“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 th
e 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?”
“I’m not entirely sure. But, basically, yes, my instinct is that it would.”
“Do we have any other immediate, viable, effective options?”
The VP pondered that for a moment. That was, of course, the heart of the matter. Bennett found himself silently imploring this man to come up with something better.
“In the next half hour? No.”
Bennett could feel the train leaving the station, and he wanted to jump off.
“Could we invade Western Iraq and move towards Baghdad and occupy the city and find Saddam and shut him down? Given six to nine months? Yes. Given the willingness to lose upwards of ten thousand to twenty thousand American soldiers, at least, maybe many more? Probably. Would U.S. public opinion support that? Doubtful. Would our alliance hold, particularly in the Arab world? Absolutely not. Could it become our next Vietnam? Absolutely. You were there, Jim—Mr. President. You know what it was like. You want to go back?”
“So what are you saying, Bill?” the president pressed. “Give me a bottom line.”
“We’re in one hell of a mess.”
“I noticed.”
“Sir, I’m saying that I am not in favor of a nuclear strike. Not under any circumstances…”
Everyone’s eyes were riveted on the vice president. McCoy bit her lip. Bennett held his breath. The president visibly tightened.
“…not under any circumstances, that is, but these.”
Bennett could feel the oxygen get sucked out of his body. He was winded and scared and cold.
“In the abstract, it’s ugly and grotesque and bordering on the barbaric,” the vice president continued. “But in terms of our immediate military options and the threat to U.S. national security and that of our allies? It’s instant. It’s overwhelming. It’s decisive. And yes, I believe it buys us fifty or a hundred years of world peace, at the very least.”
“Does that make it worth it?” the president asked.
“Well, sir, it might. But again, I go back to my previous question. What next? Where would we go from here?”
“Ecclesiastes.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“There’s a time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build up. A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war…”
The words hung in the air for a moment.
“…and a time for peace.”
“Yes, sir. That might be a good way to put it. We can’t just think about how to destroy our enemy. We need to think about how to rebuild a new world, a world of peace and prosperity.”
Bennett could tell the president wanted to get up and pace. That’s what he used to do in GSX strategy meetings when he was trying to get his hands around how to approach a new deal.
But now he was trapped in a wheelchair, deprived of sleep, forced to decide about the use of nuclear weapons in the middle of the night at forty-five thousand feet and a thousand miles away from his top national security advisors.
Unable to pace, however, the president suddenly chose to pray. Without saying anything to anyone, he simply bowed his head, closed his eyes, and folded his hands. Bennett just stared at him.
The next few moments felt like an eternity, and Bennett found himself seething inside, furious with his friend and mentor for wasting such valuable time when there was so little of it to begin with. This was no time for fairy t
ales. This was the time for rational thinking and logical decisions. The fate of the world hung in the balance.
Carrie Downing was smart, stylish, and thirty-two.
She had been a rising star at Excite@Home, once the world’s leading broadband Internet provider. That is, until the company filed for Chapter Eleven bankruptcy protection in October of 2001.
Downing’s dream of riding the wave to dot com millionaire status had been sunk faster than the Titanic. She and more than thirteen hundred other employees got dumped overboard just as the al Qaeda terrorists struck the Pentagon and the World Trade Center and the U.S. economy was sinking fast into a serious recession.
So Downing did what any aspiring email software writer might do when her boatload of stock options plummeted in value from $100 a share in April of 1999 to a mere thirteen cents a share two and a half years later. She joined the FBI.
Trained in short order as a specialist in electronic counterintelligence and counterterrorism, she was fast making an impression on her superiors. She’d been assigned to an elite team and a highly classified project known to the outside world only as Magic Lantern.
The state-of-the-art and highly controversial software was part of what the Bureau called the “Enhanced Carnivore Project Plan.”
It was designed to gobble up as many meaty morsels of email as possible. It could be secretly installed onto the hard drive of the computer of a potential enemy of the United States, or sent incognito as a virus to such a person, attached to a seemingly innocuous email note or advertisement.
Once installed, it allowed the FBI to read encrypted files, and even capture individual keystrokes, like passwords, thus unlocking the most sensitive financial and organizational details of the most elusive criminals and crime syndicates. And it could evade even the most sophisticated antivirus software on the market, so far.
But even the best technology is only as good as the people who make use of it. It fell to people like Downing to invade a target’s computer, steal its data, and sift it rapidly and without detection for the kind of information that could help her fellow agents in the field break the toughest of cases. And Downing was good. Very good. She’d helped blow open so many cases in the last several years that she’d landed on FBI Director Scott Harris’s radar screen and been dubbed “The Carnivore Queen.”