“What gives?” Jack asked, arriving with Goodley in his wake.
“According to NORAD, a nuclear device just went off in Denver.”
“I hope that's a fucking joke!” Jack replied. That, too, was a reflex. Before the man had a chance to respond, Ryan's stomach turned over. Nobody made jokes like that one.
“I wish it were,” the Senior Duty Officer replied.
“What do we know?”
“Not much.”
“Anything? Threat board?” Jack asked. Again it was reflexive. If there had been anything, he would have heard it by now. “Okay — where's Marcus?”
“Coming home in the C-141, somewhere between Japan and the Aleutians. You're it, sir,” the SDO pointed out, quietly thanking a beneficent God that it wasn't himself. “President's at Camp David. SecDef and SecState—”
“Dead?” Ryan asked.
“It would appear so, sir.”
Ryan closed his eyes. “Holy Jesus. The Vice President?”
“At his official residence. We've only been going about three minutes. The NMCC watch officer is a Captain James Rosselli. General Wilkes is on the way in. DIA's on line. They — I mean the President just ordered DEFCON-TWO on our strategic forces.”
“Anything from the Russians?”
“Nothing unusual at all. There's a regional air-defense exercise underway in Eastern Siberia. That's all.”
“Okay, alert all the stations. Put the word out that I want to hear anything they might have — anything. They are to hit every source they can just as fast as they can.” Jack paused one more time. “How sure are we that this really happened?”
“Sir, two DSPS satellites copied the flash. We have a KH-11 that's going to be overhead in about twenty minutes, and I've directed NPIC to put every camera they have on Denver. NORAD says it's a definite nuclear detonation, but there's no word on yield or damage. The explosion seems to be in the immediate area of the stadium — like Black Sunday, sir, but real. This is definitely not a drill, not if we're jacking the strategic forces to DEFCON-TWO, sir.”
“Inbound ballistic track? Aircraft delivery?”
“Negative on the first, there was no launch warning, and no ballistic radar track.”
“What about a FOBS?” Goodley asked. A weapon could be delivered by satellite. That was the purpose of a Fractional-Orbital Bombardment System.
“They would have caught that,” the SDO replied. “I already asked. On the aircraft side, they don't know yet. They're trying to check air-traffic-control tapes.”
“So we don't know jack shit.”
“Correct.”
“President check in with us yet?” Ryan asked.
“No, but we have an open line there. He has the National Security Advisor there also.”
“Most likely scenario?”
“I'd say terrorism.”
Ryan nodded. “So would I. I'm taking over the conference room. Okay, I want DO, DI, DS&T in here immediately. If you need choppers to fetch them in, order 'em.” Ryan walked into the room, leaving the door open.
“Christ,” Goodley said. “You sure you want me here?”
“Yes, and when you have an idea, you say it out loud. I forgot about FOBS.” Jack lifted the phone and punched the FBI button.
“ Command Center.”
“This is CIA, Deputy Director Ryan speaking. Who is this?”
“Inspector Pat O'Day. I have Deputy-Assistant Director Murray here also. You're on speaker, sir.”
“Talk to me, Dan.” Jack put his phone on speaker, also. A watch officer handed him a cup of coffee.
“We don't know anything. No heads-up at all, Jack. Thinking terrorists?”
“At the moment, it seems the most plausible alternative.”
“How sure are you of that?”
“Sure?” Ryan shook his head at the phone, Goodley saw. “What's 'sure' mean, Dan?”
“I hear you. We're still trying to figure out what happened here, too. I can't even get CNN on the TV to work.”
“What?”
“One of my communications people says the satellites are all out,” Murray explained. “Didn't you know that?”
“No.” Jack pointed for Goodley to get back into the Ops Center and find out. “If that's true, it could scratch the terrorism idea. Jesus, that's scary!”
“It's true, Jack. We've checked.”
“They think ten commercial commosats are nonfunctional,” Goodley said. “All the defense birds are on line, though. Our commlinks are okay.”
“Find the most senior S&T guy you can find — or one of our commo people — and ask him what could snuff out satellites. Move!” Jack ordered. “Where's Shaw?”
“On his way in. Going to be a while the way the roads are.”
“Dan, I'll give you everything I get here.”
“It'll be a two-way street.” The line went dead.
The most horrible thing was that Ryan didn't know what to do next. It was his job to gather data and forward it to the President, but he had no data. What information there was would come in through military circuits. CIA had failed again, Ryan told himself. Someone had done something to his country, and he hadn't warned anyone. People were dead because his agency had failed in its mission. Ryan was Deputy Director, the man who really ran the shop for the political drone placed over his head. The failure was personal. A million people dead, maybe, and there he was, all alone in an elegant little conference room staring at a wall with nothing on it. He hunted a line to NORAD and punched it.
“NORAD,” a disembodied voice answered.
“This is the CIA Operations Center, Deputy Director Ryan speaking. I need information.”
“We do not have much, sir. We think the bomb exploded in the immediate vicinity of the Skydome. We are trying to estimate yield, but nothing yet. A helicopter has been dispatched from Lowery Air Force Base.”
“Will you keep us posted?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you.” That was a big help, Ryan thought. Now he knew that someone else didn't know anything.
There was nothing magical about a mushroom cloud, Battalion Chief Mike Callaghan of the Denver City Fire Department knew. He'd seen one before, as a rookie fireflghter. It had been a fire in the Burlington yards just outside the city, in 1968. A propane tank-car had let go, right next to another trainload of bombs en route to the Navy's munitions terminal at Oakland, California. The chief back then had had the good sense to pull his men back when the tank ruptured, and from a quarter mile away they'd watched a hundred tons of bombs go off in a hellish firecracker series. There had been a mushroom then also. A large mass of hot air rose, roiling as it went into an annular shape. It created an updraft, drawing air upward into its donut-shaped center, making the stem of the mushroom…
But this one was much larger.
He was behind the wheel of his red-painted command car, following the first alarm, three Seagrave pumper units, an aerial ladder truck, and two ambulances. It was a pitiful first response. Callaghan lifted his radio and ordered a general alarm. Next he ordered his men to approach from up-wind.
Christ, what had happened here?
It couldn't be that…. most of the city was still intact.
Chief Callaghan didn't know much, but he knew there was a fire to fight and people to rescue. As the car turned off the last side-street onto the boulevard leading to the stadium he saw the main smoke mass. The parking lot, of course. It had to be. The mushroom cloud was blowing rapidly southwest towards the mountains. The parking lot was a mass of fire and flame from burning gasoline and oil and auto parts. A powerful gust of wind cleared the smoke briefly, just enough that he could see that there had been a stadium here… a few sections were still… not intact, but you could tell what they were — had been only a few minutes before. Callaghan shut that out. He had a fire to fight. He had people to rescue. The first pump unit pulled up at a hydrant. They had good water here. The stadium was fully sprinklered, and that system fed off two 36-inch high-pressure mains that gridded around the complex.