Whiplash

70

The voice directed Danny and Hera to an abandoned farm about a mile from the air base. Danny parked just off the road, then led Hera as the Voice guided them down an old creek to a farm lane where they climbed up a hill about a half mile from the rear of the complex. Until they crested the hill, they saw nothing. Hera kept wanting to complain that they were going in the wrong direction, and struggled to keep her mouth shut.

And then, suddenly, they saw floodlights in the distance. They didn’t even need their night glasses to see what was going on.

“It’s a missile,” said Hera. “Oh my God.”

Aberhadji watched as the warhead was bolted into place. The process was delicate — not because of the warhead, which would remain inert until after it was launched, but because of the rocket fuel and oxidizer being pumped into the tanks.

Fueling the missile was not quite as easy as loading a truck with gasoline. The liquids had to be carefully monitored; their temperature and pressures were critical, and a spark in the wrong place would ignite a fireball. While Aberhadji’s team had perfected quick fueling methods, his short notice added another level of difficulty. Still, he knew it should take only a little more than an hour before they were ready to launch — a prep time that would be the envy of the best-trained crew in the West.

“Imam, the warhead is ready to be coded,” said Abas, the head technician.

The code was part of the fail-safe lock that prevented unauthorized use of the warhead. It allowed the bomb to arm itself following launch. Without it, the warhead was simply a very heavy piece of complicated metal.

Aberhadji moved quickly to the panel at the side of the warhead. The code was entered on a very small number pad. The display screen was a small panel sixteen boxes long. It displayed an X as each number was pressed in. When the boxes were finally filled, Aberhadji had to press the unmarked bar at the bottom to enter them. He had only two tries. If the number was entered incorrectly a third time, the fusing circuit was designed to overload, rendering the weapon useless.

He pressed the bottom bar. The display flashed. The X’s turned to stars.

They were ready to go.

“How much longer?” he asked Abas.

“An hour and ten minutes, if nothing goes wrong.”

Aberhadji nodded. He could barely stand the suspense.