“Whoever’s got his finger on the button ain’t one of us,” he says to himself.
The computerized voice from the speaker startles him. “All systems operational. Ninety seconds to propulsion launch. Confidence is high.”
Jericho frantically scans the generator control panel. He tears a plastic shield off the keyboard and flicks the “on” switch. The monitor flashes to life with the message: “Launch Sequence in Progress. Generator Access Prohibited.”
“Shit!” Then he remembers Dr. Burns’ question as to whether he is a leader or follower. Neither one, he knows. And he isn’t even sure what he’s doing now, but he knows he must do something. Jericho hits the “stop” key, and an electrical shock jolts him. The monitor flashes: “Caution. Unauthorized Access Prohibited.”
More gingerly this time, Jericho touches the same key. With a ka-pow, the shock knocks him down, blue smoke wafting above the control panel. Dazed, Jericho gets to his knees and looks up at the monitor, which mocks him. “Caution. Each shock increases in severity.” Then, in smaller print, “OSHA WARNING: Repeated exposure to electrical shocks causes brain damage in rats.”
Jericho gets to his feet, his hands dangling over the keyboard. As he tries again, he says, “I ain’t a rat.”
In the launch control capsule, all the lights on the console are green except for one, which flashes amber. Brother David stares at it a moment, his brow furrowing. “What in the name of… ”
“What is it?” James asks.
“Get over here.”
James kicks his chair down the rail and studies the computer monitor in front of David where the message appears, “Input S.L.C. Now.”
“What?” David stares blankly at the screen.
“Never heard of it,” James says, shaking his head.
David wheels around in his flight chair, glaring at Owens, who sits uncomfortably on the floor. “Enlighten us!” David orders.
Owens hesitates, and Gabriel wags the barrel of a rifle in his face.
“The slick,” Owens says. “Secondary Launch Code. The launch will abort unless it’s entered. It’s a double fail-safe mechanism entered after the Enable Code and the plick, the PLC, are activated.”
“Since when!” David demands, growing furious. Why?”
“I don’t know,” Owens says, nervously. “Six, seven months ago.”
“It was my recommendation,” Susan Burns says. She is turned away from David, sitting back-to-back with Owens, their hands cuffed together.
“What!” David thunders.
She turns her neck uncomfortably to face him. “Preliminary tests showed that fifteen per cent of the missileers believed that any order to launch would be a mistake, a computer glitch. Of that number thirty per cent would refuse to turn the key. I recommended another level of security be added so that missile crews would have confidence that if the S.L.C. came down separately from the National Command Authority, we must surely be at war.”
“Idiotic!” David thunders. “It complicates and delays the launch. That could be fatal if you’re counter-attacking.”
“But it thwarts terrorists,” Susan says. “I was afraid you had it. You seemed to have everything else. But then, I guess you’re not perfect.”
“Input Secondary Launch Code,” the computer orders in the same detached voice.
David screams at Owens, “The code, damn you!”
Owens is too terrified to answer.
“He doesn’t have it,” Susan Burns says, calmly. “It comes from the President after the Enable Code has been entered. That’s what makes it double fail-safe.”
David slams his fist into the console. “Damnation!” Turning to James, his voice breaks, “Do something! You’re the cyberpunk genius. Do something, goddamit!”
“David,” Rachel says from the back of the capsule. “Taking the Father’s name in vain will not—”
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” He turns back to James, who already is hunched over the keyboard, banging away like Van Cliburn playing Tchaikovsky.
The voice of the computer is as calm as a warm breeze on a summer day. “Enter S.L.C.” Launch will abort in thirty seconds.”
Footsteps echo in the tunnel leading from the missile silo. Captain Pete Pukowlski leads the U.N. delegation at double time toward the launch control capsule.
“We go to DEFCON ONE, and nobody notifies me!” he fumes. “We’re in launch mode, and I’m jerking off some diplomatic goof-balls. Somebody’s ass is grass, and I’m the lawn mower.”
They pass the door to the Launch Equipment Room, which swings open. Gabriel and three other commandos come out and face the delegation.
“Who? What? Who the hell are you?” Pukowlski stammers, though it must be sinking in, because as the words come out, he is reaching for the .45 in a side holster. But Gabriel raises a pistol grip shotgun toward Pukowlski’s bulging belly, which seems to flatten just a bit.
“We’re the messengers of God,” Gabriel says.
“I don’t think so,” Pukowlski says, raising his hands over his head. “God’s on our side.”
The officers watch the dotted line’s trajectory on the Big Board as it soars from Wyoming toward Israel… then fades away. The computerized voice solemnly declares, “Launch Aborted. Launch Aborted.”
Sighs of relief, backslapping, a couple of wolf whistles, and more than one, boy-was-that-close.
Colonel Frank Farris loosens his tie and turns to General Corrigan, who is not sharing in the celebration. “They didn’t have the slick,” the colonel says. “Jeez, we dodged a bullet, a big one.”
“But they still have the base and the capsule, don’t they?” the general asks. He knows it is not over yet.
On the board, the dotted line on the screen tracks from Wyoming across the arctic circle, stops, then disappears. “Yes, sir. They have the capsule,” Colonel Farris says. “But there’s no way they could get the S.L.C., is there? I mean, if they don’t have it now, how could they get it before we roust them?”
General Corrigan gives the colonel a look an animal trainer might show to a slow chimpanzee. “They knew how to capture our missile base, how to re-target the missile and how to enter the plick and Enable Codes, didn’t they?”
Colonel Farris nods.
“They hot wired our computer to simulate a message from another launch capsule in order to get dual confirmation, didn’t they?”
Another nod.
“Then why in hell wouldn’t they know how to get the Secondary Launch Code?”
“I have no idea, sir,” the colonel says, straightening up. “I have no idea how they could take over a terrorist-proof nuclear facility.”
“Neither do I,” General Corrigan says. “But I’m going to find out. Get me the son-of-a-bitch who built the damn thing.”
BOOK FOUR
The Professor and the Prodigal Son
-29-
MAD
Professor Lionel Morton, seventy-one years old, wild mane of white hair flowing past his shoulders, sits on the lecture stage in a high-tech wheelchair equipped with a computer and monitor. In front of him, at desks on tiered rows, are fifty of the best and brightest of Stanford University’s students. Behind the professor, the blackboard is filled with lengthy equations and diagrams of every missile in the U.S. arsenal from the old Atlas and Titans to the newest Minutemen III’s and Peacekeepers, called in Air Force parlance, damage limitation weapons.