Arc Light (8 page)

The force of the bomb could be felt through the soles of the feet of the old babushkas sweeping the streets on their late-night shift throughout that area of Moscow. The women closest to the blast on the street outside the ministry stopped for a moment to look at each other and wait for something more. But there was nothing more. The underground command facility was now a tomb, the echoes in the enclosed spaces dying down quickly and giving way to the dark and the quiet more common at the cavelike depth of the hollowed space.

Greg Lambert's car raced through the dark streets of the capital as he listened to General Thomas brief the President in the three-way conference call, the alarm set off by the White House military switchboard blaring in the background of the President's phone.

“ ‘I've got it,” the President said. “They just handed it to me. ‘White House Emergency Procedures Manual.' I'll bring it with me. Now what's going to happen?”

“The E-4B will be ready at Andrews,” Thomas said. “I'll meet you there, sir.”

“Will the Chinese hit the Russians back?” the President asked, and Lambert cringed as his driver barely slowed before heading through the red light at an intersection and then gunned the growling engine again.

“No, sir,” Thomas replied, the whine of his helicopter engine
starting up in the background. “Their generation time is too slow. They've probably squirreled away some tactical nukes somewhere, but they'd have a hard time delivering them through Russia's air defenses to anything other than purely tactical targets.”

“And
DEFCON
3—what exactly does that entail?” the President asked.

“Going from the normal
DEFCON
5 to
DEFCON
3 sets in motion a variety of things,” Thomas said, raising his voice over the engine noise until the helicopter door was slammed shut and the background noise diminished. “Dispersion of forces, higher alert statuses, et cetera, for all forces other than the forces actually engaged in Korea, which are already on 1, and the strategic forces at Air Combat Command, which are on 2. It'll put shorter range nuclear weapons—the navy's cruise missiles and carrier-based nuclear-capable A-6s and F/A-18s—on Combat Alert Status along with the ground-launched cruise missiles and FB-llls and F-16s in Europe. I've also ordered the ACC bombers from ground alert into the air on Minimum Interval Takeoffs, twelve seconds in between. They'll stand by on airborne alert. In addition, Alternate Reconstitution Base teams, which set up air bases to receive ACC bombers after return, have been dispatched to their sites at civilian airports and various stretches of interstate highway around the country and in Europe. It also means emergency combat capability—maximum possible generation—out of the ICBMs, and subs to their firing stations.”

“Is it really necessary to evacuate like this?”

“Mr. President, we're assuming Attack Condition Bravo, sufficient warning to evacuate full staffs. If it should turn out to be Alpha—surprise destruction of peacetime headquarters—we'll be down to skeletal staffs at all branches of military and government.”

“But we're not even under attack. I don't see why—”

“Evacuation is automatic with
DEFCON
3, sir,” Lambert interrupted. “This has never happened before, Mr. President, because we've never had anything like it. The Russians are going to launch ICBMs, missiles that are alternately aimed at this country, from silos in Siberia. They switched from the old single-target tapes years ago. Those missiles now have stored in their targeting banks cities and military facilities in the U.S. We won't get confirmation that their targets are in fact in China until those missiles complete their burns and roll over to the south—somewhere between six and eight minutes after launch. Until then, we have no way of knowing, other than General Razov's word, that they are heading to China. We have to play it safe. If those ICBMs are in fact coming this way in a coordinated attack, the SLBMs from Russian submarines in the Atlantic fired on a depressed trajectory would be just eight to ten
minutes away from D.C.” The thought sickened him, and he mentally urged Jane on. “There is the risk of a decapitation strike, sir.”

“Now wait a minute,” the President said. “Is there any reason to expect that this is a Russian surprise attack, for God's sake?” He sounded exasperated, and he was clearly growing angry.

“Sir,” Lambert said, reiterating, “the issue at a time like this is stability. Getting you airborne, sir, buys us time to stay ahead of things. We don't want any mistakes.”

“Shit,” the President said. “I've got State ringing up foreign governments to tell them what's happening and what we're doing, and I'm already starting to get calls back. ‘Chancellor Gerhardt—holding, line two,' ” he said, obviously reading. “ ‘Prime Minister Barrow.' I've got to take some of these. What am I going to tell them? Who all are we evacuating?”

“JEEP, the Joint Emergency Evacuation Plan,” General Thomas said, “calls for immediate evacuation by army and air force helicopter of forty-six JEEP-1 cardholders. They're mainly people in the line of presidential succession who're tracked by the Automated Central Locator System, but they're also key military leaders, Mr. Lambert, and others, necessary to ensure continuity of government. Within four hours, two hundred forty-eight JEEP-2 cardholders—other senior officials, personnel in key posts at various agencies who happen to be on duty, and FEMA employees—will have been evacuated to ensure continuity of operations.”

“So how the hell are we going to run the government tomorrow morning?” the President asked as Lambert checked his wallet for his Federal Employee Emergency Identification Card. He found it just behind his racquetball club card. All it had was his name, picture, blood type, and the message, “
THE PERSON DESCRIBED ON THIS CARD HAS ESSENTIAL EMERGENCY DUTIES WITH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. REQUEST FULL ASSISTANCE AND UNRESTRICTED MOVEMENT BE AFFORDED THE PERSON TO WHOM THIS CARD IS ISSUED.”
Lambert turned the card over. Printed in large block letters was “JEEP-1.”

“Well, sir,” Thomas said, “in a couple of hours the Joint Air Transportation Service will start evacuating Category A Relocation Teams—skeleton staffs consisting of several dozen people from each department and key agency split into three teams, each going to a different location. By the end of the day, they'll have moved Category B Teams—people from the National Science Foundation, the FDIC, people like that. All Category C agency personnel, and all government personnel who aren't part of the relocation teams, should be getting ‘Advanced Alert' phone calls from their superiors telling them to pack up and stand by. They in turn pass the alert to the next tier down on their organizational chart, and it goes on and on.”

“Where is everybody going?” President Livingston asked as Lambert saw the lights of the White House, its lawns brightly lit by floodlights, so stark in contrast to the other buildings mostly dark on this Sunday night.

“Well, the airborne evacuees,” General Thomas said, “will just orbit. We'll send one E-4B with a presidential successor down to the Southern Hemisphere out over the mid-Atlantic, but the rest will remain over the continental United States. Everybody else goes to emergency relocation sites within the ‘Federal Arc'—within three hundred miles of D.C.—or to alternate command posts. You go to ‘Kneecap,' the National Emergency Airborne Command Post, and the civilian government goes to Mount Weather or to the Alternate National Military Command Center at Raven Rock Mountain. And, I might add, there are several thousand state, county, and city blast-and fallout-resistant emergency operating centers that were constructed to ensure continued local government. They're receiving the warning and should also be staffing up. I'm sorry, sir,” Thomas said, “but I've got a call coming in from the Pacific Command. I'd better see what this is.”

“Okay, General Thomas. See you at Andrews. Greg, are you still there?”

“Yes, sir,” Lambert said as they pulled up to the White House gate.

“Okay. I'm going to take Barrow's and Gerhardt's calls. You get me Secretary Moore at State. I'm switching to this portable thing they're handing me and heading down to the South Lawn. I'll just be a second—you stay on the line with Moore.”

Instead of calling Jane on her car phone, as he had hoped to do, Lambert dialed the number of the White House switchboard. “This is Greg Lambert. Get me the Secretary of State.”

“One moment, sir,” the operator said calmly, recognizing his voice and not wasting time with the new voice ID system that he knew the old ladies at the switchboard hated. Lambert's car pulled to a stop in the drive just by the South Lawn. Through the bushes he could see security personnel fanning out from the building.

“Greg?” the voice of Secretary Moore came from the speaker-phone, the sound of a racing engine in the background.

“Bill, just a minute, the President wants to talk to you.”

“Helluva deal, hey, Greg?” the Secretary asked, but before Lambert could answer they heard “Bill? Greg? Anyone there?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. President,” Lambert said. “We're both here.”

The bright landing lights of a helicopter descended with surprising speed to the lawn. It was not the dark green Marine One that normally carried the President, but a squat gray air force helicopter.

“Bill, listen to me. I want you to call the Chinese and tell them what's coming.”

“But sir . . . !” Lambert began.

“I will
not
be a party to this!” the President declared, and in the background Greg heard the voice of the director of the White House Military Office say, “Mr. President, Crown Helo has landed.”

“Look, Greg, we're pregnant with this, and I refuse to go down in history as tacitly endorsing the Russians' use of nuclear weapons by sitting on this information! Bill, you call Beijing directly and you warn them—right now! Where are you headed?”

“Raven Rock Mountain, sir,” Secretary Moore said.

“You call them,” President Livingston said just as Lambert noticed a large group of Secret Service agents emerge from the White House, “then you report back to me when you get there.”

“Mr. President!” Greg said, getting out of the car as he saw the President and First Lady head down the steps to the South Lawn. The helicopter's engines were deafening—the pilot kept the rotors turning at high speed. “Sir!” Lambert shouted as he plugged one ear and began to trot across the lawn to meet the President at the helicopter door. “We'd better think about whether—”

“What?” he heard faintly from the phone. “I can't hear you!”

“Secretary Moore!” Lambert yelled as the branch of an unseen bush smacked his face. Lambert immediately stared down the barrel of an Uzi machine pistol; the red glow of a laser shone, he looked down to see, a tiny red dot of light on his chest. “Secretary Moore!” Lambert shouted again, but as he looked up he saw the President at the door of the helicopter; his portable phone hung loosely in his hand as he spoke with the director of the White House Military Office.

“ID!” the agent with the Uzi snapped.

“Goddammit! It's Greg Lambert!” A flashlight flicked on from the right, and Lambert turned to face the glare of the bright light that shone in his face. “It's okay! He's clear!” the second agent said, shutting off the light. Lambert immediately dashed for the helicopter.

At opposite sides of the lawn two pairs of Secret Service agents in dark suits stood, one of the men in each team with a slender tube, a Stinger missile, Lambert realized, mounted on his shoulder and pointing skyward. He hoped National Airport had gotten the word to divert their air traffic. On the ground at the door of the helicopter, three men in full combat gear knelt with rifles pointed out.

Lambert stooped under the rotor and dashed in the helicopter door, squeezing between the banks of electronic equipment in search of the President. Through the maze of crewmen seated in the aircraft jammed with gear he saw the Livingstons looking unsettled
in their unfamiliar places, strapped into cramped bucket seats. The White House military aide—the air force officer carrying the nuclear code case known as the “football”—was the last person to board, and the helicopter lifted off before the crew shut the door. Lambert and the military aide struggled to maintain their balance for the next minute or so as the helicopter maneuvered recklessly. Finally a crewman scrambled to shut the door and ushered Lambert to a lone fold-out seat. He strapped himself in, looking out the tiny porthole to see that they were flying at extremely low altitude. Lambert felt another steep bank just in time to see the brightly lit Washington Monument streak by his window. He leaned out to try to catch sight of the President down the narrow passageway to the rear of the helicopter, but a rack of equipment cut him from view. He even thought about trying to call the President from his portable phone, but he knew it would be too late. Secretary Moore would have already made his call.

The glowing Jefferson Memorial streaked by the small window, and Lambert felt faintly nauseous from the gyrations of the hurtling helicopter. The volume of the rotors was intense and vibrated through the metal wall at his back. The helicopter began a pattern of pitching first left, then right.
They're dodging imaginary antiaircraft missiles!
he realized.
Of course. Evasive maneuvering.
The helicopter's pilots who trained for this flight naturally prepared only for wartime conditions.

Lambert took a deep breath and tried to relax, settling back to watch the familiar sights streak by his small window. On one steep bank over the Potomac he saw the old buildings of Georgetown University, his alma mater, silhouetted against the city lights for an instant before they disappeared as the pilot threw the helicopter into another steep bank.
He's following the river,
Lambert guessed.