Capital Offensive

“All of them?” the President demanded pointedly, placing aside the empty cup.

“Greater than ninety-five percent.”

The President tried not to frown. Which would mean only twenty or thirty million dead civilians.

“What was the breakage, sir?” Brent Morgan, the head of Homeland Security asked, easing his grip on a black cell phone. The entire White House was shielded against radio signals, but cell phones could be used inside the structure for relaying commands to staff while on the move.

“The estimated death toll is five thousand men, women and children,” the President replied sternly, his displeasure at the cavalier euphemism patently obvious. “Although I’m sure that a lot of things—” he stressed the word “—were also smashed and destroyed. Our ambassador in Beijing will be receiving a bill within the day for the damages. Massively overinflated I’m sure, but we’ll have to pay without complaining to maintain international goodwill.”

“The one bright spot is that the Paris missile impacted on an empty apartment complex set to open next month,” George Calvert, the secretary of the interior added, throwing his arms wide across the back of the sofa. “Not a soul was hurt. But the blaze from the crash spread to a nearby park and started a damn forest fire. The blaze is out of control and heading for civilian areas and oil refineries.”

“Can we help?” Morgan asked. “Send some humanitarian assistance, try to earn some goodwill?”

Waving a dismissal, the other man snorted. “Hell, no! The Red Cross has already sent in disaster relief,” he replied. “NATO, as well. But all American assistance has been flatly refused. The French are beyond furious, and are squealing like stuck pigs.”

“Can we put any spin on this?” Thursby asked without much hope.

“Not a chance,” Amanda Freeman said, shaking her head. The press secretary was wearing a neatly tailored dress suit sans jewelry. She wore polish, but the nails were kept short from her constant work on computers. “We have to take this hit politically.” She frowned. “The Internet is burning with the tale, the bloggers are going nuts and the news cycle has already sunk its teeth into the story. The whole world thinks that we had a massive failure in our missile defense systems. We look like damn idiots, but at least nobody thinks we tried to start World War Three and failed miserably. Good thing the last missile hit the ocean.”

Which was a lot better than letting them know the truth, the President added mentally. The stealth capabilities of those missiles was being tested, not their accuracy. They should have been able to hit a phone booth on the other side of the globe! The very idea that three of them failed at the same time was beyond ludicrous.

“How are things at the United Nations?” Virgil McPherson asked pointedly. “I understand the Security Council has called a special meeting just to discuss limiting our—”

There was a knock at the door, then it opened and the President’s secretary appeared. “Sir, the sandwiches have arrived,” the elderly woman said quietly.

The dour expression on the President’s face eased somewhat at the news. “Excellent. Send them right in.”

“Yes, sir,” the secretary replied. She left the Oval Office at a brisk walk.

“Sandwiches?” asked the senior policy adviser, glancing at the sideboard along the wall. It was stacked with enough food to feed a platoon of Marines for a week.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you all for your diligent efforts,” the President said, sitting straighter in his chair. “But now I need a few minutes alone to consider the matter.”

“Leave? With so much on the table?” a junior speech writer asked in surprise, looking up from his laptop.

“Yes, thank you,” the President said with a touch of impatience in his voice. “I’ll confer with you again in an hour. Good day.”

“Of course, sir, absolutely,” Calvert said, rising from the couch. He shot the younger man a disapproving look. “We’ll be in the Blue Room with the Cabinet discussing the matter.”

Gathering their reports and files, the senior policy staff left the office, with the Secret Service agents following close behind. They also knew the difference between the President wanting to be alone and when he needed privacy.

When the office was empty, the President pressed a button on the intercom. Immediately the door opened and in walked Hal Brognola. Short, powerful, middle-aged, he looked like a Mafia capo or the CEO of a multinational corporation, instead of the director of the Sensitive Operations Group.

“By God, I have never wanted to see you less, but needed you more, old friend,” the President said, standing and offering a hand.

“Sorry I took so long, sir, but traffic is a mess around DuPont Circle,” Brognola replied, shaking hands, then taking a chair. “I heard about the missiles. What’s the real story?”

The man was always two steps ahead of any conversation.

“I’ll be brief.” The President grimaced unhappily, starting to pour himself another cup of coffee. But the urn proved to be empty. “Last night at around 2:00 a.m., there was a test firing of three of our new StarDagger ICBMs. Absolutely state-of-the-art missiles theoretically capable of penetrating the defense grid of any enemy nation without their even knowing it occurred. The targets were located far at sea, a long distance from any foreign powers, and a safe distance from the commercial shipping lines…just in case anything went wrong.”

“Which it obviously did,” Brognola stated, templing his fingers. He didn’t like where this conversation was going.

“Sadly, yes.” The President started to speak, paused, then took a deep breath. “Almost immediately after launching, the missiles went wildly off course and hit Paris and Beijing. One landed in the Pacific Ocean.”

“Where was that again?” Brognola asked, stunned. The news had talked about trouble overseas, but nothing like this. “Were the birds hot?”

“Thankfully, no.” The President sighed, rubbing his face. “The missiles were only equipped with marker warheads, just a half ton of M-2 plastique.”

Brognola knew that was enough high explosive to throw out a plume of water a hundred feet high, but not enough to do any significant damage to a major city. Maybe destroy a city block or two, but not much more than that. “How many people are dead?” he demanded gruffly.

“Hundreds. However, it could have been much worse.”

“Not by much,” Brognola replied curtly, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. Racking his memory, the man recalled that modern-day ICBMs didn’t have a self-destruct and that their flight paths couldn’t change from the primary target. It was a failsafe procedure to prevent an enemy from seizing control and turning the missiles back against America. Once launched, the warbirds were totally autonomous. “How far off course did they go?”

“The original targets were the Fifth Fleet in the North Atlantic, the third Carrier Group in the Sea of Japan and the Second Submarine Assault Group in the South Pacific.”

The big Fed grunted in reply. Obviously the missiles hadn’t veered slightly off course, but had completely changed direction and flown halfway around the planet in new directions. That smacked of outside control, not a malfunction. “Any idea what went wrong, sir?” he demanded gruffly.

“To be honest I have no idea,” the President replied, spreading his hands. “Nor does anybody else. Only a wild guess. Every telltale was green, all telemetry was nominal, and yet…”

“Sabotage is the obvious answer, but how could anybody get to all three of them?” Brognola mused out loud, massaging his jaw. “Were they launched from the same base?”

“No.”

“Then we either have a network of traitors scattered through the launch silos…”

“Not completely out of the question.”

“Agreed. But if that’s not the case, then logically, somebody has found a way to manipulate our long-range weapons systems.”

“Sadly, that’s also my conclusion.” The President growled as if the notion put an unpleasant taste in his mouth. “Which means that until this matter is rectified, the nation is virtually defenseless. If we launch another ICBM, or even a long-range stealth bomb, it could go anywhere. Hit anybody from Manhattan to Melbourne. And the next time we may not be so lucky, and the civilian death tolls could be catastrophic.”

“And if these saboteurs can also alter the course of other nations’ missiles…” Brognola added grimly. The implications were staggering. “India fires at Pakistan, but hits London. The British launch at New Delhi and hit Moscow, and then they hit…” The man made an endlessly circular gesture. One wrong move by the U.S. could start a domino reaction that would bring about the long-feared apocalypse of the old cold war.

“I see that you’ve also come to the same conclusions as myself,” the President said. “At the moment, every antimissile we have has been taken offline. We can’t trust them anymore. Which leaves us with rail guns and lasers of questionable accuracy in the first place.”

“Artillery would be better.”

“Agreed. The Pentagon has all of our jet fighters on patrol around the continent watching for incoming missiles. But we can’t keep them up forever.”

“Especially if whatever is sending our missiles off course can also affect our jets, making them fly in the wrong directions to violate international airspace, crash into each other over populated cities…”

“…Or leave a wide-open breach for an incoming missile to fly through without hindrance,” the President finished grimly. “We have the best combat pilots in the world, but men get tired, and when they need to rely upon their navigational systems…” There was no need to finish the sentence.

“What can my people do to help, sir?” Brognola asked bluntly, leaning forward in the chair.

“Find out what happen to those ICBMs and stop whoever is responsible from doing it again,” the President stated, passing over a clear plastic jewel box containing a computer disk.