Chapter 3: Excerpt from OneThreeThirteen
THE ‘WAR ROOM’ looked exactly like Madison feared it might – empty.
Together he and the Staff Sergeant got things going. The Staff Sergeant started up the central computer that linked Andrew’s computer system to the ones at the Pentagon. While the Staff Sergeant worked on the uplink to the Pentagon, Madison worked on getting an up-link to NORAD’s main satellite which he then linked to the ‘War Room’s world-wide status map. When the huge screens, that were the room’s main focus, lit up neither Madison nor the Staff Sergeant could believe what they were seeing.
US bases around the world were shown in blue. Invading forces in red.
Madison took two steps back from the huge screen, hoping it would transpose things on the map. “Are you sure you have those colors right?” quipped Lucinda.
“They’re right enough,” said Madison, looking over his shoulder at the slender woman standing with her legs astride and hands on her hips. He noted that her hair was pulled back in a severe bun and her caramel colored skin glowed pinkish red indicating a rising level of frustration. Pretty soon she’d be in full combat mode. He hadn’t known her long but already he felt confident with her having his back.
“There’s got to be something wrong with this,” said Lucinda, and ran over to the screen’s computer interface and began pushing buttons trying in vain to recalibrate the information on the screen.
The huge screen shuddered and went blank. For a few seconds she and Madison had hope. But when the screen came back on-line, casting an eerie pinkish-blue glow throughout the room, hope turned to resolve.
Every blue dot on the screen was ringed by a circle of red. From the War Room, Madison began issuing orders.
He ordered the men and women upstairs to take further security measures in an effort to hold off the full scale assault he knew was coming. He ordered everyone except combat seasoned soldiers into one area. The soldiers who had combat experience he stationed on the ground level by as many entrances as he could. The other entrances were locked and barricaded with office furniture. Windows were blacked out and stairwells were booby-trapped. Cameras showing any view of the outside were destroyed. Madison knew the enemy would use the wives, lovers, and friends of the people inside Central Command as a weapon to gain entry.
Madison ordered every piece of paper shredded then burned and every hard drive wiped clean. What the enemy didn’t already know they weren’t going to learn on his watch.
Only two computers in the building were left operating — one for transmissions between the Pentagon and Andrews, and the other for transmissions between Andrews and NORAD.
Madison was beginning to think that all their work had been a wasted effort, since they hadn’t been able to contact anyone at NORAD or the Pentagon. After an hour of trying Madison knew he couldn’t wait any longer. He had to act. They could hear heavy shelling going on outside. Gunfire was increasing and the shelling was getting closer. Surrender in his case was not option.
Madison very quietly took stock of the situation and realized there were two things he had to do and from the sound of the gunfire outside, he had to do them quickly.
First, thing was destroy ‘Angel.’ ‘Angel was the code name for Air Force One. The thought of a foreign power parading her around as their war trophy was unfathomable. The plane had to go.
Standing up to his full height, he turned in the direction of where Staff Sergeant Lucinda Washington sat and simply asked. “Are you a religious person, Sergeant?”
“Begging your pardon, sir?”
“Are you a religious person, Sergeant?” For the first time that night, Lucinda’s heart fluttered with fear.
“Yes. Yes, sir. I am.”
“Good. Then you should pray, Sergeant. Cause we’re going to blow up Air Force One and we have to get me off this base by whatever means necessary!”
Staff Sergeant Lucinda Washington put up a howl of protest. “Sir, you can’t just go around blowing up the President’s plane. For God’s sake, we don’t know who we’re fighting. We don’t even know if this is for real. This could very well be some sort of drill.”
“A drill with live rounds where we kill people. I don’t think so Sergeant and neither did your Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton.”
“Sir, I still say we need more information.”
“Sergeant, whatever actions I have us take, the responsibility for it will fall on me, not you. I can tell you for a certainty that whoever these people are, they’ve managed to capture a major portion of this base and if we don’t do something fast to stop them or at the very least, slow them down, they’re going to capture the rest of it. And that includes the portion that contains ‘Angel’. Am I clear?”
“Yes sir! But, Colonel Sir, no one else around here is going near that plane. You’re the only one here who’d have guts enough to do something like that.”
Madison thought for a second. It was time to reveal a truth about himself that only a few people on the face of the earth knew. A secret so dire that he’d sworn an oath never to reveal. “I can’t go Staff Sergeant. All the enemy needs to do, to finish us off, is capture both me an ‘Angel’.” He looked the Staff Sergeant squarely in the face and said as matter-of-factly as he could manage, “You see, I’m carrying the Football. It means that I’m …”
“I know what it means, she said cutting him off. You’re the guy with the ‘Doomsday Launch Codes.”
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Eliza D. Ankum
Author of
Flight 404
Ruby Sanders (The Ruby and Jared Saga Book 1)
Jared Anderson (The Ruby and Jared Saga Book 2)
OneThreeThirteen – A Presidential Agent Novel Series
Dancing With the Fat Woman
Thou Shalt Eat Dust
A Woman’s Voice: Book of Poems
STALKED: By Voices
The Hunt For Red November 