That’s when the second part of her instructions came clearly into her mind. She had to open an escape portal to a specific point, one Michael-Lan had been very insistent on. That one point, nowhere else. No matter how bad things were, she had to go to that point first. She joined her mind to that of the Scarlet Beast and together they opened the great black ellipse that was her road to safety. Stunned with shock and pain, she and Fluffy leaped through it and into the refuge that lay beyond.
Radio Room, INS Tekuma, Mediterranean
The radio message chattered its way through the decrypting system and spewed out as words printed on a white tape. The message was clear and formed into two parts. One was an urgent message to Tekuma to re-establish contact with operations center immediately. The other was a flash message that said an Australian air strike had forced the Scarlet Beast to break off its attack and retreat to Heaven. That emergency at least was over.
Lieutenant Midyan Yitzchak read the latter and sighed to himself. The time had come, all the planning that had gone into this operation would be rewarded. It had taken years to get this operation set up, people had had to be moved into the right places, and they had had to move others into the places they were needed. But, with Divine inspiration, provided by the peerless Archangel who had appeared to them all in their visions, it had been done. They had been promised no reward. They were doing the Lord’s will and that was enough. He took the message that had arrived and carefully destroyed it, feeding it through the shredder that was specifically designed to reduce paper to an irrevocable mass of tiny shards. Then he took another message out of his pocket, one that was carefully packed so that it looked freshly arrived. Its contents were not those that had just been delivered.
Yitzchak’s next stop was the weapons control room. There was a terminal there, one that connected to the five Popeye missiles stored in the torpedo tubes forward. They had been loaded into the tubes earlier, all they needed was their target coordinates. The weapons control officer took the orders and typed the numbers given there into the missile control panel. There, they would be fed through an algorithm that converted them into the actual targets. The Weapons Control officer had no idea where those targets were and that was the plan. He was better off not knowing.
“The targets are entered into the system.” The voice was solemn as befitted the occasion. Nobody on the submarine had ever really believed this moment would come. In fact, it still might not for there was an outside chance the submarine’s Captain would refuse to fire. But that was a remote chance indeed. Yitzchak saluted and left the compartment, heading for the command center.
Captain Alex Ben-Shoshan was waiting there. An alert had sounded when the message had come in and in his heart he guessed what it was. Yitzchak silently handed the message to him. Ben-Shoshan read it and his eyes saddened. “The situation is worse?”
“Worse by far Sir. The beast has finished its destruction of Jerusalem and has moved into the corridor. Soon, it will be approaching Tel Aviv itself and then it will be too late. We have a brief opportunity, when the Beast is in the corridor, that is all.”
The Captain nodded. At the bottom of the message was a line of characters. He took a small box and typed those characters in. Then he handed the message to his Executive Officer who had a similar box. Once again the characters were typed in and the box translated them into a different string of numbers.
“I have 693987909 Sir.” The Executive Officer typed the numbers manually into the launch console.
Ben-Shoshan nodded. His machine had given him a different number and he added that to the console input. The computer would add the two numbers and if they came to the right total, they authenticated the input and released the locks on the firing system. There was no sign that the doomsday decision had been taken. No lights, no flashing messages. The fire control system was quiet. “It is time.” Ben-Shoshan said.
He took the key from its chain around his neck and went to a box at one end of the control room. His executive officer did the same so the men were separated by the length of the room. Then, they inserted their keys in two small, unobtrusive locks. “On the count of three. One… two… three.”
The keys turned and the computer made a series of clicks. A t this point, if the calculations done by the computer had not come to the correct answer, the whole system would lock down. There was an eerie silence in the control room then the submarine shuddered gently. The first Popeye missile was on its way. The next followed ten seconds later with the third following ten seconds after that. In less than a minute, all five missiles were on their way to their targets.
Israeli General Command Headquarters, Tel Aviv, Israel
The cheering and applause in the headquarters building was stilled by five words.
“We have a missile launch.”
The Navy Duty Officer’s simple statement changed the celebration over driving off the Scarlet Beast into a tense atmosphere that was thick with fear. On the displays that dominated one wall, the tracks of missiles were clearly evident. Only one at first but others joined it and were fanning out across the sea towards the land. There was nothing indicated on the display to suggest where the missiles had been launched from but there was only one real option and everybody knew what it was. Tekuma
Five missiles, heading east in a fan. There was no doubt what they were either. Nuclear-tipped Popeye missiles. “”Nobody authorized that launch.” It was a stupid remark and the man who uttered it flushed deep red with embarrassment.
“Where are they going?” Marosy’s throat was dry. This was what everybody in the nuclear business had feared for so long.
“No way to tell yet. The missiles will use an evasive course for the first few minutes to complicate any hope of interception. Then they will go to their targets.”
“Interceptors are up. Four Akef fighters out of Tel Nov.” The Air Force Duty Officer read the data out. The fighters would be heading out in an effort to shoot the missiles down before they reached their targets.
“Only four?” Marosy couldn’t tear his eyes off the screen. The missiles were heading east in a snaking S-shaped pattern that made target prediction impossible. Blue lines appeared on the map, the F-15Cs heading out to intercept the Popeyes.
“All we have. It will be ten minutes before the rest of the aircraft are available and that will be too late.”
Second ticked by. The missile tracks stopped snaking and accelerated along straight courses to their targets. The fighters changed course slightly, spreading out to make their intercepts.
“We have targets Sir. Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, Cairo and Tel Aviv.” The last words were spoken in stunned disbelief. “Sir, the way they’re spread, we can’t get them all. The first three, we can get, one Akef each. The last pair, its one or the other.”
“Order the fighter to take the one heading for Cairo.” The Prime Minister’s voice cut across the room. “If Israeli nuclear missiles destroy an Arab capital, the human alliance will be torn apart. Human will fight human with every weapon we have. The only winner will be Yahweh and his crew. So we sacrifice Tel Aviv, not Cairo. Anyway, our missile batteries may stop the Popeye.”
That was a faint chance and everybody knew it. The anti-missile system was designed to shoot down ballistic missiles that came in on a straight, predictable ballistic arc. An ABM system didn’t even need guidance to hit a target like that, the Indians had made intercepts by mathematical prediction without guidance. The Arrow stressed range and speed, not the agility needed to hit a maneuvering target. But the Popeye was skimming in at very high speed, a few feet above the ground. A much harder target. By ordering the one fighter within reach of the last pair of missiles, the Prime Minister had condemned Tel Aviv to death.