That left one, and the room turned to Agent Preeti Parikh. Her avatar looked a little surprised; this wasn’t the kind of attention you wanted in a time of crisis. But she was ready to attend to her duty, and she started formulating her response to the suggestion that they could all see was coming.

Among the six virtual faces looking at her, John Hunt’s looked as concerned as the rest, and in truth, he was concerned, though for very different reasons than his colleagues. As the AI continued with its analysis and Agent Parikh discussed how she could realistically get to Peshawar in the shortest possible time, Agent John Hunt pondered the news the AI had provided. So, there were six long-range nuclear missiles heading for Moscow.

The question was: would they make it?

Chapter 51: Launch Protocols

Major Toranssen sat gathering his thoughts in the officers’ break room at Whiteman Air Force Base. Across from him sat Dr. Martin Sobleski, his chest heaving with exertion, sweat gathered and beaded on his forehead.

“How you doing there, Doc?” asked Jack, smiling at his partner in crime, and quite a few crimes at that.

“Hmm, Jack, let’s review,” said Martin, panting a little. He glanced around and lowered his voice to a measured tone, “We’ve just finished loading sixteen of the most explosive and unpleasant devices I have ever worked on into the belly of the single most expensive plane the air force has ever built. And now we’re sitting and waiting for confirmation that we should go ahead and steal that plane and break pretty much every international treaty the world has ever known.”

He sat back, clearly still reeling from the mental and physical exertion of loading and affixing the huge air bombs into the clamps that lined the huge hold of one of the menacing stealth bombers that sat in hangars across the base. They had done it. Using every available lie and con they had, using the major’s seniority and B-2 experience, along with faked orders from General Pickler, all supplemented by phone calls from Colonel Milton to the base commander.