Using the unlock code from the execution message, Mace used yet another decoding book, broke out the six-digit weapons prearming code, and entered it into a code panel. Two minutes later, a green ENABLE light illuminated on the weapons arming panel. He then accomplished a weapons connectivity and continuity check on the weapons, checking that full electrical and data transfer capabilities were intact, then put the weapon arming panel from OFF to SAFE.
“Gimme consent,” Mace said.
Parsons reached around to his left instrument panel, twisted a thin wire seal off from a red switch guard, opened the guard, and flipped the lone switch up. “Consent switch up.”
Mace clicked the interphone, reached to his weapons arming panel, twisted a similar safety wire off a sliding silver switch, and moved the switch to CONSENT. In nuclear-capable aircraft, as in all American nuclear launch systems from sixty-pound battlefield shells to hundred-ton intercontinental ballistic missiles to two-thousand-ton nuclear submarines, two physically separate switches had to be activated before the weapons could be prearmed. Mace moved the large knob on the weapon arming panel from SAFE to GND RET. Two white switchlights on the weapon status panel illuminated; both read AGM-131X. He moved the missile select switch on the missile control panel to ALL and the silver arming switch from its center OFF position up to ARM. The status indication on the panel changed from SAFE to PREARM.
“If this shit wasn’t so serious,” Mace said to Parsons, “I’d swear I could hear ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ right now, just like in Dr. Strangelove.”
“Right,” Parsons said, his voice low and tense. “What have you got?”
“Weapons prearmed, racks locked,” Mace replied. “Double-check my switches.” He swiveled a small reading lamp down to the weapons arming panel so Parsons could check the indications, then he began composing another coded message to inform the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command headquarters that he had successfully prearmed his weapons…
… Two thermonuclear AGM-131X Short-Range Attack Missiles.
“Checked,” Parsons said uneasily. He sank back into his seat, and realized that he had just witnessed an historical event — this was the first time that a combat aircraft had prepared thermonuclear weapons for use since World War II. Plenty of aircraft had launched with nuclear weapons aboard during the Cold War, and there had been accidental releases and airplane crashes with atomic weapons on board, but this was the first time that a thermonuclear weapon had been prearmed and made ready for attack. It was all because the twelve F-117 stealth fighters, with their load of two-thousand-pound bombs, had failed to destroy one single building near the provincial capital city of Karbala, about fifty miles southwest of Baghdad and thirty miles west-northwest of the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon. Along with a large military base, railroad yard, warehouses, and a large military airfield, Karbala was the site for one of the world’s most sophisticated military command posts. It was a deep underground reinforced-concrete bunker that reportedly controlled all of Iraq’s fixed and mobile offensive rocket forces — nearly three hundred medium-range SS-1 Scud missiles, over one hundred short-range SS-7 Frog missiles, and an unknown number of SS-12 Scaleboard missiles, a tactical nuclear-tipped surface-to-surface missile purchased from the USSR after the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with the United States. Each weapon could carry a high-explosive warhead — or biological, chemical, nerve agent, or even nuclear warheads — that could quickly devastate Coalition forces.
Karbala had to be destroyed early in the conflict, before Iraq could mount a heavy missile assault on Saudi Arabia, or the Coalition airfields near the Iraqi border, or Israel. If Saddam was foolish enough to launch Scud missiles against Israel, she would almost certainly use nuclear weapons to stop the Iraqi war machine. It was so important that Karbala be destroyed, that Iraq not launch any Scuds on Israel, that Israel not enter the war, that the United States planned the ultimate contingency mission — employ a low-yield nuclear device against Iraq.
Except for the standard nuclear strike weapons on board Navy ships, the two AGM-131X missiles aboard Mace and Parsons’ bomber were the only thermonuclear weapons deployed as part of Desert Shield and now fielded as part of Desert Storm. The warhead of each missile was a “subatomic device,” a very low-power weapon with a yield of less than one kiloton, or one thousand tons of TNT — about one-twentieth the size of the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, but still packing the same explosive power of fifty fully loaded B-52 bombers carrying non-nuclear weapons.
Mace knew the delivery procedures — he had practiced them often enough back home. The missile would be launched from low altitude, climb to fifty or sixty thousand feet with the power of its dual-pulse solid rocket motors, then follow a ballistic path to its target, steered by its inertial navigation system and the superaccurate, satellite-based Global Positioning System. The missile would fly for about forty miles — plenty of room for Mace and Parsons to escape the blast effects.
Only one missile was planned to be launched; the second missile was a backup. Mace had seen charts predicting the fallout path, likely contaminated areas, and a list of things that might happen when the electromagnetic-pulse (EMP) hit, but the bottom line was much simpler — there was going to be widespread, global fear, panic, and a bloody outcry directed against the United States, the Pentagon, the Air Force, and him.
The Pentagon planned, and the White House hoped, that Iraq would sue for peace immediately after that attack.
While speeding toward their low-level entry point, Mace had tuned his HF (high-frequency) radio to the Israel National Radio broadcasts from Tel Aviv — everyone stationed in the Middle East knew the INR’s HF single sideband frequency, 6330, by heart, as well as the Voice of America (2770) and the BBC (3890) — and a few minutes later they got the confirmation they had been dreading: “Fuck. Just heard it on the INR, Bob,” Mace told Parsons. “ ‘VIPER SNAKE.’ Tel Aviv and Haifa were hit by Scud missiles.” VIPER SNAKE was the Israeli code word to all its military posts of a mass attack against the country. “Report says that the missiles that hit in Tel Aviv were carrying chemical warheads. Israel is launching attack aircraft.”
“You’re shitting me,” Parsons said. He knew that civilian news broadcasts should never, never be used as sources of official information, but the report only seemed to confirm the orders they had already received from the Pentagon. “Boy, never thought they’d do it.”
“One thing about ol’ Saddam,” Mace pointed out, “is that he’s never failed to do something he said he’d do. He told everyone he’d destroy Israel if Iraq was invaded. I hope he’s under this SRAM when we cook it off.” Mace checked his bomber’s chronometer: “The Scud missiles hit shortly after four A.M. We got our execution message about ten minutes after the missiles hit. Christ, the brass didn’t waste any time.”
“Looks like we were primed to do this mission right from the start,” Parsons pointed out. “We haven’t heard much from Israel during the military buildup — we must be Israel’s secret guarantee that Saddam won’t destroy her.”
Mace was silent for a moment, then said over interphone, “Well, that’s typical of the brass — do a fucking back-door deal and keep us in the dark, then let us drop the nuke and bear the guilt of obliterating thousands while they sit back, smoke their cigars, and slap each other on the backs for a job well done. Then it’s off to the White House for victory cocktails with the Old Man. The bastards.”
Parsons knew the aggravation Mace was going through. He was feeling it himself, as well as a slow, sinking queasiness in his stomach that he hadn’t felt for some time — not since ’Nam, when he’d seen little Vietnamese children running through the rains of fiery napalm — ordered by the brass — burning their flesh to the core. It had sickened him then, as this sickened him now. But he was an officer serving his country, with a job to do. The President — their Commander in Chief — had ordered it and they would do it.