Target America

14

General William Couture stalked into a heavily guarded conference room at the Pentagon dressed in his starched universal camouflage ACU, flanked by his aide-de-camp, an equally towering army major who looked as though he’d been chiseled from a block of granite and who wore a .45 caliber Glock 21 pistol slung beneath each arm. Rumor had it that he carried two weapons so he could toss one to the general in the event there was ever a need to defend themselves. Couture stood at the head of a long mahogany table lined with generals and admirals from all branches of the United States military. All seven of the Joint Chiefs were present, as were several other uniformed service chiefs.

Couture’s expression was stern, his merciless gaze set firmly.

“Gentlemen,” he said in a sonorous voice, “the secretary of defense has ordered us to Fast Pace.” This was the code phrase for DEFCON 2. “The president is aboard Air Force One, and the vice president has already been taken to a hardened location belowground. In addition, the United States Congress is being evacuated from the District of Columbia as we speak. Each member of Congress will return to his or her home state, where they will remain until we are back to at least DEFCON 4.” DEFCON 5, code named Fade Out, was the most relaxed of the defense conditions.

Most of what Couture had just announced, the Joint Chiefs already knew. What they did not know was why the defense condition had been escalated again. The moment the army had verified a nuclear explosion in southern New Mexico, the US military had been ordered to DEFCON 3, but the last time the US had stood at DEFCON 2 was during the three-week Yom Kippur War of 1973, when Egypt and Syria launched surprise attacks against Israel, only to be driven back into their own countries before a cease-fire was reached. DEFCON 2 was the last stage before nuclear war, and no one seated at the table had yet heard anything to merit an escalation of this magnitude.

“Within the hour,” Couture continued, “everyone in this room — myself included — will be airlifted to Edwards Air Force Base, where a command center is being prepared. All submarine captains are being alerted that a nuclear strike on the District of Columbia may be imminent.” Couture shifted his gaze to a pair of navy admirals. “These vessels are not — repeat, not—to assume Cocked Pistol status without a direct order from the president aboard Air Force One, where he will remain for the foreseeable future.” Cocked Pistol was the code name for DEFCON 1: clearance to use nuclear force.

“In addition, the Russian Federation and the Republic of China have been put on notice. There has been no provocative language, but the president has made it to clear to both nations that the United States will remain poised to defend itself with full military capacity in the event that Washington, DC, is destroyed.”

By now the Joint Chiefs were exchanging pensive glances.

Couture pulled out his chair, taking a seat and lacing his fingers on the tabletop. “Now, here is the reason we are at Fast Pace, gentlemen: there is an active two-kiloton RA-115 loose within the United States, and we have no idea where it is.”

“Jesus,” muttered a buzz-cut Marine Corps general, clicking a pen and rocking back in his seat. “So they’re real.”

“What’s an RA-115?” asked the Coast Guard admiral seated next to him. “Never heard of it.”

“Until now,” the Marine said, “nothing more than a rumor — a Cold War legend.”

“It’s a Russian suitcase nuke,” Couture explained. “We’re pressing the Russians to provide us the necessary intel, but so far they’re vacillating. Regardless, CIA has determined — to within what they consider a ninety-five-percent certainty — that the New Mexico Event was the result of a belowground detonation of one of two of these damn things. From what CIA has pieced together, it looks like Chechen insurgents paid one of the Mexican cartels to let them cross through a tunnel under the border. The reason for the president’s immediate departure is that one of these Chechens is reported to have brought the other device into the country seventeen days ago.”

“Good God!” said the pallid-looking vice chairman, General John Pickett. “With a seventeen-day head start, it could be anywhere.” He had arrived at the Pentagon only a half hour earlier, having been in hospital for the last three days with an intestinal virus he’d picked up during a recent visit to Pakistan.

“What went wrong with the other bomb, General?” asked the Marine. “Does CIA have any idea why it went off?”

“It’s still open to conjecture at this point,” Couture replied. “We do know, however, that the ICE office in Albuquerque received an eleventh-hour tip about some kind of special shipment coming across the border. The call was received a couple of hours before the blast, and it’s beginning to look like the local ICE team out there may have made a late-night interdiction raid on the tunnel. The fact that thirteen ICE agents have gone missing seems to support the theory, and CIA is guessing that our Chechen friends must have detonated the bomb as a result.”

The Joint Chiefs began to talk among themselves.

Couture elevated his voice. “There’s no way we can sit on this, gentlemen. The president will address the nation from Air Force One within the hour. He’s going to lay it on the table. He’s going to announce that we suspect a nuclear weapon to be loose within the United States.”

“There’ll be mass exodus,” someone muttered. “DC and Manhattan will be a pair of ghost towns by this time tomorrow.”

“Not to mention LA,” someone else remarked. “Chicago.”

Couture rocked back in the chair. “Very possible. That’s why the president’s decided to declare martial law in each of the cities you’ve just mentioned. With luck and God willing, that will be the extent of it, though you can bet that all arms of local law enforcement will be stretched to the limit on a national level. This is exactly what we’ve been fearing, gentlemen. Our nuclear chickens have come home to roost.”