The Trigger

  We cannot control what happens when we are gone from here, or when that day will come, she explained in the memo that became known as the Eulogy. We cannot be assured of completing what we've begun. We cannot be assured that our successors will honor either our intent or our efforts. All we can do, in the time remaining to us, is to make the most of our presence. If all we leave behind are plans, they are easily ignored. If all we leave behind is a hole in the ground, it is easily filled. If all we do is hoard workers and supplies, they are easily diverted to other causes.

  But if we commit ourselves to this goal and no other, enlisting help wherever we can find it, I believe we have enough time to place in the ground a solid foundation for peaceful disarmament, with pilings that go all the way to the social bedrock. And if we diligently tend and watch over our foundation until the concrete has cured, and is ready to bear all the weight we intended for it, then those who follow us will have as much trouble dismantling it as they will ignoring it. It will be a permanent fixture on the political landscape, a reminder of the new possibilities. What our successors decide to build there will be influenced by what we've done to prepare the ground, and their choices will be visible for all to see, and judge.

  It may be that it's not yet time for this vision to become a reality. But we can change the nature of the argument forever, and provide those who share our vision with a symbol and an example around which they can rally. It may be that it is not within our reach to hasten the future - this is still a young country, stubbornly short-sighted at times. But we can still be the voice of the self-fulfilling prophecy, the midwife if not the mother of a new age. Our commitment and our example will ensure that the future, when it comes, will bear more than a passing resemblance to our ideals of a safer, more civil society.

  This is what the moment asks of us. This is what the President needs from us. Make every day count.

  Printed on fine bond letterhead instead of electronically mailed, individually hand-signed by the former Alabama senator and hand-delivered by her to nearly three hundred desks in the Execu-tive Office Building, the Eulogy memo had far more impact on the staff than Breland could ever have guessed. There were a handful of defections and resignations, but those who remained closed ranks around the President and tried to shelter him from the storm raging without.

  Ironically, one of the sheltering havens they found for him was Western Europe. Breland was more popular in Cologne than in Chicago, more respected in Bonn than Boston. All of the European Union nations had long ago resolved their issues regarding private ownership of firearms - and resolved them in favor of public safety. It was hard for the typical citizen of England or Germany or France to grasp how an American President could find himself in trouble for offering a long overdue solution to what they viewed as an ugly stain on America's character.

  But there was more to Breland's popularity than sympathy for someone seen as wrongly maligned. Most of those same EU nations had struggled for decades with urban terrorism, and Breland's gift of the Trigger had given the police a powerful new weapon against the car bomb and the package bomb. And unlike in America, there was no resistance to using the Trigger creatively and aggressively.

  Offspring of the Mark I were buried under dozens of intersections in Paris and three other French cities, creating confinement grids that made it difficult to transport a bomb any distance through the city. Checkpoints with massive blast deflectors were placed along the approaches to train and highway tunnels in the Swiss Alps. Large areas of London, Belfast, Geneva, Amsterdam, Rome, Warsaw and Berlin - some as extensive as forty square blocks - were evacuated and screened for unexploded ordnance, then placed under permanent protection by a Mark I array.

  Creating these 'safe zones' was a calculated risk, and there were some casualties, despite metal-detector and magnetic anomaly sweeps beforehand - a thirteenth-century church, San Francesco, in Bologna and a ten-year-old government services center in Bonn both partially collapsed into the craters left by deep-buried aerial bombs, and in London a fire caused by a V-1 warhead exploding under the basement badly damaged a block of flats near Parliament Square. But the safe zones, marked by Breland's blue-and-white dove symbol, were so popular with tourists and residents both that those losses did not derail the program.

  At the same time, all across the European continent, fields and forests by the square kilometer were being swept clean of bombs and shells left behind by almost two centuries of warfare. A startling amount of aging ordnance proved to still be in the ground, and the work became something of a spectator event, producing spectacular visuals for the newsnets on a regular basis.

  Outside the EU, similar 'anti-terrorist protocols' and 'interdiction zones' began to appear along the Nile, where the new democratic government of Egypt was eager to lure Westerners back to the pyramids and temples; in Sarajevo, which was determined to recreate itself as the beautiful, cosmopolitan city it had been before the first civil war; and in Singapore, which surrounded itself with what amounted to a Trigger-field moat and declared itself 'the island city of peace'.

  Elsewhere in the Far East, the governments of more than a dozen island nations from the Solomon Islands to the Philippines were calling on the United States and Japan to return and clean up not only the battlefields but the territorial waters on which they'd fought, and the US Navy had begun testing a towed Trigger array off Guadalcanal. The premier of a reunified Vietnam made the same appeal to the governments of France and the United States.

  Viewed from Eureka County, Nevada, or Princeton, or the Goldstein estate in Maryland, all this activity seemed like a thoroughgoing vindication, a guarantee that there would be no turning back.

  But the view was different from the offices of Senator Wilman and Mind Over Madness, of General Madison and the other Joint Chiefs, of Anson Tripp and the National Security Council, of Devon Carrero and the geopolitical analysts at the Department of State. They were concerned not with cleaning up after the last war, but with preventing - or, it became necessary, winning - the next war. And it was not yet clear to anyone whether the Trigger could help with either.

  No one in those circles believed that peacable demonstrations of the technology alone would make the Trigger a credible deterrent to aggression. It was widely held that someone, somewhere, would have to put armed forces on the move and on the line. 'It will take a Hiroshima,' was the chilling phrase that had achieved currency.

  And so they waited, preparing for what they considered the Trigger's real test, knowing that if their response was too slow or too feeble, it would have to be done again. They waited for the rumblings of aggression in a place they could reach in time and in strength, rumblings loud enough that no one could miss when and how they were silenced.

  They waited, frozen in an uncertain standoff with an undeclared opponent. They waited, and while they waited the training went on, preparing unarmed pilots and sailors and soldiers to face an invading army, an advancing fleet. If the Trigger did not work, many lives in the special Tactical Intervention units would be forfeit.

  The waiting finally ended on June 6, when President-for-Life Hosan Hussein demanded that Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait cease construction on a series of slender fifty-meter-tall towers located just inside their borders with Iraq.

  'We know the true purpose of these structures,' Hussein declared in a chest-pounding national address. 'We know that the claim of a defensive shield is a lie. These towers are being built so our enemies can spy on us, so the infidels can peer into our villages and cities and streets and homes and mosques. These towers are being built so our enemies can beam destructive energies into our bodies as we sleep, energies which will cause cancers to grow and steal the life from our unborn children.

  'We will not allow these assaults to take place. We will not accept these insidious invasions of our sovereign lands and our sacred places. The towers must come down. If those who plot against us do not abandon their course and destroy these evil weapons, then I will send our brave
pilots and soldiers to smash them down and scatter our enemies on the sands.'

  To back up his ultimatum, Hosan Hussein sent two armored divisions supported by artillery and antiaircraft batteries south to within a four-hour drive of the Al-Rafah crossroads on the Saudi border, where more than eight kilometers of the tower array stood completed. But before the columns of tanks had even reached those encampments, a mixed squadron of F-22 Raptors and F-l 17B Nighthawks had flown half-way around the world and landed at Al-Hayyaniyah, just forty minutes from the border.

  The aging Nighthawks carried the military version of the Mark I in their internal bays, while the Raptors carried the long-range Mark II in an oversized underbelly pod. But even the crews of those aircraft wondered silently how much eight aircraft carrying no missiles under their wings, and cameras instead of guns in their noses, could do against more than one hundred tanks. They listened to Breland's public warning to Hussein with no hope that it would be heeded.

  The next morning, the Iraqi forces moved to within an hour of the border, and Hosan Hussein issued another ultimatum, this time including the United States in his roster of villains. 'We will not wait to be your victims, or needlessly endanger our fighting men. We will not be diverted into lengthy negotiations or slowed by empty promises. The towers must come down now.'

  By nightfall, the last of the construction crews working along the Saudi border had packed up and withdrawn.

  At 2.00 p.m. Washington time, Stepak and Tripp interrupted President Breland in a meeting with news of what looked like the Iraqi push. 'We have new satellite data,' said Stepak as they hurried through the corridors toward the situation room. 'The Iraqi units near Al-Rafah are moving east at high speed, and six more divisions are coming down the Al-Basrah road toward the Safwan entrance into Kuwait.'

  'So Kuwait was the target after all,' said Breland, studying the map. 'Al-Rafah was a feint.'

  'So it appears,' said Tripp.

  'How long?'

  'We're projecting that the western forces will probably cross into Kuwait along the Wadi al-Batin, where the array is still under construction. If they keep up their present pace, they can cross just before dawn local time. The eastern forces can reach Safwan an hour sooner. The grid is active there.'

  'Rockets and artillery?'

  They reached the situation room as Breland was asking his question, and the secretary of defense went directly to the theater map. 'In position to reach Al-Kuwayt - here, here, and here.

  And as this scenario is developing, Mr President, we expect to see them used.'

  Stepak hesitated, then turned to face Breland. 'I know you intended to wait until the tanks crossed the border, so there'd be no question that Iraq was the aggressor. But if the GA-30s have chemical warheads, we could be looking at ten thousand dead in Kuwait City. If they have biologicals, the bidding starts at thirty thousand. Do we wait until the Iraqis put the artillery in play, or do we go after them preemptively?'

  'How fast can we respond once they start? Can we get close enough to wait on the first muzzle flash?'

  General Hawley stepped forward to take the question. The Nighthawks don't have much capacity to loiter on station. The Raptors have more, but, frankly, we don't have enough planes there to cover all the bases - or to cover the likely losses if we do expose our aircraft that way.'

  'Do we have any other aircraft we can bring in?'

  'There are six Trigger-equipped strike fighters on the USS Truman, in the Mediterranean,' said Admiral Jacobs. They're too far out. There are six more on the USS Reagan, in the western Indian Ocean - with midair refueling, we could just get them over the Iraq-Kuwait border by dawn, but the timing is tricky - we need a Go within the next half-hour, and they won't be able to linger.'

  Breland settled into his chair at the circular conference table. 'I need to hear recommendations,' he said. 'Don't expect me to call the pitch.'

  'Very well, Mr President,' said Stepak. 'Our recommendation is that we violate the border and act preemptively. General Madison proposes to send one flight of F-22s and one flight of F-l 17s after the artillery in Iraq, with the attack timed to take place thirty minutes before the armor units reach Kuwait. The other four aircraft at Al-Hayyaniyah would pursue the armor column from Ash-Shabakah and intercept them at the border. Four aircraft from the Reagan would be sent to intercept the eastern column at Safwan.'

  'Projected losses?'

  Twenty percent. Three aircraft.'

  'Can they get the job done?'

  'I'd rather have twice as many aircraft, and some top cover for them,' said Madison. 'But we'll do our damnedest to get the job done with what we have.'

  'Can we be sure this isn't another feint?'

  'Not if we shoot first.'

  'I'll want to issue another warning.'

  'Then projected losses double, and I can't guarantee the results. I would counsel strongly against it. You already told them we're there, and you told them why. Letting them know we've seen through the feint gives away an edge we probably need.'

  Tripp appeared at Breland's right elbow. 'And, sir, consider -' he said in a low voice. 'What if you warned them again, and they actually stopped? Does that give us what we want?'

  His implication was as distasteful to Breland as the prospect of initiating hostilities on Iraqi territory. Pushing his chair back, he walked up to the theater map and studied it, his arms crossed over his chest. But the map was only colored pixels, an eccentric chessboard with exotic pieces. He had to force himself to see the human beings - the American pilots, the Iraqi tankers, the Kuwaiti soldiers and citizens, the artillerymen expecting to be fifty kilometers from the fighting.

  We do need a Hiroshima, after all. Damn them for not believing, Breland thought bitterly. Damn them all for being willing to raise the club - and obliging me to knock it out of their hands. And that means no half-measures - it has to be done with enough authority that they never pick it up again. Damn them all -

  'I authorize the plan outlined by the Secretary of Defense,' he said without turning from the map. 'Send the planes into Iraq.'

  The planes came racing through the near-total darkness of a moonless predawn morning, skimming four abreast two hundred meters above the desert. Neither radar nor sentry saw them, angular black shapes knifing through the sky, outrunning the sound of their own engines - not until it was too late, and hellish pillars of fire marked the location of ammunition trucks which had been poised to feed the great steel cylinders of the long-range artillery.

  From inside the cockpits, each thunderous explosion below seemed to lunge upward at them, grasping for the delicate flight surfaces, hurling shrapnel at the spinning turbine blades, the soft bodies of the pilots. The worst of the concussions shoved their planes around in the sky like a thunderstorm cell. But the speed of their passage carried them safely away from harm, as though they were riding on the leading edge of chaos.

  Breaking into pairs, they made four more runs over the gun emplacements and the adjacent encampment, both now starkly lit by fierce fires. The last of these was made in silence, as there was nothing left on the ground below them that could threaten the planes - or anyone else.

  Along the Az-Zubayr road, four more ghosts chased and caught a different quarry - a long and badly strung-out support convoy following a two-mile column of Russian- and Indian-made armor. With one Nighthawk flying just above and to the right of the road and another just above and to the left, a single pass was enough to leave the convoy in ruins. The Ravens, trailing behind as spotters, found nothing to aim their Mark Us at, and no reason for a second pass.

  When they caught up with the armor column, they found it dispersing, scattering off the road and into the sand. It made no difference. In less than two minutes, every tank was a flaming coffin. The token machine-gun fire directed at the planes in the first seconds did no damage, and even with radioed warning from the convoy behind, neither of the mobile antiaircraft guns managed to fire a single shell at the low-flying attackers.
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  The third element of the interdiction force, the Navy contingent from the Reagan, arrived late at Safwan, their unforgiving timetable ruined by half a dozen minor snafus and a midair refueling problem. Dawn had already broken when the flight finally made contact with its targets.

  But to the amazement of the pilots, the Iraqi column - number-ing more than two hundred twenty tanks and other vehicles - was neither driving into Kuwait nor fleeing back the way it had come. Instead, it was stopped dead on the road a kilometer from Safwan, a ragged double line of vehicles in clear sight of the Kuwaiti border post. And on either side of the road, scattered across the barren land but keeping well clear of the tanks, were hundreds, perhaps thousands of Iraqi soldiers on foot.

  It took several radio calls over the next several minutes to sort out the mystery. Eventually, though, the circling pilots received confirmation from the Kuwaiti forces at the border that the improbable prospect before them was in fact the strange reality - the soldiers on foot were the tank crews, who had abandoned their vehicles rather than be blown up inside them.

  'Flight, they obviously got the word on what they could expect. Let's not disappoint them,' said the sortie leader, and led his wingmates down.

  It was, at last, the end of the beginning. In less than an hour, a dozen unarmed aircraft had dismantled a modern armored invasion force, methodically destroying its equipment and, more importantly, breaking its will. But it was the story of the battle that wasn't - the events at Safwan, the incredible images captured by combat videographers on the ground - which confirmed for believers and skeptics both that a new era had dawned, and there would be no going back.

  * * *

  II: Jammer

  23: So Much Madness

  'If you have a nation of men who have risen to that height of moral cultivation that they will not declare war or carry arms, for they have not so much madness left in their brains, you have a nation of lovers, of benefactors, of true, great, and able men.'