Lethal Trajectories - Michael Conley [122]
With a heavy heart, he walked over to the safe against the west wall of his office. With sweaty fingers, he keyed in the combination and pulled out a ten-page document that only three human beings had seen in its entirety. The cover page read “Israel’s Nuclear Response to a Nuclear Attack.” He would bring this document to the war cabinet meeting later today and advise the cabinet that the time had come to consider their doomsday options. As he reviewed the document, he could not help but think of the Armageddon Valley near Megiddo, just north of him, and the apocalyptic battle for which it stood.
44
38,000 feet over the Atlantic
10 October 2017
Eyes bleary, and with a double scotch clenched in both hands, Jack McCarty peered out the window of his 757-200 jet streaking over the Atlantic, bound for Geneva, Switzerland. The unmarked government plane, carrying only Jack, his four-man entourage, CIA bodyguards, and crew, had been airborne for about four hours, having left Andrews Air Force base at 7:00 p.m. with an ETA of 9:00 a.m.
His day had been an endless blur of meetings, and every meeting seemed at least a card short of the complete deck of information he desired. What information he did have didn’t come together in a pattern he could easily understand. Even now, it took a major mental effort to reconstruct the day and to contextually position the two meetings he was about to have in Geneva.
It was, nonetheless, good to be out of the Situation Room after hours spent poring over options and scenarios, punctuated by intelligence updates and intermittent calls from Wang Peng, plus two CIA briefings that shaped his next two days. There had been one other interruption, of course, in the form of the swearing-in of his brother as the new president of the United States.
Thank goodness for the television footage, because he could remember very little of the actual ceremony; he had been too preoccupied with his Geneva meetings to fully absorb the enormity of the moment. Strangely, he remembered the more inconsequential things, like the tears in Maggie’s eyes, the trickles of sweat on President Burkmeister’s face, and the big brown coffee stain on his white shirt, which he had tried (unsuccessfully) to cover with his suit jacket.
He also remembered Clayton’s brief remarks following the ceremony, the most noteworthy being his nomination of Elizabeth Cartright to step up as vice president. The ceremony itself couldn’t have lasted more than twenty minutes—it was only 12:45 when now-former President Burkmeister was whisked off to Walter Reed. Jack was glad to have had the chance to shake Burkmeister’s hand and receive his much-appreciated good wishes. Clayton was right, Jack thought, he was—no, is—a class act.
After the swearing-in ceremony, Jack had joined the others in the Situation Room to complete the preparations for his trip. “Have you settled yet on who you’ll be taking with you, Jack?” Clayton had asked, looking harried.
“Well, Peng and I both agreed that a large contingent would be counterproductive to this kind of high-level positioning meeting. The working details should be developed only after we’ve settled on a framework and a few guiding principles. We’re limiting it to five attendees each, including ourselves. Peng and I felt we could handle the energy and environmental aspects of the agenda, but we’ll need expertise in the military, intelligence, economic, and geopolitical arenas.”
After a short discussion on the attendees who would accompany Jack, Clayton looked at CIA Director Mullen and asked, “What’s the latest on the Prince Khalid situation, Tony?”
“Jack’s meeting is set for ten in the morning tomorrow, Geneva time, Mr. President. He will be allowed to take two CIA bodyguards with him. They will rendezvous with Prince Khalid’s security people and be taken to a secret location. We are still fine-tuning the details.”
“That means we’ll