James BeauSeigneur - In His Image James

The elevator door opened to a small room about twelve feet square where two armed guards waited. Badges were out of the question under the circumstances, so they were operating strictly on a recognition basis. Joel would soon learn this was not that difficult a task: very few people were involved in this operation. As Scott introduced him to the guards who were obviously studying every aspect of his appearance, Joel noticed his photograph laying on the desk beside an array of security monitors, one of which was focused on the elevator in the garage where they had entered.

Scott then opened the cipher lock of an armored door that was the only exit from the room other than the elevator. Before them lay a small sea of computers and defense tracking equipment on a raised floor, filling a room about 8500 square feet. An array of symmetric multiprocessors made up the heart of the operation, with integrated routers/ATM switches feeding real-time input via broadband fiberlinks. Joel had seen this hardware configuration before, at the Strategic Defense Control Facility in the mountains near Mizpe Ramon in southern Israel. There was much less room here than in the mountain, but at first glance this seemed to be an exact duplicate of the core of the SDCF.

Scattered around the facility were a handful of men and women busily working at Sun workstations. A few slowed their pace just long enough to look up and acknowledge Scott's and Joel's presence with friendly smiles before going back to their work. While Joel looked around in disbelief, a short well-built man entered from another room and approached them. Scott abruptly ended the brief tour to greet the man.

"Good afternoon, Colonel," Scott said, formally. "Allow me to introduce Mr. Joel Felsberg; Joel, this is Colonel White."

"Welcome to the team," White said. "Glad you could join us."

"Uh… thank you, sir," he said, unaware that he had.

"You're coming in at a crucial time. Scott has told me all about you and I've seen your record. I'm sure we can count on you to help us make this thing happen.

"Scott," he continued, "introduce Joel to the rest of the team and get him briefed on what his role is. We'll talk later." With that the Colonel left.

"Uh, yeah, that's a good idea, Scott. Get me briefed on what my role is," Joel repeated. And then more to the point, "What the hell is going on down here?!"

Scott smiled. "Welcome to SF-14," he said.

In the facility's briefing room, Scott poured coffee and proceeded to present an overview of the project and a discussion of the highly classified maximum capabilities of each of the four phases of the Israeli strategic defense. After nearly an hour, he finally got around to explaining where Joel fit into all of this.

"The reason you're here," Scott explained, "is that two nights ago Dr. Claude Remey, our software guru, very stupidly got in the way of his neighbors' domestic quarrel. As a result, he's now lying unconscious in a hospital with a stab wound three quarters of an inch from his heart. You've been brought on to finish the project he was working on."

Joel knew Remey. They had worked together on a couple of projects but had never gotten along well. Still, Joel was sorry to hear of his injury.

"What you see here is a fully operations-capable backup facility to the Strategic Defense Control Facility. It is not simply a 'test' facility. Dr. Arnold Brown, who was in charge of its development, determined from the outset that knowledge of its existence should be limited to as few individuals as possible. It was felt that, should Israel ever be invaded, this facility should be maintained at all costs.

"Colonel White, actually, Lieutenant Colonel White, whom you just met, was part of a chain of officers, decreasing in rank from General to Captain, charged with operation of the facility in case of an invasion. The purpose of the chain was to prevent any invading force from disrupting the operation of this facility by systematically arresting all high-ranking officers. As it turns out, each of Colonel White's superiors were arrested in the first days after the invasion and the responsibility fell to him.

"The initial plan for this facility, in an invasion where the SDCF was lost, included three scenarios. First, should the opportunity present itself, this facility could be used to launch on the invader's flank, thus cutting off his supply lines and weakening the forward forces. Second, should there be an attempt by an invading force to use our own nuclear capabilities against us, this facility could frustrate that attempt by overriding the controls at the SDCF. And third, should there be any attempt to remove a warhead from a silo, this facility has the capability to neutralize the nuclear device. Had either the second or the third scenario occurred, the established procedure would have been to initiate the destruction of each threatening, or threatened, missile by remotely setting off small explosives in the silos that would disable both the silo and the warhead, without, of course, detonating the nuclear device.

"What actually happened with the Russian invasion was something that had not even been considered. As I alluded in the cafe – oh, by the way, the cafe is one of several safe houses around the city – the Russians have presented us with a totally unexpected opportunity. By concentrating their forces away from populated areas," Scott paused to point out the Russian troop locations marked on a large wall map, "they have literally made themselves sitting ducks to the capabilities of this facility.

"The first phase of our plan, then, is to neutralize the Strategic Defense Control Facility and launch six neutron-tipped, short-range Gideon missiles – one against each of the Russians' positions.

"There are three very important reasons we've chosen the neutron-tipped Gideons. The most obvious is that since we will be launching on targets within our own borders, it is absolutely imperative that we limit the area of destruction. We'll come back to that in a minute.

"The second reason is that the Gideon-class warhead produces the most rapidly dissipating radiation pattern of any of our warheads. Our forces will be able to reenter the initial kill radius within six to eight hours after impact. Ground Zero will be entirely habitable in three weeks.

"Third, if the launch is successful, and our strategic defense successfully defends Israel against a Russian retaliatory nuclear strike – that's phase two of the plan – we will very quickly face a second threat from both Arab and Russian conventional forces. We hope to limit the immediate response of the Arabs by: one, creating a communications blackout, thus maintaining the highest possible level of confusion for our enemies; and two, by planning the strike during the Hajj." Scott was referring to the annual pilgrimage of Muslims to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. The rites of the Hajj include circling the Ka 'bah in Mecca and going seven times between the mountains of Safa and Manva as Abraham's concubine, Hagar, is believed to have done during her search for water. This can take several days and is followed by group prayer on the plain of Arafa. During the Hajj, Muslims are forbidden by the Koran to harm any living being, including their enemies.

Scott spread out a handful of photographs on the table. "As you can see, our satellite reconnaissance of the Russian encampments reveals extraordinarily large caches of weaponry – both Russian-made and captured Israeli weapons."

Joel was surprised by what the photos showed. Dozens of huge temporary warehouses had been constructed, with tanks, helicopters, and armored personnel carriers parked nearby in neat rows. It looked like a massive car lot. "What are they doing out there?!" Joel asked.

"We suspect that the Russians are storing up military equipment for a conventional attack on Saudi Arabia and Egypt. After that, we have to assume they will go after each of the other oil-rich countries in the area. We have only limited intelligence reports to support that assumption, but it's obvious that they don't need that kind of armament simply to keep Israel under thumb."