The Nostradamus File

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

At 4:00 A.M. Elizabeth came into her office and found a dead mouse lying by her chair. Burps had been leaving little presents for her. This morning it was a mouse. Yesterday it had been a garter snake. She put the small corpse in her wastebasket.

That darn cat is courting me, she thought.

Stephanie came in with a cup of coffee. Steam wafted from the cup.

"Thanks, Steph."

Elizabeth took the cup and blew on the hot, black liquid. She wasn't surprised to find Steph here and working. Most days they were both in by 5:00 A.M. Today, Elizabeth had quit at midnight and slept in the living quarters downstairs. That had been happening a lot, lately. She'd taken to keeping changes of clothing and back up toiletries downstairs, just in case.

"Israel just shot down a drone Hezbollah sent from Lebanon," Stephanie said. "That's the second one this week."

"I don't know why they think those will work. Iran sends the parts to Lebanon, Hezbollah assembles them and sends them off, Israel shoots them down. What's the point?"

"Prestige booster for Hezbollah's leaders. Look at us, we are doing God's work against the Zionist enemy, all that BS. Hezbollah is a serious opponent, though. They fought Israel to a stalemate during the last invasion."

"That was political. I don't think they can stop the Israelis this time around," Elizabeth said. "Lerner is going to give it everything he's got. It's a matter of hours at most before he moves. That drone may be the last thing he needs to justify an invasion."

On Elizabeth's desk was a small device which had only one purpose. It displayed the current defense condition level in colored letters and numerals. When Rice had raised the level to DEFCON3, the color had changed from yellow-green to yellow. Now the device beeped three times. The display changed to orange. It said DEFCON2.

Elizabeth looked at it and felt as though she'd swallowed a lead ball. Her phone rang.

"Harker." She listened for a moment. "Steph, bring up the SBIRS system on the monitor. And whatever we've got over the Middle East."

SBIRS stood for Satellite Based Infrared Surveillance. Two dozen birds in geostationary and moving orbits formed a grid that covered the globe. It was one of the key strategic assets in America's intelligence network. SBIRS had been built primarily to monitor, track and help destroy a hostile missile launch.

"Thank you, Clarence." Elizabeth hung up the phone. She turned to Stephanie.

"That was DCI Hood. There's activity at Badr missile base in Iran. Hood was giving me a heads up. He's worried that the Israelis may have learned Iran has a nuke."

"Badr is where they have the Shahab 3-B," Stephanie said. "What if they put that nuke on one of those?"

Elizabeth gestured at the orange display with it's chilling message. "Rice has called a meeting of the National Security Council in case they did."

"If Tehran uses that Russian warhead, Israel will annihilate them," Stephanie said. "They have enough nukes to wipe Iran off the map."

"What worries me is that the Mullahs might be crazy enough to think they could win with a preemptive strike. The Shahab 3B has a very short launch time and sophisticated avoidance capabilities. Once it's up it would be hard to stop in time."

"Doesn't Israel have Patriot missile defenses?"

"Yes, and their own Arrow 2. But the 3B has a new evasion system. It could get through."

"The pictures are up," Stephanie said.

The monitor image was in real time, from a geo-stationary satellite over Iran. The Badr missile base was east of Tehran in the Central Semnan desert, a desolate, dry wasteland. They were looking at the reason Rice had gone to DEFCON2. Hundreds of heat signatures moved about the base. There was intense activity around the silos.

"They could be getting ready to launch," Stephanie said.

Elizabeth watched the images and the computer readouts on the right of the display.

"If they do," she said, "it's a new ball game."