Season Of The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 1) (55 page)

“You promise that there won’t be
many civilian casualties?” he heard himself say, as if his voice
was being controlled by some other intelligence.

“Most likely a few hundred will be
killed outright, with a few thousand more suffering serious
injury,” the Clement-thing reassured him. “But you will be saving
the entire world, Mr. President. That is what you must focus on.
Far greater sacrifices have been made by far lesser
men.”

Curtis nodded, his mind and body
numb. “What about her?” he asked, nodding toward Ridley. “What…what
should I tell the others?”

“You can tell the truth: her
injuries are taking a toll on her, and she needed some rest before
rejoining us.”

“But when they find
her...”

“Her condition will be a mystery
that no human will be able to explain,” it told him
smoothly.

Gathering himself, Curtis nodded,
then turned toward the door. “Clement” followed him.

“Director Ridley needed some rest,”
Curtis told the agents outside as he pulled the door closed behind
Clement. “The injuries she suffered are taking a toll on her, so
make sure she’s not disturbed.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” one of the
agents said. He stayed by the door while Eric, the senior agent on
the President’s protective detail, escorted Curtis back to the main
sitroom, with Clement right behind.

“I need the
Secretary of Defense, General Coleridge, and Colonel Mathay,”
Curtis ordered brusquely. “Everyone else clear the room.” The
gathered members of the National Security Council froze at the
mention of Mathay’s name. “
Now
,” Curtis
snapped.

That started an organized stampede
toward the door.

After the others had left the room,
a tall, lantern-jawed man in the uniform of an Air Force colonel
stepped in, followed by two grim-faced Secret Service agents. They
wouldn’t be ordered outside for this one. The colonel’s nametag
said Mathay, and he carried a large leather briefcase that was
secured to his right wrist by a length of chrome chain that ended
in a locked handcuff. It was popularly known as the “football,” a
device that allowed the President to send launch orders to
America’s strategic forces.

“Shut the door,” Curtis ordered the
Secret Service agents before gesturing for Mathay to come to the
table and set down the briefcase.

“What’s going on, sir?” Coleridge
asked huskily, his pale gray eyes fixed on the football.

Thomas Wilburne, the
recently-promoted Secretary of Defense, glanced at the case, but
his expression didn’t reveal any surprise. Then he looked at
Clement and nodded his head respectfully.

He
knows
, Curtis thought.
He’s in on The Secret, too
. With a
sinking sensation he suddenly understood that the deaths of
President Fowler and the former Secretary of Defense had been a bit
too convenient.
Ridley was
right
. But that confirmation wouldn’t sway
him from what he had to do. He might burn in Hell for it, but he’d
do anything to save his daughter. Lord, forgive me, he
begged.

“I’ve received what I believe to be
absolutely reliable information,” Curtis told them, “that there is
a weapon in the EDS base that poses a clear and immediate danger
not only to the United States, but to the world at large.” He
looked directly into Coleridge’s eyes. “If this thing gets out, if
it’s exposed to the atmosphere, it will contaminate the world’s
biosphere and end life as we know it.”

“I’ll order the Air Force to prepare
the penetrator bombs,” Coleridge said, reaching for one of the
phones along the wall, “and–”

“No, general,” Curtis told him.
“Conventional weapons will only increase the likelihood that this
thing that EDS has created will be accidentally released into the
atmosphere. It has to be completely contained. Sterilized.” He
nodded at the case. “And there’s only one way to do it.”

“Mr. President,” Coleridge began
carefully, “sir, may I ask where this information is coming
from?”

“It’s from a deep penetration agent
we’ve had inside of EDS for the last month,” Clement answered
before Curtis could say anything. “It’s one-hundred percent
reliable.” He glanced at Curtis. “We’ve gotten details of the
weapon, a retrovirus suspended in an aerosol form. It was just
confirmed.” He gestured at the phone on his belt. “There’s no
question, general.”

“Sir,” the old Marine said to
Curtis, “we...we can’t just drop a nuke. We haven’t been attacked
on a scale that–”

“We
have
been attacked!”
Curtis shot back angrily. “Why the hell do you think I’m standing
here instead of Ben Fowler, our former Commander-in-Chief? Remember
him? He was blown up, along with your former boss and a few hundred
high schoolers. And how about the hundreds of people who were
burned to death in Colorado? Not to mention the ring of explosions
around the world, all of which EDS publicly took credit for.”
Despite his guilty knowledge that The Others may not have been as
white as snow, he was nonetheless filled with righteous anger at
the outrages that had been visited on the country and the world.
“Ring any bells, General Coleridge?”

“Yes...yes, sir,” Coleridge said
quietly.

“All I want to know, general,”
Curtis told him coldly, “is if you’re going to carry out the orders
I give you. If not, consider yourself relieved and I’ll summon your
deputy to see if he has the balls to get this job done.”

“No need, sir. It’s my job. I’ll do
it.

That was when the Predator’s video
feed, which had been running uninterrupted on the front screen,
suddenly flared with a tremendous explosion from where the FBI
agents had been engaged by a defensive team that had come to the
surface from the subterranean base.

They all turned to look at the
scene.

“We’re out of time,” Clement said
urgently, watching as smoke roiled out of what must have been a
ventilation shaft leading into the base. “It may already be too
late.”

“Colonel Mathay?” Curtis
ordered.

Without a word, as if this were
nothing more than a routine communications exercise, Mathay opened
the case, revealing a heavily protected device similar to a laptop.
With a few keystrokes, he activated the football’s
console.

“Your orders, sir?” the colonel
said, looking at Coleridge.

“Initiate an operational alert,”
Coleridge said after a long, uncomfortable moment. He looked at
Curtis. “What attack option did you have in mind, sir?” he asked.
“We don’t exactly have anything to cover this in the SIOP.” The
SIOP was the Single Integrated Operational Plan that was the
blueprint for how the United States would employ its nuclear
weapons.

“It’s an ad-hoc mission,” Wilburne,
the new Secretary of Defense, said. He looked up at Coleridge, then
at Curtis. “And there’s already an asset available.”

The President’s expression hardened
at the reminder that one of the nation’s nuclear weapons had been
loaded aboard a strike aircraft without his knowledge or consent.
But that was an issue he would deal with later.

“BLUE MAX?” Coleridge asked. “That
was a nuclear strike training exercise. The planes don’t have
operational weapons on board.”

“One of them does,” Wilburne told
him flatly, but he was looking at Clement.

“You’ve known that our planes have
been carrying nuclear weapons without my authorization?” Curtis
asked him, aghast.

Wilburne nodded, his eyes still on
Clement. “I coordinated the weapon deployments,” he said. Turning
his gaze to Curtis, he added, “I was…ordered not to inform you or
President Fowler, sir.”

“God Almighty,”
Curtis breathed. “All right. Use it,” he said, looking at the video
feed and the rising plume of smoke from the EDS base. His blood
chilled at the sight as he wondered if even now, particles of the
weapon were escaping into the air.
If the
weapon’s even real
, a part of his mind
whispered.

“Your authentication, please, Mr.
President?” Mathay asked.

Curtis reached into his coat pocket
and withdrew a plastic card about the size of a credit card that
was nicknamed “the biscuit.” On it were printed the authentication
codes that would allow the nation’s nuclear weapons to be armed and
used. He read off a string of letters and numbers, which Mathay
carefully entered into the football’s console.

“Mr. Secretary?” the colonel said,
looking at Wilburne. In order for a valid nuclear weapons order to
be issued, the President’s order had to be confirmed by the
Secretary of Defense.

Wilburne already had his biscuit
out. “I authenticate...” And he read out a set of random letters
and numbers, which Mathay again entered into the console. They were
rewarded with a set of illuminated buttons on the console changing
from red to green.

“The target, General Coleridge?”
Mathay asked.

“Here,” Clement said, handing Mathay
a small slip of paper that held the latitude, longitude, and
surface elevation of the EDS base.

Mathay glanced at Coleridge, who
turned to look at Curtis.

“Enter it,” Curtis said flatly, and
Mathay punched in the information into the console.

“Mr. President,” Mathay said
finally, “do you authorize the nuclear mission execution order?”
His finger hovered over a rectangular red button that said
EXECUTE.

Curtis swallowed hard, the full
meaning of that single word glaring from the button striking home.
“Yes,” he said, forcing out the words. “I authorize the execution
of this mission.”

Mathay nodded, then pressed the
button. In a few seconds the display on the console reported that
the order had been issued and received by the designated strike
aircraft.

“It’s done, sir,” Mathay
said.

“May the Lord forgive us,” Coleridge
whispered, his face pale.

***

“Martin, if you’re
making this up I’m going to bust your ass,” Major Elaine Harris
growled over the intercom. She was the pilot in command of a
B-52H
Stratofortress
strategic bomber of the 5th Bombardment Wing out of Minot Air
Force Base, and she was not happy. Not happy at all. What had begun
as a nuclear strike exercise, something they rarely seemed to get
to do these days and had spent weeks preparing for, had gone awry.
Harris’s aircraft had pulled out of the training mission they had
been flying in isolated desert areas of Nevada and ordered into a
holding pattern in cleared airspace west of Beale Air Force Base in
California. No explanation, no nothing. They’d burned up thousands
of pounds of fuel doing nothing but blasting holes in the sky in a
racetrack pattern over the mountains of Tahoe National Forest, and
Harris was ultra-pissed.

“Major,” Lieutenant Martin
Borichevsky, the plane’s navigator told her tensely. “It’s an
action message, all right. I’ve already confirmed it. Twice. It’s a
valid exercise order.”

“What kind of crap is that?”
Harris’s copilot muttered as he looked at the target plot the
bombardier had punched into the plane’s systems. “The target’s just
outside of Beale?” He was from California, and could imagine them
being ordered to attack the base itself as part of an exercise, but
not a bunch of orchards in the foothills of the nearby Sutter
Buttes. “This is just a simulated release, right? I can’t believe
they’re going to have us live-drop a training weapon outside of a
bomb range!” he said.

“Negative,” the bombardier said
firmly after briefly conferring with the navigator. “Martin’s got
it right: it’s an actual release. We’ve got the
go-ahead.”

The copilot looked over at Harris.
“This doesn’t make any sense, major. We’re not actually going to do
this, are we?”

Harris regarded him for a moment.
They’d only flown twice before and she didn’t know him all that
well. She unsnapped her mask and killed the intercom so the rest of
the crew couldn’t hear. “What the hell do you think we get paid
for?” she snapped. “If the action message is valid and we’ve
confirmed it, we follow our orders. I don’t give a shit if those
orders are to drop a nuke on the White House. If you can’t handle
that, you should’ve stayed in the Boy Scouts.” She stared hard at
him. “This aircraft is mission capable, mister. Are
you?”

Slowly, he nodded, then turned
away.

Harris snapped her oxygen mask back
on and clicked over to the intercom. “Weapon?” she called to the
navigator, trying to dismiss her copilot’s concerns as she began to
run through the extensive pre-strike checklist before the bomber
would be ready to do what it had originally been designed for:
delivering a nuclear bomb. Only in this case, it wouldn’t be a real
one.

“The strike order calls for a single
B83,” the bombardier called out. The plane carried four training
weapons that, aside from blue markings designating them as such,
looked, weighed, and handled just like real B83 nuclear gravity
bombs. Except, of course, that these didn’t have an actual nuclear
weapon in the bomb casing. “Setting it for...three hundred
kilotons. Air burst at five hundred meters above ground
level.”