“Mr. President?’ the general replied uncertainly. “We seemed to have a brief communications problem.”
“Yes, briefly.”
“Mr. President, the Russians launched more land-based missiles thirty seconds ago.”
The President wondered if Icarus was lying. Did it make any difference? In less than three minutes his communications system would be in such disarray, he might not be able to respond at all.
“At the Chinese or us?” he asked.
“We can’t tell yet.” Icarus sounded despairing. Then he added, with a bite: “Is it really relevant?”
Relevant. Good God. Control such a place? The President slumped, as if in surrender. He began speaking very quietly. “I will go with SIOP. We will do it in the prescribed fashion. We have an assistant secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs in place in the Pentagon. The order will be issued through them. It will not take long.” The President barely heard the last word from Icarus.
His mind had floated a far distance away now. He took the briefcase from the Emergency War Orders officer and handled the details as routinely as he had signed milk-support bills, reading a quick code sequence from the Sealed Authenticator System card that identified him and let the Pentagon know they were dealing with the real thing. The real thing. He shook his head. He looked up and saw the duty officer, the man he knew only as Sedgwick. The President had pain in his eyes.
“Do you think the Premier was sincere?” the President asked the junior naval officer.
“Don’t torture yourself, Mr. President,” the young man replied. “We have to leave right now.”
“Do you?”
“I doubt it. The idea was childlike. Impossible.”
“Childlike. Yes. Maybe that’s what we needed.”
Sedgwick draped a Navy greatcoat over the President’s bathrobe. He could feel the shuddering even through the heavy wool.
“And Alice said to the Queen,” the President said in a detached voice, “‘One can’t believe impossible things.’”
Sedgwick, worried, looked around for help.
“And the Queen said to Alice, T daresay you haven’t had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’”
The voice of Icarus scratched into the radiophones of his two airborne command posts.
“You got the SIOP battle-order changes? Alice? Harpoon?”
“Instantly, sir,” replied Alice. He was flying the Looking Glass east now, away from Omaha and the missile fields to the west and north.
“Clear as a bell, sir,” replied Harpoon. He was taking the giant E-4 south with its staff of sixty men and women.
“The new target projections in the Soviet Union?” Icarus asked calmly but quickly. “Our launches? Successes? Failures? Alice, does your board show Quebec Three at Minot?”
Inside the Looking Glass, the general hurriedly scanned his computer data. Quebec Three. Minuteman launch Control Capsule. Seventeen miles northwest of Minot, North Dakota. SIOP orders to the two-man crew: launch five of the ten missiles under their command. Data: none launched.
“Fizzle,” Alice said.
“The hell it was a fizzle,” Icarus said. “They chickened out. Override the lily livers and launch ’em from the plane.”
“General,” Alice said, “I need those orders from a National Command Authority.”
Hzzzzzzz.
“You looking at your clock, old buddy?” Icarus asked blandly.
“Yes, sir.”
“Override ’em.”
Inside the Looking Glass, the general paused just briefly, the low hzzzzzzz becoming a roar. He thought of the oath he had taken so long ago. He thought of the briefing on electromagnetic pulse he had received so recently in Albuquerque and knew Quebec Three’s missiles wouldn’t go if they didn’t go now. He thought of the two young airmen sitting in the tomb of their command capsule outside Minot. Cowards? Rebels? He thought of Icarus in his doomed blue tomb beneath Omaha. The orders were illegal but logical. He turned and gestured to a colonel sitting several seats away. “Sam,” he said, “Quebec Three at Minot.” The colonel flitted quickly through the combination on a red lock box. The general did the same. Each pulled out a key. Each punched in a code. Each inserted a key. “Three…” Alice said. “Two… one… mark.” They turned the keys simultaneously. The data board changed, showing five more launches in progress out of the frozen prairies. Alice sighed.
“Geronimo,” Icarus radioed upward. Alice looked at his watch. 0630 Zulu.
“Your computers show the projected impact areas in the United States?” Icarus asked.
Alice ran his eyes across the computer data. He frowned, pausing again, even more briefly this time, as his eyes landed on the puzzling sequence of missile launches—first the limited Soviet attack, then our limited response, then the craziness around the world, then… why the devil had we let half our ICBMs go in response to a small Soviet retaliatory attack on the Chinese? A fuck-up? Murphy’s Law—If something can go wrong, it will? Something he didn’t know? He shook his head slightly and looked at Sam.
“Alice!” Icarus barked into the phone.
Sam’s face was impassive.
“Affirmative,” Alice replied.
“Print ’em out. You aren’t gonna have your computers long.”
“It’s been done, sir.”
“Old buddy?” Icarus said hurriedly to Alice. “You see General Moreau again, you tell him any apology that ends with ‘fuck you’ ain’t an apology.”
Alice felt his baritone voice catch, but he covered it and hurried. “He won’t hold you to it, sir.”
“Happy hunt—”
Alice heard no hzzzzzzzz. Just a snap, like a twig breaking. And silence. He cradled the phone. Good-bye, old friend, he said silently. Then he heard the noises. Low popping sounds. Subtle electric crackles. Grunts from his surprised crew. He looked down the aisle of the Looking Glass plane and saw his computers flaring and dying, the men and women of his battle staff shouting futilely into radios that didn’t work.
To the south, in the more sophisticated E-4, Harpoon also heard the twig snap and saw the lights blink out on all his multicolored phone consoles. He felt the same tickling sensation he had felt on the palm-print authenticator. But again he knew it was his imagination. The plane did not even ripple in flight. He had felt nothing. So this is EMP. They knew a lot about nuclear effects, but very little about electromagnetic pulse. All they knew was that, unlike most nuclear effects, the massive power surge from EMP passed harmlessly through humans. It ate communications gear instead, moving thousands of miles in microseconds. He had a helluva mess to clean up inside America’s premier communications plane.
Sedgwick reached under the President’s arms and hoisted him to his feet. Then he pushed him forcefully toward the Situation Room exit, following a detachment of Secret Servicemen over the flattened door and up the stairs. On the first floor they moved quickly, maneuvering around broken plaster and shards of glass, an occasional overturned chair, a fallen chandelier. At the Oval Office the President fought to a stop. The door was blown open, the great windows shattered behind his desk. The office was dark, illuminated only by twenty-two pinpoints of light from the phone console hanging powered, but powerless, over the side of his desk. Sedgwick pushed him on, past the Cabinet Room and finally through the broken French doors leading out to the Rose Garden. The din staggered him.