thomas translated.

“Scope Light is five by five,” said a different voice, distorted by transmission but clear.

“That's Atlantic Command,” Thomas said in a low voice.

“Silk Purse is five by five,” a voice with a still different quality of sound reported.

“European Command,” Thomas said. Both he and General Starnes, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, were making check marks on a preprinted sheet of paper.

“Blue Eagle is five by five.”

“Pacific Command,” Thomas said as Lambert took a seat by the President.

“Looking Glass is five by five.”

“That's ACC's twenty-four-hour-a-day alert aircraft on Doomsday Watch.”

The President, Lambert, Thomas, the Chiefs of the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, and the Secretary of Defense sat around the table. The military aide with the football sat at the far end of the room against the wall with his bag in his lap.

“Cover All is five by five.”

“Okay. That's it,” Thomas said. “Everybody's airborne or rolling. Oh, Cover All is
CINCACC
, the commander in chief of the Air Combat Command. We're Nightwatch. In addition to ACC's Looking Glass, we've gotten checks from ACC's two Post Attack Command and Control System auxiliary EC-135s, the three Airborne Launch Control Center aircraft that would fire our missiles if all the ground launch centers were destroyed, the navy's Atlantic and Pacific
TACAMO
aircraft for communicating with ballistic missile submarines, and the control aircraft for the fleet of tankers that'll keep everybody airborne.”

“In addition to the airborne commands,” General Starnes said, looking down and reading, “we've gotten checks on
NORAD
in Cheyenne Mountain; the Alternate National Military Command Center at Raven Rock Mountain; the civilian authorities' alternate headquarters at Mount Weather; Congress's Greenbriar Facility in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia; the White House Situation Room; the CIA Indications Office; the U.S. Intelligence Board National Indications Center; the U.N. Military Mission; the FEMA Alternate Warning Center in Olney, Maryland; the Civil Defense
bunkers at Maynard, Massachusetts, and at Denton, Texas; the U.S. Coast Guard Operations Center, the FAA Executive Communications Control Center; and NATO Headquarters in Brussels. We've also touched base with the three
RAPIER
teams, which are 100-man staffs in eighteen-wheelers tearing ass out of Colorado Springs right now. They are
NORAD
and
AFSPACECOM
Rapid Emergency Reconstitution Teams that would provide early-warning attack assessment and postattack data reception and evaluation.”

The Secretary of Defense jumped in. “We've also been contacted by the Federal Reserve System's Communications and Records Center in Culpeper, Virginia, which is downloading Federal Reserve account data onto optical disks as rapidly as possible. Plus we've gotten calls from the New York State Emergency Operating Center and Alternate Seat of Government in Albany, the Massachusetts State Bunker in Framingham, and the AT&T National Emergency Control Center under Netcong, New Jersey. They all want to know just what the hell's going on. Oh, and I ordered
TREETOP
II activated, and the Presidential Successor Emergency Support Plan is being implemented. That means your successors are being dispersed.”

“What do you mean, ‘dispersed'?” the President asked.

“Well, sir,” the Secretary of Defense said, “let's see. The Vice President and Secretary of the Treasury are each airborne in separate E-4Bs. Secretary of State Moore is at Raven Rock. Then there are six Ground Mobile Command Centers, which are just ordinary looking eighteen-wheelers with a lead security team in a truck out on the highways. They're code-named Island Sun, and they carry the junior members of the line—the secretaries of HHS, HUD, Transportation, Education and Veterans Affairs—plus the Speaker of the House, who didn't want to be at Greenbriar, so we accommodated him.”

“That sounds like Bill,” the President laughed, having only half listened, it seemed to Lambert. “He's claustrophobic, you know.” He turned to the air force steward who was filling his coffee cup and said, “Cream and sugar, please.”

The Secretary of Defense continued. “The President Pro Tempore of the Senate, the Attorney General, the secretaries of Interior and Labor, and the National Program Office's six extraconstitutional successors are en route to some of the eighty-four underground presidential emergency facilities. The Secretary of Commerce was in Paris and is heading to NATO Headquarters. The Secretary of Agriculture is at Bethesda after his gallbladder surgery, and we have people standing by there to move him to Mount Weather where he can recuperate once the doctors say it's all right for him to travel.

That gives us a check on all of your constitutional successors plus the NPO's six. Everybody has their emergency kits with war plans, regulations, systems instructions, fact sheets, et cetera.”

Brigadier General Sherman appeared in the doorway with a printout in his hand. “Excuse me, but we just got this from
CINCNORAD
.” He looked down and read. “Nineteen Russian ICBMs—believed Model SS-19—and four shorter-range missiles of indeterminate model confirmed fired from Far East Russia. Am tracking, will confirm on rollover. Probable targets to south. Indications consistent with launch against People's Republic of China.”