Executive orders - Tom Clancy [44]
Why is this necessary? he asked. We trashed the last ballistic weapons last year.
Mr. President, we still have cruise missiles which can be armed with W-80 warheads, plus B-61 gravity bombs assigned to our bomber fleet. We need your authorization to enable the Permissible Action Links-the PALs-and the idea is that we enable them as early as possible, just in case-
Ryan completed the sentence: I get taken out early.
You're really important now, Jack, a nasty little voice told him. Now you can initiate a nuclear attack. I hate those goddamned things. Always have.
You aren't supposed to like them, sir, the general sympathized. Now, as you know, the Marines have the VMH-1 helicopter squadron that's always ready to get you out of here and to a place of safety at a moment's notice, and
Ryan listened to the rest while his mind wondered if he should do what Jimmy Carter had done at this point: Okay, let's see, then. Tell them I want them to pick me up NOW. Which presidential command had turned into a major embarrassment for a lot of Marines. But he couldn't do that now, could he? It would get out that Ryan was a paranoid fool, not someone who wanted to see if the system really worked the way people said it would. Besides, today VMH-1 would definitely be spun up, wouldn't it?
The fourth member of the briefing team was an Army warrant officer in civilian clothes who carried a quite ordinary-looking briefcase known as the football, inside of which was a binder, inside of which was the attack plan-actually a whole set of them
Let me see it. Ryan pointed. The warrant hesitated, then unlocked the case and handed over the navy blue binder, which Ryan flipped open.
Sir, we haven't changed it since-
The first section, Jack saw, was labeled MAJOR ATTACK OPTION. It showed a map of Japan, many of whose cities were marked with multicolored dots. The legend at the bottom showed what the dots meant in terms of delivered megatonnage; probably another page would quantify the predicted deaths. Ryan opened the binder rings and removed the whole section. I want these pages burned. I want this MAO eliminated immediately. That merely meant that it would be filed away in some drawer in Pentagon War Plans, and also in Omaha. Things like this never died.
Sir, we have not yet confirmed that the Japanese have destroyed all of their launchers, nor have we confirmed the neutralization of their weapons. You see-
General, that's an order, Ryan said quietly. I can give them, you know.
The man's back braced to attention. Yes, Mr. President.
Ryan flipped through the rest of the binder. Despite his previous job, what he found was a revelation. Jack had always avoided too-intimate knowledge of the damned things. He'd never expected them to be used. After the terrorist incident in Denver and all the horror that had swept the surface of the planet in its aftermath, statesmen across continents and political beliefs had indulged themselves in a collective think about the weapons under their control. Even during the shooting war with Japan just ended, Ryan had known that somewhere, some team of experts had concocted a plan for a nuclear retaliatory strike, but he'd concentrated his efforts at making it unnecessary, and it was a source of considerable pride to the new President that he'd never even contemplated implementing the plan whose summary was still in his left hand. LONG RIFLE, he saw, was the code name. Why did the names have to be like that, virile and exciting, as though for something that one could be proud of?
What's this one? LIGHT SWITCH ?
Mr. President, the general answered, that's a method of using an EMP attack. Electromagnetic pulse. If you explode a device at very high altitude, there's nothing-no air, actually-to absorb the initial energy of the detonation