“We got a Zero-Tango notification,” Tyler told Stone. “You should be familiar with that: notification by NCA or Space Command directly, teleconference of the NCA, JCS, specified and unified commanders, all that stuff.”
“I’ve only been in one,” Stone replied, “and I was the one who called it. Just before the Philippine elections last year, Manila was a war zone. I thought Clark was going to be overrun. I had to kick General Collier at PACAF in the butt to do something. I raised a ruckus that obviously went right to CINCPAC, but he finally made the call and we got the support we needed.”
“I remember that,” Tyler said. “From what I read in the messages, Rat, Clark could have looked like the American embassy in Tehran in ’79. Landing that Marine Expeditionary Unit on Luzon may have seemed like overkill to most of the Pentagon and the press, but it defused the situation perfectly.”
“Sure it did,” Stone added dryly. “And I got shit-canned for even suggesting it.”
“Best thing that could have happened to you was getting bumped out of Pacific Air Forces and coming to work at SAC, Rat,” Tyler said. “You know as well as I do that everyone will remember the last commander of Clark Air Force Base. Wherever you went in PACAF, that stigma would have followed you. It would have hurt your chances for promotion — I know it sounds shitty, but shit happens. Here at SAC, I get a topnotch expert in the Pacific Theater and maritime warfare, and you get a fair shot at your third star.”
A coded message was being read over the radio, and Tyler squelched it out. Stone said, “You’re not going to monitor the alert network?”
“The messages are for the crews, not for me,” Tyler replied. “When I try to second-guess those messages, I give myself ulcers. Now I try to relax, think about what I need to do, and think about what I should be hearing when I get to the Battle Staff area.”
“And the whole staff gets notified and called in?”
“Yep,” Tyler replied, hanging on to the seat back as Meers negotiated a tight turn, switching on the siren to clear some traffic out of an intersection. “At this time of day it’s no problem. When we get one at two in the morning, it can get real hairy.”
“How often do you get these notifications?”
“Not very often lately,” Tyler admitted. “A lot of the notifications can be expected — the riots in Lithuania just before their independence, the SCUD missile attacks during DESERT STORM, the assassination in Iraq, shit like that. You can read the evening paper and pretty much anticipate that a Zero-Tango was going to be called. But things just aren’t all that critical in the real world these days.”
They were approaching SAC Headquarters, a low, generally unimpressive building in the center of the base. The building was unimpressive because only three stories were above ground — there were five more stories underneath. Stone could see the Minuteman I missile out in front of the building, a lone dedication to the thousands of SAC crew members who spent as much as a third of their careers on twenty-four-hour alert, sitting near their planes, in underground missile-launch complexes, or in windowless command posts, ready to respond in case deterrence failed — in case they were called on to fight World War III.
He also saw the weeping willow on the lawn in front of the headquarters building, and the sight struck Richard Stone as oddly ironic. Fifty feet under that lone weeping willow, men and women were ready, at the direction of the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, and the man in the car with him, to unleash thousands of megatons of explosive power all across the planet with uncanny precision. The location of the willow, Stone realized, was even a little absurd — several nations probably had their thermonuclear weapons aimed at that precise spot, ready to knock out the two-thirds of America’s nuclear forces controlled from this one location.
No wonder Tyler turned off his radio, Stone thought Even in these days of relative stability and peace, the thought of being flattened and vaporized by the first incoming warheads was enough to drive a guy crazy.
“In ten, Sergeant Meers,” Tyler told his driver.
“Got it, sir.”
“Keep your badge in sight and follow me in, Rat,” Tyler told Stone. “We might have to put you in the ‘press box,’ but you’re certainly cleared inside the Command Post. It should be fun, whatever we got going here.”
Stone blinked at the four-star general. “General, you mean you don’t know what’s happening?”
A grim-faced expression from Tyler gave Stone his answer.
