The Omega Missile

Chapter One

There wasn't a cloud in the sky and the air temperature in the eastern end of the Mediterranean was eighty degrees. The temperature of the water was a comfortable seventy-two. The surface of the sea was so smooth and flat that any disturbance of the water could be spotted easily. The moon was almost full and it reflected off the mirror surface, giving sixty-five percent illumination, aiding any prying eyes.

The American submarine lay eight kilometers off shore, due west of southern Lebanon. It was dead in the water a hundred feet down. On the back deck, just behind the conning tower, a hatch opened in the hull, leading to a pressurized compartment, the dry deck shelter — DDS — which was bolted onto the deck.

The two men climbing through the hatch into the DDS wore wet suits and carried their gear in waterproof rucksacks. As soon as they were inside, the hatch was closed behind them and sealed.

The two men ran through the pre-operations checks on the vehicle tied down inside the DDS: the Mark IX SDV (Swimmer Delivery Vehicle). The Mark IX was a long, flattened rectangle with propellers and dive fins at the rear and a Plexiglas bubble at the front for the crew to see through. A little over nineteen feet long, it was only slightly more than six feet wide and drew less than three feet from top to bottom.

After five minutes both men were satisfied with the craft. The batteries were at full charge and all equipment was functioning properly.

The divers slid inside the SDV, closing the hatches behind them. They hooked the hose from their mouthpieces directly to the interior air valves to breathe from the vehicle's tanks.

The man on the right spoke into the radiophone which was connected by umbilical to the sub. "Amber, this is Topaz. We are ready to proceed. Over."

"Roger, Topaz. We read all green here. Over."

"Request flood and release. Over."

"Flood and release will be initiated in twenty seconds. We'll leave the porch light on. Umbilicals cut in five. Good luck. Five. Four. Three. Two. One."

The radiophone went dead. With a heavy gurgle, water began pouring into the dry dock shelter. The pilot worked at keeping the SDV at neutral buoyancy as the chamber filled. Water also flooded into the crew chamber inside the SDV where the two divers lay on their stomachs peering out the front canopy. The Mark IX was a "wet" submersible meaning that the only waterproofed sections were the engine, battery, and navigational computer compartments. The two crewmen could feel the warm water seep into their wet suits and they forced out small pockets of air, trying to get as comfortable as possible in their confined space.

Once the chamber was full, the large hatch on the end of the DDS slowly swung open. The pilot activated the twin, three-bladed propellers and the SDV cleared the DDS. The long length of the submarine lay beneath them for another two hundred feet. Once in open ocean, the pilot directed the Mark IX up and down and from side to side using stabilizers, both horizontal and vertical, that were aligned to the rear of the propellers. A throttle controlled the speed of the blades, and thus the speed of the sub.

The second diver was the navigator and he was currently punching in numbers on the waterproofed panel in front of him.

"Fixing Doppler," he announced over the internal communication link between him and his partner. The computerized Doppler radar navigation system was now updated with their current location, received from the submarine prior to departure, and would guide them on their underwater journey, greatly simplifying a task that previously was a nightmare in pitch-black seas. The SDV also boasted an obstacle-avoidance sonar subsystem, which provided automatic warning to the pilot of any obstacles in the sub's path — an essential given that at their current depth they could see little more than a foot in front of them and would be "flying" blind, trusting the Doppler and their charts for navigation. The SDV had a pair of high-power halogen lights facing forward, but they were not an option on this mission.

"Course set. All clear," the navigator announced.

The pilot increased power to the propellers and they moved away from the sub, heading due east.

"What do you think, Chief?" the pilot finally asked, now that they were alone and out of the presence of higher-ranking officers. They both wore dive masks and mouthpieces, with transmitters wrapped around their necks. When they spoke, their voices sounded strangely garbled because the mouthpiece was held with the teeth while the speaker articulated with his throat.

The navigator, satisfied that everything was running smoothly, finally looked up from his panel at his cohort. "The politicians and bureaucrats ought to get their heads out of their asses and go public with this crap. That's what I think, Captain," Chief Petty Officer McKenzie replied.

"Always the big view," Captain Thorpe said with a low laugh that sounded like gargling to McKenzie. "I meant what do you think about our chances of spotting the transfer, if there is one?"

"They'd be a lot better if we went in with a big hammer right from the start and knocked these shit-birds on the head," McKenzie said. "I hate this sneaking andpeeking crap. What I really want to know is why I'm the navy guy and you're the army guy, but you're the one driving this sled?"

"Brains," Thorpe said. "Brains over muscle. You SEALs can do push-ups until the sun goes down but I'm a Green Beret. We got the brains and the looks."

"Yeah, right," McKenzie growled. "If you're so smart, how come you're in here with me?"

That was a good question, Thorpe silently acknowledged. Although they were from different branches of service, as McKenzie had pointed out, they, along with several dozen other members of the military's elite special operations forces, had been co-opted to form covert Department of Energy SO/NESTs teams — Special Operations Nuclear Emergency Search Teams.

At least that was the official jargon on their orders and the explanation given to the congressional oversight committee. In reality, he and McKenzie represented the spear point of much more than simply a search team.

They were actually part of the unit the Department of Defense used to patrol the world to keep the cauldron of nuclear weapons and materials from boiling over. Regular DOE SO/NEST teams were designed to clean up the mess after a nuclear problem occurred. They were reactive. DOD SO/NEST teams were proactive. People like McKenzie and Thorpe searched out potential nuclear problems before they escalated and a mess had to be cleaned up. So far they had been successful, but all it took was one failure and no one on the teams dwelled on that. The pressure was intense and men serving on SO/NEST rarely lasted more than a couple of years before they burned out.

Thorpe had been with SO/NEST for six months. McKenzie was the senior man in the group, with over four years of experience. The stress had aged him.

"You ever think about the insanity of what we do?" McKenzie suddenly said.

Thorpe was startled. That wasn't exactly the sort of question one asked on the inbound leg of a dangerous operation. "It's our job," he replied.

"Job?" McKenzie said. "Cutting grass, now that's a job. Being a doctor, that's a job. A doctor does an operation that saves somebody's life everybody thinks he's a god. He gets paid like one, too."

"We save millions of lives and what do we get? Shit, that's what we get. Hell, we don't even get hazardous duty pay."

"We don't get hazardous duty pay," Thorpe said, "because then the Department of Defense would have to tell Congress what we do in order to authorize it. And what we're doing is not exactly legal in the eyes of U.S. or international law. Not only are we not supposed to be operating overseas like this, it would scare the piss out of the civilians if they knew how close things get sometimes."

"Maybe the civilians need a scare," McKenzie argued. "Everyone thinks the world is safer now that the Cold War is over, but they're fooling themselves. Everything's gotten a lot more dangerous. Too many bombs, too much nuclear material floating around. Too many people playing shady games."

"You know I got passed over on my last promotion, don't you? The promotion board OK'd me, but then some fucking civilian oversight board noticed that I'd been at Tailhook. Fuck, I wasn't even in the goddamn hotel when those aviators were doing their stuff. I was representing SEAL Team Two at the convention."

"Sorry about that," Thorpe murmured, keeping his eyes on the control panel. He'd known McKenzie for the past six months, but had never worked this closely with him. Listening to him, Thorpe was beginning to wish he wasn't on this mission with the man.

"Fucking civilians," McKenzie said harshly, drawing a concerned look from Thorpe across the flooded chamber. "They're talking about chaptering me out, taking away my pension. We're the ones getting screwed while they sit at home and bitch about taxes and cut our fucking benefits. Fuck them all."

"Nav update?" Thorpe asked, trying to draw the older man's attention back to the task at hand.

After McKenzie gave him their present location, they both lapsed into silence. While his hands were steady on the controls, Thorpe felt the tension in the rest of his body and had to force himself to relax.

Thorpe's six-foot-two frame was cramped in the limited space allowed him. Under his wet suit, his body was well muscled, the result of a fierce daily workout routine.

His face, hidden by the mask he wore, was the deep brown of a man heavily exposed to the harshest of the sun's rays. He already carried the deep lines and crevasses that signaled late middle age. Only his blue eyes hinted that he was just thirty-four. If he had allowed his hair to grow beyond the thick, short stubble he favored it would have been dark and liberally sprinkled with gray.

Next to Thorpe, McKenzie had a better lengthwise fit at slightly less than five-foot-six, but his barrel chest and massively muscled arms made it difficult for him to move around. Before joining SO/NEST, McKenzie had carried the label of strongest man in the SEAL teams, quite a feat among a group of men who prided themselves on their physical conditioning. During physical training Thorpe had seen the older man bench press over three hundred pounds. McKenzie had as much pride in his body as a two-thousand-dollar-an-hour-model.

Both men stayed as still as they could during the run in, trying to keep the trim of the SDV steady.

"Running clear," McKenzie eventually said in a level voice. "I put us at three klicks off coast. Change heading to one-one-zero degrees."

"One-one-zero degrees," Thorpe confirmed, as he manipulated the controls. He glanced at his partner. The earlier outburst seemed forgotten, as McKenzie's demeanor eased.

"Two minutes."

"Roger."

The SDV slid through the water, the propellers leaving no trace fifty feet below the surface. As they drew closer McKenzie directed Thorpe nearer the surface as the ocean floor rose beneath them.

"We have one hundred feet under us," McKenzie announced. "Thirty above."

"Eighty down, twenty up."

"Sixty down, ten up. Hold vertical."

Thorpe slowed their forward speed and held their depth steady.

McKenzie was watching his screen intently. "Forty down. Route still clear."

Thorpe slowed until they were at a crawl.

"I've got solid contact," McKenzie said. "Shoreline," he confirmed. "New heading, eight-zero degrees."

"Eight-zero degrees." The SDV turned slightly left.

"Easy, easy," McKenzie muttered as he watched numbers tick off on his screen. "On my mark. Ten down, ten up. Hold."

Thorpe brought the SDV to a halt, then slowly let the craft sink until it rested on the bottom, in twenty feet of water, two hundred yards from shore.

Thorpe reached out and flipped a switch on the control panel. "Beacon on." He checked what looked like a large wristwatch strapped to his left forearm. A small red dot glowed. "I read the SDV beacon six by six."

McKenzie did the same. "Six by six."

Thorpe was doing everything by the book, following a checklist taped to the left side of his compartment. "Begin shutdown."

Each man turned off their parts of the SDV until all that was functioning was the beacon and the air supply.

"Switch to personal air," Thorpe ordered before he turned off the SDV's air supply. He glanced over. McKenzie pulled out his air hose, which also disconnected him from the internal communication system. McKenzie gave him a thumbs-up. Thorpe switched on his own rebreather then flipped a switch cutting off the internal air.

They pushed open their hatches and slid out, pulling their waterproofed rucksacks with them. Leaving the Mark IX resting on the bottom, they swam toward the shore, the rucksacks towed on six-foot lines attached to safety lines at their waists.

The two men ascended until they were just below the moonlit surface. Their fins flickered back and forth, propelling them smoothly toward shore. Thorpe held a nav board right in front of his face, following the azimuth determined from their mission briefing.

After a few minutes both men could feel the sea change. They knew they were close to shore from the increasing swell. Thorpe tapped McKenzie on the shoulder. McKenzie held position while Thorpe surfaced. Thorpe rode a wave up and looked shoreward. He could make out lights to the left but the shore ahead was dark. Thorpe hoped their underwater navigation had been accurate. He returned to McKenzie.

Together, they moved forward until they could feel the tips of their fins hit the bottom. Thorpe edged ahead, the surf lifting him and then slamming him down into the sand. Before the water pulled him back, Thorpe dug his hands into the sand and held his place, then scuttled forward a few more feet. He could feel McKenzie behind him, pulling off his fins. McKenzie then crawled to his side and Thorpe returned the favor. Each retrieved his rucksack and unfastened the submachine gun tied to it, pulling backthe slide and making sure there was a round in the chamber, ready to fire, then pulling the muzzle plug out. They slipped an arm through the shoulder strap of their ruck and lay at the edge of the surf, listening carefully.

Thorpe stood and sprinted across the sand, McKenzie right on his heels. They reached the concealment of the dunes. The dry desert air felt good against their faces, the only part of their skin exposed.

Thorpe carefully unsealed his ruck, making sure it made no noise. He pulled out a small handheld device and turned it on. The GPR — Global Positioning Receiver — quickly accessed the nearest three DOD satellites overhead and pinpointed their position to within five meters.

"We're four hundred yards south," Thorpe whispered. He didn't think that was too bad for an eight-kilometer underwater infiltration. Both he and McKenzie donned their night-vision goggles. Thorpe waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the slightly green and depth-distorted display.

Thorpe shouldered his ruck. He stood and led the way, carefully moving through the dunes to the north, McKenzie behind him and to the right.

They now heard another noise over the pounding surf: heavy diesel engines. Thorpe slowed, searching for the guards that would be near. A high dune lay across their path and they crawled until they could just see over it.

"Shit," McKenzie muttered. Four large military-style trucks were parked with their open tailgates pointed toward the beach. But the trucks were not the focus of McKenzie's comment. Rather he was referring to the two tanks, one with its main gun aimed out to sea, the other guarding the sandy road that led inland.

"They're Merkavas," McKenzie said, confirming what Thorpe had already determined from their distinctive shape. "What the hell are the Israelis doing here?"

Thorpe didn't have an answer. His and McKenzie's need-to-know had only extended to a rumor that there would be transfer of a large amount of weapons-grade plutonium. The plutonium, supposedly smuggled out of Russia, was to be delivered to the buyer tonight on this beach. They had not been informed who was doing the smuggling or who was doing the buying, but the assumption that an Arab group was involved on the receiving end had seemed likely since they were lying on Lebanese sand.

Thorpe and McKenzie had no idea how even this limited information was obtained. They had received only the filtered-down classified version from Department of Defense intelligence channels.

Both men flinched as the seaward tank turned on its high-powered searchlight. The beam spread across the water and Thorpe was glad they had come in four hundred meters to the south. He could see armed men walking around the perimeter, the nearest only twenty meters away on the far slope of the dune.

"What now, Mr. Brains?" McKenzie whispered.

"We get our air and ground support on station and we film," Thorpe said.

"Those are Israelis," McKenzie hissed. "Not some ragheads. Something heavy is going down here."

Thorpe retrieved the handset for the small backpack satellite radio from his ruck. The radio was hooked to a specially designed frequency-jumping scrambler that made it impossible for the transmission to be intercepted. "Heaven, this is Topaz. We are on target. Over."

Heaven was the code name for their commander on board an aircraft carrier two hundred miles to the west.

"This is Heaven. Read you five by. Give us a description of what you have. Over."

"Four trucks waiting on the beach. Also we've got two Merkava tanks standing guard, so your people better have something to take care of that. Approximately two dozen men on foot armed with automatic weapons. Over."

"Did you say Merkavas? Over."

Thorpe glanced at McKenzie who only grunted as he opened his ruck. "Roger. Over."

While Thorpe was talking, McKenzie pulled out a palm-sized digital video camera with a specially designed night lens. Instead of recording the image on film or tape, the camera computerized and digitized directly onto a small CD-ROM disk. McKenzie began filming.

After a few seconds of silence, Thorpe keyed the mike. "Request support stand by, over."

"This is Heaven. Your support is standing by and coming on this channel. Call sign Angel. Will be monitoring. Update us any changes. I still reserve final go. Out."

Thorpe keyed the mike. "Angel, this is Topaz. Over."

The voice that came over the air had a distinct dull roar in the background that indicated the speaker was sitting in a cockpit moving at several hundred miles an hour. "This is Angel. Standing by. We're four minutes out from your location and waiting. Over."

"Roger," Thorpe said, "stand by. Over."

According to their briefing, Angel consisted of several Harrier jets and four helicopters full of heavily armed Marines flying in from the carrier. Thorpe knew the Harriers could make short work of the tanks and the Marines could finish the job.

Something slid into the light sent out by the searchlight. There was the sound of a strong wind, then a hovercraft came into view, rapidly approaching the shore, coming up onto the beach and blowing sand about. There were no markings on the vehicle.

Thorpe pulled the mike close to his lips. "This is Topaz. We've a got a hovercraft coming in. The deal is going down. Request Angel come on in. Over."

The hovercraft pulled up directly behind the four trucks and slowly settled down. Men ran up to the rear deck and began rolling barrels down a plank onto the sand and then four men lifted each one into the rear of a truck. The barrels were painted bright red.

"Pay dirt," McKenzie muttered. "I'll bet you every cent of my measly salary that those barrels contain cased plutonium."

"I wouldn't take the bet," Thorpe whispered. "The question is, who's the supplier?" Thorpe keyed the mike, wondering why he had not received a reply to his previous message. "Angel, this is Topaz. We have positive confirmation of hot materials. Request Angel come in. Over."

"Topaz, this is Heaven. Negative. I am switching you over to call sign Loki. Take all orders from Loki. Out."

Thorpe looked at McKenzie in confusion. There was a brief break of static, then a new voice came on. "Topaz, this is Loki, over."

"This is Topaz," Thorpe replied.

"Abort mission. Return to home base. Over."

Thorpe glanced at McKenzie. "This is Topaz. I say again. Confirm hot materials here. Request Angel. Over."

"Angel is heading home, suggest you do the same. Out." The radio went dead.

"Fuck!" McKenzie hissed. "They've left us!"

At that moment, they both heard a slight noise to their rear. Thorpe was still putting the mike down and turning when he heard the low popping of McKenzie's submachine gun spewing rounds.

Thorpe caught a glimpse of a figure tumbling back down the dune. Someone else was there and a muzzle flashed. Thorpe didn't hear anything, but he reacted instinctively, firing at the flash.

Leaving their rucks behind, Thorpe and McKenzie slid down the slope to where the bodies lay, scanning the area for more guards. Both men were dead. They were dressed in khaki and armed with automatic rifles with bulky silencers on top.

McKenzie swore as he peered down at the face of the man at his feet. "They're Agency!"

"What?" Thorpe said.

"I know this guy," McKenzie said. "He's fucking CIA." McKenzie stood. "It's a set-up! That's it. I've had it with this bullshit! No wonder they aborted us." McKenzie popped the CD out of the camera and slid it into a pocket on the inside of his wet suit.

Thorpe grabbed the chin of the man he shot and turned the face up. He spotted the small boom mike attached to the headset the man wore and immediately knew what that meant.

He turned to McKenzie. "We've been made!"

"What?" McKenzie said, then both spun around as the whine of a turbine engine revving up came over the top of the dune, followed by the tip of a 105-mm muzzle.

The Merkava tank was moving at thirty miles an hour as it crested the dune and it flew almost ten feet before the heavy treads crashed down onto the sand.

Thorpe and McKenzie barely had time to roll out of the way as the steel behemoth tore by, showering them with sand and pieces of the dead bodies it had crushed.

The driver of the tank pivot steered, reversing one tread while keeping the other going forward and the tank abruptly turned. Thorpe fired on automatic, more a gesture of defiance than with any hope of causing damage. The bullets ricocheted off the metal in a spray of sparks.

"Run!" McKenzie screamed. "The water!"

Together they scrambled toward the surf two hundred yards away. The tank ate up the distance at four times their speed.

"Split!" McKenzie yelled when the tank was less than twenty feet behind them. Thorpe jigged left while McKenzie went right. With an instant decision to make, the driver turned left. Thorpe looked over his shoulder and saw the blunt edge of the tank's front slope five feet behind him. He dove into the sand, rolling onto his back and watching as the treads came toward him. He rolled once more and the right tread clanked by less than a foot away.

Thorpe was in total blackness and smothered with diesel fumes. Worse though, was the overwhelming sense of weight on top of him, the metal bottom of the tank eight inches above his body, the treads blocking movement to either side.

The tank kept going and Thorpe reached up, grabbing a loop of the tow cable overhanging off the back deck and was dragged through the sand as the tank turned around to the right. The driver briefly searched for Thorpe's body. When he couldn't find it, he decided to go after the other man.

McKenzie was running like a halfback through the defensive backfield, cutting back and forth, hoping to be able to turn quicker than the tank. But the driver was very good, matching McKenzie's moves and closing the distance. At the last second, McKenzie did what Thorpe had done, throwing himself down in a shallow ditch between the treads.

The tank rolled over the trench and McKenzie was safe, directly between the treads, but this time the driver was prepared. He slammed on the brakes, then pivot-steered back and forth, digging the treads down into the sand and moving the tank left and right in two-foot arcs.

McKenzie realized that if he didn't move soon the treads would settle down in the sand and the bottom of the tank would crush him. He scrambled through the sand trying to get from under the tank to the rear. At that moment, the driver unexpectedly made a ninety-degree turn to the left.

McKenzie couldn't move fast enough. The tread racing by caught his left forearm and sucked it into the gnashing metal. If there had been a hard surface underneath, there would have been nothing left of the limb, but the sand gave slightly.

From his position still hanging on to the rear of the tank, Thorpe heard McKenzie's scream over the roar of the engine. Thorpe let go and rolled away, then got to his feet. The tank was still churning sand, back and forth. Thorpe ran forward timing his jump to coincide with the tank's movements. He slammed onto the rear deck and grasped for a handhold.

His left hand closed around a ridge of metal and Thorpe hauled himself up. He quickly climbed onto the turret. The tank commander's hatch was slightly open, enough for the commander to look forward. Thorpe pulled his 9-mm pistol out of its holster and stuck it in the hatch and fired, hitting the commander in the side of the head, blowing brains and blood all over the inside of the turret.

Thorpe ripped open the hatch and dove in headfirst, sliding past the dead body. He was firing as he fell and he kept firing as he hit the metal grating on the floor of the turret. When the magazine was finally empty, the entire three-man crew was dead, riddled with bullets. Thorpe got to his feet as he slammed another magazine into the pistol.

The driver's dead foot slipped off the pedal and the tank came to a halt, engine still rumbling. Thorpe was just climbing out the top hatch when he spotted the second tank, a quarter mile away and closing fast.

Thorpe dropped back down into the turret. He grabbed the tank commander's override control lever and turned the turret, looking out the top of the hatch until he had the barrel lined up. The tank was heading directly for him.

Now he could only hope there was a round in the breach. Thorpe pulled back the trigger on the front of the override. There was a blossom of flame from the end of the muzzle and the blast blew back over Thorpe, a sudden surge of warm wind.

The kinetic sabot round crossed the distance between the two tanks in less than one-tenth of a second. It hit at the turret-body junction of the second tank, punching through the front and out the other side, leaving only two small, four-inch-circumference holes in its wake.

But the metal that had been in those holes killed the crew as the shrapnel ricocheted around the inside of the tank, the armor protection turning deadly as it kept the metal shards trapped inside like a swarm of angry bees. The crew was torn to shreds.

One piece of shrapnel hit the stowed rounds at the rear of the turret and ignited one of them. The round blew, taking with it those packed next to it, and the turret popped off in the tremendous secondary explosion.

Thorpe climbed out and jumped over the side to the sand. He momentarily froze as he spotted McKenzie, crawling with one arm toward the water, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. Thorpe ran over and knelt next to him.

"Oh, shit," Thorpe exclaimed when he saw the man's crushed limb in the glow of the burning tank. McKenzie's left forearm was a mess of mangled flesh and bone, hanging from his elbow by half-ripped tendons.

"Go!" McKenzie hissed. "Get out of here."

Thorpe pulled a length of parachute cord and a small Maglite out of his combat vest. He wrapped the cord around McKenzie's upper left arm. Thorpe tied a square knot in the thin rope as tight as he could, leaving the Maglite inside the knot. Thorpe then twisted the Maglite around several times, cinching down the cord and cutting most of the blood flow with the makeshift tourniquet.

Thorpe was reaching for his first-aid packet attached to his vest to get a painkiller when a string of tracers split the night, flying over their heads. He could hear voices in the distance, shouting, getting closer, firing wildly into the night.

"Go!" McKenzie insisted.

Thorpe grabbed McKenzie and, with a surge of adrenaline, threw the bulky man over his shoulders.

McKenzie was protesting, demanding that Thorpe leave him behind, but Thorpe staggered to his feet and headed for the surf.

"I'm dead," McKenzie yelled in Thorpe's ear. "Leave me."

Thorpe didn't have the breath to answer, his feet sliding in the sand as he ran for the water. Another burst of tracers went by, this time a bit closer.

Thorpe hit the water running. As the water splashed up around his legs, he reached up and grabbed McKenzie's safety line and hooked it into his own belt. He lowered McKenzie into the water, then dove forward. The line momentarily brought him to an abrupt halt, then Thorpe began the difficult business of swimming, pulling McKenzie behind him.

Thorpe swam as hard as he could, trying to put distance between them and the shore. Those on the shore were still firing wildly, tracers whipsawing in all directions.

After a couple of minutes, Thorpe pulled on the line and brought McKenzie in close to check on him.

"Leave me," McKenzie said, his face white from loss of blood. He'd popped his inflatable vest because he was too weak even to float.

"Shut up," Thorpe said as he continued to kick with his legs. "We'll make it."

"My blood will draw sharks," McKenzie warned. "Go while you can."

Thorpe hit the homer on his wrist and checked the direction. The SDV was to the southwest. Thorpe grabbed McKenzie and pulled him along as he swam in that direction.

"How far to the SDV?" McKenzie asked in a dazed voice.

Thorpe looked at his monitor. "About a hundred yards."

"I can't dive," McKenzie muttered, then he passed out, his head lolling back on the preserver.

Thorpe swam farther, towing McKenzie, and checking the homer again. They were over the SDV. In the dark, Thorpe turned to look at McKenzie. The older man's face was white, the muscles slack. As best he could in the dark and swelling waters, Thorpe made sure there was no blood passing through the tourniquet, and that McKenzie's face was out of the water. After letting the wounded man go, Thorpe inserted the mouthpiece for his rebreather and dove. His own lacerations pulsed with pain in the salt water, but Thorpe ignored them.

He was at the SDV in half a minute. Forgetting the checklist, Thorpe powered up. He retraced his route and surfaced. Kneeling in the hatch, Thorpe looked about. McKenzie was nowhere to be seen.

Reaching down, Thorpe gave power to the screws and anxiously began driving the SDV in slowly increasing circles. The six-foot swells knocked him against the side of the hatch and made it difficult for him to see. The SDV wasn't designed to operate on the surface and was tossed about like an empty canoe.

Thorpe spotted something to his left and turned the SDV in that direction. Relief flooded through him as he saw that it was McKenzie. Thorpe brought the submersible next to the unconscious figure. He tied off his safety line to a hitch on the top, then slid into the water. He paddled over to McKenzie and grabbed hold of the other man's safety line. McKenzie was still alive, but barely.

Then Thorpe felt something slide underneath him. He looked down. In the moonlight he could see a large gray form lazily swim by. Glancing up, Thorpe saw the dorsal fin of an eight-foot shark less than two feet in front of him, slicing through the calm water. Thorpe kept his legs moving as he watched the fin turn and head back. Thorpe pulled McKenzie to his chest.

Putting his body between McKenzie and the shark, Thorpe pulled on his safety line, drawing them toward the SDV, expecting at any moment to feel the rip of razor-sharp teeth in his back.

Thorpe reached the edge of the SDV and with a surge of adrenaline, shoved the older man up over the side, rolling him into his cocoon. Thorpe swiftly scrambled up the same side. Clinging to the top, he sealed McKenzie's hatch, then climbed over into his own, sealing it behind him.

Grabbing the controls, he adjusted the radar to home in on the submarine's beacon and opened the throttle all the way.

Chapter Two

The combat talon came in low through the desert mountain pass, wingtips less than forty feet from the rock walls on either side. Inside the cockpit of the modified C-130 cargo plane, the pilots were flying by computer and long experience: watching their low-light television displays and terrain-avoidance radar while listening to the instructions from the navigators sitting in front of their computer consoles in the forward half of the cargo bay.

The flight south from the air base in Turkey had been easy, as had been the approach over Lebanon, but as the Israeli border drew closer, the Talon went lower and lower, until it was now skimming along, less than forty feet above ground level, well below even the best Israeli radar.

The Talon was just west of the Golan Heights in the jumbled terrain of northern Israel. It was uninhabited terrain and satellite imagery had confirmed this low-level course through the canyon was free of military forces.

There was near-total darkness outside, the moon having completed its cycle, and only the stars giving the faintest hint of light. Inside the cargo bay, behind the black curtain that sealed off the Talon crew from the people and equipment in the rear half, four black-clad figures waited, gathered around a canister that was rigged with a cargo parachute. The four also wore chutes, along with rucksacks rigged in front under their reserves and weapons strapped across their chests.

"Six minutes!" the loadmaster screamed, straining to be heard above the four super-charged turboprop engines that powered the plane.

One of the four kneeled down and unhooked the snap link from the cargo chute on top of the bundle and hooked it to the steel cable running over their heads along the right side of the plane. Then the four hooked up their own static line snap hooks right behind the bundles.

"Three minutes!"

The four were struggling to stay on their feet as the plane jigged its way through the canyon, the pilots staying below the rim of the walls. A particularly hard cut to the right threw all four against the other side of the plane, but their eyes were on the canister which teetered for a second, before settling back down in its specially designed holder.

The noise level increased even more as a horizontal crack appeared in the back, open to the chill night air. The crack widened as the back ramp lowered on hydraulic arms until it was level and the top disappeared into the cargo bay roof under the large tail.

They now had the pilot's view in reverse and watched as rocky walls flew by and disappeared as the plane shifted and turned. The deck slanted up as the plane gained jump altitude.

"One minute!" The crew chief knelt with a razor-sharp knife in his hand, the blade against the nylon strap holding the canister. With his free hand he cracked a chem light tied off on the apex of the cargo chute.

All eyes were riveted to the glowing red light above the opening. The seconds stretched out as adrenaline altered their sense of time, slowing it down, forcing the team into an agonized tension.

The light turned green. The knife sliced through the nylon and the canister slid out the back, its chute instantly billowing open. The four raced out, stepping off the ramp into darkness, their specially designed chutes opening within a second of exiting the ramp.

And they needed that quick opening as they were only two hundred and fifty feet above the canyon floor. Triple canopies exploded above each jumper, jarring their forward speed from the aircraft's hundred-and-twenty-five knots to zero in less than two seconds. Each jumper quickly pulled eighteen-inch attaching straps and their rucksacks fell to the end of fifteen-foot lowering lines to dangle below their feet. Just as quickly, each jumper reached up, found their toggles, and steered their chutes toward the green glow of the chem light on top of the bundle's chute. They barely had time to turn in the correct direction before the ground came rushing up and they rotated their elbows in tight against their faces, put their feet together and flexed their knees, waiting for impact.

The bundle hit sand and the four jumpers followed. Each rucksack touched down, followed by the hard slam of rapidly descending bodies all within forty feet of the bundle.

Three of the four were on their feet immediately, unhooking their parachutes while shaking off the shock of landing. Throwing rucksacks over their shoulders, weapons at the ready, they ran over to the canister, pulling their chutes with them.

"Where's Scanlon?" Brinn, the leader, asked, checking the other two faces.

They turned and looked at the fourth chute lying on the sand about thirty feet away, and the motionless dark form at the end of the suspension lines.

"Shit," Brinn muttered as they ran over. Brinn was tall and built like a linebacker. His face was weathered with age and stress and his crew cut hair was mostly gray. Like the others, he was dressed in black fatigues with a combat vest covering the top half of his body. Adorning the vest were the assorted tools of Brinn's chosen trade. A pair of night-vision goggles were looped around his neck and he pulled them up.

Reaching the body, Brinn unsnapped the man's helmet, grimacing as he was greeted by the sight of dark red blood mixed with gray brain matter. Looking aside he spotted the sharp boulder that had caused the injury. Scanlon's luck had run out. It could have been any of them, Brinn knew, but of the four, Scanlon was the one they could least afford to lose.

But there was a plan for that, an extra body for that contingency. He turned and stared at the person directly across from him who was looking down, ashen-faced, at the dead man. He had doubts about Scanlon's backup, never a good thing on a mission.

"You're primary weapons now, Parker," Brinn said. "Sanchez is your backup."

Parker looked up from the body without comprehension.

"You are primary weapons," Brinn repeated. "You got that?"

Parker slowly nodded, fighting the shock of Scanlon's violent death.

"Don't fuck up," Brinn added as he took off his helmet and placed it next to the body.

Parker followed suit. "I'll do my duty." Long brown hair, tied in a ponytail fell down her back as she shook it free of the confines of the Kevlar helmet. Parker was in her mid-thirties, five-and-a-half feet tall and slender. Her face had high cheekbones and was creased with worry lines around the edge of her mouth and eyes. At the present moment, those lines were furrowed as she turned from the body and looked at the canister.

"Let's move," Brinn ordered.

"Wait. What about Scanlon?" the third member of the party, Sanchez, asked. He was a wiry Hispanic, with dark skin and close-cropped black hair. He was kneeling over the body, his voice betraying his emotion.

"Rig a thermal grenade on the body to go off in four hours," Brinn ordered. "There'll be nothing left but bone and teeth. His gear is sterile anyway, so he's deniable. We sure as shit can't carry him with us." He tapped Parker on the arm. "Let's get the package and get ready to move."

Parker caught the gaze that Sanchez had focused on her. It was difficult to see his features but for a moment his black eyes held her with an intensity that caused her to turn back to the canister. She saw that her hands were shaking and she drew a deep breath.

An hour later, the three lay sweating in the chilly early morning air just below the east canyon rim. The five-hundred-foot climb carrying the slung canister had been harder than they'd anticipated and time was growing short.

Brinn pulled a small GPR — Global Positioning Receiver — out of his combat vest. He checked the data on the small screen. Sanchez was pulling a radio and small satellite dish out of his rucksack, opening the dish and setting it at the proper azimuth and elevation to their designated satellite. Parker was unsnapping the clasps on the side of the canister.

"We're in the right spot," Brinn said. He looked up at the crest ten feet above and gestured for the other two to stop what they were doing and follow him. The three slithered up on their bellies until they could see over.

A quarter mile away, set against the side of a steep mountain, a road led up to a massive steel and concrete portal, which was surrounded by rows of barbed wire and armored vehicles. The door set in the opening was big enough to accommodate six vehicles side by side and was over thirty feet high. The door was protected from overhead observation by huge camouflage nets draped on steel poles. In the bright green glow of their night-vision goggles, they could see not only the door, but the guards surrounding it, and the bright glow of infrared searchlights that illuminated the entire area for the guards' own night-vision goggles.

"That's the tip of the iceberg," Brinn said, indicating the door. "The Israelis have hollowed out most of that mountain." He tapped his hand on a flat rocky space to his right. "Put the special here," he instructed Parker. "Get me up on MILSTAR," he ordered Sanchez.

The other two scurried back to their equipment. Straining, Parker dragged the sixty-pound canister to the indicated spot. She finished removing the snaps and flipped open a panel, revealing a computer keyboard and LED display set into the side of the canister.

She pushed an inset button and the screen came alive, scrolling through its own internal systems check.

"I have access to MILSTAR," Sanchez whispered from the radio.

Parker opened a small door to the left of the keyboard and pulled a thin cable out. She handed the free end to Sanchez who screwed it into a corresponding portal on the top of the SATCOM radio.

She typed a command into the keyboard and watched the screen. "We have secure connection from the REACT computer to MILSTAR," she announced in a low voice.

"I've sent our infiltration report burst to Cheyenne Mountain," Sanchez said. "They know we're in location and ready."

Brinn nodded. He took one last look at the tunnel entrance, then slid down next to Parker. "You sure on your procedure?" he asked.

"I'm sure," she replied.

He looked at her long and hard, clearly unhappy about the turn of events. His stare was broken by words forming on the screen.

"I have an incoming Emergency Action Message," Parker said. The screen cleared and new words formed, followed by a six digit code. "Emergency Action Message received," Parker said. She reached inside her black fatigues and pulled out the thin steel chain she wore around her neck. Attached to it was a laminated card wrapped in black plastic. She peeled the plastic back and checked the numbers on it against those on the screen.

"EAM code is current and valid," Parker called out.

"Code current and valid," Sanchez repeated, checking his own card.

"Code verified," Brinn said. "Prepare weapon," he ordered.

Parker typed in the sequence of commands that she had long ago memorized and practiced day after day. After precisely forty-seven seconds she stopped. "Weapon prepared."

"Check the EAM," Brinn ordered. "What's the delay set for?"

For a moment the trained routine broke as all three sets of eyes met over the canister. Parker looked back down. "As briefed, I read a delay of two hours from activation to blast if the bomb is initiated."

"Yeah, right," Sanchez muttered, earning himself a glare from Brinn.

"Hopefully we won't have to find out if the computer's telling the truth," Parker said.

Sanchez laughed bitterly. "Yeah, hopefully."

Brinn's voice had a hard edge to it. "Captain Sanchez, I don't like that tone."

Sanchez kept quiet, merely lifting his eyes to Parker as if they had some silent pact. Parker ignored him, wishing she could leave the bleak desert landscape and this blighted mission. She tried not to dwell on the next few hours, but instead thought of exfiltration and home.

Parker looked at the sky. There was no sign of dawn yet. They had another two hours of darkness. Brinn pointed across the canyon and down to the left where a knoll was silhouetted against the night sky about three miles away. "That's our overwatch and exfiltration point. I hope we can make it in two hours if we have to."

Brinn leaned back against his rucksack. "Might as well make yourself—" he paused as there was a low beep from the computer in the side of the canister.

"Oh, fuck," Sanchez muttered.

Parker read the new message with a trembling voice. "We are ordered to free firing locks so the bomb can be remotely controlled by the REACT computer through MILSTAR."

"Great, just fucking great," Sanchez said. Freeing the firing locks took activation control away from the team.

"Free firing locks," Brinn ordered, ignoring Sanchez.

"Something's not right about this," Sanchez said flatly and with certainty.

Brinn shook his head. "Listen, we got sent in here with this thing. We have an EAM. Let's do our job, people."

"Jesus, what if this is some mistake? We're going to set this thing off—" Sanchez said, but Brinn cut him off.

"We're not setting it off. We're just removing the safety firing locks. Someone from the National Command Authority will give the order to fire this bomb and that order will be relayed from Cheyenne Mountain through MILSTAR to the REACT computer and that will set this thing off."

"But we're not at war with Israel," Sanchez argued. "I mean, what's the purpose here?"

Brinn's voice sharpened. "Do you want to sit here and discuss this until we get scarfed up by the Israelis or are you going to do your job, Captain?" He turned to Parker. "Remove the safety firing locks."

Parker took a deep breath and flexed her fingers before she began typing into the keyboard, entering the code words she had memorized during the mission briefing. She entered the two words, then put her finger over the enter key.

"Do it!" Brinn hissed.

Parker pressed the enter key and the screen cleared. A highlighted box blinked, waiting for Sanchez's code word.

Sanchez didn't move. Brinn's hand slid down toward the pistol grip of the submachine gun slung over his shoulder.

Sanchez saw the move. "Hey, Major," he pleaded, "we could be starting World War III here. I just feel like something's wrong. There's no reason to arm this thing. I tell you there's something fucked up going on and we're about to add to it."

"You don't need a reason, Captain," Brinn said stoically. "Your job is to type in your code."

"Don't you think I know that, sir?" Sanchez replied. "This isn't my first mission. But we never went as far as removing the firing locks before."

Parker silently watched the two men arguing, alarm and fear swimming across her fine features. She was having a difficult time accepting that this, her first Red Flyer mission, would probably be her last. Nuclear weapons were her specialty and beyond Sanchez's concerns about the mission, she had her own fears about removing the locks. They'd been assured that there would be a two-hour delay if the locks were removed and the weapon activated by the REACT computer from afar. A certain twisted logic in the back of her brain told her that there might not be a delay. The bomb could go off the second the locks were removed and a firing code transmitted. Why would the powers-that-be leave the bomb sitting here for two hours unattended? To allow the four — check that, three — of them to get away? A lousy three people weighed against a tactical nuclear strike on Israel's secret nuclear weapons storage bunker made for a very uneven equation in her mind.

Despite that concern though, she had entered her code. What other option was there? They were here and they'd received their orders. Parker felt strangely detached from reality; even her fear felt like someone else's pressed upon her. Sixteen years of military training from her first day at the Air Force Academy was allowing her to function and follow orders.

"We do our duty," Brinn said. "Enter your code."

Sanchez didn't move.

The muzzle of Brinn's sub was now centered on Sanchez's forehead. "Enter your fucking code to remove the locks, Captain, or I guarantee you'll never leave this place alive. Your only chance is to do your duty."

"Scanlon was primary weapons," Sanchez said. "Maybe he knew something we don't. We don't know exactly what's going on. We—" Sanchez was again cut off by Brinn.

"We're not supposed to know exactly what's happening. We're supposed to do what we're trained to do when we're given the correct orders!" His finger tightened on the trigger. "You have five seconds, Captain, or I blow your head off. And you know I'll do it." The muzzle moved ever so slightly. "You have three seconds," Brinn warned.

Sanchez looked at Parker but what could she say? She'd already entered her code. She looked down into the canyon, unconsciously holding her breath, fearing either outcome of Sanchez's decision.

With shaking hands, Sanchez took Parker's place and typed in his code word. "May God forgive us," he whispered.

All three tensed as the screen cleared. They each, to varying extent, expected the bomb to go off in their faces. As the seconds passed and nothing happened, they slowly relaxed.

A new message came up. "Locks are removed," Parker read. "Weapon is armed and ready for incoming commands."

Another message flashed and numbers began counting down on the screen.

"Bomb is armed and firing sequence initiated," Parker whispered in disbelief. "Two hours until firing." Without consciously thinking of it, her fingers set the timer on her wristwatch for two hours and she pressed the start button.

Sanchez stared at the bomb. "I am the destroyer of worlds," he whispered.

Brinn, his professional demeanor cracked by the last couple of minutes, jabbed a finger in Sanchez's chest. "You're a crazy fuck. If it's the last thing I do, you're out of Red Flyer. You can kiss your career good-bye."

Sanchez looked at the star-filled sky. "You are both just another button on that panel."

"Another word and I'm placing you under arrest," Brinn snarled. "Now, let's get out of here."

The other two didn't need any further urging as they gathered up their rucksacks and slithered down the canyon wall.

It took them one hour and forty-eight minutes of hard climbing to make it to the overwatch position. Breathing heavily, they threw their rucks to the ground as they reached the top of the knoll. Brinn quickly undid the flap on his rucksack and pulled out three long plastic tubes. He unscrewed the ends and slid out the stock, receiver, and barrel for a fifty-caliber sniper rifle. With practiced hands, he quickly bolted the three parts together and slid the eight-power scope on top. The first hint of dawn was showing in the eastern sky, lighting up the Jordanian border.

He pulled back the bolt and chambered one of the five-inch-long rounds. He sighted in on the bomb. It sat where they had left it, undisturbed. His finger trembled lightly on the trigger as he watched, protecting the bomb in its final moments.

"Prepare to record for the damage report," he told Sanchez, the first words spoken since they'd left the bomb.

Sanchez pulled a digital video camera out of his rucksack and trained it in the general direction of the bomb.

Parker leaned back against her rucksack, feeling the sweat beginning to dry on her back. She checked her watch. Six minutes before detonation.

The three were silent as the minutes passed. Parker looked at her watch once more. A minute. She pulled her goggles down and turned them back on. She felt pain in her shoulders and realized she was hunched over behind her ruck, putting it between her and the bomb. She forced herself to straighten up. She knew the effects the bomb would have, knew that they were safe at this distance. But although her mind knew the facts, her body still felt and feared the worst.

Brinn put a special cover over the end of his scope, a device that would protect his eye from the effect of the flash. "Give me a time hack," he ordered.

"Fourteen seconds," Parker said. "Ten." She watched the numbers. "Five. Four. Three. Two. One."

She flinched as there was a sharp flash of light in the direction of the bomb, but just as quickly, the light was gone and nothing happened. No shock wave… no mushroom cloud… nothing.

"Malfunction?" Sanchez was looking through binoculars.

"Something blew," Brinn muttered. He jabbed a finger at Sanchez. "Come up on FM radio and see if our exfil chopper is inbound. If you get contact, tell them we have a malfunction."

"They don't malfunction," Parker said in a low voice, but Brinn ignored her.

Sanchez turned on the small FM radio secreted in his vest and put the small headset on. "Condor this is Eagle, over."

He pressed a finger to his ear as he got a reply. He relayed the information to the other two. "Condor is five minutes out."

"Tell them about the malfunction," Brinn insisted. "Tell them the mission is a no-go."

Sanchez repeated the information. He listened to the reply, then slowly looked at the other two. "They know. It was a test," he said.

"What?" Brinn was confused.

"A test. They had a small conventional explosive rigged in the canister, not a nuke," Sanchez said.

"Why the fuck would they have us come out here for a goddamn test?!" Brinn exploded.

"To see if we'd do it," Parker said in a quiet voice.

Major Brinn, Major Parker, and Captain Sanchez were directed into a dimly lit conference room by the taciturn lieutenant who'd been their escort since their arrival at Cheyenne Mountain two hours earlier.

The trip to Colorado had required a series of rides with plenty of time to reflect, from the moment the HH-53 Pavelow helicopter had swooped in to pick them up in Israel and fly them to Turkey, where a U.S. Air Force jet had been waiting to take them to Germany, then on to the United States. They'd been debriefed by several men, some wearing civilian clothes, on the flight back to the States. Parker, Brinn, and Sanchez had spent the flight anxiously awaiting this after-action review of the exercise. Not once had they been told why they'd been sent on a test mission into Israel with what they thought was a nuclear bomb. Nor were any regrets or concerns over Scanlon's death expressed.

The conference room was located inside Cheyenne Mountain, on the southwest side of Colorado Springs. Cheyenne Mountain was a massive granite mountain along the front range of the Rocky Mountains. Pikes Peak was a few miles to the northwest, Colorado Springs to the northeast. The complex inside the mountain had been built in the early 1960s by the Department of Defense to house NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

Parker looked around the room. There were several colonels and majors seated around the conference table with junior ranking officers in plastic seats along the walls. Two men, seated all the way at the rear of the room, were shrouded in shadow, only their silhouettes and the dim glow of a pipe. Parker was surprised the man was smoking in here, given that smoking in federal facilities had long ago been banned. The scent of the pipe smoke lay heavy in the room.

Parker and the others snapped to attention as General Willoughby walked into the conference room. The two men in the back remained seated.

"Take your seats," Willoughby ordered as he sat at the head of the table. The general looked about the room, his gaze lingering on Brinn, then Sanchez, and then shifting past Parker to the rear of the room.

"Mr. Lugar," he was looking at the man to the left who didn't acknowledge the introduction. "Mr. Lugar," Willoughby continued, "represents the National Command Authority." Willoughby's head turned to the man smoking the pipe next to Lugar. "Professor Kilten," he said with a nod of his head.

"General," Kilten returned the greeting.

Parker started at the name. She, and every other officer in nuclear weapons command, knew who Kilten was: the designer of the REACT computer system and practically every other piece of computer hardware and software used in the nuclear weapons business. He was the man who had designed and pulled together the entire nuclear command and control structure, from the design of the bombs themselves to the strategic planning for their use.

While military men switched jobs every few years in keeping with their career paths, Kilten was one of the many civilians at the Pentagon who provided long-term expertise in certain fields. Because of that, he knew more about the field than the military men he worked for.

"Let's get this over with," Willoughby said.

The colonel to Willoughby's right got up and stood at the lectern. He opened his portable computer. It had the record from the mission debriefing loaded into its hard drive, from jump-in to the chopper ride out. The colonel went into the after action review, speaking rapidly and succinctly, using the computer display when necessary. It was all recorded and it was pointless to argue the facts.

The colonel flipped down the cover on the laptop after the brief outline of events. "In summary, sir, the exercise was successful although there was a problem when it came to releasing the arming locks on the weapon."

Willoughby nodded. "Thank you, Major." The general turned to the people seated around the table. "I cannot overstate the importance of exercises such as the one we have just debriefed." Willoughby glared at Sanchez. "The security of this country rests on our potential adversaries' certainty that we will not hesitate in the slightest to use our nuclear arsenal. It is our duty. It is the very purpose of our entire command and control system.

"An EAM is a lawful order coming from the National Command Authority," Willoughby continued. "You do not have the option to question that order or any that follow it. If you cannot do your duty, what the hell are you doing in the Air Force, Captain Sanchez? What are you doing in my command?"

"I am doing my duty, sir," Sanchez said, meeting the general's angry gaze straight on.

"Your duty was to disarm the locks, Captain!" Willoughby slapped his palm on the tabletop.

Parker twisted in her seat, wishing she could disappear. She was looking down at her hands, rotating the Air Force Academy ring on her finger.

"Sir, with all due respect, I tried to do the correct thing," Sanchez said, his voice tightly controlled.

Willoughby stared at him, momentarily speechless.

At the rear of the room, Kilten leaned forward into the light. "Why do you say that, Captain Sanchez?"

Sanchez turned in his seat. "The EAM we received was not, as the general said, a legitimate National Command Authority order, but rather a test, as was the entire mission given that the bomb was not nuclear. Therefore General Willoughby's argument is false," Sanchez said. "Because the mission was only a test, my hesitation to disarm the lock was not a factor. I just felt something was wrong."

Willoughby looked stunned by the bizarre logic. "You didn't know it was a test," Willoughby found his voice. "You thought the bomb was real."

Sanchez's words were clipped but still carried a deferential tone. "I felt there was something wrong. I didn't know it was a test, but I didn't feel that it was the real thing either."

"You operate on orders, Captain, not feelings," Willoughby snapped. "The EAM we sent was legitimate as far as you were concerned. You get that order, you do what you are trained to do!"

Sanchez, sensing the inevitable, was emboldened. "Like we're just part of the machine?"

"You are part of the machine. You're the last switch," Willoughby said.

"Gentlemen," Kilten said, his voice quiet in contrast to the other two. "Let us calm down."

Sanchez spoke up. "I may not have done what I was trained to, but I did what a person with some feelings would do."

"Feelings?" Kilten repeated, one eyebrow raised.

General Willoughby had reached the boiling point. "Captain, you are relieved as of this minute!"

Kilten turned his head toward the irate general. "If I may, General, I would like to hear about Captain Sanchez's feelings. Maybe he can articulate why we had the problem removing the locks. And isn't that the point? To perfect the system?"

Sanchez dropped all pretense of military hierarchy and interrupted the older civilian. "Perfect the system? That's what I mean. How do you perfect something that has a basic flaw? The whole thing's nuts!"

Kilten seemed to take Sanchez's words as a personal affront. "Captain, you have no business playing a role in a system you apparently don't understand or believe in."

"I did believe in it once," Sanchez countered. "Nuclear deterrence sounds pretty good until you have your finger on the button and there's no good reason why. Until you're sitting right on top of the bomb and you just left one of your buddies dead with his brains smashed out. You don't want me to think, you just want me to push that button like a rat at a food bar. Well, I'm a man. I have a gut and it tells me things."

General Willoughby snorted. "We're not running the defense of this country on your gut, Captain."

Sanchez was beginning to look tired and defeated and Parker felt a blanket of sadness settle over her. She had never imagined that Sanchez would so completely destroy his own career. She wondered what he could possibly do now. She and Brinn were invisible, barely moving lest some of the attention find them.

Sanchez's voice broke the momentary quiet and he spoke with firm conviction. "You believe that the weakest link in the nuclear system is the human factor. I suppose I'm proof of that, at least from a certain perspective. I believed that bomb was real. I believed we were destroying a big chunk of a nation we've always considered an ally. I felt that was a mistake, so I didn't do my duty. What if it hadn't been a test? What if it was a mistake?"

"You think you're making the system foolproof. You're just taking the checks out. Someday the big mistake will come and you'll just have a bunch of robots listening to the computers. The whole thing will be a machine."

"But a human being will make the decision," Kilten said. "The machine won't act on its own."

"I'm a human being and I made a decision," Sanchez argued, "and you're frying my ass and getting rid of me."

"You're not the National Command Authority," Lugar spoke for the first time. "I represent the NCA and that's who makes the decision to use nuclear weapons."

"Who made the decision to run this training mission in Israel right next to their nuclear weapons storage facility?" Sanchez asked. "If we had been captured by the Israelis, the political repercussions would have been staggering. Scanlon's body being left there, despite the thermite grenade I had to put on him, could still cause trouble if it's found. The casing for that bomb, even after the conventional explosion, will be found."

"We did it there to push you to the limit," Lugar said. "And I'm damn glad we did."

Kilten leaned forward toward Sanchez. "If what you're saying is—"

But Lugar cut in. "Captain, I've heard enough from you. We're not here to debate the system, we came here to talk about what happened on this mission."

"You have to look at the system," Sanchez argued. "If you don't examine the—"

"The system is fine," Willoughby growled. "It's people like you who screw it up."

"Then get people out of the system," Sanchez yelled, finally losing his patience, "and just leave the machines there. If I have no discretion and am not supposed to use my intuition, my human mind, to decide whether or not to unlock the arming control on that bomb, then get us the hell away from the bombs. Have the machines take total control."

"You are being taken out of the system, Captain!" Willoughby snapped. "You'll never work near a damn nuclear weapon again!"

"Fine, sir!" Sanchez ripped the weapons badge off the breast pocket of his coat and tossed it on the table. He stood. "Then I guess I'm done here."

"You're done in the Air Force, young man," Willoughby said to the captain's back as he walked away.

Sanchez paused, his hand on the doorknob and faced the room. "What about Captain Scanlon? Is he just a statistic in all this? What did you tell his widow? Killed in a plane crash during training? Body lost at sea?"

"That's none of your business," Lugar said.

"Scanlon died in your test," Sanchez said, glaring at Kilten.

"I'm sorry about—" Kilten began, but Sanchez opened the door.

"You people are fucked," Sanchez said. He walked out, slamming the door behind him.

Willoughby looked to the rear of the room in the awkward silence that followed. He regained his composure. "Mr. Lugar, Professor Kilten, I'd like to thank you for your assistance in setting up this exercise. Your system worked; it was my people who failed to use it efficiently." Willoughby got to his feet. "You are all dismissed."

They stood. The general walked out the door, the other officers right behind him. As Parker approached the door a low voice called out to her. "I'd like to speak with you for a moment, Major."

Parker turned toward Kilten. The man stood and walked forward into the light. Now that she could see him, Parker saw that Kilten was an old man, nattily dressed in a brown wool suit with a bright bow tie. He was frail and slender, his face hatchet-thin. He wore thick glasses with gold rims. Behind the lenses his eyes were a bright green and sparkled with intelligence.

"Major Parker, if you don't mind, I'm interested in your opinion of what just happened in this room." Kilten's voice was soothing, the antithesis of the general's.

"I don't know if I have an opinion," Parker said. "I do believe Major Scanlon's death played a greater role than any of us are admitting."

"Why do you think that is?"

"I believe Scanlon and Sanchez were friends, sir."

"Friends, oh, yes." Kilten repeated the word with relief, as if it explained everything that had just happened. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Captain," Kilten said. The discussion was apparently over. He turned for the door.

Parker found herself momentarily confused by his reaction.

"Sir—" Parker began and Kilten paused. "Sir," she continued, "why did we go into Israel? I don't understand why we ran such a high-risk operation on foreign soil."

Kilten turned in surprise. "You don't believe Mr. Lugar's explanation that it made for a more realistic test situation?"

"No, sir, I don't."

"Why did you release the arming locks, then?"

"Because I had a lawful EAM to do so, as we discussed. And at the time I had to believe my orders. But now, after what happened, I have to wonder about those orders. Nothing that I heard in this room really justifies what we did in Israel."

Kilten tapped his pipe against his palm, his eyes regarding Parker thoughtfully. "You want to know the truth?"

Parker nodded.

"I don't know either, but I should, shouldn't I?"

Lugar stuck his head in the door. "Are you ready, Professor?"

Kilten nodded and walked out.

Parker was left alone. Slowly she sat down and stared at the ring on her finger.

Chapter Three

Washington, D.C. is the nation's capital. It also leads the country in murder per capita. Just blocks from the hallowed halls of Congress, the quality of life and housing diminishes quickly.

Nestled among the rotting and decaying buildings stood a two-story house painted a fading, dingy red. The house to its right had been abandoned and was now home to transients whose primary interest was stealing enough money to maintain a twenty-four-hour-a-day connection to their crack pipes. The building to the left of the red house was the headquarters for the local crack-and cocaine-dealing gang. Traffic to its back door was steady, day and night.

No one in the neighborhood had ever seen anyone go into the red house, but they knew it was occupied. All the locals knew that. And it was accepted, even by the gang members, that no one was to mess with the red house. There were vague stories of would-be burglars disappearing. The word was that they had been killed.

The man who occupied the red house had indeed killed — and more than once. Not just the few unfortunates who tried breaking in, but on the battlefield in a very different part of the world. It had not been necessary in the strictest sense to kill anyone breaking in upstairs since the four-inch-thick steel door blocking the way to the basement would have denied the criminals access to his lair, but he felt it was wise to keep any potential threats at arm's reach. There was also the possibility that some intruder might stumble across the coaxial cable that led to the satellite dish hidden in an old pigeon coop on the roof. The cable and satellite dish must never be interfered with. The man inspected both each morning and evening. Every day. He had performed the ritual for the past twenty-one months and sixteen days without missing a single one.

His tour of duty would be up in less than three months, but he had not allowed himself the luxury of anticipation. He would not think of home until he was there. To think of anything other than this job would take his mind off the task and that was when things went wrong. Combat had taught him that.

Not that anything was happening in the basement. His job was to make sure the satellite link worked and the object in the basement was secure. He slept in the basement, a cord from the satellite link tied around his wrist. If the link came alive while he slept, an electric shock would be sent through the cord.

When he'd assumed his tour of duty, the men who had brought him here had unloaded enough food for two years from the U-Haul truck they had driven. The electricity, water, and sewage bills were taken care of by others. The man had one job. There was an official title to his job, but he was known by the select few aware of his existence by an informal, but apt, title. He was the man who waited.

Two blocks away, out of direct view of the red house was an old fire station. Inside the blacked-out windows, a dozen hard men with cold eyes also waited. Their weapons were in racks along the walls, next to an M-2 Abrams Fighting Vehicle whose turret housed a 40-mm automatic cannon and TOW missile launchers. A belt of rounds was loaded into the cannon and the two TOW launchers held live missiles. The Abrams had been brought into the firehouse several years ago on a lowboy carrier hidden under a tarp, the operation conducted under cover of darkness.

In the troop bay of the Abrams, several specially designed charges were carefully secured, blasting caps inserted, primers ready. The charges were checked four times a day.

These men had their own satellite receiver on the roof of the firehouse. They waited on the man who waited.

Chapter Four

The patients referred to the room as the torture chamber. Its location belowground next to the VA hospital's parking garage added to that image. There were no windows and the echo of car doors being slammed and engines running echoed dully through the cinder block wall separating it from the garage. Inside, the rows of machines with their Velcro belts and gleaming metal would have done the Spanish Inquisition proud. Patients sweat and cried while they were strapped to those machines as they worked to rehabilitate damaged parts of their bodies or to compensate for missing ones. On one end of the room, rows of prostheses, crutches, canes, and wheelchairs added a macabre tilt.

McKenzie liked the physical-therapy room because it reminded him of the weight rooms where he used to spend all his off-duty time. It was the only part of the hospital where he felt comfortable. His ward upstairs was full of whining old military retirees too afraid to die. The little park in the back of the hospital where he was supposed to go every day for some sun depressed him with its view of jets landing and taking off at nearby Miramar Naval Air Station. McKenzie had staged out of Miramar several times when he was on SEAL Team Two back in the late eighties and those memories only brought bitter bile to the back of his throat. In the other direction lay the Pacific Ocean off of San Diego and it was in those waters that McKenzie had received his SEAL training when he was a much younger man. It also wasn't a direction he favored.

"Are we ready?" Nurse Stedman was a petite, wizened brunette in her early fifties who had seen a generation of men, old and young, through physical therapy here. When she'd first started they'd handled loads of Marines, their bodies torn and maimed in the jungles of Vietnam. She'd thought she'd seen and heard it all but this SEAL, McKenzie, was someone very unique, in even her experience.

"Ready," McKenzie growled, hopping onto the rubdown table. He pulled off his shirt without being asked and extended the stub of his left arm.

The arm had been gone when he'd arrived here two months ago, but he'd needed an operation to smooth off the stump and then he'd been confined to his bed as he fought off several infections from what had been a very dirty wound. He had told her he lost the arm to a tank. He'd also said that he and his partner had knocked out that tank as well as another. Stedman had instinctively thought he was lying at first. Marines and SEALs would come up with anything to try to impress a nurse. But she'd checked his medical records and discovered to her surprise that he was telling the truth. There was no hint in the records telling where this had happened but despite her world-weariness, and maybe because of it, Stedman had an itching desire to know McKenzie's story.

The doctors had been forced to take the arm four inches above the elbow. The mangled joint had still been attached when he'd arrived, the original amputation being below the elbow, but there was too much damage to the joint. Besides, the original surgical amputation had been crudely done. Stedman had checked the records and discovered that that initial procedure had been done by a ship's doctor on board a submarine. She shuddered to think of the scene inside the cramped, insufficiently equipped infirmary onboard that vessel. It must have been a desperate situation for the sub's doctor, a general practitioner, to do the surgery. And the submarine must have been someplace where an aerial evacuation had not been possible, which further fueled Stedman's interest given that there wasn't an ocean in the world where the U.S. Navy couldn't get a medevac helicopter in a few hours' time.

Stedman picked up the artificial arm which had undergone several adjustments based on their last attempt at fitting. She'd had to stand over the bored specialist to get the job done right, but she felt McKenzie was worth the time and effort.

"Let's see how it works now." She attached the arm, using a Velcro and leather harness that slipped over both of McKenzie's shoulders and hooks that went into loops left at the end of the stub. The massive muscles in his upper arm had been salvaged and the hope was that the operation of the prosthesis could be linked to those muscles. It took them twenty minutes to get it on.

"How does it feel?"

McKenzie looked at her. "Feel? It's metal. I don't feel a damn thing. I feel like my arm is still there, but every time I try to use it I'm reminded it isn't."

"Your nerves will keep firing as if the arm were there for a long time," Stedman said. "What I meant was how does the prosthesis feel?"

McKenzie hopped off the table and walked. "Strange. I don't know. Maybe it's normal. It was strange not to have the rest of my arm there. I'll have to get used to the weight. The balance." The arm twitched as he attempted to move it.

"Sit down, please," Stedman said. She took the metal hand at the end of the arm and carefully lifted the arm up until it was standing straight out. "How does that feel?"

"Fucked," McKenzie muttered. "It's fucked. It's never going to be the same."

Stedman was used to that. The feeling of irrevocable loss hit every amputee sooner or later. She sensed a deeper level to what McKenzie was saying though. As she began working him out, teaching him how to use the arm, she questioned him about what had happened.

"I looked at your file. You weren't B.S.'ing me when you said a tank caused your injury."

McKenzie stared at her. "Injury? Is that what they call it? An injury? Like I was lifting weights and hurt myself? Tripped over a rock?" He tapped the artificial limb with his good arm and his voice dripped bitterness. "This was a wound sustained in the service of my country."

"Your VA status and the—" Stedman began, but McKenzie cut her off.

"I lost my arm in Lebanon," McKenzie said.

As she worked, he talked, telling the story of what had happened for the first time since he'd been debriefed during the medevac flight from Italy back to the states. He'd been ordered under an oath of secrecy never to discuss what had happened, but such oaths meant nothing to him now.

"Captain Thorpe got me on board the SDV," McKenzie said as he neared the end of the story. "Then he headed for the sub. Only it wasn't there. Seems like when Loki pulled the plug on us, he pulled everything."

"The only thing that saved us," he said, "was that the captain of the sub picked up our transponder as he was beating feet out of the area. He didn't check in with anyone higher or else we'd still be out there. He came back and picked us up. I heard he was relieved afterward for disobeying orders."

Stedman had heard many horror stories in this room but she had to shake her head. "I can't believe they would abandon you."

McKenzie snorted. "They didn't just abandon us. Someone gave us up to the Israelis and the CIA. If that sub captain hadn't disobeyed orders, Loki would have gotten his wish and Thorpe and I would be dead."

"Why would we be supplying plutonium to the Israelis?" Stedman asked. A part of her wanted McKenzie to be lying, but her instincts told her he wasn't because there was no bravado in what he said. If his story was true, it was a story she wasn't supposed to know.

"Politics," McKenzie said. "Why was Oliver North sending arms to the Contras? Why'd we fight the Gulf War? Who the fuck knows why?" he said.

"I do," a low voice said behind them.

McKenzie turned. An old man, dressed in a brown wool suit with a wildly colored bow tie, stood behind them. He looked ill, his gray hair missing in spots, his body rail thin, his skin splotchy with red, raw areas.

"Who are you?" McKenzie demanded.

"My name is Kilten." The man waved an ID card at Nurse Stedman. "Might I have a few moments alone with Chief McKenzie?" he asked.

Stedman nodded and walked over to the other side of the room to help a patient working on a Cybex machine.

"I'm a friend," Kilten said.

"Friend?" McKenzie said. "I don't have any friends."

"What about Captain Thorpe? He saved your life."

McKenzie frowned. "What do you know about me and Thorpe?"

"I read a classified file, code name Delilah, that contained the CIA's debriefing on your SO/NEST mission into Lebanon."

"Who are you?" McKenzie asked. "I saw your ID card. You work for the government."

"I work for the same government you work for."

"Worked," McKenzie spat. "Get the tense right. I don't work for them anymore. I gave them my arm and damn near gave them my life and it was all just an administrative screw up. That's what they told me during the debriefing. Can you believe that bullshit? They were dealing nuclear materials to the Israelis for God knows what reason and if they happened to kill me in the process of doing that, well, that's just too bad, right?"

Kilten nodded. "The CIA was keeping it a secret and the Department of Defense accidentally learned of the deal, not knowing exactly who was involved. So there you were, secretly watching our own government at work."

McKenzie frowned. "How do you know that?"

Kilten plowed on, ignoring the question. "Then when your commander became aware that the Israelis were involved, he bounced the whole thing up the chain of command until someone who knew what was going on pulled the plug on you."

"Loki," McKenzie hissed. "Who is he?"

"He's just a lackey who works for someone else," McKenzie said. "We'll get to that. I've run into him also. We have much in common, McKenzie. It seems we have both become cynics. The source of your dissatisfaction is rather obvious. I suppose mine is more complex. Suffice it to say my eyes have been opened. Better yet, I have a gut feeling that something bad is about to happen."

"Fuck bad. Look at my arm," McKenzie angrily said.

Kilten gave a sad laugh. "Your arm?" He rubbed a thin hand, blue veins sticking out, along his chin. "You see my hair? My skin? Radiation poisoning. Someone put a lethal dose of isotopes in my food sometime in the past month."

"Loki?"

Kilten nodded. "I would suspect so."

"Why?"

"Because I was asking questions that people don't want asked."

"Why didn't they just kill you outright?" McKenzie asked, drawing on his own violent background.

"I suppose they thought this would look like an accident. I work around nuclear materials all the time in the lab and field. Unfortunately for them I'm not that stupid, although they have succeeded in killing me."

Kilten stared at the angry man wearing the prosthesis. "I believe that you and I together can accomplish much. How would you like to profit from your misfortune as well as ensure the survival of the planet?"

"Fuck the planet," McKenzie growled. "I want what's due me."

"I think this is the start of a beautiful but short relationship," Kilten murmured, satisfied that he had found his man.