Impact (20 page)

Frost sat in the pilot seat. She lifted a blast screen. The vast dunescape. Barren mountains veiled by heat haze.

From her position in the cockpit she could look down on Hancock as he worked outside. He was digging in the sand, excavating something buried by the storm.

The sled. Deck plate lashed with a cable tow rope. The chunk of grate he used to drag the battery from the tail section. He gripped the cable and hauled it clear of the sand.

Noble climbed the ladder to the flight deck. He stood beside Frost and looked out the window.

‘Think he’s lost it?’

‘Hard to say.’

They watched Hancock pull a long length of injector pipe from the sand. He shook out the dust-matted flag and tied it to the pole.

He stabbed the pole into the ground. The flag hung limp.

Inverted stars and stripes. A futile signal of distress.

The crawlway.

A tight, steel-sided tunnel, little wider than an air duct.

Hancock on his hands and knees. He held a flashlight between his teeth like a cigar. He pushed the backpack ahead of him. He dragged the satcom unit behind.

The bomb bay pressure door. A heavy hatch secured by crank handles.

He turned the handles. The door wouldn’t open. The frame had distorted during the crash. He curled foetal, turned in the tight crawlspace and kicked at the door with booted feet. Metal shriek. The door swung open.

Stifling darkness.

He crawled inside and stood upright. A wall-mounted toggled switch. He flicked On. Immediate crack and spark-shower from cabling above his head. He flinched from the sparks and flicked Off. He traced cable with the beam of his flashlight until he found a frayed break in the line. He stripped and twisted copper wire.

He flicked the switch again.

Secondary lights burned steady. The compartment lit blood red.

He surveyed the vaulted weapons bay.

Dead power cable and data lines hung from roof conduits like jungle vine. He ducked beneath them.

His boots crunched sand. The payload doors had been ripped away, leaving a wide aperture in the floor open to the desert.

The centre of the bay was dominated by a rotary launcher: a drum-rack that could house at max five ALCMs and position them, one by one, above the open payload doors ready for deployment.

An eighteen-foot Tomahawk missile held by clamps. Solid-propellant power plant and intakes at the rear. TERCOM terrain mapping radome in the nose.

The warhead was housed in the payload section behind the nose. A Mod 4 CS-67 tactical nuke prepped for a ten kiloton yield.

He ran his hand over the surface of the weapon. White lacquer, like bathroom porcelain. The missile appeared undamaged.

He took a compact Geiger counter from his pocket. He took a reading, passed the sensor the length of the bomb. Steady background.

He unzipped his backpack and pulled out a flat Peli trunk the size of an attaché case. He flipped clasps and opened the trunk.

A laptop bedded in foam. Beside it: tools, cables, replacement fuses. Battlefield triage. Everything he would need to monitor and maintain the missile up to the moment it was jettisoned from the plane.

Titanium torque keys. He selected a key, lifted it from its foam trough and set to work.

The payload compartment of the ALCM was studded with twenty-four hex screws. A laborious task to release each screw. He had to crouch beneath the weapon with a flashlight. Had to pause every couple of minutes to shake fatigue from his fingers.

The final bolt. He set it turning, threw the wrench aside, and unscrewed by hand.

A faint click as the bolt cleared the thread. The cowling dropped loose. He carefully lifted the panel clear. It was heavy. Hardened steel alloy.

The core. An anti-radiation jacket held in a titanium frame. A featureless cylinder wired to a bundle of fusing and firing circuits. Uranium 235 hemispheres, plutonium 239 and a tritium/deuterium booster, all of it jacketed with hexagonal plates of high explosive to force a millisecond of super-compression.

Critical mass. Cascading fission. Stellar light. Nova heat.

Arming the warhead for manual detonation would take all the cold-sweat delicacy associated with defusing an IED. The slightest error would transform the weapon into a giant paperweight.

A nine-pin data port bedded in the surface of the confinement case.

He placed the laptop on the sand floor of the bomb bay. Flickering boot sequence. He ran cable and jacked into the warhead.

A winking cursor.

A black plastic tag hung round his neck on a lanyard. He lifted the lanyard over his head, snapped the tag in two and removed a small slip of paper.

He unfolded the paper and typed the ten digit authenticator code:

The code input field was immediately replaced by a status screen. The arming sequence and fuse system. The heartbeat of the weapon.

Permissive Action Links.

A five-stage authorisation protocol which would enable the bomb. Unless the weapon were activated in sequence a series of barometric, impact, and rate-of descent lock-outs would render the warhead inert to prevent accidental detonation. It could be consumed by fire or dropped thousands of feet with no chance of triggering thermonuclear reaction. It could only be detonated by specific human intent.

Four of the PAL cut-outs flashed green. Final authorisation flashed red.

The B-52 crashed on target approach, just before it reached the hold coordinates, the point at which Hancock would have checked in with USSTRATCOM and requested go/no-go authorisation. Once the order had been received, Frost would have armed the warhead and directed Noble to jettison the missile.

A deliberately fragmented protocol that would ensure a lone individual couldn’t launch a nuke on a whim.

A single ten-digit code would complete the arming sequence and render the warhead live.

He booted the satcom, unfolded the antenna and set it on the sand floor of the bomb bay facing east.

REQUEST GO TO ARM WEAPON

He waited.

The reply:

CONFIRM EXEC AUTHORITY TO DEPLOY

He typed:

WHAT IS SECONDARY ARM CODE

Reply:

RADAR NAV

HOLDS FINAL AUTHENTICATION

He typed:

RADAR NAV NON-OPERATIONAL

UNABLE TO PROVIDE FINAL AUTHENTICATION

REQUEST OVERRIDE CODE

FOR SINGLE KEY LAUNCH

Reply:

RADAR NAV

HOLDS FINAL AUTHENTICATION

He sat back and massaged chin stubble.

Frost, the radar navigator, held the final code. It was printed on a small strip of laminated paper sealed in a plastic tag hung round her neck.

Without her ten-digit authenticator, he couldn’t detonate the warhead.

Frost held a scrap of thermal print in her hand.

EMERGENCY ACTION MESSAGE

PRIORITY COMMAND

COMPLETE MISSION

PROCEED TO TARGET SITE AND INITIATE

PACKAGE

ACKNOWLEDGE

Message time-stamped one hour earlier.

She handed the note to Noble. He studied it.

She turned to Hancock.

‘Did the sender identify themselves?’

‘USSTRATCOM.’

‘For sure? Did they actually authenticate as Roundhouse?’

‘They had full knowledge of our mission and payload. Couldn’t be anyone else.’

‘To be clear: they did not use their designated comsec call sign, is that right? They didn’t identify themselves as Roundhouse?’

‘Disrupted chain of command. Can’t expect rigid protocol.’ He pointed to the paper in her hand. ‘The order is clear.’

‘I can’t assent to the deployment of a nuke based on an anonymous message,’ said Frost.

‘We received clear confirmation of our orders back at Vegas, direct and unequivocal: launch the missile. We have to abide by the doctrine of Commander’s Intent. We have received no further communication from STRATCOM, nothing that countermands our original instructions. The mission still stands.’

‘I respectfully disagree. Fluid circumstances. We have significant circumstantial reasons to believe the mission parameters have changed. We need to confer with STRATCOM, establish their current intent. Until they are back on air, I cannot assent to deploy. Anyway, why are we even having this discussion? Whole thing is academic. We lost the plane. We have no means of launching the missile.’

‘We could carry it.’

‘The sled? You want to drag the missile on the sled? It weighs over three thousand pounds. We’d need a dozen able-bodied men to make it budge an inch. A friggin’ team of oxen.’

‘The warhead could be removed. We could transport the core, the physics package, to the target.’

‘I refuse to throw away my life.’

‘You took an oath.’

‘To a nation that no longer exists.’

Hancock fetched satcom gear from the bomb bay. He hefted it up the ladder to the flight deck.

He angled the antenna and booted the transceiver.

A blank screen. A winking cursor.

He turned to Frost and swept his arm in a be-my-guest gesture, inviting her to sit and type.

She lowered herself to the deck in front of the transceiver, laid her bad leg straight.

She keyed:

THIS IS MT66

USB52H
LIBERTY BELL

STRATCOM HAIL

PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE

She hit Send.

Immediate response:

TRANSMISSION FAIL

‘Atmospherics,’ said Hancock. ‘The signal comes and goes.’

Frost leant back against the flight-deck wall.

‘I don’t mean to pry into your private life, sir. We’re all hurting. We’ve all lost family. But you must have someone, somewhere, who needs you to live.’

He waved a dismissive hand.

‘I could talk about duty and honour, but I doubt the words mean a whole lot to you. You’re clearly the type who joined for the benefits.’

‘Surely it’s time to be pragmatic. Why die here, in this miserable corner of desert? What’s the use? What good will it serve? No one will know. No one will care. If we get out of this damn place we might be able to find some folks who actually need our help.’

‘I have tactical command, Lieutenant. This isn’t some kind of town hall debate. I’m still AC. And I say we complete the mission.’