Moreau’s hand shot out for the receiver, and the moment he heard the familiar faraway hiss indicating a long-distance call in the background, he waved Theresa away. With his weary eyes locked on the jungle, he listened as a deep voice somberly greeted him.
The next couple of minutes moved with the ponderous pace of a nightmare. For the most part, the Commandant did all the talking. Moreau could but summon the fortitude to occasionally grunt in meager response.
For the first time in his recollection, the esteemed figure he respected most in life spoke with the tone of one who had been totally subjugated. The dismal news that he soon relayed was as grim as his intonation.
Operation Diablo had been a complete failure. Not only was the Ariadne presently lying disabled on the floor of the Pacific, but the Americans had boarded her as well. A handful of surviving sailors had been taken into U.S. custody. Over four dozen of their brave comrades hadn’t been so fortunate. Their stiff corpses still lay within the sub’s crushed hull.
As a direct result of this tragic turn of events, the Condor had been able to successfully attain its orbit.
Already, its precious payload had been released.
Whereas the Americans were now back in the space business, the Ariadne project was now finished.
Only minutes before, the President of the Republic had ordered the Commandant to resign his position at once. Labeled a disgrace to his country, he even faced the possibility of criminal charges.
The Commandant’s voice was quivering with emotion as he thanked Moreau for his years of service. He left him with a single sentence, the ominous overtones of which still rang in his ear even after his trembling hand had managed to hang up the receiver.
“Now do what you have to do, my son, for you deserve much more than the shame that your country is about to call down upon your once-honored name.”
Stunned by this conversation, Moreau sat upright, his limbs twitching uncontrollably. Waves of sweat poured down his forehead, and he struggled for each successive breath.
So this was what it was like when a man’s very life caved in around him. All of his efforts, all of his work, in vain!
A frail voice broke out from behind him, its tone emanating as if from a different dimension.
“Are you all right, mi amore!”
A warm, tiny hand hesitantly stroked his shoulder, and Moreau found himself possessed by a fit of blind fury. Dizzily, he stood. Angling his clenched fist downward, he smacked it into Theresa’s jaw. As she fell to the ground, he turned and stormed out the back door. He was well on his way over the strip of grass that lay between his house and the jungle when a confused, whimpering voice called out to him.
“Mi amore, what is the matter with you? Is it something that I did? Please come back. The jungle at night is no place for you to be. You could get killed out there!”
This fragile plea registered in his consciousness, yet Moreau plunged onward into the tree line. The dark, sticky, heavily scented boughs of the jungle reached for his limbs, and the cries of the night creatures throbbed with a million different voices. Yet all that Jean Moreau could think of was that, if he were lucky, his demise would be mercifully quick. And such was his fate, as the night fell over French Guiana.
Chapter Seventeen
Vandenberg’s underground situation room was a large, cavernous structure buried three stories beneath the surface of the base’s main administrative area. Built specifically for the Strategic Air Command, this control center was utilized to initiate and monitor the launches of Vandenberg’s Minutemen, Titan II, and MX ICBM’s. Although it was primarily designed as a test range, the base did have sixteen missile silos on its northern sector that maintained a latent Emergency War Order capability. It was for this seldom-used function that the room currently found itself being occupied.
Seated at one of the two dozen digital consoles that filled the room. Lieutenant Colonel Todd Lansford pondered the startling series of events that had sent him scurrying from the shuttle launch center to this one. It had all started soon after the Condor had attained its orbit. The mission had been proceeding perfectly, and they had been able to deploy the Keyhole platform right on schedule. After being successfully activated, the recon satellite had begun its first sweep over the central Soviet Union.
It was Kauai’s Kokee satellite-tracking station that had relayed to them the shocking photos that were soon to bring the world to the very brink of war.
Those digitally transferred snapshots were of the Soviet ICBM fields at Tyuratam. There, the SS-18 silos were clearly visible. Huddled around the lips of these underground structures were an odd assortment of vehicles and personnel. A detailed analysis of the film showed the workers to be in the midst of replacing the missiles’ warheads. Intelligence was certain that this new warhead package was what was known as the Tartar system. It would allow each of the SS18’s to be armed with ten MIRV’d warheads, with enough yield and accuracy to knock out even the most hardened target. It was common knowledge that this package was not only a flagrant violation of the current nuclear weapons treaty, but also indicative of a possible imminent first strike.
In response to this revelation, the President of the United States had immediately activated the hot line to the Kremlin. The infuriated Chief Executive had soon reached Premier Viktor Alipov. Yet, much to the President’s dismay, Alipov had flatly denied his accusations.
This had left him with no alternative but to bring his country’s own strategic forces to a state of DEFCON Two, only a step away from war itself.
With this directive, America’s Triad had been activated.
Beneath the seas, America’s powerful force of strategic missile submarines had been sent to their action stations. On land, the country’s B-52 and B1B bombers had been dispersed from their vulnerable airfields and sent flying toward their fail-safe positions.
And finally, from deep inside their launch control silos, the countdowns had begun on the United States’ own arsenal of Titan II, Minutemen, and MX ICBM’s.
Lansford was well aware that a flight of Minutemen III missiles sat in their silos only a few thousand yards from his current position. He visualized Vandenberg’s very own contribution to the Triad, as the sleek group of sixteen missiles waited for the launch release codes that would come from this very room.
The officers who would relay these launch signals sat before their consoles around him. As they went about their macabre business with a cool efficiency, Lansford wondered if they ever thought about the consequences that would follow a real launch. Surely they were well aware that their actions would most probably signal the end of the civilized world as they now knew it.
Though he was a veteran Air Force officer himself, Lansford had never actually thought this fateful day would ever come to pass. World War III had been like a grim specter on the horizon, always threatening, yet never a reality. But the continued existence of the doomsday weapons that made this conflict so unthinkable had made this day inevitable. Man was only fooling himself if he thought otherwise.
Lansford looked out on the hushed room that surrounded him, and wondered if this afternoon would be the moment when humankind’s luck finally ran out. He was well aware of the fact that that morning’s skirmish with those suspected Soviet commandos could have been the first military engagement of the war. If so, at least the Americans had emerged from that brief battle victorious.
Of course, confusing the matter was the submarine that the Razorback had sunk while prowling off the coastline. Was its crew really French as the preliminary reports indicated, and was an electromagnetic railgun indeed mounted on its stern? And if this were true, was the