Act of War Read online

  “Told you, J,” Ari said, resetting the range telemetry sensors again. “You’re bringing your head up and topping the ball. Head down.”

  “All right, all right,” Jason murmured dejectedly. “Toss me another one.”

  “This is the last one,” Ari said, tossing him the last orange projectile from the case. “Make it good.”

  Jason reached up and snatched the ball from mid-air—but it was not his fingers that grasped it. The fingers belonged to a three-meter-tall robotic figure. Its arms and legs were thin, covered in composite nonmetallic skin. Its shape was like a human, with arms, legs, a head, and torso; its bullet-shaped head was an armored sensor ball that swiveled and moved in all directions; its joints were fluid and massive, matching strength with dexterity. But for its size, the machine was incredibly agile—its movements precisely mimicked a human’s movements in amazing detail, even to subtle movements of its shoulders and hips as it precisely, casually placed the orange projectile on another golf tee and stepped back, ready to hit it downrange. The robot parted its feet and centered up on the ball—it was almost comical to watch, like some weird child’s caricature doing a completely human thing.

  “No using fire control sensors now,” Ariadna reminded Jason. “You said you wanted this completely manual.”

  “I’m not using fire control,” Jason said. The robot was fitted with a variety of sensors—millimeter-wave radar, imaging infrared, and laser—that fed a computer that could steer weapons with zero-zero precision, or the data could be uplinked to other aircraft or forces in the area via satellite. Jason smoothly brought the club back, paused, relaxed his “body,” and began his swing…

  …just as a cellular phone rang. The robot’s head jerked up just as the club head made contact. The projectile veered sharply right, ricocheted off a steel revetment with a sound like a heavy-caliber gunshot, then blasted through a concrete range officer’s building a hundred meters away just in front of the vehicle assembly area. “Dang!” Jason shouted. “No fair! I want a mulligan!”

  “The range officer’s going to be pissed—again,” Ari said as she reached for her cell phone. “Hop out and help me get packed up—that was the last projectile.”

  The robot tossed the golf club toward Ari, then assumed a stance with one leg extended back, the other knee bent, leaning forward, and arms extended back along its torso. An access hatch on the robot’s back popped open, and Jason Richter climbed out from inside the machine. He was a little sweaty and his face was lined with ridges from where the oxygen mask and sensor helmet plates sealed on him, but he was still grinning from ear to ear like a schoolkid who had just hit a home run in a Little League game.

  Ari opened the flip on her phone. “Vega here.”

  “Put Major Richter on, Ari.” She recognized the agitated voice of the staff NCO, Army Master Sergeant Ted Gaines.

  Ari held out the phone to Jason. “It’s the Top, and he sounds weird,” she said.

  Jason barely finished saying hello when Gaines asked breathlessly, “Are you listening to the news, sir?”

  “You just ruined my last test shot, Top. I was…”

  “Turn on the radio, sir! Houston has been bombed!”

  “Bombed? Bombed by whom?” Jason motioned to the Humvee parked a few meters behind them, and Ariadna flipped on the satellite radio receiver and turned it to SATCOM One, the all-satellite news broadcasting station…and in moments, they were both stunned into absolute speechlessness. “I…I can’t believe this,” he finally stammered. “Someone set off a nuke near Houston…?”

  “Major! Are you still there?” No response. Richter’s mind was racing. This was unbelievable…too horrible for words…“Major…?”

  “Sergeant, get the Chinook ready to fly,” Jason said breathlessly. “I’m taking the Humvee and CID One to the flight line right now. We’re going to Kingman City.”

  “Kingman City? You can’t go there now! It’s a radioactive hole in the ground!”

  “CID will be the only system that can operate in that environment,” Jason said. “Just get it moving. I’ll call the boss and get clearances. Move!”

  CHAPTER ONE

  The White House, Washington, D.C.

  That same time

  The President’s National Security Adviser, Robert Hall Chamberlain, strode into the White House Situation Room ahead of a wall of military officers, civilian advisers and analysts, and Secret Service agents. They had to scramble to stay out of Chamberlain’s way as he quickly entered the room and took his seat, not at the center of the oblong table but just to the right of the seat apparently reserved for the President of the United States. A former oil executive with TransGlobal Energy, an expert and adviser in foreign affairs and commerce, a wealthy political supporter and friend of the President and many other world leaders, Chamberlain had been described as having the geopolitical savvy of Henry Kissinger, the military affairs expertise of Condoleezza Rice, the wealth of Bill Gates, the charisma of Colin Powell…and the ruthlessness of Saddam Hussein.

  “All right, let’s get started,” Chamberlain said brusquely. He was of average height and size, but he made up for his lack of physical stature by his high degree of energy—it always seemed as if he had someplace else he had to be; and in this current emergency situation, he was moving twice as fast. “Just to bring you all up to speed: the President, Vice President, most of the Cabinet, and the congressional leadership have been evacuated. The President, his chief of staff, SECDEF, SECSTATE, CJCS, and the congressional leadership went aboard Air Force One; the VP, Attorney General, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and a few other senior Cabinet officials went aboard a C-37B, the Vice President’s transport; the congressional leadership are in alternate secure locations throughout the East Coast. All are safely away and secure, and it is our opinion that the continuity of government has been assured to the best of our ability. As you all know, the President has already made one radio broadcast from Air Force One and plans on making another in a few hours. Except in southern Texas, the nation seems to be as calm as can be expected after a horrifying attack like this.”

  Chamberlain then turned to the woman beside him to his right, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Before we begin, I want to extend my personal condolences to Secretary of Homeland Security Calhoun, whom I understand lost some family members in Kingman City. It is truly a devastating loss, and I for one intend to see it avenged and the guilty persons destroyed. I thank her for staying here in Washington to oversee the defense and security of the United States. I’ll postpone her briefing for a few…”

  “No…no, I’m ready, Mr. Chamberlain,” Calhoun said, wiping her eyes. She took a deep breath but kept her eyes on the table. Donna Calhoun was tall and statuesque but fragile-looking in her current emotional state. “Let me begin with a short synopsis: the attack occurred approximately three hours and twenty minutes ago, at three-thirty P.M. Central Time. We have no details of the incident itself yet, only the aftermath. The destruction, the death toll, is…is immense. Approximately three square miles has been destroyed or dam…damaged.” She had to choke back a wimper, trying like hell to replace her sorrow with anger. “Estimated casualties are in the…thous…” This time she couldn’t hold back the tears no matter how hard she tried.

  “That’s okay for now, Donna,” Chamberlain said. He waited a few moments until her weeping subsided, then turned with a stony expression to the three-star general across from him. “General Hanratty?”

  Lieutenant General Colin Hanratty was deputy commander of U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, the unified military command responsible for the defense of the fifty states; the commander of NORTHCOM was also triple-hatted as the commander of NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, the joint U.S.–Canada military alliance defending the entire North American continent; and also commander of U.S. Space Command, in charge of all of America’s satellites and space boosters. “The commander of NORTHCOM, General Joelson, is at the Cheyenne Mountain Com
plex and is on duty with the senior duty controller monitoring the global military status and assessing North America’s defense readiness. Although we are in constant communications with the Mountain, at the present time it is sealed up and ready to cut itself off from all outside communications and utilities at a moment’s notice.”

  One of the wide-screen monitors on the wall showed a map of the world, with several annotations across mostly green shading. “The map shows the global defense status as of the latest observations, none of which are more than two hours’ old,” Hanratty said. “Our strategic adversaries are at normal defense configurations and we have observed no unusual strategic weapon movements. All of our detection, warning, intelligence, navigation, communications, and surveillance spacecraft are operating normally. Consequently, at this time Northern Command believes that this incident was a singular act of terrorism and not a coordinated attack or prelude to any sort of military action against the United States.

  “As the lead military organization in the defense of the homeland, NORTHCOM was asked by the FBI to do some initial analysis of the explosion itself,” Hanratty went on. “We estimate it was a point seven-five kiloton thermonuclear blast—a so-called ‘backpack nuke,’ actually about the size of a very large suitcase, with approximately ten kilos of fissile material, comparable to a Soviet-era one-hundred-and-thirty-millimeter tactical nuclear artillery shell. The double-pulse characteristic of a small but potent thermonuclear blast was detected from space by our thermal and nuclear detectors.”

  “Are you saying the weapon was Russian, General?” Chamberlain asked pointedly.

  “I have no information on its origin, Mr. Chamberlain. I was just making a comparison. But I’ve read lots of reports of former Soviet military weapons on the black market, including weapons of mass destruction, and since I’ve never heard of a Western WMD up for sale I can only assume it was Russian.”

  “Let’s not leap too far ahead here yet, folks,” Chamberlain said. “Before we know it, this will leak out and the Russians will be screaming denials at us, and that will only ratchet up the pressure for military action. I don’t need to remind you all that everything discussed in this room stays in this room. The press will be clamoring for an explanation and what we’re going to do about this, and we need to give the President the time he needs to make some hard decisions. Move on, General. What about fallout?”

  “As far as we know, sir, serious, but not catastrophic,” Hanratty said. “Prevailing winds are from the southwest—New Orleans, Little Rock, Shreveport could all be affected, perhaps even as far north as Memphis or St. Louis. I haven’t seen the reports yet from environmental analysis and atmospheric testing, but my guess would be that the explosion was not large enough to cause a very large volume of radioactive material to be dispersed into the atmosphere.”

  “Compared to Hiroshima, how big was this blast?”

  “Quite a bit smaller, sir—in fact, about ninety percent smaller,” Hanratty said. “The effects are similar but on a proportionally smaller scale. Also, this explosion was in a mostly industrial area of Houston, quite a distance from populated areas. Kingman City is mostly oil refineries, petroleum and natural gas storage, docks, and inland waterways. The destruction might be horrible, but the loss of life will be relatively small. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were major population areas.” He nodded to the assistant secretary of Homeland Security. “With all due respect for your loss, Madam Secretary, the loss of life is probably a lot less than 9/11.”

  “That may be some small comfort to the nation as a whole, but it is not any comfort to me at all,” Robert Chamberlain said angrily. “I will accept for now that this is not a prelude to a traditional military attack, but my recommendation to the President will clearly state that this is most assuredly an attack on the nation, and that we should respond accordingly.”

  The “hotline” phone rang just then, and Chamberlain answered it on the first ring. “Chamberlain…yes, go ahead, Signal…I’m here, Mr. President. I’ve assembled representatives of the National Security Council here in the Situation Room.”

  “Thank you, Robert,” the President of the United States, Samuel Conrad, began on the secure line. “I’ve got the secretaries of State, Defense, and Transportation with me, along with the chairman of the joint chiefs, the Speaker of the House, and the majority and minority leaders of the Senate. The Vice President, Attorney General, and some of the other Cabinet members are also patched in.”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Chamberlain said. “We’ve just been briefed by General Hanratty of Northern Command, and he tells us that there appear to be no indications of any nation mobilizing its armed forces. It looks like we were the victim of another terrorist action—but this time with more dire implications.”

  “Christ…” the President breathed.

  “I strongly recommend you return to Washington immediately, sir,” Chamberlain said forcefully, glancing at the drawn, shocked faces of the men and women around him in the Situation Room. “There’s no imminent danger, and you have already made it clear to the world that you and the government are safe. You need to get back to the White House and take charge, in person, right now.”

  “Are you sure it’s safe, Robert?”

  “Safety is not the issue, sir—leadership is,” Chamberlain replied. “You need to get back here so the American people can see you not just alive and safe, but in charge and leading the defense. Now I advise you to tell the chief of staff to turn the plane around and get back to the White House as soon as possible. I’ll advise the press you’ll be on the ground at Andrews and back at the White House shortly.”

  “I…all right, Robert,” the President said hesitantly. “I plan to address the American people immediately as soon as I arrive back at the White House, Robert,” he went on a moment later, “and I want a full situation briefing and intel dump as soon as I get off the plane.”

  “Yes, Mr. President.”

  “Is there any information on who did this? Anyone claim responsibility yet?”

  “No, Mr. President,” Chamberlain said. “We hope to have more by the time you return. We’ll transmit a complete casualty and damage report, defense status report, and up-to-the-moment world situation report to the chief of staff so he can have Communications draft an address for you.”

  There was silence for a few moments; then: “I want to hunt them down and slaughter them, Robert,” he said angrily. “I want every resource of the United States of America mobilized to find those responsible and eliminate them. I’m not interested in bringing them to justice. I want them gone.”

  “Everything will be done that can be done, sir…”

  “That’s not good enough, Robert,” the President said acidly. “I’m tired of America being the target, the hunted—I want America to be the hunter.” He paused, then went on, his shaking voice evident even over the secure telephone connection: “Robert, I want to declare war on terrorism. And I don’t mean a ‘war’ like our ‘war on drugs’ or our current ‘war on terrorism’…” He paused again, and Chamberlain could hear a slow uptake of breath before he said, “I propose to go before Congress and ask for a declaration of war against terrorism.”

  “A…say again, sir?” Chamberlain responded in shock and confusion. “Mr. President, I…I don’t know…”

  “Robert, I intend to ask Congress for a declaration of war against terrorism,” the President said firmly. “The attack on Kingman City may or may not be state-sponsored; it may be radical fundamentalist Islam or some other fanatical group—it doesn’t matter. I want the full and unfettered resources of the nation to find who did this unspeakable act, hunt them down like the sick cowardly dogs they are, and destroy them. I want a congressional declaration of war. I don’t care how we get it, I just want it done.”

  There was silence on the line for several long moments; then: “Mr. President, I am behind you all the way on that idea,” Robert Chamberlain said. “We should discuss this as soon as you land. It will take
an enormous amount of courage and tenacity to pull it off; undoubtedly your political opponents will call it a grandstanding gesture that will throw the world into chaos. But I believe the American people will be behind you one hundred and ten percent.”

  “I’m not going to sit around and wait for Congress or the Supreme Court to wring their hands and debate this,” the President retorted. “Robert, I’m tasking you with implementing this idea. Get together with Justice, Defense, and the congressional leadership and draft me a proposal that I can present to a joint session of Congress within thirty days. I want a plan of action set into motion immediately. Military, Central Intelligence, FBI, Homeland Security, every branch of the government—everyone’s going to work together on this to find the bastards who attacked us.”

  Chamberlain swallowed, nervously looking around the Situation Room at the faces looking worriedly at him. “Yes, Mr. President. I’ll get right on it,” he said finally. “I’ll have some suggestions for you as soon as you return.”

  “Thank you, Robert,” the President said. “You’re my go-to guy, Robert. I’m relying on you to push this, hard. The entire world watched me run in fear from my own capital, and I’m not going to let that happen ever again on my watch. I want to take the fight to the enemy. Whatever it takes, whatever we’ve got—I want the terrorists who did this to suffer. I’m going to stake my entire political career on this. I need a strong hand on the wheel. I’m counting on you, Robert.”

  “I understand, Mr. President,” Chamberlain said. “I’ll see you when you get back. Thank you, Mr. President.” The connection went dead, and Chamberlain returned the phone to its cradle with a stunned expression on his face.