The wing commander, call sign Cheyenne, peeled away and did a “bat-turn,” a tight, high G, turn that put him right on Sixshooter’s tail.
“Sixshooter, I order you to eject immediately. Affirmative?”
“Arming the seat, sir. Shit, that’s working at least… independent system…”
“Pull that goddamn red handle, son. Right goddamn now!”
“Sir, I’m trying, but…”
“But nothing. I’ve got you locked on. I’m giving you exactly five seconds to get out. Then I’m pulling the trigger… on my mark, five… four…”
A keening alarm could be heard from inside the cockpit of Sixshooter’s F-15. His missiles were armed and about to launch. His voice cracked and broke as he made his reply. “Pull that trigger now, sir. I got a rogue Sidewinder with the fuse lit. Launch right now, sir, before this damn-”
“God bless and keep you, son,” Cheyenne said, and launched his missile.
“God bless America, sir,” were the last words heard from Sixshooter before he and his aircraft were vaporized.
Red Team Leader’s AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air heat-seeking missile homed in on the exhaust of Sixshooter’s F-15 Eagle. A conical sensor in the missile’s nose cone registered optimum destructive range and triggered the warhead.
Lieutenant Mick Millard, Sixshooter, died instantly in a blinding ball of flame. Aboard Air Force One, Captain Dickenson leveled off at ten thousand feet and immediately notified the president and Angel’s entire crew that the threat had been nullified.
A few long minutes later, Colonel Danny Barr, Angel’s copilot, along with the airplane’s physician, Doctor and Rear Admiral Connie Mariano, peeked into the conference room. Once the rogue F-15 had been destroyed, the 747 leveled, completely unharmed save for the nervous systems of everyone aboard. Colonel Barr was deeply relieved to see the president and everyone else buckled in. Scared, dazed maybe, but unhurt.
“Everybody all right? Sorry, Mr. President, I know we didn’t give you much of a heads-up to strap in tight before we took evasive action.”
Starting with the president, Dr. Mariano went to each person in the conference room, checking pulses, pupil dilation, and asking a few questions to determine whether or not anyone wanted a mild sedative. No one did.
“What in God’s name happened, Danny?” the president asked.
“Yes, sir, well, we’re still trying to figure that out, both up in the cockpit and with tech support down on the ground. Apparently, the airplane flying Red Three today suffered a catastrophic systems failure.”
“There’s an understatement. Damn thing tried to shoot us down.”
“Yes, sir. The pilot lost all control of his aircraft, Mr. President. The way the skipper put it to the engineers on the ground, he said, ‘the airplane was completely co-opted.’ ”
“Co-opted?”
“Somebody else was flying that airplane, sir. One minute the pilot had control, the next minute, he was riding a drone. His radar went active, he painted us, and then his weapon system armed. That F-15 was seconds away from launching a Sidewinder at us when Red Team Leader took him out, sir.”
“Did that poor boy get out first?”
“No, sir. His ejection seat was inoperable.”
“Thank you, Admiral Mariano; thank you, Danny, appreciate your help. That will be all.”
Once the door had closed, the president said, “I’d say this crisis just escalated, if that isn’t too much of an understatement for you.”
“It’s insane, Mr. President,” Anson Beard, the secretary of defense, said, squeezing his temples with his forefingers. “Just insane.”
“Not an ‘it,’ Anson, but a ‘who.’ Who the hell has amassed this kind of power? Hell, you could bring the whole damn world crashing down with something like this. We’re going to spend the rest of this flight lighting up the secure phones; how many we have on board, twenty-eight or so? I want everyone notified immediately, Defense, NSA, CIA, FBI, the Joint Chiefs, everybody. We got a war on our hands. I’m not so sure we don’t have a world war on our hands.”
Twenty-two
Palo Alto, California
As soon as the funeral service for Dr. Cohen was over, CIA director Brick Kelly approached the president and said he needed to go for a long walk. He had a few hours to kill before Angel was wheels-up again. Her next stop was Los Alamos, for an emergency presidential briefing on the AI research being done there. Los Alamos scientists had been working feverishly to prevent some kind of cyberattack on the facility. It was the lead scientist’s contention that only AI-level intelligence was capable of launching attacks such as were now occurring against the United States.
Prior to that, the president and the secretary would engage in a parlay with the brass at Travis AFB about what was now being referred to as “the Incident.” At Travis, they’d teleconference with the Joint Chiefs and discuss the implications of the near-disastrous attack on Air Force One, coupled with the sinking in the Caribbean.
Besides, Brick thought, the rolling, wooded hills of the cemetery perfectly suited his mood. A cold, wet fog had rolled in from the bay during the service, like an Irish mist. Perfect atmosphere to do some much-needed thinking, he thought, strolling through a garden of chiseled and sculpted stone.
Under the dripping trees, a long line of black cars was beginning to move down the winding lane. The saga of America’s most brilliant scientist was now officially laid to rest. Brick shivered, suddenly very cold, and he wrapped his raincoat tightly around himself.
Cohen was gone. Inexplicable. He’d talked to the man via telephone just a few short weeks ago. Found him brimming with optimism and energy. Telling his same jokes, funny still despite years of repetition. And excited about a recent breakthrough in his AI research. Something, he’d told Brick, that would “change everything.”
His death constituted a huge loss for the American military, defense, and intelligence communities. Brick knew the DOD had been counting on him to make the huge AI advances needed to give the United States a leg up on the warfare of the future. Neo-War, Cohen had called it. Now? In what had become a blinding glimpse of the obvious, the United States had not only failed to surge ahead, but, judging by recent frightening events, they’d clearly fallen woefully behind.
But behind who? That was the question.
He found a stone bench at the base of a great sequoia that was reasonably dry, raised his umbrella against the drip-drip-drip, and sat down. He expelled a sigh that hung in the damp air before his face like a small cloud. The temperature must have dropped twenty degrees since the service. California weather, he remembered it well. But, he reminded himself, he wasn’t here to think about the goddamn weather. He was here to think about the survival of his country.
Brick Kelly was a lanky Virginian, too old to be the “whiz kid” he’d once been in Washington, but still considered relatively young blood around town. As he aged, his reddish hair flecked with grey, he was acquiring a “Jeffersonian” demeanor that suited him well. He was more at home among his books than out “pressing the flesh,” and he’d brought much-needed respect to the once-troubled CIA. He’d worried about how he’d fit with the new president, but he and McCloskey seemed to have meshed seamlessly.
Brick spoke softly and let the president wield the big stick.
These were hard times for everyone in the White House and in government. He couldn’t remember a time in his career when he’d felt so helpless in the face of the country’s many enemies. Now, a faceless, unnamable enemy seemed to have leapfrogged ahead in the ways war worked in the twenty-first century. Hell, in the ways the world worked. If you suddenly possessed the power to seize control of anything, anything, and bend it to your will, then all the warships and warplanes and nuclear warheads were rendered irrelevant. Useless.