Swan Song Read Free Page A

prodded. He glanced again at the clock, which showed fifty-eight minutes after ten. “I think the decision belongs to you now.”
    I don’t want it! he almost shouted. He needed time, needed to go to Camp David or off on one of those long fishing trips he had enjoyed as a senator. But now there was no more time. His hands were gripped before him. His face felt so tight he feared it would crack and fall to pieces like a mask, and he wouldn’t want to see what lay underneath. When he looked up, the watching and powerful men were still there, and his senses seemed to whirl away from him.
    The decision. The decision had to be made. Right now.
    “Yes.” The word had never sounded so terrible before. “All right. We go to”-he paused, drew a deep breath-“we go to Defcon Three. Admiral, alert your task forces. General Sinclair, I don’t want those B-1s over one inch of Russian territory. Is that clear?”
    “My crews could walk that line in their sleep.”
    “Punch your codes.”
    Sinclair went to work on the keyboard console before him, then lifted his telephone to make the voice authorization to Strategic Air Command in Omaha and the North American Air Defense fortress in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado. Admiral Narramore picked up the phone that instantly put him in touch with Naval Operations at the Pentagon. Within minutes there would be heightened activity at the country’s air and naval bases. The Defcon Three codes would hum through the wires, and yet another check would be carried out on radar equipment, sensors, monitors, computers and hundreds of other pieces of high-tech military hardware, as well as the dozens of Cruise missiles and thousands of nuclear warheads hidden in silos across the Midwest from Montana to Kansas.
    The president was numb. The decision was made. Chief of Staff Bergholz adjourned the meeting and came over to grasp the president’s shoulder and say what a good, solid decision it was. As the military advisors and officials left the Situations Room and moved to the elevator in the outside hallway the president sat alone. His pipe was cold, and he did not care to relight it.
    “Sir?”
    He jumped, turning his head toward the voice. Hannan stood beside the door. “Are you all right?”
    “A-OK.” The president smiled wanly. A memory of his glory days as an astronaut had just flashed by. “No. Jesus Christ, I don’t know. I think I am.”
    “You made the correct decision. We both know that. The Soviets have to realize we’re not afraid.”
    “I am afraid, Hans! I’m damned afraid!”
    “So am I. So is everyone, but we must not be ruled by fear.” He approached the table and paged through some of the folders. In a few minutes, a young CIA man would be in to shred all the documents. “I think you’d better send Julianne and Cory to the Basement tonight, as soon as they can pack. We’ll work out something with the press.”
    The president nodded. The Basement was an underground shelter in Delaware where the first lady, the president’s seventeen-year-old son, ranking cabinet members and staff people would-they hoped-be protected from all but a direct hit by a one-megaton nuclear warhead. Since news of the carefully constructed Basement had leaked to the public several years before, such underground shelters had started appearing all over the country, some dug into old mines and others into mountains. The “survivalist” business was booming as never before.
    “There’s a subject we need to talk about,” Hannan said. The president could see his own face, weary and hollow-eyed, reflected in the man’s glasses. “Talons.”
    “It’s not time for that yet.” His stomach had knotted. “Not nearly time.”
    “Yes. It is time. I think you’d be safer in the Airborne Command Center. One of the first targets would be the roof of the White House. I’m going to send Paula to the Basement, and, as you know, you have the authority to send whomever else you want there. But I’d like