charleston naval base is the Navy's third-largest homeport after Norfolk and San Diego. Over forty ships were currently anchored or docked on the Cooper River, just north of the city of Charleston. While the rest of the port was at its normal Sunday morning level, one ship was a beehive of activity.
The USS Shiloh was a Ticonderoga-class cruiser, more commonly referred to as an AEGIS guided-missile cruiser. It was a cousin of the infamous Vincennes which shot down an Iranian airliner in the Persian Gulf. The Shiloh was an even more advanced version than that older ship. The sophisticated ship was a far cry from the cruisers of an earlier age that had boasted eight-to ten-inch guns as their main weapons. The Shiloh only had two single-barrel five-inch guns, one on the forecastle and one on the quarterdeck at the rear. For armament, the ship relied on missiles and it carried quite a punch in that department. It boasted eight Tomahawk cruise missiles in each of its two VLS missile launchers along with numerous other surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles.
At the present moment, above the rear, deck of the USS Shiloh, a SH-60 specially modified Blackhawk helicopter was being guided down to a landing by a crewman in a bright orange jumpsuit. As soon as the helicopter's wheels touched down, the side doors were opened and several large bags were thrown out. Crewmen picked them up and carried them forward to the ship's captain, who was standing next to a special operations resupply pod. The pod was six feet long and two feet in diameter, painted dull black.
The pilot handed a computer disk out his door to the ship's weapon's officer before it took off.
"All right, pack them in," the captain ordered.
The crewmen had just begun doing so when one of the canvas bags broke open and stacks of worn hundred dollar bills fell onto the deck. All work paused as they stared at the money.
The captain's voice cut through the pause. "Pack the bags in the pod, gentlemen."
A petty officer looked up at the captain. "We're going to fire this off, sir?"
"If we get ordered to, we will."
The petty officer shook his head. "Someone on the Joint Chiefs retiring or what?"
"I don't know," said the captain honestly, "and I don't think I want to know." He turned to a petty officer. "Chief, is the Tomahawk ready to receive this pod?"
"Yes, sir."
The captain nodded. "All right. As soon as the money is in, load it."
The petty officer snapped to attention. "Aye-aye, sir."
Drake came back in the access panel, leaning it back in place behind him. McKenzie walked over and they talked quietly, so the other guards couldn't hear.
"Are we all set?" McKenzie asked.
Drake handed McKenzie a small device that looked like a TV remote with a cover. It had a thick, bright red nylon strap attached to one end, allowing it to be worn around the neck. Drake flipped open the cover and showed McKenzie a series of buttons. "I've programmed this manually so it's out of the Omega Missile loop." He lightly touched one button. "Green and the silo opens and the missile preps up. Blue and the missile takes off. Red and you arm the warhead and it goes off when the missile lands. Yellow is abort." He pointed to a last black button. "That's the bugaboo. Push black and that warhead goes off no matter where it is, whether it's flying or still sitting in the silo. As you can see, they're all labeled so we don't make a rather big mistake and push the wrong button."
McKenzie took the device and slipped it over his head, hiding it inside his shirt. "And the missile is targeted correctly?"
"Straight up and down isn't that hard to program."
"The flight time?"
"Thirty minutes give or take a few seconds."
McKenzie smiled. "Excellent."
*****
National Security Adviser Hill walked out of the small office to the rear of the War Room. He seemed to have aged years in the hour he'd been in the War Room. "If we cannot stop Kilten by any other means, the president has approved the nuclear strike at five minutes before the deadline is up. That's only if you can assure him the area has been evacuated and there will be no civilian casualties."
General Lowcraft had been looking through various printouts. "I've already given the orders to prepare the aircraft and to get the evacuation started. Our readout on wind and fallout indicate New Orleans won't be affected."
Colonel Hurst called out. "Sir, we've got radio communications with a helicopter that crashed inside the radar zone of the Omega Missile launch facility. They were knocked out of the sky by the explosion that took out Barksdale. The pilot says he had a Special Forces officer on board and the man is checking out some shots fired in the area. They've also made contact with one of the crew from the Omega Missile LCC."
"Can we talk to them?" Lowcraft asked.
"The pilot says the SF officer is supposed to radio him in a couple of minutes and he'll patch him through."
Hill looked at Lowcraft. "What can one man do?"
Lowcraft shrugged. "It's one more than we had."
"Still, what can one man do?"
"Ask Kilten."
*****
Parker pulled to a stop in the tree line next to a fifty-square-meter clearing. The concrete cover for the Omega Missile silo was tilted back inside of a fence.
"How's it guarded?" Thorpe asked.
Parker pointed. "Two thermal cameras, there and there at opposing corners of the compound. Ground sensors along the fence projecting out twenty feet. Slave-driven chain gun, 7.62-mm, activated by the Omega Missile LCC is there. The one at the LCC tracks movement and fires at it. This one tracks movement of thermal signatures and fires at anything with a mass large enough to be a person inside the perimeter. It's the best-guarded silo in the inventory."
"Great," Thorpe muttered. Thorpe looked at the weapons mounted on a twenty-foot tower in the center of the compound. They had a clear field of fire over the fence at the entire clearing.
Thorpe checked his watch. "Hold on a second." He took out Parker's survival radio and pushed the transmit button. "Maysun, this is Thorpe."
"Thorpe, hold on a second. I got ahold of Dublowski and he's monitoring. There's someone else who wants to talk to you right away, though. Let me patch you through."
There was a short pause, then a new voice came over the air. "This is General Lowcraft. Who am I speaking to?"
Thorpe knew who General Lowcraft was. "Captain Thorpe, Fifth Special Forces Group on detached assignment to the Department of Energy Special Operations NEST team, sir. I also have Major Parker from the Air Force here. She's with the Three Hundred Forty-First Missile Wing."
"How the hell did you end up there, Captain?"
"Bad luck, sir," Thorpe replied. "My chopper was flying in to Barksdale for fuel and a spare part and we got caught."
Lowcraft was direct and to the point. "We have a problem."
"Yes, sir, we're aware of that. Major Parker is from the Omega Missile crew and we saw both Kilten and McKenzie go down into the launch facility."
"You certainly are up to speed on this problem. In fact, you seem to be ahead of us on some of it. Who's McKenzie?"
"Ex-Navy SEAL," Thorpe said. "He worked with me on the SO/NEST teams before he retired. They've also got a bunch of Canadian ex-paratroopers for their muscle."
"We have to stop them," Lowcraft said. "You're aware of what they control?"
"Yes, sir," Thorpe said. "We're working on it."
"Work harder, soldier.''
Parker indicated she wanted the radio. "What are they asking for, sir?"
"Twenty-six-million dollars and for the president to review the country's nuclear weapons system safeguards and some classified files."
"Are you giving them the money?" Thorpe asked.
"We don't know yet. You do what you can. You've only got two hours."
"Then what, sir?" Thorpe asked.
"You let me worry about that, son."
Thorpe keyed the radio. "Sir, may I make a suggestion?"
"Fire away," Lowcraft said.
"We think we have a way of getting into the launch facility. We also have the override code for the vault door to the LCC. The air force security people got ambushed and wiped out."
"Goddamn!" Lowcraft exclaimed.
"But we're heavily outnumbered and outgunned," Thorpe continued. "We could use some help. If you could get the rest of my NEST team here, they could go for the LCC itself through the vault door. There's a Master Sergeant Dublowski standing by at Fort Polk, ready to go."
"We've been in contact with your team and we have a C-130 arriving at Polk shortly to pick them up," Lowcraft said. "The problem is that Kilten has threatened to fire off a nuclear weapon if he spots an aircraft on the radar in the launch facility," Lowcraft said.
Thorpe turned to Parker. "What's the range on the radar in the launch facility?"
"Five miles," Parker said.
Thorpe spoke into the radio. "Sir, the team can jump in. They can go high, offset their release point five miles and HAHO in."
There was a brief pause, then Lowcraft's voice came back. "I'll get on it, Captain Thorpe. You monitor this frequency and do what you can to get into the launch facility."
"Roger that, sir." Thorpe waited a few seconds. "Maysun, you still there?"
"Where am I going to go with a broken leg?"
"How's Tommy?"
"Fine."
"Patch me through to Dublowski," Thorpe said.
"Wait one. OK, he's on."
"Dublowski, this is Thorpe."
"What's up, sir?"
"You guys ready?"
"Roger that. I've got the boys standing by. We've got a C-130 landing right now. Anything else?"
Thorpe snapped his fingers at Parker. "Give me the code."
"You can't send it over the radio!" Parker exclaimed.
"What, some terrorist is going to intercept it and break into the LCC?" Thorpe said. "We should be so lucky."
Parker shook her head. "That's the rule."
"Rules got us into this mess," Thorpe said. He looked at Everson. "Can you take the code and wait by the surface entrance, out of sight?"
"Yes, sir." Everson said.
Thorpe keyed the radio. "Ski, there will be a Sergeant Everson waiting for you on the ground with the override code."
"Roger."
"Do you have any demo just in case the code doesn't work?"
"We've got some charges," Dublowski said.
"Watch out for the machine guns on top of the LCC. They fire at movement when activated."
"Great," Dublowski said.
"I'm going underground in a few minutes to try to get in a different way and stop those guns from firing. Once I go down, I'll probably be out of touch. Good luck."
Parker was shaking her head as he hung up.
"What?" Thorpe asked.
"No way they're going to be able to blow that door," she said. "It's designed to take a nuke strike."
"They can try," Thorpe said.
"Even if they take down McKenzie's men," Parker said, "Kilten and McKenzie can stop them using the remote controlled chain guns on the top of the LCC surface entrance before they make it in the first door. They're just like the guns here."
"Is there any way we can short-circuit the guns?" Thorpe asked.
"From inside the LCC. There's a master control panel."
"Then I suppose we'd better make damn sure we get into the LCC, right?"
He turned to Everson. "Go put surveillance on the LCC and wait for my team. Use your survival radio to monitor."
Everson saluted and headed into the woods.
Parker pointed across the field. "After you."
Thorpe was looking in the back of the Humvee, taking out equipment the ambushers had in there. He appropriated a rope and sorpe grenades. "Any way you know of that we can beat the cameras and the sensors?" he asked.
"Not that I can think of," Parker said.
Thorpe looped the rope over his shoulder. He looked at the cameras. "Thermal right?"
Parker nodded. "That's so they can see at night without having to light the silos up and give away their location to overhead imagery."
Thorpe nodded. He reached into his vest and pulled out two small foil packets.
"What are those?" Parker asked.
"Survival blankets," Thorpe said as he ripped one of them open. "We put them over us and crawl to the silo. They reflect heat back so we shouldn't show up on the thermals."
Parker eyed the blankets dubiously. They looked like strips of aluminum foil. "What about the sensors?" she asked.
"They might think they've been tripped by an animal. Do you know what weight sets them off?"
"No," Parker said, "but we have had deer set them off."
"Well, they won't know what to make of us under the blankets, so let's go."
"Doesn't sound like much of a plan," Parker said, hesitating and looking across the way at the lurking menace of the machine guns.
Thorpe pulled the blanket over his shoulders, lowered himself to the ground, and began crawling away from the tree line toward the compound.
*****
After General Lowcraft finished giving a flurry of orders, he was finally able to answer the question Hill had asked after the conversation with Thorpe.
"HAHO stands for High Altitude, High Opening parachute drop. They jump at thirty thousand feet, open their parachutes immediately, and fly them to the drop zone. The parachutes won't get picked up on radar."
"Can the team get in there?" Hill asked.
"I don't know."
"But it's worth a try?"
"Yes, it's worth a try, but it puts us in a rather difficult position. If I HAHO an SF team on top of the launch facility and they don't make it in, then there's no way I can get them out before you hit that place with your nuclear strike. It's condemning those men to death."
"Send them anyway," Hill said.
Lowcraft gave Hill a look he might use for something that he accidentally smeared on the bottom of his shoe. He reached for the mike. "I'm going to tell them of the planned strike."
"I don't see how it would help them," Hill said.
"It would give them the option of getting out of there," Lowcraft said.
Hill shook his head. "Options are not things normally associated with military operations. Even though it's a slim chance, the NEST team and Thorpe and Parker are our best shot at getting into that LCC."
"I'm going to tell them anyway," Lowcraft turned to the communications officer. "Get me Thorpe on the radio."
*****
Thorpe and Parker were halfway across the field when Thorpe heard a low voice on the radio in his pocket. Irritated, he pulled it out. "Thorpe here," he answered as Parker edged next to him, her head near his.
"Captain Thorpe, this is General Lowcraft. I want you to know that if you don't get to the launch facility by noon, we're taking it out with a nuclear strike."
Thorpe rolled his eyes at Parker. "Just get Dublowski and his men moving." Thorpe paused. "Sir, have you evacuated Barksdale?"
"We're working on it. The nuclear bomb will be proceeded by a bunker-buster bomb so the nuclear bomb will go off twenty feet down, which will minimize the effects."
"There are family members at Barksdale," Thorpe said.
"We're aware of that," General Lowcraft said.
"Just do your job and we'll take care of our end of things."
"Sir, you need to get the people out from the chopper crash. My son is one of them."
"Your son?"
"It's a long story, sir, but can you get them out?"
"I'll get a medevac chopper as close to the radar limit as possible. We'll get them out of there. You focus on getting the LCC under your control."
"Yes, sir."
"Good luck."
Thorpe put the radio away. He met Parker's gaze without a word.
"Someone will get Tommy to safety," she said.
"The question is, will there be any safety?" Thorpe asked. "We've got to get into this place."
They began crawling.
*****
Inside the LCC, McKenzie punched memory five in his cellular phone for the tenth time. The phone rang and rang with no answer. "Shit!" McKenzie exclaimed.
He turned to Drake. "We've lost contact with Mitchell so we have to assume our perimeter has been breached at the bridge. We're wasting time. They're up to something."
McKenzie keyed the microphone for the satellite radio. "General Lowcraft. I and my associates are becoming short-tempered. Has the president been notified and is the money on its way?"
"Who am I talking to? Where's Professor Kilten?"
"Just answer my questions, General."
"The president has been notified," a new voice replied. "He has a copy of Kilten's report and I can assure you he is reading it. The money has been transported to Charleston and is being loaded as we speak."
"Is this Hill?" McKenzie asked.
"Yes."
"Is your shithead aide, Lugar, there? The one who uses Loki as his call sign?"
Hill remained silent.
"Listen, Hill, I know your people are trying to get in here. We spot anybody and you're going to have a hell of a lot more problems than us. You got that?"
"Is this McKenzie?" Lowcraft asked.
McKenzie smiled. "So you've been talking to my friend Captain Thorpe, have you?"
There was no answer.
"Not very bright, General, but not a great disclosure either. How's Thorpe doing? What's he up to?"
"He's back at Barksdale debriefing our people," Lowcraft said.
"Oh, I don't think so," McKenzie said. "That's not the way Thorpe works. He's around here somewhere. Of course, he's not the threat he once was."
"McKenzie, why are you doing this? I've got your service jacket here. You've served your country for twenty-two years. Why have you turned against it now?"
"I've turned against the Pentagon and assholes like your friend Hill, General, not my country. I'm doing my duty to my country here. Protecting them from people like Hill."
"Chief McKenzie, I—"
"You think what I'm doing is wrong?" McKenzie yelled into the radio. "I'll show you people doing wrong things." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a CD. He handed it to Drake. "Send that to the sons-of-bitches."
Drake took the CD and slid it into the communication computer. He transmitted the data on high-frequency burst to the War Room as McKenzie spoke. "You've got some digitized data coming in, General. I suggest you view it."
*****
In the War Room, Lowcraft turned his chair to face the front of the room. The front display cleared and then an out-of-focus image appeared. It showed a beach with some trucks parked.
Just as Lowcraft was getting ready to ask his technician to clean the image up, it cleared and he could see four military-style trucks parked on the sand. The camera panned and a tank came into view. Lowcraft immediately recognized the make; there was only one country in the world that made that tank and it had never been exported.
"What is this?" Lowcraft asked.
"Don't act stupid," McKenzie hissed. "Those are Israeli-made Merkava tanks. Your friend Hill knows exactly what this is."
One of the tanks turned on its searchlight and a hovercraft appeared on the water, sliding up onto the beach. Men began taking barrels off the hovercraft and loading them onto trucks. The camera zoomed in on one of the barrels and Lowcraft could see the markings on the side.
"Oh, shit," he muttered to himself.
McKenzie's voice came over the speaker. "I shot this digitized video while working for our government, General. As you can tell from the scene, those are Israelis receiving a shipment of plutonium. What you can't tell is that the people doing the shipping are CIA."
Lowcraft turned to Hill. "Maybe you can shed some light on this. We aborted that Lebanon SO/NEST team but you didn't tell me any of this."
McKenzie's voice boomed out again. "This was my last mission for our government. We had received information that there was going to be a transfer of weapons-grade plutonium along the coast in southern Lebanon. This information was correct. Unfortunately this was a case of the left hand not knowing what the right was doing, no pun intended." McKenzie gave a strange laugh.
"When we called for an air and ground strike on the exchange to get the plutonium back under positive control, the strike was canceled by Mister Hill's aide and we were ordered to abort," McKenzie said. "Then we got attacked by the CIA guards and the Israelis. I didn't let the debriefers know I had the video when I got back because I knew it would disappear and I'd have Agency dinks knocking at my door. So don't give me any crap. You people are the criminals!"
"So enough bullshit!" McKenzie exploded. "You do what you were told to do. I want the money moving. Now!" He cut off the connection.
General Lowcraft was rubbing his forehead. "This thing keeps getting worse and worse."
Hill had been thinking about something McKenzie mentioned. "If Thorpe was with him on that mission into southern Lebanon, maybe Thorpe's not on our side."
"Sir," Colonel Hurst said. "I've got Thorpe's file and I've also contacted the NEST headquarters. Thorpe's team was directed to check out security at nuclear weapons storage sites this weekend by direct request from the Pentagon." Hurst looked up from the papers in his hand. "The request was initiated by Professor Thomas Kilten."
Lowcraft took the orders and looked at them, then he threw them down. "Kilten may have wanted this team in the area for some reason, but Thorpe's on our side."
"How do you know that?" Hill demanded.
"Because his son's there," Lowcraft snapped. He glared at Hill. "Of course, there are those of us who would sell out our own children if there was something to be gained." He poked a finger at Hill's chest. "How are you going to feel when it's you who is being sacrificed?"
"Sir, there's more," Hurst said. "I've run a check on the Omega Missile LCC crew. Major Parker just came back to the Air Force after being seconded to a CIA unit called Red Flyer."
Lowcraft turned to Hill with eyebrows raised. "What's Red Flyer? That was part of Kilten's request."
"You don't have a need to know," Hill replied. "Suffice it to say it's part of that hammer I hold over the heads of the Israelis and others who fuck with the United States."
"You're still playing 'I've-got-a-secret' and we're standing on the edge of nuclear Armageddon," General Lowcraft said wonderingly.
Hurst had another file in his hand. "In Kilten's file it says he also worked with Red Flyer. It's apparently something compartmentalized between the Air Force and the CIA."
"I'm only the chairman of the Joint Chiefs," Lowcraft shook his head. "No one tells me what the hell is going on with anything."
Hill took Lowcraft's arm and led him out of earshot of the others. "Red Flyer took over the SADM mission from the Special Forces six years ago."
Lowcraft knew that SADM stood for Strategic Atomic Demolition Munitions. A fancy term for backpack nukes. He'd known about the mission being removed from the Special Forces, but he thought that was because the mission had been phased out given the accuracy of cruise missiles with tactical nuclear weapons.
"Why?" Lowcraft asked.
"There are times when we have to use the threat of a deniable tac nuke strike for diplomatic pressure," Hill said. "There's so much shit floating around now that a bomb going off can be pinned on terrorists if there is no trace of a missile or aircraft launch that can be backtracked."
"So we have Red Flyer teams stationed around the world with tactical nuclear weapons to use to threaten those who need threatening," Hill concluded.
"How was Parker involved?" Lowcraft asked.
"I don't know," Hill answered. "She must have done a tour of duty with Red Flyer. We take some personnel with the necessary nuclear weapons background from the military to work on the teams."
Lowcraft rubbed his eyes in weariness. "Jesus Christ, Kilten sure has uncovered a cesspool, hasn't he?"