Omega Missile (Shadow Warriors) Page 4

  The conference room was located inside Cheyenne Mountain, on the southwest side of Colorado Springs. Cheyenne Mountain was a massive granite mountain along the front range of the Rocky Mountains. Pikes Peak was a few miles to the northwest, Colorado Springs to the northeast. The complex inside the mountain had been built in the early 1960s by the Department of Defense to house NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

  Parker looked around the room. There were several colonels and majors seated around the conference table with junior ranking officers in plastic seats along the walls. Two men, seated all the way at the rear of the room, were shrouded in shadow, only their silhouettes and the dim glow of a pipe. Parker was surprised the man was smoking in here, given that smoking in federal facilities had long ago been banned. The scent of the pipe smoke lay heavy in the room.

  Parker and the others snapped to attention as General Willoughby walked into the conference room. The two men in the back remained seated.

  "Take your seats," Willoughby ordered as he sat at the head of the table. The general looked about the room, his gaze lingering on Brinn, then Sanchez, and then shifting past Parker to the rear of the room.

  "Mr. Lugar," he was looking at the man to the left who didn't acknowledge the introduction. "Mr. Lugar," Willoughby continued, "represents the National Command Authority." Willoughby's head turned to the man smoking the pipe next to Lugar. "Professor Kilten," he said with a nod of his head.

  "General," Kilten returned the greeting.

  Parker started at the name. She, and every other officer in nuclear weapons command, knew who Kilten was: the designer of the REACT computer system and practically every other piece of computer hardware and software used in the nuclear weapons business. He was the man who had designed and pulled together the entire nuclear command and control structure, from the design of the bombs themselves to the strategic planning for their use.

  While military men switched jobs every few years in keeping with their career paths, Kilten was one of the many civilians at the Pentagon who provided long-term expertise in certain fields. Because of that, he knew more about the field than the military men he worked for.

  "Let's get this over with," Willoughby said.

  The colonel to Willoughby's right got up and stood at the lectern. He opened his portable computer. It had the record from the mission debriefing loaded into its hard drive, from jump-in to the chopper ride out. The colonel went into the after action review, speaking rapidly and succinctly, using the computer display when necessary. It was all recorded and it was pointless to argue the facts.

  The colonel flipped down the cover on the laptop after the brief outline of events. "In summary, sir, the exercise was successful although there was a problem when it came to releasing the arming locks on the weapon."

  Willoughby nodded. "Thank you, Major." The general turned to the people seated around the table. "I cannot overstate the importance of exercises such as the one we have just debriefed." Willoughby glared at Sanchez. "The security of this country rests on our potential adversaries' certainty that we will not hesitate in the slightest to use our nuclear arsenal. It is our duty. It is the very purpose of our entire command and control system.

  "An EAM is a lawful order coming from the National Command Authority," Willoughby continued. "You do not have the option to question that order or any that follow it. If you cannot do your duty, what the hell are you doing in the Air Force, Captain Sanchez? What are you doing in my command?"

  "I am doing my duty, sir," Sanchez said, meeting the general's angry gaze straight on.

  "Your duty was to disarm the locks, Captain!" Willoughby slapped his palm on the tabletop.

  Parker twisted in her seat, wishing she could disappear. She was looking down at her hands, rotating the Air Force Academy ring on her finger.

  "Sir, with all due respect, I tried to do the correct thing," Sanchez said, his voice tightly controlled.

  Willoughby stared at him, momentarily speechless.

  At the rear of the room, Kilten leaned forward into the light. "Why do you say that, Captain Sanchez?"

  Sanchez turned in his seat. "The EAM we received was not, as the general said, a legitimate National Command Authority order, but rather a test, as was the entire mission given that the bomb was not nuclear. Therefore General Willoughby's argument is false," Sanchez said. "Because the mission was only a test, my hesitation to disarm the lock was not a factor. I just felt something was wrong."

  Willoughby looked stunned by the bizarre logic. "You didn't know it was a test," Willoughby found his voice. "You thought the bomb was real."

  Sanchez's words were clipped but still carried a deferential tone. "I felt there was something wrong. I didn't know it was a test, but I didn't feel that it was the real thing either."

  "You operate on orders, Captain, not feelings," Willoughby snapped. "The EAM we sent was legitimate as far as you were concerned. You get that order, you do what you are trained to do!"

  Sanchez, sensing the inevitable, was emboldened. "Like we're just part of the machine?"

  "You are part of the machine. You're the last switch," Willoughby said.

  "Gentlemen," Kilten said, his voice quiet in contrast to the other two. "Let us calm down."

  Sanchez spoke up. "I may not have done what I was trained to, but I did what a person with some feelings would do."

  "Feelings?" Kilten repeated, one eyebrow raised.

  General Willoughby had reached the boiling point. "Captain, you are relieved as of this minute!"

  Kilten turned his head toward the irate general. "If I may, General, I would like to hear about Captain Sanchez's feelings. Maybe he can articulate why we had the problem removing the locks. And isn't that the point? To perfect the system?"

  Sanchez dropped all pretense of military hierarchy and interrupted the older civilian. "Perfect the system? That's what I mean. How do you perfect something that has a basic flaw? The whole thing's nuts!"

  Kilten seemed to take Sanchez's words as a personal affront. "Captain, you have no business playing a role in a system you apparently don't understand or believe in."

  "I did believe in it once," Sanchez countered. "Nuclear deterrence sounds pretty good until you have your finger on the button and there's no good reason why. Until you're sitting right on top of the bomb and you just left one of your buddies dead with his brains smashed out. You don't want me to think, you just want me to push that button like a rat at a food bar. Well, I'm a man. I have a gut and it tells me things."

  General Willoughby snorted. "We're not running the defense of this country on your gut, Captain."

  Sanchez was beginning to look tired and defeated and Parker felt a blanket of sadness settle over her. She had never imagined that Sanchez would so completely destroy his own career. She wondered what he could possibly do now. She and Brinn were invisible, barely moving lest some of the attention find them.

  Sanchez's voice broke the momentary quiet and he spoke with firm conviction. "You believe that the weakest link in the nuclear system is the human factor. I suppose I'm proof of that, at least from a certain perspective. I believed that bomb was real. I believed we were destroying a big chunk of a nation we've always considered an ally. I felt that was a mistake, so I didn't do my duty. What if it hadn't been a test? What if it was a mistake?"

  "You think you're making the system foolproof. You're just taking the checks out. Someday the big mistake will come and you'll just have a bunch of robots listening to the computers. The whole thing will be a machine."

  "But a human being will make the decision," Kilten said. "The machine won't act on its own."

  "I'm a human being and I made a decision," Sanchez argued, "and you're frying my ass and getting rid of me."

  "You're not the National Command Authority," Lugar spoke for the first time. "I represent the NCA and that's who makes the decision to use nuclear weapons."

  "Who made the decision to run this training mission in Israel rig
ht next to their nuclear weapons storage facility?" Sanchez asked. "If we had been captured by the Israelis, the political repercussions would have been staggering. Scanlon's body being left there, despite the thermite grenade I had to put on him, could still cause trouble if it's found. The casing for that bomb, even after the conventional explosion, will be found."

  "We did it there to push you to the limit," Lugar said. "And I'm damn glad we did."

  Kilten leaned forward toward Sanchez. "If what you're saying is—"

  But Lugar cut in. "Captain, I've heard enough from you. We're not here to debate the system, we came here to talk about what happened on this mission."

  "You have to look at the system," Sanchez argued. "If you don't examine the—"

  "The system is fine," Willoughby growled. "It's people like you who screw it up."

  "Then get people out of the system," Sanchez yelled, finally losing his patience, "and just leave the machines there. If I have no discretion and am not supposed to use my intuition, my human mind, to decide whether or not to unlock the arming control on that bomb, then get us the hell away from the bombs. Have the machines take total control."

  "You are being taken out of the system, Captain!" Willoughby snapped. "You'll never work near a damn nuclear weapon again!"

  "Fine, sir!" Sanchez ripped the weapons badge off the breast pocket of his coat and tossed it on the table. He stood. "Then I guess I'm done here."

  "You're done in the Air Force, young man," Willoughby said to the captain's back as he walked away.

  Sanchez paused, his hand on the doorknob and faced the room. "What about Captain Scanlon? Is he just a statistic in all this? What did you tell his widow? Killed in a plane crash during training? Body lost at sea?"

  "That's none of your business," Lugar said.

  "Scanlon died in your test," Sanchez said, glaring at Kilten.

  "I'm sorry about—" Kilten began, but Sanchez opened the door.

  "You people are fucked," Sanchez said. He walked out, slamming the door behind him.

  Willoughby looked to the rear of the room in the awkward silence that followed. He regained his composure. "Mr. Lugar, Professor Kilten, I'd like to thank you for your assistance in setting up this exercise. Your system worked; it was my people who failed to use it efficiently." Willoughby got to his feet. "You are all dismissed."

  They stood. The general walked out the door, the other officers right behind him. As Parker approached the door a low voice called out to her. "I'd like to speak with you for a moment, Major."

  Parker turned toward Kilten. The man stood and walked forward into the light. Now that she could see him, Parker saw that Kilten was an old man, nattily dressed in a brown wool suit with a bright bow tie. He was frail and slender, his face hatchet-thin. He wore thick glasses with gold rims. Behind the lenses his eyes were a bright green and sparkled with intelligence.

  "Major Parker, if you don't mind, I'm interested in your opinion of what just happened in this room." Kilten's voice was soothing, the antithesis of the general's.

  "I don't know if I have an opinion," Parker said. "I do believe Major Scanlon's death played a greater role than any of us are admitting."

  "Why do you think that is?"

  "I believe Scanlon and Sanchez were friends, sir."

  "Friends, oh, yes." Kilten repeated the word with relief, as if it explained everything that had just happened. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Captain," Kilten said. The discussion was apparently over. He turned for the door.

  Parker found herself momentarily confused by his reaction.

  "Sir—" Parker began and Kilten paused. "Sir," she continued, "why did we go into Israel? I don't understand why we ran such a high-risk operation on foreign soil."

  Kilten turned in surprise. "You don't believe Mr. Lugar's explanation that it made for a more realistic test situation?"

  "No, sir, I don't."

  "Why did you release the arming locks, then?"

  "Because I had a lawful EAM to do so, as we discussed. And at the time I had to believe my orders. But now, after what happened, I have to wonder about those orders. Nothing that I heard in this room really justifies what we did in Israel."

  Kilten tapped his pipe against his palm, his eyes regarding Parker thoughtfully. "You want to know the truth?"

  Parker nodded.

  "I don't know either, but I should, shouldn't I?"

  Lugar stuck his head in the door. "Are you ready, Professor?"

  Kilten nodded and walked out.

  Parker was left alone. Slowly she sat down and stared at the ring on her finger.

  Chapter Three

  washington, d.c. is the nation's capital. It also leads the country in murder per capita. Just blocks from the hallowed halls of Congress, the quality of life and housing diminishes quickly.

  Nestled among the rotting and decaying buildings stood a two-story house painted a fading, dingy red. The house to its right had been abandoned and was now home to transients whose primary interest was stealing enough money to maintain a twenty-four-hour-a-day connection to their crack pipes. The building to the left of the red house was the headquarters for the local crack-and cocaine-dealing gang. Traffic to its back door was steady, day and night.

  No one in the neighborhood had ever seen anyone go into the red house, but they knew it was occupied. All the locals knew that. And it was accepted, even by the gang members, that no one was to mess with the red house. There were vague stories of would-be burglars disappearing. The word was that they had been killed.

  The man who occupied the red house had indeed killed—and more than once. Not just the few unfortunates who tried breaking in, but on the battlefield in a very different part of the world. It had not been necessary in the strictest sense to kill anyone breaking in upstairs since the four-inch-thick steel door blocking the way to the basement would have denied the criminals access to his lair, but he felt it was wise to keep any potential threats at arm's reach. There was also the possibility that some intruder might stumble across the coaxial cable that led to the satellite dish hidden in an old pigeon coop on the roof. The cable and satellite dish must never be interfered with. The man inspected both each morning and evening. Every day. He had performed the ritual for the past twenty-one months and sixteen days without missing a single one.

  His tour of duty would be up in less than three months, but he had not allowed himself the luxury of anticipation. He would not think of home until he was there. To think of anything other than this job would take his mind off the task and that was when things went wrong. Combat had taught him that.

  Not that anything was happening in the basement. His job was to make sure the satellite link worked and the object in the basement was secure. He slept in the basement, a cord from the satellite link tied around his wrist. If the link came alive while he slept, an electric shock would be sent through the cord.

  When he'd assumed his tour of duty, the men who had brought him here had unloaded enough food for two years from the U-Haul truck they had driven. The electricity, water, and sewage bills were taken care of by others. The man had one job. There was an official title to his job, but he was known by the select few aware of his existence by an informal, but apt, title. He was the man who waited.

  *****

  Two blocks away, out of direct view of the red house was an old fire station. Inside the blacked-out windows, a dozen hard men with cold eyes also waited. Their weapons were in racks along the walls, next to an M-2 Abrams Fighting Vehicle whose turret housed a 40-mm automatic cannon and TOW missile launchers. A belt of rounds was loaded into the cannon and the two TOW launchers held live missiles. The Abrams had been brought into the firehouse several years ago on a lowboy carrier hidden under a tarp, the operation conducted under cover of darkness.

  In the troop bay of the Abrams, several specially designed charges were carefully secured, blasting caps inserted, primers ready. The charges were checked four times a day.

  These men had th
eir own satellite receiver on the roof of the firehouse. They waited on the man who waited.

  Chapter Four

  the patients referred to the room as the torture chamber. Its location belowground next to the VA hospital's parking garage added to that image. There were no windows and the echo of car doors being slammed and engines running echoed dully through the cinder block wall separating it from the garage. Inside, the rows of machines with their Velcro belts and gleaming metal would have done the Spanish Inquisition proud. Patients sweat and cried while they were strapped to those machines as they worked to rehabilitate damaged parts of their bodies or to compensate for missing ones. On one end of the room, rows of prostheses, crutches, canes, and wheelchairs added a macabre tilt.

  McKenzie liked the physical-therapy room because it reminded him of the weight rooms where he used to spend all his off-duty time. It was the only part of the hospital where he felt comfortable. His ward upstairs was full of whining old military retirees too afraid to die. The little park in the back of the hospital where he was supposed to go every day for some sun depressed him with its view of jets landing and taking off at nearby Miramar Naval Air Station. McKenzie had staged out of Miramar several times when he was on SEAL Team Two back in the late eighties and those memories only brought bitter bile to the back of his throat. In the other direction lay the Pacific Ocean off of San Diego and it was in those waters that McKenzie had received his SEAL training when he was a much younger man. It also wasn't a direction he favored.

  "Are we ready?" Nurse Stedman was a petite, wizened brunette in her early fifties who had seen a generation of men, old and young, through physical therapy here. When she'd first started they'd handled loads of Marines, their bodies torn and maimed in the jungles of Vietnam. She'd thought she'd seen and heard it all but this SEAL, McKenzie, was someone very unique, in even her experience.