There was not a sound except for the dry rustle of the rats in the darkened warehouse. The three Dajanis squatted on the cold cement loading dock, waiting. Whalid held his watch in his hand, mesmerized by the sweep of its second hand. Again, he turned his regard upwards. Somewhere up there in the infinity of space, a tiny ball of metal tumbled through the canopy of night. It was a forgotten satellite, its existence known only to a handful of amateur redio operators around the world. Among them was the head of the Libyan state. Softly Whalid began to count off the passing seconds: “Three … two … one … zero.”
The sound of the last syllable hadn’t faded when it happened: the green light glowing on the screen of their control case blinked off. In a split second, another color replaced it in almost instantaneous response to the gesture of a man burning with hatred and fanaticism halfway around the world. It was the same ominous red glow that had appeared there a quarter of an hour ago.
Laila gasped. Whalid slumped forward, half relieved, half horror-stricken.
Kamal looked on in silence. The red glow faded and the words “RADIO FREQUENCY GLOBAL CONTROL: OK” appeared on the screen. Then they too faded and were replaced by the word “CONNECTION.” It was as though now that all their tests had been successfully run, the blue case before them was taking over, eliminating from the carefully elaborated chain of command any further need for the frail and uncertain intervention of human hands.
Whalid fitted the cable running from his bomb to the olive-drab circular plug an inch in diameter that connected it to the case. The next time the light on the screen glowed red, a flash of electricity from the case’s lithium batteries would pour through those pins to detonate the thermonuclear device lying on the platform.
Whalid stared at that black object he had created. Oh God, oh God, he thought, why did you ever give men such power?
“What’s the matter?” his brother asked.
Whalid started like a child in a classroom caught daydreaming by a teacher. His watch was still in his hand.
“The red light didn’t glow a full two seconds,” he replied. “Are you sure you connected the rod up on the roof to the cable tightly?”
“Of course.”
“I think we better check it.” Whalid took the pencil flashlight. “I’ll go up with you and hold this while you check it.”
The two men started for the door. Before they could get to it, Whalid doubled up in agony from the pain of his ulcer. “I can’t go,” he whispered, handing the flashlight to Laila. “You go and hold it for him.”
By the time Laila and Kamal returned, his spasm had passed. He was sitting on the dock, anguish no longer contorting his face.
“It’s all right,” Kamal said.
Whalid reached over and punched a final tap onto his keyboard, striking the word “END.” The control case was now locked. Only a code known to the three Dajanis could open it again.
“Whalid,” Kamal said, “you better spend the night here in case they’re looking for you. How about you, Laila?”
“Don’t worry about me, Kamal,” she replied. “No one will look for me where I’m going.”
Shortly after eleven-thirty, the President, riding in the front seat of an unmarked Secret Service car, rode up to the river entrance of the Pentagon. The members of the Crisis Committee, moving at irregular intervals to avoid drawing attention, had preceded him. An MP saluted the Chief Executive and led him to a plain white door under an archway bearing the words “JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF.” Its only identification was a set of figures, 2$890. A pair of guards, armed with sidearms, verify both visually and electronically the identity of each visitor, even that of the President of the United States, passing through that door. In addition, a closed-circuit television system records on videotape the face of everyone who enters, the hour and the day he came in, and his reason for being there.
There is good reason for that rigid security. Beyond that door lies an Ali Baba’s cave of the electronic age, the most mind-boggling display of technological wizardry of which twentiethcentury man is capable, the National Military Command Center of the United States.
Seated in a leather armchair at the oval conference table dominating Room 2B890, the President can, quite literally, watch the world go by. Every communication system the United States possesses, every electronic-surveillance network, all the vast electronic gadgetry at the disposition of the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, all ultimately funnel into that immaculately white room not much larger than a small movie theater.
The newwork of KH-11 satellites girdling the globe can flash onto any one of its six movie-sized screens a live television picture of any quarter of the planet. So fine is the resolution those satellite cameras provide from ninety miles into space that the President, sitting in his armchair, can tell the difference between a Jersey and a Guernsey cow in a pasture in Nottingham, England, or note the color and make of an automobile leaving the gates of the Kremlin. He can talk to a Marine Corps lieutenant leading *a platoon on a patrol in Korea or eavesdrop on, and have instantly translated, a conversation between an airborne Russian MIG-23 fighter pilot and his air controller in Sebastapol. He could listen, thanks to the CIA, to the sound of men’s footsteps walking in certain offices in Moscow, Potsdam and Prague, overhear their most intimate conversations and clink of their vodka glasses, or count the clicks on their telephones as they dial a number.
And, from that leather armchair, the President could be both a spectator and a participant in the ultimate tragedy. He could order a Minuteman missile launched from its site in South Dakota, then, like a spectator in a movie house, watch on one of the screens before him as the thermonuclear horror he had wrought devastated the people, the streets, the tenements of some Soviet city.
The President settled his lanky frame into that armchair and indicated he was ready to begin. Despite his seventy odd years, there were no signs of strain or weariness on his face. On the wall opposite him, enclosed in a huge black frame to give contrast to the pictures they held, were six large screens used for displays.
The rear admiral in charge of the center, one of the five flag officers in command of the shifts that manned it twentv-four burs a day. seven days a week, moved behind his console. He began by flashing onto his six screens, with almost bewildering speed, a portrait of the military forces of the Soviet Union as they were deployed at that very moment: nuclear submarines, every one at sea pinpointed by a blinking red light on a world map; missile sites caught in a resolution so fine the men in the conference room could watch their Soviet sentries pacing their beats; Backfire bombers on the Black Sea Coast; SS-20 missiles along the Oder.
The Admiral plunged the screens into darkness with a button. There was nothing, he said, in the Soviet’s military posture to indicate that the Soviet’s armed forces were in an alert status beyond their normal readiness state. It was unlikely that the Soviets were involved in what was happening in Libya.
He turned back to his console and flicked a series of controls. Now a stretch of desolate sands reddening in the first light of morning appeared on the screen. At its center, barely visible, was a tower.