Vortex

The once steaming-hot cup of coffee sitting on the President’s desk had long since grown stone cold. Now it sat off to one side, pushed aside and abandoned after a particularly abrupt hand gesture threatened to spill its contents across an important stack of telexes, reports, and maps.

“Indeed, Prime Minister, you’re absolutely right. The situation is quite intolerable.”

Vice President James Forrester slid his own empty cup onto the low side table by his chair and leaned forward. The President’s sudden formality was a sign that the hour-long, early-mo ming conversation with Britain’s prime minister was drawing to a close. Until now, everything had been on a strictly first-name basis.

“Exactly. My people will be meeting within the hour,” The President arched an eyebrow at Forrester, looking for confirmation.

He nodded back. Most of the NSC’s key players had al506

ready been at their posts for more than twenty-four hour sever since the first unsettling reports of the new Cuban offensive started pouring into official Washington. And a Marine Corps helicopter was already parked out on the White House lawn, on standby to fly him across the Potomac to the

Pentagon.

“Yes, Prime Minister, I’ll call you the moment I have more detailed information from this end. Yes. And thank you, too. ” The President put the phone down, his expression grim.

Forrester couldn’t control his curiosity.

“Well?”

The President looked up.

“It’s a go, Jimmy. The British are in.” He seemed older somehow.

“I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. But I just don’t see that we have any other real choice. “

Forrester felt his pulse accelerating. He rose from his chair.

“In that case, Mr. President, I’ll be on my way. Hurley has his group waiting for me.”

He glanced behind him as he left the Oval Office. The President sat still behind his desk-staring sadly at nothing in particular. Not for the first time, Forrester realized that it was a hell of a lot easier to follow orders than it was to give them.

EMERGENCY CONFERENCE ROOM, THE PENTAGON

At the President’s direction, the NSC’s Southern Africa Crisis Group had shifted its day-to-day operations over to the Pentagon. The basement

Emergency Conference Room there was larger, had better communications facilities, and allowed faster access to the latest intelligence data from the region.

Almost as important, the Pentagon had more parking and entrances and exits than the White House. And that, in turn, made it easier to hold a serious meeting without creating a three-ring media circus. The print and

TV reporters who prowled through the White House looking for fast-breaking news had limousine-counting down to a science.

Besides, the Conference Room looked a lot more like a

hightech command center than did the rather dingy White House Situation

Room. A bank of six-foot-high computer display screens, most of them blank at the moment, lined one whole wall, three across and two rows high. The length of a T-shaped table accommodated Crisis Group staffers and aides, while members of the Crisis Group sat across one end. A microphone stood in front of every seat at the table. Podiums, with as much audiovisual equipment as a small high school, allowed the entire group to be briefed on developments.

Doors led to the basement hallway outside, an adjacent communications center, a pair of small apartments with beds and washrooms, and a carefully guarded cubicle crowded with terminals linked directly to the mainframe computers at every major U.S. intelligence agency.

The Conference Room was supposed to be filled with organized chaos.

Instead, it was just chaos. Cuba’s attack into South Africa had caught the

Crisis Group in mid move turning what was supposed to be a smooth transition into a frantic scramble.

Officers and enlisted personnel from all four military services came and went in a steady stream, mixing with little knots of harried-looking civilian aides. Technicians clustered on one side of the room, trying to get the right images displayed on the room’s wall-mounted computer screens.

Maps for southern Africa were on file, but they hadn’t yet been converted to the Pentagon’s new computer format.

More enlisted men staggered in, carrying scaled boxes of highly sensitive intelligence reports. An extremely tense Air Force captain stood in the doorway to the tiny intel cubicle, checking off each report’s title and serial number. Under normal circumstances, he would have counted every page of every report to make sure that none were missing-but circumstances were clearly not normal.

A low whistle broke across all the activity. The assorted technicians, officers, and enlisted men scattered through the chamber turned to see a short, bowlegged Army sergeant major waving them out.

“Meeting’s on, gents.

Secure the room.

In the sudden exodus, pen flashlights, tech manuals, tools, and reams of paper were all left lying in place. They’d be needed again once the politicos and higher brass were done jawing at each other.