“For you, my very dear friend,” Tauriq Haddad said, as he turned his head and bowed slowly before his leader, “are the messiah. You are god come in the form of a man.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE Al Augustus lost no time while President Beaulieu was out of the country on his extended mission. Before he left the country, the president had signed off on giving Archie Gladstone his second and third stars, promoting him to the rank of lieutenant general. Congressional approval was perfunctory. The president also signed an executive order authorizing the secretary to take all necessary action during the crisis to protect United States military installations.

With the gradual thinning out of the volcanic ash, it was now possible to begin deployment of aviation units as well as ground units into the Ash-Free Zone. Augustus had located a virtually abandoned military storage depot in southern Colorado near Pueblo. The commander’s operations task force was able to report that the Pueblo depot took in 22,500 acres, with some 922 igloos, or weapons storage bunkers, of which 102 were storing 2,475 tons of deadly mustard gas. The facility also housed two completely equipped 400-bed portable military hospitals. In addition to the ammunition storage igloos at the depot, there were also a thousand unused buildings.

The Pueblo Depot had been the site, years earlier, for the destruction of the Pershing intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

Secretary Augustus determined to position his forces on the east and west foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains—Spanish for the “blood of Christ”—which divided Albuquerque in the west from Pueblo in the northeast.

As the buildup began, traffic toward the staging areas accelerated dramatically. Trains were now moving. Truck convoys with armaments, equipment, housing and shelter materials, as well as food and expendable items, filled the roads. Huge quantities of fuel, ammunition, and rations were in transit day and night. Now that limited low-level flying was permitted, the flood of supplies in and out of Albuquerque increased at an even faster pace.

General Archie Gladstone had never before visited the Pueblo facility. He hardly knew of its existence, but he was delighted by the spacious accommodations, which he deemed easily large enough for two or more reinforced combat divisions. But what else he learned after his own detailed inspection amazed him.

He called Al Augustus on a secure line. “Mr. Secretary, I thought all Pershing missiles were supposed to have been destroyed here by the end of 1991 under the terms of the treaty President Reagan signed with the Soviets.”

“Of course they were,” said Augustus. “There are no more Pershing missiles.”

“Well, there are now,” said Gladstone.

“What are you talking about? There can’t be any Pershing missiles at Pueblo.”

“Mr. Secretary, I just counted ten fully intact Pershings here at Pueblo. What are your instructions?”