"How's the satellite dish?" McKenzie asked.
"All set." Drake said. He walked over to a bank of radios next to the REACT consoles. "I've got it spliced into their stuff here. We can talk voice and transmit data through MILSTAR just like we're part of the system using the REACT here. We can talk to the Pentagon whenever you want."
Drake pointed at Lewis in his Air Force flight suit. "What's this?"
"Seems we had an ace in the hole that we didn't know about," McKenzie said. "Courtesy of the good professor."
Drake fingered his gun. "Can we trust him?"
"Yes," Kilten said. "He knows what we're doing and why we're doing it."
"Careful with that we," McKenzie said. He tapped Drake on the shoulder. "You keep an eye on him, make sure he does as he's told. What about Omega Missile?" he asked Kilten.
"We're in," Kilten said. "I have positive contact through MILSTAR."
McKenzie walked a couple of steps away. He punched in a number on his cellular phone.
Thorpe held up a hand, interrupting Parker as the phone in his pocket buzzed. He flipped open the lid but didn't say anything. McKenzie's voice came out of the speaker. "Bognar? Reynolds? Are you there?"
"Hello, Chief McKenzie. This is Captain Thorpe. Nice of you to call. Your men are, shall we say, indisposed at the moment. Should I take a message?"
"Thorpe." There was a long moment of silence. "Well, isn't this a pleasant surprise?" McKenzie finally said.
"You fucked up," Thorpe said.
"I did?"
"Yeah," Thorpe said. "You didn't get into the LCC clean and you've got me here."
There was the sound of laughter. "You are so wrong," McKenzie said. "Right now, I'm standing directly behind the REACT computer and you are the one who can't get in, clean or otherwise."
"What are you trying to do?" Thorpe asked.
"By the time you figure that out, it will be long over," McKenzie replied.
The phone went dead.
McKenzie shut the phone.
Lewis looked up from the computer. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing for you to worry about," McKenzie snapped. How the hell did Thorpe end up here? McKenzie thought. He'd seen a man run out of the tree line and help the woman escape, but he hadn't bothered to try to identify him.
McKenzie knew the number one rule of any military operation was to expect the unexpected, contrary to Kilten's belief in planning. McKenzie absentmindedly rubbed his artificial arm, trying to scratch an itch that his nerve endings told him existed, but the metal arm reminded him didn't.
McKenzie reevaluated his plans, adding in the now known factor of Thorpe. After a few moments he felt better as he remembered the scuttlebutt he'd heard about the Special Forces officer. It didn't change much.
Thorpe punched some numbers into the phone, but nothing happened. "Damn, he must have these on a frequency where they can only talk to each other. I can't get an outside line."
Thorpe flipped the phone shut and stuck it back in his pocket.
"Why didn't you try to find out what he was doing?" Parker asked.
"He wouldn't exactly tell me if I asked."
"What was the purpose of baiting him, then?"
"Now he has something else to worry about."
"What?"
"Me."
Parker shook her head. "Why don't you tell me how you know this McKenzie guy?"
Thorpe pointed. "We need to get back to the chopper and my son. I'll tell you about it on the way."
Chapter Twelve
Three hundred and fifty feet below the lowest level of the Pentagon proper was the Joint Chiefs of Staff's National Military Command Center, commonly called the War Room by those who worked there. It had been placed inside a large cavern carved out of solid bedrock. And while it was ten times larger and over three times deeper than the LCC Parker had been inside of in Louisiana, it was designed along the same principles. The complex could only be entered via one secure elevator and the entire thing was mounted on massive springs on the cavern floor. There was enough food and supplies in the War Room for the emergency crew to operate for a year. Besides the lines that went up through the Pentagon's own communications system, a narrow tunnel holding cables had been laboriously dug at the same depth to the alternate National Command Post at Blue Mountain in West Virginia.
When it had been built in the early sixties, the War Room had been designed to survive a nuclear first strike. The advances in both targeting and warhead technology over the past three decades had made that design obsolete. There was no doubt in the mind of anyone who worked in the War Room that the room was high on the list of Russian and Chinese nuclear targeting and would be gone very shortly after any nuclear exchange. Because of that, it had been turned into the operations center for the Pentagon.
The main room of the War Room was semicircular. On the front, flat wall, there was a large imagery display board, over thirty feet wide by twenty high. Any projection or scene that could be piped into the War Room could be displayed on this board, from a video of a new weapons system, to a map of the world showing the current status of U.S. forces, to a real-time downlink from an orbiting spy satellite.
The floor of the room sloped from the rear down to the front so that each row of computer and communication consoles could be overseen from the row behind. At the very back of the room, along the curved wall, a three-foot-high railing separated the command and control section where the Joint Chiefs and other high-ranking officers had their desks. Supply, kitchen, and sleeping areas were off the right rear of the room, in a separate cavern. The War Room had had its first taste of action during the Gulf War when it had operated full-time, coordinating the multinational forces in the Gulf.
Normally on a Sunday morning only a quarter of the desks in the War Room were filled by the duty staff, but over the last twenty minutes, new personnel flooded the room and the hubbub of activity indicated something more than a normal Sunday morning shift.
The elevator in the left rear opened and the president's national security adviser, Michael Hill, and General Lowcraft, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff strode into the room. Hill was still dressed for golf, but the general was in an immaculate set of green Class As, his rows of ribbons stacked on his left breast.
"What the hell is going on?" Hill demanded as they walked to the center desk and stood behind it. He had been informed on his cellular phone as he'd finished the eighteenth hole that there was a Class-1 Alert and he was required in the War Room as the senior representative of the administration present in Washington. A helicopter had swooped down into the parking lot of the golf course and carried Hill to the Pentagon landing pad. With Kilten's fax still in his pants pocket, Hill felt a new wave of anger toward the professor and Lugar surge through him.
"We'll find out shortly," Lowcraft said. They had met at the elevator doors upstairs and had not had a chance to talk.
Hill had other things on his mind. He grabbed the general by his elbow. "You told me there was no imagery from the Lebanon incident," he hissed.
Lowcraft stared at the civilian. "What are you talking about?"
"Don't jerk my chain," Hill threatened. "You'll find out who has the real power."
Lowcraft ignored Hill and turned to the War Room. "Give me a status report," he called out.
The senior duty officer, a full colonel named Hurst from the War Plans Division who had had the unfortunate luck of drawing duty this morning, had his position right below Lowcraft's desk. Hurst was air force and wore his blue uniform tightly on his slim body. He had white hair, combed straight back, and a thin, pinched face.