Arc Light (17 page)

“We've got a
CINCNORAD
‘Highly Probable Assessment,' ” Starnes continued, “on the boost vehicles heading for the general areas of our missile bases, sub pens, bomber bases, and radar sites, plus command and control centers. That's a pattern called ‘counter-force,' meaning they've gone after our ability to fight a nuclear war, not ‘countervalue,' meaning populations, cities, and industrial base.”

“How many are there now?” the President asked, consumed, Lambert thought, by the desire to know that number.
He's asked that a hundred times!

“We have,” Starnes said, reading the screen, “two hundred and seventy confirmed by radar and almost a thousand unconfirmed. You've got to assume now they'll all be confirmed. Based on the tubes they've expended, they've shot five models—SS-17s, 18s, 19s, 24s, and 25s. The 17s are MIRVed with four warheads, the 19s with six, and the others with ten. All the multiple warheads are somewhere in the three-to four-hundred-kiloton yields. Some of the SS-18s, their
Model Is, however, are gonna have just one warhead—the big twenty-five-megaton mothers—we just don't know how many or which ones. They'd use ‘em for deep digging, though, so I'd guess they're the ones targeted for our hardened command centers. Finally, if they fired any of their couple of dozen FOBS, Fractional Orbital Bombardment System weapons, that come up from over the South Pole instead of the North, we won't pick them up for a few minutes yet.”

“So what does all this mean?” the President asked. “What's going to happen?” He was looking at the floor, and then at the wall, and then at the table. He fidgeted and never looked up at the eyes of the others in the room.

“Mr. President,” Lambert said slowly, trying to break through whatever barriers prevented the President's understanding, “somewhere around a thousand plus warheads are going to strike the U.S. with an aggregate yield of around six or seven hundred megatons.”

The silence in the room had a weight and presence of its own.

“When?” the President asked in a stricken voice as he stared down at the conference table.

“We've got twenty-five minutes to go, sir,” General Starnes said as he looked at the screen. “We've got to send a nuclear control order at least three, preferably five or six, minutes before impact. After that, and the missiles may not have time to escape the blast effects.”

“How bad . . . how bad is it going to be?” President Livingston asked in a quivering voice.

Lambert watched the President as his head slowly disappeared behind the shield of his hands. General Thomas looked over at the Secretary of Defense.

“Well, as I said, sir,” Starnes answered, gesturing with his hands despite the fact that the President could not see them, “
CINCNORAD
should be getting the
PARCS
—that's the Perimeter Acquisition Radar Attack Characterization System—he should be getting the
PARCS
data in shortly and he'll give us an assessment. But there won't be much time after that to react.”

Lambert swallowed, the dryness of his throat surprising.
It's so bad,
Lambert realized,
that Starnes can't even answer the question.

“Sir,” the Secretary of Defense said, “I have to tell you that I concur with Mr. Lambert. I think it's time that you considered a nuclear control order. We clearly have tactical warning sufficient for you to release strategic nuclear weapons under the Congressional Nuclear War Powers Directive—Number 14—that was passed by secret vote in 1972, and we are very shortly going to lose a substantial portion of our forces to that first wave of Russian missiles. We either
fire them now, or . . . or they're gone, Mr. President.”

The door opened and an airman, speaking to General Thomas, said, “Sir, it's General Razov on line one.”

After a pause, the President said, “How the hell did he know where we are?”

“He probably called the White House switchboard,” Thomas said as he leaned forward and rested his finger on the blinking button, pausing to ensure that all were quiet. “General Razov?”

“General Thomas,” Razov began. “There has been a tragic, tragic mistake, and my country is guilty of it. As you must know by now, missiles were fired at your country from certain land-based missile fields by a madman, a General Zorin, who had seized control of the nuclear codes. We had made every attempt possible to stop him and he will shortly be in our custody. But, obviously, we have failed in preventing this terrible atrocity, and in this we will forever be guilty in the eyes of humanity.”

“General Razov,” President Livingston said, suddenly animated, “this is the President of the United States. Are you saying that this was a complete mistake?”

“Yes, sir,” Razov said, “a mistake of terrible proportions but a mistake nonetheless.”

“And that means,” the President said, his eyes narrowing, “that you will not fire
any
of the remaining weapons that you possess at this country, or take
any
other hostile actions against us of any kind?”

“Absolutely not, Mr. President! We have no reason at all to harbor any hostility toward you, your people, or your nation. We are friends, allies. There will be no hostilities initiated by the armed forces of Russia from this moment forward.”

The President began to say something further, but Lambert stood and reached over to hit the
MUTE
button on the phone console. “Mr. President, I would advise you to terminate this communication right now.”

“Why?” the President asked. “We can work this thing out. He said it was a mistake!”

“Mr. President,” Lambert said in as even a voice as he could muster, allowing the words to provide the impetus, “in twenty-two minutes, this nation will suffer the single worst loss of life in its history. There is only one rational response, and that is to retaliate massively, to destroy their remaining force before it can be generated and fired at us.”

“But . . . but you heard him,” the President said to the others around the table, clinging tenuously to his earlier position. “It was a mistake. Greg, you above all others . . . You know these people. Do you think what Razov said is some sort of trick?”

“It doesn't matter
what
it was,” Lambert said. “We're at war, whether by accident or by design.”

“General Thomas?” Razov said over the speakerphone. “President Livingston?”

“We have twenty-one minutes,” Lambert said, stressing the words by speaking them slowly, “to decide what to do, Mr. President. We have work to do.”

Marine General Fuller spoke up. “Mr. President, Rome's burning, and we're screwin' around talkin' to this son of a bitch.”

“Sir,” the Secretary of Defense said, and all turned their attention to him. “This attack is going to have a profound effect on our nation. You have to consider how it will appear, in the aftermath, if . . . if we were being talked out of retaliating while their attack was only minutes away from destroying the vast majority of our weapons on the ground.”

The President's eyes dropped to the table. “You're all telling me I don't have a choice. I can't stop this thing.” Everyone watched as he took a deep breath and fell back into his chair, slumped lower now than before, his face ashen. He nodded at Lambert and waved his hand for Lambert to release the
MUTE
button.

“General Razov,” the President said in a tired, far-away voice. “We expect to hold you to your pledge of no further aggression against our country. Good-bye.”

“Mr. Presi—!” Razov shouted as Lambert cut the line.

There was a long silence, and then the Secretary of Defense said, “Walter—it's time.”

“I don't know, I don't know,” the President said, his hands rubbing his scalp roughly and destroying the always neat order of his hair as he shook his head.

“Dammit, sir!” Starnes burst out. “When we lose those ICBMs, we lose our ability to take out
their
ICBMs. Now, the sub-launched missiles are fine,” he said in the direction of the Chief of Naval Operations, “but they're just not accurate or powerful enough, and there aren't enough of ‘em, to do that job.”

Lambert took a deep breath and said, “Sir, the possibility exists that after losing all of our ICBMs, our bomber bases, our air defense system, and our command centers, the Russians generate their remaining forces over the next few hours and fire again, this time at secondary and tertiary targets. Those targets would be everything we've got of strategic value, military
and
industrial. We'd lose not just millions dead, but tens of millions, maybe a hundred million, and we'd cease to exist as a functioning world military and economic power. Given that, sir, if a follow-on strike left their silos, I can assure you that the firing options we'd present to you for the submarines'
missiles would not be remote Russian ICBM bases. It would truly be Doomsday, and the targets we'd recommend would start with the human populations of Moscow and St. Petersburg.”

The President said nothing. He did nothing. “Eighteen minutes, sir,” Starnes said quietly.

The President sat there motionless for a moment, and then, to everyone's amazement, rose from his chair and headed for the door. “I'll be back in a few minutes,” he mumbled, and was gone.

The Joint Chiefs looked at each other, heads shaking.

General Starnes finally said, “I've got tens of thousands of
my
men and
my
women sitting at their posts at ground zero waiting to
die,
and you and I
damn
well know where that son of a bitch is going.
Goddammit!”

“Mr. Secretary,” General Thomas said, “if he's not back here in”—Thomas looked at his watch—“two minutes, I'm going to ask you to poll the Cabinet and declare the President incompetent. That should give us just enough time . . . ”

“General Thomas!” the Secretary of Defense said sharply. “All of you! If I hear any more talk of that nature, I'll immediately relieve you of your commands!”

“Your quarters are right here, sir,” the Secret Service agent said, indicating a door on which a sign read
NCA (KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING).

Walter Livingston opened the door and saw the First Lady resting on the lower bunk. She immediately swung her legs to the floor. He closed the door behind him and turned to face her.

“Walter?” she asked, and when he couldn't return her look she rose to her feet and walked over to embrace him. “Darling, I've heard. I've heard.” She patted his back. “I know about the Russian attack. A crewman told me.” Her hands stroked the back of his neck, and he dissolved into the arms of his wife, shaking his head. “What?” she asked. “Are you all right, Walter?” He couldn't answer. “What is it?” When he said nothing, she ushered him to a seat at the cabin's small writing desk and stood behind him, rubbing his shoulders. “Why don't you tell me what it is.”

With his eyes closed, the President shook his head. “Walter,” she prodded, gently, gently.

“I've made a terrible, terrible mistake, Margaret. It's a mistake that is going to cost lives, millions of lives.” Her hands fell still for just a second, but in that second he knew that no matter how much support she or anyone else could lend him, he was all alone. It was he, and he alone, who had blundered. Her hands resumed their deep massage and she said, “What happened?”

He turned and tugged her gently by the hand to sit on the bed so he could see her. “I had Moore call the Chinese to warn them of the Russian attack.”

“And?”

“And that gave the Chinese the time to get a shot off at the Russians, which triggered their launch against us.”

She let out a sigh of relief, her hand resting on her chest as she relaxed. He realized just how tense he had made her. “Walter, that's it? That's your great sin?”

He stared at her for a moment, feeling some relief in watching his wife's reaction despite the fact that she still didn't see the trouble coming. “That's not why I'm here.” Margaret sat up straight and waited, as always. “I've got to decide what to do, whether to retaliate. I don't have long, just a few minutes.”

Her eyes drifted off. “Was their attack a mistake? Truly a mistake?”

“Probably. Yes.”

“And is it going to be . . . ? How bad is it going to be?” “Terrible. They're going to rain missiles down all over our bases.”

“But not the cities?”

“No, not yet.”

She again sat still, staring off into space. He looked at her, waiting as he'd always done. Despite what his detractors and the standup comics had regularly intimated, she never made the decisions for him. She didn't need to. They always agreed. She always came to the same conclusion that he knew in his heart to be the right one. He just needed to hear it. He needed one other person to be with him in making the big decisions, to help shoulder the weight of them. “Do I shoot back, Margaret?” She looked up at him with a look of deep sympathy on her face, and his head drooped from the weight of her silent answer.

“Is he in there?” Lambert asked.

The Secret Service agent nodded.

Lambert knocked.

“Who is it?” came the muffled voice of the First Lady.

“Greg Lambert, ma'am.”

“Come in.”

Lambert opened the door, and the President and First Lady were sitting across a small desk from each other in the spartan quarters. “Fourteen minutes, Mr. President.”

The First Lady looked back over at her husband and patted him on the hand. “It's time, dear,” she said.

“Are you sure? Is it the right thing to do?” the President asked. “You know it is, Walter,” she said, leaning over to cup his cheek with her hand.