Chapter 49
The Situation Room of the White House was more crowded than the president had ever seen. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of the CIA, the secretaries of state and defense and their aides had filled the sitting areas. Other cabinet members stood in the space around the main table.
The world situation had deteriorated harshly in the past twenty-four hours. In response to the downing of their fighter plane, the Chinese had captured a pair of Russian spy boats in disputed waters and now troops were building up on the border between the two countries.
Because an American vessel had been approached in the same area but had managed to leave the vicinity and escape capture, the Russians were claiming U.S. duplicity. They were lashing out at both nations through every available channel.
The Chinese, on the other hand, wanted to know why U.S. and Russian spy boats were in its waters and operating together, as a second round of finger-pointing and paranoia got into full swing.
The president sat in his chair quietly. He glanced through a situation report while the head of the Joint Chiefs explained the particulars using a flat screen monitor.
“… and in addition to that the Chinese have deployed forty divisions on the Russian border; strategic aircraft have been dispersed or launched and parked in racetrack patterns a hundred miles from the borders.”
He clicked the screen and a new satellite photo appeared: a Russian ICBM silo. What looked like steam could be seen escaping from hoses attached to a large, odd-looking tanker truck. “The Russians are making serious preparations, but their activities are balanced, half in Asia, half on the European side.”
A new photo showed mobile SS-20 launchers being dispersed into the countryside. The following one showed the Russian port at Murmansk. The docks were empty, and the channel, normally frozen solid at this time of year, had been cleared by a flotilla of massive icebreakers.
“From our point of view this is the bigger problem,” the chief said. “In twenty-four hours, in some of the worst conditions of the season, their entire ballistic missile fleet has put to sea. Not only did we believe this could not be done so quickly, it hasn’t been done since the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
He turned to look at Henderson. “This is a grave sign, Mr. President. The Russians are very serious about things. And I think we should be, too.”
These latest actions were highly unwelcome. And they left the president with a growing dilemma. He believed the Brazil stone was secure and no longer an immediate threat as long as it remained in the Yucca Mountain depository. Sensors placed on and around the mountain had detected no emissions of electromagnetic energy escaping the complex. But neither the NRI staff, the CIA’s newly involved experts, nor Nathanial Ahiga could say for sure what would happen if another super-spike occurred.
Another event like that, in the current state of heightened readiness, might be more than they could afford.
In that sense the incident had been terrible luck. It had led directly to the current predicament—spy satellites destroyed, tensions flaring. One more hour and the stone would have been safely ensconced in the depths of Yucca Mountain and nothing would have occurred.
But in a different sense, he felt it might have been good luck. Had the stone sent forth this burst while still housed at the NRI headquarters in Virginia, or, worse yet, at the beginning of the journey, on the road to Andrews Air Force Base, all of D.C. and most of the eastern seaboard would have gone dark—including the Pentagon, the White House, and Congress, not to mention CIA headquarters in Langley and Andrews itself.
The pulse had fried almost every circuit and backup system at Groom Lake, and even the backup systems at Nellis Air Force Base, eighty miles away, had been inoperable for almost five hours.
The president had served in the military and he believed in their professionalism and training. But he feared what the reaction would have been if Washington and most of the East Coast had gone suddenly, utterly dark. It would not have been like the blackout in 2003, where the grid went down but phones still operated, with places with backup power remaining functional and military communications online. It would have been complete darkness, complete silence.
To the western command, five hours without communication would have been incomprehensible. All public television, radio, and Internet feeds gone, nothing but static on the box, no response to calls, no word from either military or civilian personnel, no flights arriving from eastern airports. To any rational person, and especially those charged with the task of protecting America, the sudden loss of contact with anything and everything from New York to Washington—all without any warning—could have only seemed like a nuclear strike of some kind.
He wondered privately if that scenario would have caused the western command to launch some type of counterattack, firing back against anyone anywhere who might have been responsible.
The president was thankful that burst had happened so far from civilization. But it had caused a shift in his position. He’d begun coming around to what the director of central intelligence had been pushing all along: that these stones, these devices of unimaginable power, were incredibly dangerous instrumentalities. If the men who studied them did not understand them, or even know what they were capable of, how could anyone accurately predict their intended or even unintended consequences?
For the past month, he’d been swayed by the opinion of his longtime friend, Arnold Moore. But for all his well-known gifts of discernment, Moore didn’t seem to feel the danger.
“Mr. President,” the head of the Joint Chiefs said, “in the interests of national security I must formally request we move the military readiness status to Defense Condition Two.”
“Two?” the president asked, stunned.
“Yes, Mr. President. I feel in light of the Russian and Chinese actions it’s necessary.”
Escalation, the predictable result of itself. Certainly Moore had been right about that. Even if he was blind to his own part in the cause.
The president looked down at the photo in the briefing folder. Russian ICBMs fueling up. For the first time in decades. He felt a thin sheen of sweat on his palms. Things were beginning to come unglued. Prior to this moment he’d felt a conviction that he could do what was needed and keep everything and everyone reined in. Now he knew that was beyond his grasp. And he also knew with certainty that he could no longer protect both his old friend and the American people at large.
“Mr. President … I’m afraid we need an answer.”
Henderson closed the folder and looked up.
“No,” he said. “DefCon Three only. Take all defensive measures, but I don’t want any ships going to sea early, bombers on airborne alert, or ICBM activity. Do one damned thing to make them more afraid and I’ll fire your asses on the spot. You understand me?”
So forceful was the president’s voice, so unexpected, that the entire room shrank back. Henderson considered that a good sign. He knew there would still be visible signs of the upgrade but they would be minimal and perhaps it would be the start of a de-escalation.
“Yes, Mr. President,” the head of the JCS said.
As President Henderson stood, the room came to attention.
“I want updates in two hours,” he said, then glanced over at Byron Stecker. “Come with me.”
Henderson strode from the Situation Room and down the hallway. The glare on his face was dark enough that staff members who’d been waiting hours to speak with him pulled back into the shadows and let him pass.
Stecker caught up with the president halfway to the White House elevator.
“What’s your take on Moore?” the president barked.
Stecker fumbled for a moment, and then spoke. “He wants his way,” Stecker said, struggling to keep up. “Wants to win his argument.”
That wasn’t Moore’s style, the president thought. Moore could be obstinate but not for the sheer sake of it. If the facts were plain he would surrender his case. There was something else.
Turning the corner, he launched his next question. “Could he be withholding information?”
Stecker looked away, as if considering the possibility.
“I’ve had issues with the NRI since day one,” Stecker said. “And especially since Moore took over. I wouldn’t put it past him if he thought it was the right thing to do, but …”
“But?”
“But in this case it would take a hell of an effort. We have access to the stone; we have everything in their database. My people have been all over it for the past couple of weeks. Everything is linked to everything else. Every report they ran built on a prior one. If there were holes in the data we’d have found them. So if he is holding something back, it’s something he never disclosed in the first place.”
The president doubted that. Moore had been up-front that the stone had been brought here from the future, that it was creating ever larger waves of energy, and that it was ticking down to something cataclysmic. If you weren’t going to hide those facts, what the hell could be worth hiding?
And yet Moore’s actions in this particular instance seemed out of character: his initial reluctance to explain what his people were doing in Mexico, his private hiring of a mercenary to rescue his friend—a loss that the man Henderson used to know would have borne stoically out of duty’s sake, even with all its pain and anguish.
The president stopped thirty feet from the elevator and the Secret Service guard who stood beside it.
“Do Moore’s actions seem rational to you?” he asked.
If Stecker ever wanted to fire a broadside at Moore, the president had just given him the green light. But Stecker was subtle.
“If you have to ask, Mr. President …”
He did have to ask. And now he found himself furious with Moore for putting him in this position to begin with.
“I want you to go back out to Yucca,” he said. “I want you to keep an eye on Moore, personally.”
“Mr. President—”
“He’s too wrapped up in this thing to pull him off it now. He knows the stone and the research better than anyone else. But I’m strongly leaning toward destroying that damn thing, and on the chance that Moore finds that option unacceptable, you are to prevent him from interfering.”
The president paused and then added, “By any means necessary.”