“Yeah, I know. If those nukes have been tampered with, you’re about the only one we have that knows anything about them. Well, it’s two AM in Washington. Hopefully Jim got to bed early last night. It’s going to be a long day for him,” Jackson told Dani as he punched Carmichael’s speed dial number on his sat phone. On the fourth ring he heard his friend answer.
“Stonewall, is that you?” Carmichael asked as he answered the phone.
“Yes, it is. Sorry to call you at this hour but this couldn’t wait.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that before. What’s up?” Jim asked, now fully awake.
“Did you guys talk about holding a press conference regarding the stolen nukes from Incirlik?”
“We discussed it but Fleming thought it’d be better to hold off on this until probably Monday, thinking we’d have the weekend to get everything together before we went public with this. We didn’t think ISIS would go public with this right away. I’m guessing you’re telling me ISIS just did this, right?”
“It’s more than that. Al Jazeera is airing a full two minute video clip of their ‘accomplishments’ this week. They start out taking credit for shooting down three Israeli F-16s and parade the four pilots through Raqqa, they show the arrival of the C-130 in Raqqa and then the unloading of the nukes — giving every viewer a close up of the bombs, right down to the serial numbers stenciled on the side of them — and then they bring in Secretaries Axelsson and Johnson meeting up with al-Baghdadi.”
“Have to admit, we served this all up for them on a silver platter,” Carmichael acknowledged.
“That’s not the worst of it. Towards the end of the video, they show Axelsson, Johnson and another lady identified as Lieutenant Colonel Susan Marshall — I guess she was the co-pilot. Anyway, at one point, al-Baghdadi orders his guards to grab Marshall and Secretary Johnson and, well, you’ll have to watch the video. Baghdadi treats both of them like trophies — and what do you do with trophies other than put them on display?”
“Oh, good Lord!”
“Yeah, we just learned of this about twenty minutes ago. It’s already all over the internet.”
“I’ll let the White House know. Looks like a busy weekend just got absolutely insane. Where are you two now?”
“We’re on the way to Aviano. Dani’s going to get a chance to play with some real nukes.”
“Good, good. I asked Stan to find a way to get her up there. She’ll know a lot more about those things than anyone of the SEALs will. I’ll stay in touch. If this is as bad as it sounds, we might need to move in a hurry.”
XXVIII
“Jim, you called this meeting. What is so urgent it couldn’t wait a few more hours?” Tom Fleming asked.
“It’s this,” Carmichael replied as he turned on the TV at the opposite end of the conference room. “Al Jazeera began airing this about two hours ago.”
“Well, we knew ISIS would be releasing some type of propaganda video but, like we discussed earlier, didn’t think it’d be this early,” Fleming replied.
“Just wait,” Jim added.
“Oh… my… God,” was all Vice President Donner could say.
Everyone’s eyes remained so riveted on the screen that no one noticed exactly when the president slumped in his chair but everyone heard the loud thump of President Barre’s head hit the table before he slid out of his chair to the floor.
“Mr. President!” Tom Fleming hollered out.
“We need the President’s physician to the Situation Room immediately!” Donner called to the White House Medical Unit as Carmichael started CPR on the president. “The President has just collapsed! We need the doc, NOW!”
“Mr. President!” Fleming continued to call out. “Jim, does he have a pulse?”
“Nothing yet!” Carmichael replied as he continued with the compressions.
“Jim, move aside,” Dr. Mike Lee ordered, as one of the orderlies resumed the compressions.
“Did anyone see what happened?” Dr. Lee asked to no one in particular.
“No, we were all watching the screen when we heard his head hit the table,” Donner replied.
“Okay, it looks like he’s had a massive stroke at the very least,” Lee noted after a very cursory exam. “We need to get him to GW immediately”—George Washington University Hospital. “Let them know we’ll be there in five minutes.”
“I’m on the horn with them now,” agent Joe Harper, chief of President Barre’s Secret Service detail replied.
“Let them know the President needs immediate surgery for a ruptured brain aneurysm. He’s completely unresponsive!”
“Did you hear that?” Harper yelled into the phone.
“We got it. We’ll be ready,” came the reply.
“They’re waiting for you,” Donner yelled to Dr. Lee as he ran with the president’s gurney to the waiting ambulance.
“De, looks like you’re up,” Carmichael simply stated.
“Yeah, okay, Tom — you’re with the president and First Lady. Let us know of any developments. We’ll be going over everything here in the meantime.”
“Will do.”
“Okay, Felix? Jim? Have we even had a chance to analyze this video as yet? Everything looks authentic but we need to make sure they haven’t simply cobbled this together.”
“Madam Vice President, we haven’t had time. This just broke a couple hours ago. Our staff is working on this but as you mentioned, everything appears to be authentic.”
“Okay, let’s get Chris in here right away. She’s going to have a long day but she’ll need to get prepped for this one. Next, what about Colonel Marshall?”
“For starters, do we know what all Colonel Marshall has for family? If not, we need to find out and then, if needed, get someone over to her home and let the family know right away,” Carmichael replied. “We do not want them seeing this on TV before we can get to them. Then, yeah, we need to confirm that this is indeed Secretary Johnson and Colonel Marshall. We probably need to confirm a few other things as well but we do not confirm anything about the nuclear weapons that are missing. Even though it may look pretty clear that they have them, I’d simply let out something along the line that a good video editor can create all kinds of misinformation.”
“General, do you know Colonel Marshall?”
“I do not, but we’ll find out and let you know.”
“What about President Barre?”
“I’ll take care of that,” Donner replied, “but I’ll let Chris handle the usual briefing, even though this is going to be anything but usual.”
“Dr. Kayani, Mohammed tells me your work looks very promising,” al-Baghdadi said to his visitor as he entered the Imam’s office in the mosque.
“It is indeed, Imam. Though I must say, I like the way you’ve adorned your office,” Kayani said, looking at the naked women on each side of Baghdadi. “Getting here a day early allowed me to get the shop all set up. The action links on these bombs are not as sophisticated as I feared they might be. I’ll still need to work with the arming mechanisms in the rear assembly of each one but it won’t be as bad as I imagined. It’s still a tedious process but not as bad as it could have been. We got started late yesterday afternoon and I worked well into the evening. So far, I have completed three of them. I should be able to rebuild five, maybe six, of these every day.”
“Excellent! That is very good news. Do you think you could have eight of them completed by tonight?”
“I would think so. I’ll need to get up to Batman as soon as I’ve finished with those. We’ll need to convert each of the fighters as well. Though the F-16 is capable of carrying the B-61, the Americans never installed the electronics for Turkey’s version of the fighter to carry the bomb. It’s a relatively simple upgrade but each plane will need to be converted to carry the weapon. Unfortunately, it’s not the same engineering package for every bomb the Americans field. I would expect I’ll be able to get up there and complete this process sometime tomorrow.”