"Five miles," Parker said.
Thorpe spoke into the radio. "Sir, the team can jump in. They can go high, offset their release point five miles and HAHO in."
There was a brief pause, then Lowcraft's voice came back. "I'll get on it, Captain Thorpe. You monitor this frequency and do what you can to get into the launch facility."
"Roger that, sir." Thorpe waited a few seconds. "Maysun, you still there?"
"Where am I going to go with a broken leg?"
"How's Tommy?"
"Fine."
"Patch me through to Dublowski," Thorpe said.
"Wait one. OK, he's on."
"Dublowski, this is Thorpe."
"What's up, sir?"
"You guys ready?"
"Roger that. I've got the boys standing by. We've got a C-130 landing right now. Anything else?"
Thorpe snapped his fingers at Parker. "Give me the code."
"You can't send it over the radio!" Parker exclaimed.
"What, some terrorist is going to intercept it and break into the LCC?" Thorpe said. "We should be so lucky."
Parker shook her head. "That's the rule."
"Rules got us into this mess," Thorpe said. He looked at Everson. "Can you take the code and wait by the surface entrance, out of sight?"
"Yes, sir." Everson said.
Thorpe keyed the radio. "Ski, there will be a Sergeant Everson waiting for you on the ground with the override code."
"Roger."
"Do you have any demo just in case the code doesn't work?"
"We've got some charges," Dublowski said.
"Watch out for the machine guns on top of the LCC. They fire at movement when activated."
"Great," Dublowski said.
"I'm going underground in a few minutes to try to get in a different way and stop those guns from firing. Once I go down, I'll probably be out of touch. Good luck."
Parker was shaking her head as he hung up.
"What?" Thorpe asked.
"No way they're going to be able to blow that door," she said. "It's designed to take a nuke strike."
"They can try," Thorpe said.
"Even if they take down McKenzie's men," Parker said, "Kilten and McKenzie can stop them using the remote controlled chain guns on the top of the LCC surface entrance before they make it in the first door. They're just like the guns here."
"Is there any way we can short-circuit the guns?" Thorpe asked.
"From inside the LCC. There's a master control panel."
"Then I suppose we'd better make damn sure we get into the LCC, right?"
He turned to Everson. "Go put surveillance on the LCC and wait for my team. Use your survival radio to monitor."
Everson saluted and headed into the woods.
Parker pointed across the field. "After you."
Thorpe was looking in the back of the Humvee, taking out equipment the ambushers had in there. He appropriated a rope and sorpe grenades. "Any way you know of that we can beat the cameras and the sensors?" he asked.
"Not that I can think of," Parker said.
Thorpe looped the rope over his shoulder. He looked at the cameras. "Thermal right?"
Parker nodded. "That's so they can see at night without having to light the silos up and give away their location to overhead imagery."
Thorpe nodded. He reached into his vest and pulled out two small foil packets.
"What are those?" Parker asked.
"Survival blankets," Thorpe said as he ripped one of them open. "We put them over us and crawl to the silo. They reflect heat back so we shouldn't show up on the thermals."
Parker eyed the blankets dubiously. They looked like strips of aluminum foil. "What about the sensors?" she asked.
"They might think they've been tripped by an animal. Do you know what weight sets them off?"
"No," Parker said, "but we have had deer set them off."
"Well, they won't know what to make of us under the blankets, so let's go."
"Doesn't sound like much of a plan," Parker said, hesitating and looking across the way at the lurking menace of the machine guns.
Thorpe pulled the blanket over his shoulders, lowered himself to the ground, and began crawling away from the tree line toward the compound.
After General Lowcraft finished giving a flurry of orders, he was finally able to answer the question Hill had asked after the conversation with Thorpe.
"HAHO stands for High Altitude, High Opening parachute drop. They jump at thirty thousand feet, open their parachutes immediately, and fly them to the drop zone. The parachutes won't get picked up on radar."
"Can the team get in there?" Hill asked.
"I don't know."
"But it's worth a try?"
"Yes, it's worth a try, but it puts us in a rather difficult position. If I HAHO an SF team on top of the launch facility and they don't make it in, then there's no way I can get them out before you hit that place with your nuclear strike. It's condemning those men to death."
"Send them anyway," Hill said.
Lowcraft gave Hill a look he might use for something that he accidentally smeared on the bottom of his shoe. He reached for the mike. "I'm going to tell them of the planned strike."
"I don't see how it would help them," Hill said.
"It would give them the option of getting out of there," Lowcraft said.
Hill shook his head. "Options are not things normally associated with military operations. Even though it's a slim chance, the NEST team and Thorpe and Parker are our best shot at getting into that LCC."
"I'm going to tell them anyway," Lowcraft turned to the communications officer. "Get me Thorpe on the radio."
Thorpe and Parker were halfway across the field when Thorpe heard a low voice on the radio in his pocket. Irritated, he pulled it out. "Thorpe here," he answered as Parker edged next to him, her head near his.
"Captain Thorpe, this is General Lowcraft. I want you to know that if you don't get to the launch facility by noon, we're taking it out with a nuclear strike."
Thorpe rolled his eyes at Parker. "Just get Dublowski and his men moving." Thorpe paused. "Sir, have you evacuated Barksdale?"
"We're working on it. The nuclear bomb will be proceeded by a bunker-buster bomb so the nuclear bomb will go off twenty feet down, which will minimize the effects."
"There are family members at Barksdale," Thorpe said.
"We're aware of that," General Lowcraft said.
"Just do your job and we'll take care of our end of things."
"Sir, you need to get the people out from the chopper crash. My son is one of them."
"Your son?"
"It's a long story, sir, but can you get them out?"
"I'll get a medevac chopper as close to the radar limit as possible. We'll get them out of there. You focus on getting the LCC under your control."
"Yes, sir."
"Good luck."
Thorpe put the radio away. He met Parker's gaze without a word.
"Someone will get Tommy to safety," she said.
"The question is, will there be any safety?" Thorpe asked. "We've got to get into this place."
They began crawling.
Inside the LCC, McKenzie punched memory five in his cellular phone for the tenth time. The phone rang and rang with no answer. "Shit!" McKenzie exclaimed.
He turned to Drake. "We've lost contact with Mitchell so we have to assume our perimeter has been breached at the bridge. We're wasting time. They're up to something."
McKenzie keyed the microphone for the satellite radio. "General Lowcraft. I and my associates are becoming short-tempered. Has the president been notified and is the money on its way?"
"Who am I talking to? Where's Professor Kilten?"
"Just answer my questions, General."
"The president has been notified," a new voice replied. "He has a copy of Kilten's report and I can assure you he is reading it. The money has been transported to Charleston and is being loaded as we speak."