The War Cloud Read online

  “Even if that prompts them to strike back?”

  “Well, it looks like they already have, Madame President. And if they haven’t, I don’t see how they could strike back if we hit them now while we can.”

  Block could see Sachs try to keep a poker face, like she was thinking it through. But that was two votes of the NCA to her one, with Carver left to cast his ballot.”General Carver,” she finally said. “If the Chinese attack is for real, and if we do lose our land-based ICBMs, will our nuclear-armed bombers and submarines survive the attack?”

  Block knew Carver had to nod a yes, which is what he did.

  Carver said the only thing he could in his position: “The airborne and seaborne legs of our defense triad will indeed survive, Madame President, with enough firepower to destroy the world several times over and, per our war plan, preserve the continuity of government for the United States of America.”

  Block could see that was enough to satisfy Sachs and give her what she needed: a 2–2 split between the four of them. Worse, she clearly interpreted her vote as commander-in-chief to count as two in a tie. “So we can live without land-based ICBMs.”

  We can live without ICBMs? Block sensed that this failed Cabinet secretary was losing her grip on reality.

  “Of course,” Marshall cut in, “you realize that if you allow the enemy to attack yet again without retaliation, you’ll only encourage further aggression against America.”

  Block watched her reaction on the screen. The woman looked positively constipated.

  “General Marshall, you’re the one who told Congress that great care and billions of dollars have been spent to construct American nuclear weapons systems that will survive a nuclear attack,” Sachs replied testily. “The point was to give the president — that’s me and not you — the luxury of determining his or her response after the shape of the battle is clear.”

  Marshall said, “But you’re letting the enemy shape it.”

  “No,” she insisted, summing up. “We’ve got conflicting signals about the reality of this incoming attack. Northern Command says DF-5 silo killers are coming our way. But our satellites show nothing. The best course of action is to ride this out and determine our response after the shape of the battle is clear.”

  Ride this out? Block thought with almost unbearable frustration. This has ing to do with conflicting signals. She’s incapable of pulling the trigger.

  “With all due respect, Madam President,” he said, knowing the inflection in his voice sounded anything but respectful, “the shape of this battle looks pretty clear on my screens, and that looks like one big mushroom cloud over Cheyenne Mountain in 24 minutes and 53 seconds.”

  “Then I suggest you prepare for impact,” she said. “General Marshall, please send me a prioritized target list for those Mavericks you talked to me about earlier. The bunker-busters we’ve got up in the air now that we can always recall. I think you called it the Tall option.”

  She had to put that little tweak in the nose at the end, thought Block. Couldn’t leave well enough alone. But at least this was something.

  “On its way,” Marshall said and cut out.

  Sachs moved on to Carver. “General Carver, American citizens have to prepare themselves for any eventuality. Issue a national attack warning. Move our subs into attack position. I want every plane from Keneda and the USS George Washington airborne. We’ll reconvene five minutes before impact. Over.”

  Sachs disappeared from the screen, leaving Block on the video conference with Carver at Strategic Command. If anything, Carver was the one most at risk here, as Block always considered Cheyenne Mountain a far more formidable fortress than Carver’s underground operations center beneath Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha.

  Block said, “I say we go ahead and launch, sir.”

  Carver frowned. “You can’t be serious!”

  “Come on,” said Block. “What are we talking about here? A woman who can’t make up her mind. I say we remove her from the chain of command.”

  Carver was adamant. “We can’t do that, Block.”

  “Technically, the National Command Authorities are running the show now. That’s us. She’s only one vote out of four in the NCA.”

  Carver said, “She is our commander in chief.”

  “What the hell kind of commander in chief is this, Carver?”

  “The only one we’ve got, understand? Look, she’ll come around. It’s Colonel Kozlowski and Captain Li who are advising her.”

  “The Pollock and the chink,” Block said. “She’s got a goddamn rainbow coalition behind her. All she needs now is a Vulcan.”

  “Just prepare for impact,” said a stone-faced Carver, obliging him with the split-fingered Vulcan “live long and prosper” salute from the “Star Trek” TV series. “I’ll sound the National Attack Warning.”

  33

  1450 Hours

  Bedford Trails

  Air raid sirens blared as Jennifer and her horse Punk rode beneath the frosty canopy of the Piney Woods Preserve. She feared she had only minutes to lose the Green Berets before they and every police unit in Westchester County converged on the area. She had to disappear, go somewhere nobody would ever consider, not even her mother.

  There was Union Cemetery ad, or the Bedford Golf Club to her right. Either way, she’d have to emerge from the protection of the preserve to cross Clinton Road.

  She dismounted Punk in the preserve and gave him a slap on the rump to make him move away from her. Then in one boot and one cold stocking foot, she ran across the narrow, unplowed road. She clamored over a tall, green chainlink fence on the other side and dropped along the 17th fairway of the very old Bedford Country Club. It dated back to 1892. It was practically Neolithic-era, she thought, as she ran toward the majestic clubhouse beyond the 18th hole.

  She skirted the clubhouse and went around back to the small, decrepit caddyshack, where Robbie had taken her to make out twice. Well, maybe one-and-a-half times. Nobody would expect to find her here, she decided, because it’s the last place she expected herself to be right now.

  She crunched through the snow to the freestanding mailbox in front of the caddyshack. She opened it to find dozens of score cards and pencils — and a key taped to the bottom. She pulled it out and looked back to make sure enough snow was falling to cover her tracks, but it would be a good half hour before that would happen. She realized she had no choice and quickly unlocked the door and went inside.

  She locked the door behind her and shivered in the darkness. It was almost as cold inside the caddyshack as outside. She waited for her eyes to adjust in the dim light. First she had to find out what was going on in the world. Then she had to decide whether she should use Carla’s cell phone. She wanted to send her mom that picture of the Green Beret, but she didn’t want to risk giving her location away to the goon and die.

  She walked over to a broom closet and opened the door. Etched into one wall were the words “R&J 4eVer.” Beneath the etching was an old AM/FM/CD boombox. She took out the boombox and put it on the floor, then wrapped herself with the dusty beach blanket she had stashed on the shelf weeks ago and sat down.

  She said a quick prayer and hit the “on” switch. It still worked. Batteries and everything. She turned up the volume and adjusted the dial.

  “This is the National Warning Center,” said the voice of God, or so it sounded. “Emergency. This is an attack warning. Repeat. This is an attack warning.”

  A bleeping sound started to repeat itself, then her mom’s voice came on. Jennifer leaned closer to the box.

  “This is President Sachs with a warning that another attack is imminent.”

  Jennifer gasped. “Oh, God.”

  “The threat appears aimed at U.S. military targets, not population centers. So there is little to gain in mass evacuations or hysteria. The best thing every American can do at this moment is to simply take cover in basements, schools, offices, churches, synagogues and mosques until the threat passes.”
r />   Jennifer looked around the sorry interior of the caddyshack. It had no basement but was about as good as anywhere else at the moment.

  “Local police departments and National Guard units will be patrolling streets to enforce safety and use deadly force against those who would see this crisis as an opportunity to break the law.”

  What about those Green Berets chasing me? Jennifer wondered.

  “Rest assured that the United States are standing by to unleash the full fury of their wrath upon those states that have financed, equipped or harbored those who have attacked us. Until then, fellow Americans, our prayers are with you and our children. Help them and help your neighbors.”

  Jennifer pulled out Carla’s phone. She knew the government could track her even when it was off, but only if they knew what phone she had. As soon as she placed a call, they’d know.

  The EAS announcer came back on. “This was a message of the Emergency Alert System. This is not a test. Repeat. This is not a test.”

  That was enough to remind her that she could not be selfish in times like this. If there was anything she could report to her mom that would be helpful, she had to do it, even if it gave her away.

  She turned the phone on, got a dial tone and punched in her mom’s number. “Mom, pick up,” she breathed.

  Even as she heard the ringing on the other end, she saw a flash of light outside and ran to the window. There in the distance was that black Suburban, high beams shooting out its crumbled front end. It was tracing a long path across the vast course, following the buried golf cart paths. It was still a ways off. But the path could only end at the clubhouse, she realized, and then here.

  Phone to her ear, Jennifer paced nervously. Light from an outside lamppost streamed through the dirty window, through which she peered with each turn. The Suburban had disappeared from view, and she paused.

  “Please identify,” said a woman’s voice in her ear, not her mother’s.

  Jennifer jumped in surprise. Her call had gone through. But to whom?

  “Jennifer Sachs, is that you?” the woman asked.

  Jennifer didn’t know what to say. She was scared.

  “My name is Captain Li, Jennifer,” the woman said. “I’m putting you through to your mother now.”

  Jennifer heard a click and then her mother’s voice. “Baby, where are you?” She sounded both relieved and frantic.

  “I can’t say yet, Mom. This line isn’t secure.”

  “It’s OK, I have people who can come and get you.”

  “Like the ones who killed Carla and almost killed me?”

  There was an audible gasp. “What?!”

  Jennifer lost it then. She could feel her eyes tearing up. “They killed Carla, Mom. And if Aunt Dina wasn’t out of town with her boyfriend, they would have killed her too. They’re probably listening to me right now.”

  “Jennifer, please, tell me where you are.”

  Jennifer paused as she heard a distant wail of the national warning system sirens outside. “Like it matters now, Mom. We’re all going to die. Just like Dad.”

  “Jennifer, I won’t let that happen. Tell me where you are. I’ll send help.”

  “No, I’ll help you, Mom. I’m sending you a picture of the guy who tried to kill me.” She found the photo in the phone’s SD media card file and then emailed it to her mother. “Just make sure whoever you send isn’t him.”

  Suddenly two headlight bes pierced the window and the low hum of a distant vehicle grew louder. “Oh, God!”

  Her mother’s voice screamed through the phone. “Jennifer!”

  Jennifer ducked and then peered through a corner of the window. The black Suburban with the crushed front end braked to a squeaky halt outside. The two Green Berets stepped out like something out of the War Cloud.

  “They found me!” she breathed into the phone and hung up.

  34

  1501 Hours

  Air Force One

  Now it was Sachs who lost it, screaming into the phone, “Jennifer!” She sank to her knees and burst into tears, unable to hold back. It all came out, everything she had bottled up since the morning: her separation from Jennifer, the chopper crash, her lock-up in the infirmary, and the strain of circumstances.

  She felt Koz put a consoling arm around her shoulders, and let him help her up before she pushed back and brushed her hair from her angry eyes. “Captain Li had better sure as hell have traced that call, Colonel.”

  “I’m sure we’ll be hearing from her any second with a location, ma’am.”

  On cue the door slid open and Captain Li entered with her tablet displaying a map of suburban New York. “She called from somewhere inside the Bedford Country Club, Madame President.”

  Sachs could only wonder how Jennifer ended up there. “The photo.” She opened her email. There was nothing but old messages that had stopped when the nuke had gone off that morning — a lifetime ago. “I didn’t get it.”

  “We got it, ma’am,” Li said. “We grabbed it from her outgoing email server. This is the man.” Li tapped the display, and a blurred image of a Green Beret lunging toward the camera came into view.

  “Oh, my God!” Sachs said, unable to mask her fear. “That monster is after my baby?”

  “Yes, ma’am. We’re trying facial recognition, but between the face paint and blurred picture, we haven’t found anything yet. This guy is low-ranking.”

  “But he’s one of Kyle’s Green Berets who tried to kill me. How hard can it be to ID him?”

  “He’s not fitting the profile for anybody on Kyle’s unit.”

  “It’s the same guys who tried to kill me, Colonel,” Sachs said, turning to Koz. “These are Kyle’s Green Berets, I know it. And you still haven’t told me who he might have been taking orders from.”

  “I was going to tell you, but more pressing matters, specifically this imminent nuclear strike, got in the way,” he began. “The short answer is everybody.”

  “Everybody?”

  “I mean everybody, ma’am. It’s not like Kyle was some cipher who had some doctored or classified record anybody was trying to hide. He’s been everywhere in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iran, you name it. And he’s crisscrossed with just about every senior officer in all branches of the armed forces. He even saved Marshall once when Marshall was a major and his bomber went down in Iraq during Desert Storm and the Republican Guards were ing in on him.”

  “That’s something, Colonel.”

  “But it was Block who sent Kyle’s team to find Marshall in the first place, ma’am, and Carver who got Navy SEAL support for extraction. Like I said, Kyle was the go-to guy for impossible missions.”

  “No wonder they all looked at me like I was crazy when I said Kyle was trying to kill me.”

  “They just figured you — or your Secret Service detail — confused his tough-guy tactics to save you with a threat on your life, and that’s what may have inadvertently started a firefight aboard your chopper.”

  “So that’s how it’s going down?” she said, angrier than ever. “How are they going to explain Jennifer?”

  “They’re not, ma’am, because we’re going to get her first,” Kozlowski said. “I have just the team to reach her in less than 80 minutes. I would trust them with my life. Captain Li, please see if you can reach the RATS.”

  Li paused, “The blast, sir.”

  “If anyone survived it, they did,” Koz said. “I want them moving the second after impact and any EMP.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said and left Sachs alone with Koz.

  Sachs put her hands over her face. “Oh, my baby, Jennifer. I couldn’t even tell her that she saved my life. She’s the reason I’m alive. If it wasn’t for her, I would have been in Washington this morning when…”

  Kozlowski handed her a handkerchief. She dabbed her eyes, embarrassed by her emotion.

  “Thanks,” she told him, and tried to hand back the handkerchief.

  Koz refused. “Keep it. It’s yours.”
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  She then noticed the presidential seal in the pattern and managed a weak smile. “I never expected any of this when I woke up this morning.”

  “None of us did.”

  Sachs shook her head. “Oh, I think somebody did, Colonel. And we’re going to find out who that somebody is, for the sake of our families and our country.”

  “You can call me Koz, ma’am. Everybody else does.”

  Sachs took a breath, then looked at him differently. He had succeeded in breaking her emotional state, which she realized was not in a good place for the commander-in-chief. “So, Koz, where’s your family?”

  “Only a brother in Wyoming now. His backyard abuts a missile field. He knew the risks. Hell, we all did.”

  Sachs asked gently, “Nobody else?”

  He shrugged and smiled. “Don’t meet a lot of women up here.”

  “Captain Li sure is a fan.”

  Koz dropped the smile, not allowing a hint of ambiguity. “Strictly professional, ma’am.”

  Sachs felt strangely relieved. “I’m sure it is, Koz. And you can call me Deb,” she said when suddenly the plane pitched and rolled, slamming her against the bulkhead and knocking her out.

  35

  1501 Hours

  Looking Glass

  Marshall felt the shockwave too from his general’s quarters aboard the Looking Glass plane. He had escaped there a few minutes earlier to collect his thoughts and run through his checklists away from the crew. Now an alarm was sounding and there was an expected knock on his door.

  “General Marshall, sir!” It was Quinn’s quivering voice.

  Marshall said, “Enter.”

  Quinn walked in, EAM printout in hand. “We lost Strategic Command, sir. Our home base!”

  “Then the day has finally come, Colonel,” Marshall said calmly. “Launch authority transfers to us here aboard Looking Glass. Shut the door.”

  Quinn, not quite understanding, turned to close the door. When he again faced Marshall, there was an open bottle of Jack Daniels on the desk. Marshall poured two glasses and handed one to Quinn, who didn’t look like much of a drinker.