Parker and the others snapped to attention as General Willoughby walked into the conference room. The two men in the back remained seated.
"Take your seats," Willoughby ordered as he sat at the head of the table. The general looked about the room, his gaze lingering on Brinn, then Sanchez, and then shifting past Parker to the rear of the room.
"Mr. Lugar," he was looking at the man to the left who didn't acknowledge the introduction. "Mr. Lugar," Willoughby continued, "represents the National Command Authority." Willoughby's head turned to the man smoking the pipe next to Lugar. "Professor Kilten," he said with a nod of his head.
"General," Kilten returned the greeting.
Parker started at the name. She, and every other officer in nuclear weapons command, knew who Kilten was: the designer of the REACT computer system and practically every other piece of computer hardware and software used in the nuclear weapons business. He was the man who had designed and pulled together the entire nuclear command and control structure, from the design of the bombs themselves to the strategic planning for their use.
While military men switched jobs every few years in keeping with their career paths, Kilten was one of the many civilians at the Pentagon who provided long-term expertise in certain fields. Because of that, he knew more about the field than the military men he worked for.
"Let's get this over with," Willoughby said.
The colonel to Willoughby's right got up and stood at the lectern. He opened his portable computer. It had the record from the mission debriefing loaded into its hard drive, from jump-in to the chopper ride out. The colonel went into the after action review, speaking rapidly and succinctly, using the computer display when necessary. It was all recorded and it was pointless to argue the facts.
The colonel flipped down the cover on the laptop after the brief outline of events. "In summary, sir, the exercise was successful although there was a problem when it came to releasing the arming locks on the weapon."
Willoughby nodded. "Thank you, Major." The general turned to the people seated around the table. "I cannot overstate the importance of exercises such as the one we have just debriefed." Willoughby glared at Sanchez. "The security of this country rests on our potential adversaries' certainty that we will not hesitate in the slightest to use our nuclear arsenal. It is our duty. It is the very purpose of our entire command and control system.
"An EAM is a lawful order coming from the National Command Authority," Willoughby continued. "You do not have the option to question that order or any that follow it. If you cannot do your duty, what the hell are you doing in the Air Force, Captain Sanchez? What are you doing in my command?"
"I am doing my duty, sir," Sanchez said, meeting the general's angry gaze straight on.
"Your duty was to disarm the locks, Captain!" Willoughby slapped his palm on the tabletop.
Parker twisted in her seat, wishing she could disappear. She was looking down at her hands, rotating the Air Force Academy ring on her finger.
"Sir, with all due respect, I tried to do the correct thing," Sanchez said, his voice tightly controlled.
Willoughby stared at him, momentarily speechless.
At the rear of the room, Kilten leaned forward into the light. "Why do you say that, Captain Sanchez?"
Sanchez turned in his seat. "The EAM we received was not, as the general said, a legitimate National Command Authority order, but rather a test, as was the entire mission given that the bomb was not nuclear. Therefore General Willoughby's argument is false," Sanchez said. "Because the mission was only a test, my hesitation to disarm the lock was not a factor. I just felt something was wrong."
Willoughby looked stunned by the bizarre logic. "You didn't know it was a test," Willoughby found his voice. "You thought the bomb was real."
Sanchez's words were clipped but still carried a deferential tone. "I felt there was something wrong. I didn't know it was a test, but I didn't feel that it was the real thing either."
"You operate on orders, Captain, not feelings," Willoughby snapped. "The EAM we sent was legitimate as far as you were concerned. You get that order, you do what you are trained to do!"
Sanchez, sensing the inevitable, was emboldened. "Like we're just part of the machine?"
"You are part of the machine. You're the last switch," Willoughby said.
"Gentlemen," Kilten said, his voice quiet in contrast to the other two. "Let us calm down."
Sanchez spoke up. "I may not have done what I was trained to, but I did what a person with some feelings would do."
"Feelings?" Kilten repeated, one eyebrow raised.
General Willoughby had reached the boiling point. "Captain, you are relieved as of this minute!"
Kilten turned his head toward the irate general. "If I may, General, I would like to hear about Captain Sanchez's feelings. Maybe he can articulate why we had the problem removing the locks. And isn't that the point? To perfect the system?"
Sanchez dropped all pretense of military hierarchy and interrupted the older civilian. "Perfect the system? That's what I mean. How do you perfect something that has a basic flaw? The whole thing's nuts!"
Kilten seemed to take Sanchez's words as a personal affront. "Captain, you have no business playing a role in a system you apparently don't understand or believe in."
"I did believe in it once," Sanchez countered. "Nuclear deterrence sounds pretty good until you have your finger on the button and there's no good reason why. Until you're sitting right on top of the bomb and you just left one of your buddies dead with his brains smashed out. You don't want me to think, you just want me to push that button like a rat at a food bar. Well, I'm a man. I have a gut and it tells me things."
General Willoughby snorted. "We're not running the defense of this country on your gut, Captain."
Sanchez was beginning to look tired and defeated and Parker felt a blanket of sadness settle over her. She had never imagined that Sanchez would so completely destroy his own career. She wondered what he could possibly do now. She and Brinn were invisible, barely moving lest some of the attention find them.
Sanchez's voice broke the momentary quiet and he spoke with firm conviction. "You believe that the weakest link in the nuclear system is the human factor. I suppose I'm proof of that, at least from a certain perspective. I believed that bomb was real. I believed we were destroying a big chunk of a nation we've always considered an ally. I felt that was a mistake, so I didn't do my duty. What if it hadn't been a test? What if it was a mistake?"
"You think you're making the system foolproof. You're just taking the checks out. Someday the big mistake will come and you'll just have a bunch of robots listening to the computers. The whole thing will be a machine."
"But a human being will make the decision," Kilten said. "The machine won't act on its own."
"I'm a human being and I made a decision," Sanchez argued, "and you're frying my ass and getting rid of me."
"You're not the National Command Authority," Lugar spoke for the first time. "I represent the NCA and that's who makes the decision to use nuclear weapons."
"Who made the decision to run this training mission in Israel right next to their nuclear weapons storage facility?" Sanchez asked. "If we had been captured by the Israelis, the political repercussions would have been staggering. Scanlon's body being left there, despite the thermite grenade I had to put on him, could still cause trouble if it's found. The casing for that bomb, even after the conventional explosion, will be found."