“Thank you.”
As she left the house, she saw PP staring at the dungeon door. He looked aggrieved, as sad as any man she’d ever known.
Galina carried Alexandra to the silver Porsche, nestling her daughter in the backseat.
The car elevator lowered them to the ground floor and she drove out the front gate into the velvet blackness of the rural Russian night.
A car appeared almost immediately in her rearview mirror, out of nowhere it seemed. She reached to put the envelope stuffed with cash into the glove box — and discovered a small gun.
With another look in the rearview, her foot found the adrenaline-pumping power of the Porsche’s gas pedal.
CHAPTER 13
Lana was gathered with the rest of Deputy Director Holmes’s closest advisors and aides in his office. They had received one more communication from the submarine hacker, announcing the launch of the Trident II for one a.m. Greenwich Mean Time, which would be nine p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Prime time, they all recognized at once, in the nation’s most populous time zone.
Other than noting the carefully calculated schedule, there had been little talk, either from Teresa McGivern or Joshua Tenon or Clarence Besserman. Few comments even from General Sprouse, Commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, or Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Deming. Admiral Wourzy also appeared subdued, as if his arrest for chip counterfeiting had taken place only seconds ago. All seemed stunned into silence, including Lana, by the imminent prospect of the launch.
Now, with fewer than thirty seconds remaining, never had a deadline held a more lethal or precisely defined threat.
With eight screens on, Holmes’s office looked like a network control room. They were monitoring the major news outlets, all of which had interrupted “normally scheduled programming.” Plus, Holmes had had a satellite feed from above Antarctica brought in, along with a screen devoted to the radar that would track the launch. Lana could still scarcely believe it would actually come to pass.
The digital readout on a clock solely devoted to this unprecedented catastrophe wound down to eight seconds. Lana trained her eyes on the numbers, as if will alone could undo this act of mass murder: “… 3, 2, 1.”
The Trident II launched. Though she did not see it on any screen — a mere speck on the radar tracker — she had no difficulty imagining the light-colored missile rising from the sea in a blaze of solid-rocket fuel turning the blackness orange and red, and white hot in the center of its wake.
Within seconds, the latest advances in the Aegis Missile Defense System flew into action. Aegis had begun in the mid-eighties, and had many successful test knockdowns to its credit. But nothing was foolproof.
Aegis had its own radar, of course, but the military’s high-resolution defense system was also tracking the Trident with its single missile head. In its infancy, the weapon had been a hedge against war, a key component of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. Now in minutes it could rain down from the heavens onto the frozen continent with heat unimaginable to most nonscientists — but there would be nothing mutual about its destruction, with worldwide catastrophe striking many, but not all, nations.
An aide wearing headphones and peering at a computer said the Trident was, indeed, heading toward Antarctica.
The speck on the radar screen indicated nothing of the ICBM’s lethality. But would the technical wizardry noted by the Pentagon briefer actually work? All she’d ever known of missile shields and interceptors made them sound more mythical than real, no more likely to actually shoot down an ICBM than a lightning bolt from Zeus or — more appropriately, perhaps — a strike by Neptune with his primitive trident, for which the missile had been named.
It would be brutally ironic, Lana realized, if the U.S. could not save itself from one of its own creations. And a single Trident II rising from the sea could claim much of the whole world if it exploded on the WAIS.
“Time?” Holmes asked.
The aide with the earphones nodded at the digital readout, where another countdown had begun. Eight minutes turning to seven in the frightening increments, red diodes spelling out the time remaining in the color of blood.
Lana caught Holmes’s eye, then glanced at the door. He nodded. She had to call Emma. She was all but certain that her daughter was watching coverage of the missile launch somewhere. And if Lana could offer her any comfort, she wanted to, but quickly.
Once in the hallway, she reached Emma on the first ring.
“Why, Mom?” Emma asked as soon as she answered.
“Where are you?”
“Tanesa’s.”
Thank God. “I’m glad you’re not alone.”
“No, Esme’s here. And so is Dad,” she added hesitantly.
Lana didn’t want her daughter feeling torn between her parents, especially at a time like this. “I’m happy for you, if he can be of any help.”
“Not exactly, Mom,” Emma said impatiently. “I’m going in the other room,” she said to the others.
“What is it, hon?” Lana asked.
“He and Esme got into an argument. She didn’t appreciate him saying this whole missile thing was nothing but a big conspiracy, like the moon shot.”
“No, I can’t imagine she did.”
First, through Emma, Lana had learned that Esme did not suffer fools gladly. Second, through research, Lana had found out that Esme’s brother was an astrophysicist who had played a key role in the success of the Apollo 11 moon landing. In fact, he’d counted Neil Armstrong among his closest friends. Lana asked if Tanesa’s mom had mentioned any of that.
“All of it.”
“And your dad said?”
“That lots of people got duped by the moon landing and he figured lots of people would get duped by this, too.”
“Emma, this is very, very real. I am so sorry to have to say that.”
“I know that, Mom.” Emma started to cry.
“Go ahead, tell me,” Lana said, checking her watch, knowing she had to get back in that room soon.
“It’s just so, I don’t know, embarrassing to have him say crap like that. I mean, it’s one thing sitting around and talking about stuff, but Esme must think we’re all idiots, and I really respect her, Mom.”
“I promise you that Esme doesn’t think you are an idiot.” Lana left the rest of what she could have said remain unspoken.
“Where are you? I wish you were here,” Emma said.
“I’m at work. I wish I were with you, too.”
“Will I see you tomorrow, Mom?”
“Yes, you will. You’re going to stay there tonight, right?”
“I’m not staying with him,” Emma said angrily.
“I understand.”
“I doubt he will,” her daughter said.
“Don’t worry about that. I love you.”
“You, too, Mom.”
Lana took a deep breath and cleared her own eyes, recognizing that she’d nimbly sidestepped Emma’s first question: Why, Mom? That would have taken more time than the moment allowed — and more horrors than she wanted to visit upon her daughter at a time like this.
Down to less than thirty seconds again in Holmes’s office. As Lana walked back into the room, the Aegis missile interceptor plunged into the sea more than two hundred miles from the Trident II. They knew immediately that it failed because tracking devices showed it vanish from the screen. But the Trident II was very much aloft, charted every moment by the military’s high-resolution defense system.