The War Cloud (15 page)

But nothing happened. No shots. Just a dirty broom in the snow.

She was puzzled. Why did they leave?

She saw her blanket and radio in the corner and turned on the radio. The nerve-shattering signal of the Emergency Alert System blared.

The EAS announcer said, “This is the Emergency Alert System. The following is a message from the National Command Authority.”

Mom
, she thought with relief.

But it was a man who was speaking.

“This is General Brad Marshall,” said the voice, which she suddenly recognized and felt a chill down her spine. “Minutes ago an enemy missile destroyed the plane carrying former President Deborah Sachs.”

Jennifer’s knees buckled. She dropped to the floor.

“This further act of aggression will not go unanswered,” Marshall announced. “I have ordered the United States Armed Forces to respond with their full fury and might.”

Jennifer turned off the radio. She sat on the floor and let loose with tears and then wailed.

She didn’t care who heard her now.

S
achs and Captain Li were running toward the diner when the plane exploded with a thunderous KABOOM. She
tried not to look back and be turned to ash, but she was worried about Koz, so she began to turn her head over her shoulder as she ran.

“No!” came a shout from behind.

Koz was flying toward her, tackling her like a shield as the force from the plane blew them off their feet and she felt herself hurl through the air over a snow bank. He intentionally landed on top of her, smothering her into the snow.

She couldn’t breathe and struggled for more than a minute until he got off.

Koz asked, “Still in one piece?”

She gasped for breath and brushed the snow off. “You trying to kill me?” she asked when a second thunderous explosion sent a chunk of the fuselage flying over their heads.

Once again Koz face-planted her into the snow.

“Stop it!” she ordered when he let her come up again for air.

“You can court-martial me lat told her as they stood up to survey the damage.

What was left of the Nightwatch plane—Air Force One—burned in smoldering ruins. Engine parts were strewn across the interstate. A broken wing stuck upright out of the frozen ground, glinting in the weak late afternoon sun.

Sachs said, “We need to contact Block at Northern Command and rescind Marshall’s launch authority.”

Koz pointed to his right, and Sachs saw it: Ethel’s Truck Stop Café. “But with Air Force One gone, Block is going to assume you’re dead. How are you going to prove your identity?”

“With this,” she said, and began to unzip her flightsuit.

She watched Koz raise an eyebrow and then smile when she flashed the presidential authenticator card he had given her.

M
arshall stood with his juniors Harney and Wilson, staring blankly at the radar screens inside the battle staff compartm
ent: The D-10s were in position, but the first-strike B-2s carrying the bunker-busting Mavericks were turning back.

“What the hell?” he said.

Banks turned from her console, bad news written all over her face. “Bombers turning back, sir.”

“I can see that,” Marshall said. “Put me through to them right now.”

She paused, putting a finger to her ear. “Northern Command is calling.”

He nodded, and she put General Block through on speaker.

“Our bombers are retreating, Block,” Marshall said. “Zhang already surrender?”

“Sachs is alive,” Block said. “Just got the call.”

Marshall didn’t believe it. “You authenticate her?”

“Yep, and voice prints match too,” Block said. “Listen, son. You’re busted. The president wants to ground Looking Glass, pronto. You are to land at Grand Forks AFB, where a reception team will be waiting for you to turn yourself in. You’ll be tried in a military court and executed for your treason.”

Marshall blinked in disbelief. “I don’t know what kind of horseshit Sachs is feeding you, Block. But pulling back our bombers now is going to cost us. Big time.”

Block didn’t like backtalk any more than Marshall. “You heard me, Marshall. Your pilots have been instructed to land Looking Glass immediately. And in case you have any trouble understanding, we’ve got a couple of F-16s on the way to escort you. Over.”

Block disappeared from view, and Marshall was aware that his own, unreadable poker face was still plain to see for Banks and the others. So he kept it that way on the outside. It wasn’t difficult. Because he knew exactly what to do next.

S
achs watched blue-hathel pour her a cup of Kona blend coffee while the TV blared the downing of Air Force
One and her death. It was freezing with the shattered windows, and a dozen AF1 crew were taping plastic sheets from the surplus store in back to keep out the cold. Koz, meanwhile, was still on the pay phone talking to Block, having been unable to connect his phone with its satellite in space. They were trying to set up a call with General Zhang for her, to confirm he knew the U.S. was standing down and requesting the same.

Ethel, who had an old military tattoo on her arm and a Tea Party pin on her apron, asked her, “You really the president?”

Sachs said, “So they say.”

Ethel snapped her gum. “You spoiled everything, you know. Women have been running the country just fine for two hundred years, only our men didn’t know it.” Then she winked and walked off with her pot of coffee to serve the rest of the AF1 crew. All 48 had been accounted for, thank God.

Koz walked over with a frown on his face. “Looking Glass landed at Grand Forks, but Marshall and three crew were missing.”

Sachs stared at him. “How can they be missing?”

“They must have bailed in flight.”

“From a 747? Is that even possible?”

“Not at 35,000 feet and 500 knots,” Koz said. “But the pilots report that Marshall had ordered them down to 18,000 and 150 knots before everything went berserk. That altitude and speed are about what the top extreme skydivers use, and Marshall and his threesome are trained paratroopers. Looks like they shot their way out the rear transport hatch on the cargo deck. There were lots of bodies on the floor and four sky suits with oxygen masks missing from the racks.”

“But where did they go? What does he hope to accomplish?”

Koz shrugged. “I have no idea. Looking Glass by definition circles the Midwest in a nuke attack, to be close to the missile fields. But there must be a reason he stuck close to the badlands of North Dakota. Only problem is that the only active missile fields are a couple of hundred miles away at Minot. There’s nothing in this immediate area except abandoned missile silos. Maybe he’s going to hide out in one and keep us hunting for him for as many days as possible.”

Sachs heard a grunt. It was Ethel. “He’s right, you know,” she said. “We used to have a full missile wing here associated with Grand Forks AFB, until they closed it down, moved almost everything to Minot. That cost us a lot of jobs.”

“Almost everything?” Sachs asked, glancing at Koz.

Koz said, “They still keep a few weapons storage areas around here that hold nuclear contingency weapons. And there’s the old Safeguard complex in Nekoma, but that’s been abandoned even longer than the silos.”

“You sure about that?” Ethel said, clearly unable to help herself. “I’ve served more than a few strangers in recent—”

The cups and saucers on the counter started shaking again. The whole diner started to shake.

“Lordy, here we go again,” Ethel said.

But Sachs knew there wasn’t another Air Force One about to make an emergency landing outside. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a flame trail on the hor

Koz and Captain Li had already burst outside through the plastic sheet.

She ran out to join them and stopped cold at the sight of a 60-foot Minuteman III ICBM missile lift off into the sky at 15,000 miles per hour like a space shuttle launch. The ground quaked from the Boeing first-stage rocket’s 200,000 pounds of thrust.

“Oh, no,” Sachs said. “Marshall.”

Another Minuteman blasted off.

And another.

And still another.

Sachs counted ten flame trails lifting off from the fields in a ring of fire that turned the evening into day.

M
arshall’s large, dome-shaped canopy, made from a single layer of triangular cloth gores, blossom
ed under the clear night. Marshall let the cold wind blow him across the desolate winter fields toward the lonely clapboard farmhouse below.

He looked over at Banks, Harney and Wilson, all doing fine on the descent. His jellyfish chute — the MC1-1C round parachute favored by U.S. paratroopers — had been packed and ready aboard Looking Glass.

Special cuts in sections of the gores gave his chute more speed and greater steering capabilities, enabling him to avoid the grain silo on his right and turn into the wind to minimize horizontal speed as he landed.

He hit and rolled, then quickly detached from his chute. Then, with the others close behind, he pulled out his M9 and headed for the farmhouse.

The MP on the front porch, a grandpa-type in a parka, looked surprised to see visitors and whipped out an M-16. He was talking to somebody through an earpiece but froze when none other than General Brad Marshall walked up the steps. He relaxed and lowered his gun to salute.

“General Marshall,” he said with relief when Harney leveled his own M-16 and spat out a round.
Blam! Blam! Blam!
And grandpa was blow right through the front door.

• • •

Sixty feet beneath the farmhouse in the launch control center, red warning flashes lit up the consoles like the Fourth of July. The two launch officers in blue uniforms and yellow ascots sat tight in their aircraft-style seats, trapped by their shoulder belts designed to keep them from being thrown by the shockwaves if they ever launched ICBMs.

“Shit,” said the first launch officer as elevator cameras showed four armed and unfriendly figures on their way down.

Both launch officers desperately tried to unhook their belts as the vault door opened and Marshall entered with his crew. Wilson and Harney unloaded two shots, and the launch officers slumped in their chairs. Then Banks followed up by relieving them of their launch keys.

The second launch officer was still alive, barely, and Marshall glared at Harney. Too many video games for these younger officers. They shot at faces to save bullets, but the effect was dehumanizing the enemy. And these launch officers were anything but. They w American patriots, and he needed at least one of them alive.

The launch officer groaned in his seat. “General Marshall?”

“It’s OK, son,” Marshall said. “We’ll get you some help. Don’t worry.”

The launch officer relaxed in his chair, blood draining out of him. Marshall knew he had only a minute if that with the kid.

“OK,” Marshall said. “We’ve got ten Minutemen III missiles. Each can be sent to any one of four preset targets. Now where are these warheads targeted?”

“Don’t know,” said the launch officer. “Didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to dream about the impact area.”

Marshall was disappointed. “I understand, son,” he said and then popped the kid in the head with his M9 pistol. The launch officer went limp.

Marshall told the rest, “He was useless anyway. How long will it take you to retarget, Major Tom?”

Banks looked at her console. “Thirty-six minutes using the Command Data Buffer system.”

“You have ten,” Marshall told her. “Harney and Wilson, you’ll need to strip some equipment here. I saw an Explorer parked outside. See if old grandpa has the keys in his pockets.”

As they left, Marshall hovered impatiently as Banks calculated the retargeting information.

“You’re taking too long, Major Tom.”

“More than two hundred attack options have been programmed into this computer, sir,” she replied. “We just need to dial up the right war scenario. Those missiles that are supposed to go, go. Those that aren’t, don’t.”

“You don’t get it. I want them all going.”

“Oh, the than won’t even take a minute then—if you can live with collateral strikes.”

“The Chinese can’t, but I can, Major.”

Marshall pushed the launch officer he had killed off his seat and strapped himself in. Banks did likewise in the other chair and then made the final adjustments.

“Missiles are retargeted,” she announced.

Marshall gave the order, “Insert launch keys.”

Banks inserted her launch key into her console at the same time he did.

“On my mark,” he told her. “Three…two…one…turn.”

They turned their keys simultaneously.

The shaking began, and Marshall tightened his belt with satisfaction. Missiles on screen filled the silo cameras with their exhaust flames.

Finally, thing were going according to plan.

J
ennifer had decided she had had enough of herself crying over her mother and the end of the world. If this was the end of all
things, she didn’t want to go out like a scared rat in a crap shack. She would face the future full-on, it was a mushroom cloud.

She rose to her feet with the old beach blanket around her shoulders for warmth. The floorboards creaked as she walked to the front door. She paused at the door and took a deep breath. She wrapped herself tighter in the blanket with one hand and flung open the door with the other and shrieked.

Standing inches from her face was one of the Green Berets, so close they shared each other’s frosty breath. There was alcohol on his. She then saw the open bottle in his hand.

“We knew you were here and were just waiting for you to come out,” he told her, pushing her back inside and slamming the door shut. “But now that your mom is dead, I thought you could use some comfort.” His lips twisted into an ironic smile. “You see, I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.”