“Ma’am, this is Lieutenant General Derek Rammes, commanding general of the Vanguard complex. I request level 10 communications protocol.”
For a second, she was taken aback. But only for a second.
“Stand by.” She removed a coded identification book from her briefcase and opened it to the appropriate page. “General Rammes, this is Ms. Allison Perez, vice president of the United States of America. Prepare to authenticate.”
“This is General Rammes. I authenticate Maxwell, Donald, Lebanon, six, six, two, four. Day code is one, one, Kilo, Echo.”
Good authentication. “Stand by.” She muted the line. “Commander Williams!”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Set me up for level 10, this line. Right now.”
“Understand, ma’am. Level 10.”
Allison held the receiver to her ear, listening to the soft clicking and bursts of muted static that signaled the recoding of the secure call. Level 10 was the highest level of encryption possible. It was used only in the direst of circumstances, where absolute confidentiality was required. Once the level 10 encryption code was used, it would have to be changed. Because of its secrecy, there were only three codes loaded and available for use at any one time. It would take the eggheads at the National Security Agency about six months to produce a new code to replace one of the three.
The Navy commander returned a few seconds later. “You’re all set up, Madame Vice President.”
“Thank you, Commander.”
She heard the lock slide shut on the other side, and knew the commander was now guarding the door, armed with his sidearm. Use of deadly force was now authorized. No one would be allowed entry until she gave him permission.
“General, this is Perez.”
There was a delay as the supersecret encryption equipment sent the four words she had spoken through a maze of highly sophisticated algorithms, scrambling sounds, scrambling the order, and then scrambling it again and again and again, until the only sounds transmitted to the Vanguard communications complex were a jumbled mess of static.
On the other end of the line, a set of identical encryption equipment rapidly put the electronic puzzle pieces back together. The vice president’s voice came through the receiver with a tinny, metallic sound.
“Madame Vice President, I need to know if you’re aware of the president’s decision to release nuclear weapons against the cities infested with the bird casings.” It was a tough call. If she knew, he would have compromised a highly secret code, and effectively ended his career. Worse than that, however, he would look like a bumbling idiot.
To put it in simpler terms, he’d just shot his wad.
When the general’s words reached her ear, Allison couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her heart skipped a beat.
“General Rammes, I am not aware of any such order.” If the order was valid, she’d been completely left out of the loop. Betrayed. By her own president. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. “Clarify.”
A pause.
“General Metzger informed me of the order. It’s going to happen this afternoon. I’m not aware of the exact time.”
A pause.
“How certain are you of this, General?” She immediately regretted questioning him, because if he had even the slightest doubt, he wouldn’t have used the level 10 communications protocol. Her words were already on their way, however.
A pause.
“As certain as I’ve ever been about anything, Madame Vice President.”
A pause.
An electronic voice spoke from the receiver, announcing the call would only last another fifteen seconds, a safeguard to prevent a hostile listening station from intercepting a long enough stream of data to help break the code and decipher the message.
“I will contact the president immediately, General. Thank you.”
A pause.
“You need to get us more time, ma’am.”
A pause.
Ten seconds until termination, the voice announced.
“I’ll do what I can, General.”
Five seconds until termination.
A pause.
“Godspeed, Madame Vice President.”
A pause.
The line went dead in her hand.
CHAPTER 57
The ramp at Barksdale AFB, Louisiana, was thrumming with activity. Trailer after trailer snaked its way to the waiting B-52s from the cavernous weapons storage bunkers, each trailer hauling tons of ordnance.
Munitions troops quickly filled the BUFFs’ bomb bays and wing pylons with five-hundred-pound high-explosive bombs, soon to be dropped all over the American Midwest in a frantic attempt to kill the fixed ground waves, before they rose again with the coming of darkness.
On another part of the ramp, far away from the line of ancient, drooped-winged B-52s, sat three bat-winged B-2 Spirit stealth bombers.
Whiteman AFB, Missouri, was the normal home for these aircraft, but the fleet of B-2s had been dispersed due to the proximity of the creatures to their home base. They now sat at different bases around the United States. Some were being used for conventional strikes because of their massive conventional-weapons-carrying capabilities, but these three were being used for an entirely different purpose. A purpose they’d been specifically designed to accomplish during the latter years of the Cold War.
Small, cylindrical objects were being loaded into their bomb bays. Streamlined. Small fins at the rear. Glinting like fine sterling silver in the sun.
These objects had come from different munitions bunkers. Handled carefully. Cautiously.
One weapon was loaded into each aircraft.
Inside the supersecret bombers, flight crews went through their preflight checks, readying the billion-dollar war machines for flight.
The mission profiles were uploaded.
The targets were programmed into the targeting software.
The time to launch was set.
Only one more thing was needed for the aircraft to fly.
A final order from the president of the United States.
CHAPTER 58
The mutants were changing, but not as she’d predicted.
Carolyn stared at the screens in front of her as the medical scanning equipment slowly, painstakingly, swept over the casings, revealing what was inside on three-dimensional digital displays.
“Garrett, come take a look at this.”
“Do I have to?”
“Come on. Take a look and quit being such a baby.”
“I’m not a baby. Every time you tell me to look at something, you always have bad news.”
“Look… here. The arm. Can you see it?”
Garrett stared intently at the screen. “Yep, looks like an arm, all right.”
“No, look closely. Does it look like the arms we saw on it before?”
“Well, no, I guess it doesn’t.” It did look different, now that he looked more closely. “It doesn’t seem to have the claws anymore.”
“Right. And look at the bones. They’re shorter. Not as thick. Look at the skull. It’s thinning as well. Look at the teeth.”
“So… you think the thing is shrinking?”
“It sure looks that way. It just doesn’t look like it’s… It doesn’t seem to be splitting into two. Like they’ve done before. Like I expected.”
“What about the rat?”
“Same thing. Look.” She switched the display to show the scanning results for the mutated rat.
“It’s much smaller. There’s a lot of empty space in that casing now.”
“Right. And here, Garrett, look at the bone structure.”
“I’ll be damned. Same thing, isn’t it?”
“Sure looks that way. The bones are smaller, less dense than before.” Carolyn paused. “You know, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say the things were mutating back to their original state.”