Kilten finally spoke, but it seemed as if he were talking to himself. "Yes. All right. Follow through on the plan. I can still do that."
Lowcraft was receiving reports from those in the front of the War Room every few seconds and interpreting the important ones for Hill. "We can't access the Omega Missile REACT through MILSTAR. Someone's in the launch facility and has locked out all outside transmissions, maintaining control through that REACT console which has override. The cable from Barksdale is down. Probably cut in the explosion."
"Can't you cut in? Or jam them?"
Lowcraft's fingers were pressing on the desktop. "You don't understand. We spent billions of dollars designing REACT, Omega Missile, and MILSTAR to prevent someone from doing exactly those things."
"Can you shoot the missile down?"
Lowcraft pointed to the front display. It currently showed the western hemisphere. A bright red dot was centered above Kansas. "That's Omega Missile. It's out of the atmosphere by now and in a geosynchronous orbit, always maintaining contact with a MILSTAR satellite so it can issue launch commands. We don't have anything that can hit it at that altitude."
"Does it stay up there forever?"
"No. It will reenter in a little under three hours and burn up on the way down. So unless something else goes wrong, we'll be all right in three hours. But we still don't know who set the blast off outside Barksdale and why…" He paused as Colonel Hurst indicated he had something.
"Sir, we have an unauthorized transmission coming in on MILSTAR. It's from someone who says he has taken over the Omega Missile Launch Control Center."
Lowcraft briefly closed his eyes. "Put him on speaker."
The noise of activity in the War Room came to a halt as a voice boomed out of the speakers.
"This is Professor Kilten. With whom am I speaking?"
Lowcraft started as he recognized the name. "General Lowcraft. Professor Kilten, what the hell are you doing?"
Lowcraft didn't have time to say anything else as Kilten continued. "Good to talk to you again, General. Maybe you'll give me more time and attention now than at our last meeting. Who is there representing the National Command Authority?"
"This is Michael Hill. I'm the president's national security adviser."
"What a coincidence!" Kilten said. "Just the man I wanted."
Hill's voice was level, as if he were talking to an errant schoolboy. "What exactly are you doing, Professor Kilten?"
"I've taken over Omega Missile and its controlling computer, REACT."
"For what purpose?"
"So you'll listen to me: You're listening, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"See? It's working."
There was a long pause.
"All right, we're listening," General Lowcraft finally said. "What do you want?"
"First, for security reasons, if the radar in this facility picks up any aircraft within five miles of this location, I will have REACT order Omega Missile to fire a nuclear weapon from a submarine off the Atlantic coast at a target of my choice in the continental United States. The missile is already programmed with a target and the EAM is ready to be transmitted. Is that clear?"
Lowcraft signaled to Hurst to relay that command. "We'll keep the airspace free."
"Good. These are my demands.
"One. All U.S. nuclear systems except two nuclear submarines now on station, the Ohio and the Michigan, will be brought off-line at noon today."
"That will leave us defenseless!" Lowcraft sputtered.
"Let's be realistic, General, which is the whole point of this exercise. The Ohio and the Michigan, one in each ocean, have more than enough nuclear throw-weight between them to keep the Russians or anyone else from launching. Besides, the other nuclear powers have no reason to launch on us right now, do they? We are at peace, aren't we?"
Kilten didn't wait for an answer. "Actually, I'm making this easy on you. This first demand really isn't something you have to do anything about because I'm going to make it happen from here at noon. I'm just letting you know what's going to happen so there's no overreaction."
"Second, I want all files on a mission code-named Delilah and an operation code-named Red Flyer to be declassified and released to the press."
Hill clenched his teeth as General Lowcraft turned a questioning gaze toward him. As Lowcraft opened his mouth to speak, Hill drew a finger across his throat and shook his head.
"Next, I want to speak to the president personally. I want him to read my memo, which Mr. Hill never forwarded, on both those items. I also want him to read the attached report on the lack of nuclear safeguards."
Lowcraft's face was red. "You son-of-a-bitch, you're making it all happen to—"
"General, there's something you should have read in my report. My basic hypothesis, which is universally supported in the scientific community, is that if something can happen it eventually will. Not just here with Omega Missile, but with every nuclear system and operation. Delilah is another wild card that will be played someday. And if it is played, then the Samson Option will be played also, won't it, Mr. Hill? The whole house of cards will come tumbling down."
"The Samson Option is fiction," Hill said.
"Oh, I don't think so, Mr. Hill," Kilten said. "You know what classified files I hacked into before you caught on and sent your little pet, Lugar, after me. Where do you think I've been the last several weeks? Holed up in a cave, saying my prayers and waiting to die?
"You need to listen to me very carefully. If a nuclear system exists, eventually it will be used, either by design or by accident. Either way, the result will be disaster. All I'm doing is making this one happen under my control. But I'm going to make a clean sweep of the board through this one incident. Omega Missile was the most vulnerable link for me to attack because I designed it, but it is a very powerful system as you are now discovering."
"The entire nuclear system was invented by man. I should know since I've been in charge of its design for the past ten years and worked on it for thirty-five years. And everything that man has invented, he has eventually used, whether deliberately or by accident."
"I am not alone in that thinking. Mathematical theorists have predicted that in the next five years there is a ninety-six percent chance that if nuclear weapons continue to exist, they will be used again."
"It is the same sort of scientific statistical projection that predicted the Challenger shuttle disaster. If something can go wrong, it eventually will. And of course, the world will continue to have nuclear weapons five years from now, won't it? Unless, of course, someone does something rather drastic to change that, which is the situation we're in right now."
"Trust me, in a week you, and the rest of the country, will be thanking me for doing this."
"I don't think so, you twisted—"
Lowcraft put his hand on Hill's shoulder. "Quiet. Let him speak."
"Good for you, General. You understand, even if Mr. Hill doesn't. Of course, he knows things you don't. Let me continue."
"I also want the president fully briefed on Omega Missile, Operation Delilah, Red Flyer, and the Samson Option. Our nuclear defense system cannot be used as a political tool. That introduces a variable that I never took into account forty years ago. I am forcing your hand to realize this very important truth."
"If you want an example, I give you the Red Flyer missions. Mr. Lugar told me they were tests, but imagine my surprise when I found out that their primary goal wasn't testing at all. Mr. Hill is using them as a way to threaten other governments with our capability to put an untraceable nuclear weapon inside their borders. You used it against Israel to counter the Samson Option."