Manning shrugged. “Maybe they’ll have to turn off the shield when they turn the array on. If so, we might be able to drop one of these in during that window of opportunity.”
“That’s not good enough,” Turcotte said. “I don’t think it’s going to take them very long to get a message out. If we destroy it after a message is sent, we’re wasting our time.”
“That’s the best I’ve got, sir.”
“That’s why we’re waiting on this Professor Leahy.” Turcotte checked his watch. “He ought to be here any minute.”
Manning indicated a large medical device with a table extended in front of it. “We need to MRI you in order to prepare your SARA link.”
Turcotte wasn’t thrilled with the idea of using the SARA links, but Manning had insisted that they had found it to be perfectly safe and it would allow them to use the suits to their maximum capability. He reluctantly climbed onto the table as Yakov and Manning stood on either side.
“Try to remain perfectly still,” Manning said. “This will only take a few minutes.” He hit a button and the table slid into the machine.
Turcotte fought the feeling of claustrophobia. He closed his eyes and forced his breathing back to a normal cadence as the machine made strange noises. He was sure it was more than just a few minutes before the table vibrated and slid him out of the machine. He swung his legs down to the ground. Manning was standing next to a small laptop, looking at the display with one of his men and Yakov.
“Do I still have a brain?” Turcotte asked as he walked over. He sensed something wrong in the way both men were leaning over the screen, staring at it.
“You’ve got a brain,” Manning said. He touched the screen, indicating a small round black spot. “You also have something implanted in it.”
Three hundred fifty feet below the lowest level of the Pentagon proper was the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s National Military Command Center, commonly called the war room by those who worked there. It had been placed inside a large cavern carved out of solid bedrock. It was ten times larger and over three times deeper than the LCC Aspasia’s Shadow had been inside of in Louisiana, but it was designed along the same principles. The complex could only be entered via one secure elevator and the entire thing was mounted on massive springs on the cavern floor. There were enough food and supplies in the war room for the emergency crew to operate for a year. Besides the lines that went up through the Pentagon’s own communications system, a narrow tunnel holding cables had been laboriously dug at the same depth to the alternate National Command Post at Blue Mountain in West Virginia.
When it was built in the early sixties, the war room had been designed to survive a nuclear first strike. The advances in both targeting and warhead technology over the subsequent three decades had made that design obsolete. There was no doubt in the minds of anyone who worked in the war room that the room was high on the list of Russian and Chinese nuclear targeting and that it would be gone very shortly after any nuclear exchange. Because of that, it had been turned into the operations center for the Pentagon.
Since the start of the Third World War, the war room had been fully staffed and it was still operating at nearly peak level. The main room of the war room was semicircular. On the front, flat wall, there was a large imagery display board, over thirty feet wide by twenty high. Any projection or scene that could be piped into the war room could be displayed on this board, from a video of a new weapons system, to a map of the world showing the current status of US forces, to a real-time downlink from an orbiting spy satellite.
The floor of the room sloped from the rear down to the front so that each row of computer and communication consoles could be overseen from the row behind. At the very back of the room, along the curved wall, a three-foot-high railing separated the command and control section where the Joint Chiefs and other high-ranking officers had their desks. Supply, kitchen, and sleeping areas were off the right rear of the room, in a separate cavern. The war room had had its first taste of action during the Gulf War, when it had operated full-time, coordinating the multinational forces in the Gulf.
The elevator in the left rear opened and the president’s national security adviser, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff strode into room.
“What the hell is going on?” the national security adviser demanded as they walked to the center desk and stood behind it.
“Give me a status report,” the chairman of the JCS ordered, ignoring the adviser for the moment. The senior duty officer, a full colonel, turned. “We’ve got a red, level-four serious incident, sir. Final Option Missile has been launched without authorization.”
“Go through MILSTAR and get ahold of the Final Option Missile LCC to determine status and gain positive control,” the chairman ordered.
The duty officer shook his head. “We’ve tried, sir. Someone’s overridden an external link. Barksdale Wing Command can’t get ahold of it on land line either. They’re sending a reaction force out to the site. Final Option Missile’s MILSTAR link is locked into its LCC computer and we have no contact with it.”
“Who’s in the Final Option Missile LCC?” the chairman demanded. “The crew?”
“We don’t know, sir.” The colonel cleared his throat. “Maybe no one. Space Command is not only tracking Final Option Missile in orbit, but also picked up an alien spacecraft at the LCC and now on its way into orbit.”
“‘An alien spacecraft’?” the chairman repeated. “What kind and from where?”
“We’ve got a report from Area 51 that Aspasia’s Shadow has control of one of the Talons that was on the second mothership. Space Command lost track of it somewhere over Texas. The signature of the craft lifting from the LCC vicinity fits the profile for a Talon. I’ve got a message to the Area 51 people to find out if it might be one of theirs, but it’s hard getting through to them since they’ve relocated to North Carolina.”
“Good Lord,” the chairman muttered as the implications of Final Option being in the wrong hands sank in.
“Will someone please tell me exactly what the Final Option Missile is?” the national security adviser demanded. “Obviously something I haven’t been briefed on yet.”
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs turned to the civilian. “Final Option Missile is a special payload loaded into a Minuteman ICBM. Final Option is the code name for what we used to call the Emergency Rocket Communication System.”
The national security adviser held up his hands. “General, since I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, why don’t you tell me what the hell is going on in plain English?”
The chairman took a second to collect his thoughts. “Final Option Missile can communicate through MILSTAR with every nuclear launch platform this country has. Subs, missile launch facilities; it can even scramble strategic bombers and get them in the air.”
“What?”
“Final Option Missile is an automated command and control system that can alert, specify targeting matrices, and actually send an emergency action message — EAM — to launch any nuclear system our military has.”
“You’re joking.”
“No, sir, I wish I was.”
“Why did someone design something like that?” the national security adviser demanded. “Only the president can order a launch — not a machine.”
“That’s why we call it the Final Option.” The general’s face was stone. “FOM was designed to be used if every other normal mode of communication was knocked out and the president can’t issue the orders or if the National Command Authority is wiped out. It’s the last-gasp means by which the National Command Authority can transmit an order so that launch codes and target matrices can get to America’s nuclear forces if all other communication means are destroyed. FOM is basically a last- ditch device and a deterrent.”