Grimm shot a hard glance at the Global Display screen. Outlined in luminous green was the continental United States, centered between Europe and Asia.
Over the black space that represented the Atlantic Ocean floated a green tracking symbol that he'd seen only in training exercises. A glowing letter U. The U stood for "Unknown."
"Satellite?" he demanded of the status officer.
"The software says no."
"Then it's gotta be an air-breather."
"Negative, sir. Software confirms that it's not a conventional aircraft."
"Can't you-I mean it-identify it?" Captain Grimm shouted.
"Mission software refuses to sort it, sir!" the status officer, a lieutenant, said sharply.
Still in his shorts, Captain Grimm got behind a second console. According to his Global Display, the unknown object was approaching the apogee of its trajectory. He touched the glowing U with his lightpen and hit a console key. The U was magnified by a factor of two. Tiny jaggededged boxes suddenly became visible as they flew off from the U symbol.
"It's shedding fragments," Captain Grimm said in a relieved voice. "It may be breaking up." But then he saw the speed of the thing. It was very fast. Faster than any known missile.
"It should be dropping its final stage at this point," the lieutenant said worriedly.
"No," Captain Grimm said. "No stages. Nothing."
"It has to. Maybe you're reading a tank box for a fragment. "
Hitting a key, Captain Grimm deleted the fragments from the display. Only the U symbol remained.
"Damn," said the lieutenant, fervently cursing the automated system that made the operator as redundant as the backup console. "What have we got here?"
"A drill. It's gotta be a drill," said Grimm, reaching for a phone.
"Maintainance, we in a test mode?" he barked into the receiver.
The reply was surreally flat. "No, sir."
"Training mode, then?"
"No. Everything's up. Everything's running."
Captain Grimm lowered the phone with a trembling hand.
"It's gotta be a glitch in the software," he said.
"Sir, the software confirms that the unknown is ballistic."
"Oh, my God! Launch point?"
"The system can't pinpoint, sir. It's a ground launch. Point of origin beyond our operating parameters."
"Ground! Then why are we dealing with it? Where's Spacetrack? This is their responsibility. They should already have this thing in inventory and be feeding it to us."
"I don't know, sir," said the lieutenant, looking at the Object Table display. "But it's heading for the east coast."
"We gotta call it. High, medium, or low?"
"We can't go low. There's definitely something up there."
"Threat or nonthreat?"
"It's not a known missile, but it's ballistic. I'd go high."
"High it is," said Captain Grimm, hitting the high-confidence button that alerted the entire complex that they had a real situation. He tapped a key, touched the screen with his lightpen, and an expanded outline of the U.S. filled his screen. On the lower east coast a glowing green circle encompassed an area from North Carolina to New York City. As the inexorably moving U on the other screen inched across the Atlantic, and the software steadily computed the probable impact point, the circle shrank. "Could be Washington," the lieutenant said in a shaky voice.
"There's only one object. It has to be Washington," Grimm rasped. "They must be crazy to launch only one object." He reached for the direct line to NORAD.
Deep in the North American Air Defense Command's Cheyenne Mountain complex, the Air Force general designated as CINCNORAD put down his red telephone. He looked out the Plexiglas of his command booth at status officers hunched over computer consoles like space-age scriveners. On the huge status panel overlooking the room, a blinking green object showed above a simulated horizon. It was larger than a warhead but smaller than a missile. And it was coming down fast. There was no time to think, never mind identify the unknown. Trembling, he picked up the White House hot line and asked for the President.
The President of the United States snored happily. It had been one of the great days in his life. He could hardly wait to get up the next morning to tackle the challenge of the Oval Office. But even an eager new President had to sleep, and so he slept.
He did not sleep long.
Two Secret Service agents burst into the room.
The President's wife bolted up from her pillows the instant the light clicked on. She reached for a dressing gown. Her fingertips grazed the pink chiffon briefly, and then one of the grim-faced Secret Service agents literally pulled her out of bed and hustled her out the door to a waiting elevator.
The First Lady screamed.
That woke the President. Seeing a hulking man looming over him, he asked a natural question.
"What is it? What's happening?"
"No time," the agent snapped. "It's for your own good, sir. Now, come with me, please."
The President reached for the nightstand drawer, where a red telephone lay. The Secret Service agent plucked the receiver from his hand and picked him up bodily. The chief executive was carried out of his bedroom, his eyes on the red telephone as if it were water and he was lost in the Gobi Desert.
The President was not set down until he was in the elevator. He stood in candy-cane pajamas, blinking rapidly. The Secret Service agents had faces that resembled cut stone. But they looked healthy compared to the face of the man carrying the aluminum suitcase. Sleepily the President tried to remember who the third man was. He could not. But he did remember the briefing when they had told him that the aluminum suitcase was called the "football" and it contained the special codes needed to launch America's nuclear arsenal.
Then it dawned on the President that the elevator had passed the White House basement and kept on going-deep, deep into the sub-sub-sub-basement nearly a mile under impenetrable bedrock and lead radiation shielding, And he knew.
"It's not fair," the President of the United States moaned. "This was going to be my first day in office!"
At the PAVE PAWS station at Robbins Air Force Base, Captain Grimm watched as the green circle shrank remorselessly, like a closing noose. It became the size of a half-dollar. Then a quarter. Then a nickel. Before it irised down to the size of a dime, a letter I appeared directly over Washington, D. C.-and then there could be no question about the point of impact.
The green circle squeezed into a dot and froze like a dead man's pupil.
"That's it," Grimm said huskily. "Washington is gone." He felt drained. Then he remembered to pull up his pants.
The precise point of impact was Lafayette Park, directly in front of the White House. The naked trees were rimed with late-January ice. It was exactly 3:13 A.M., so the park was deserted.
Washington, D.C. woke up to a sonic boom mixed with a noise like a tape of a car-crashing machine being played back at high speed. The ground jumped. The tremors were felt as far away as Alexandria, Virginia.
White steam hung over the hole in Lafayette Park. It was not a large hole, perhaps fifteen feet in diameter. But the superheated air escaping from the pit instantly melted the ice off the trees and turned the hard-frozen ground into the consistency of oatmeal and created billows of steam.
First on the scene was a police cruiser. It pulled up and two patrolmen spilled out. They approached the hole, which glowed cherry red, but the heat beat them back. After some discussion, they called it in as a brush fire. That brought the fire department.
Firemen lugged hoses as close as they could and poured water down the hole. That was a mistake. The water turned to steam. Those closest to the pit were scalded and had to be rushed to the hospital. The hoses were dragged back and, from a safer distance, the firemen tried again.