by Andrew Watts
Overwhelming Force
Book 5 in THE WAR PLANNERS Series
Andrew Watts
Point Whiskey Publishing
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
About the Author
Also by Andrew Watts
Copyright © Point Whiskey Publishing, 2019, all rights reserved.
Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
Abraham Lincoln
There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry.
George Armstrong Custer
1
“When did this happen?” The president’s eyes twitched with fatigue as he read the update on his secure tablet. He frowned and handed it back to his chief of staff.
“Twenty minutes ago, Mr. President.”
They walked quickly through the second-floor hallway of the West Wing. It was late. Past midnight. But no one would be getting any sleep tonight.
“And we’re sure about this? There’s no way this is a mistake? A military drill? Communications mix-up? Anything?”
“I’m afraid not, sir.”
“North Korea invading the south. Son of a bitch, I can’t believe they actually did it. Why now?”
Two Secret Service agents escorted them into an elevator. They plunged down several levels below the earth’s surface. President Griffin arrived in PEOC a few moments later.
The Presidential Emergency Operations Center was alive and bustling. Filled with senior national security staff who had for weeks been warning him of an impending crisis in Asia. The military officers and career defense officials looked like the president felt: tired.
And worried.
“What’s the latest?”
“Sir, in the past few minutes we’ve received word that US military assets near Japan have been attacked by air strike. Various reports of satellite and electronics outages. We’re attempting to get updates, but most communications are disrupted.”
“Japan?” President Griffin frowned. “Why would…?”
One of the military officers in the room looked up from his laptop. “General, Thule is down.”
“Thule?”
The officer nodded. “Just happened. STRATCOM is trying tertiary methods of comms now, but…they say their satellite-based detection systems aren’t responding either. This information is about two minutes time-late.”
The president’s chief of staff whispered, “They’re referring to ICBM early-warning systems. The Air Force has a base in Greenland—Thule. Between that base, a few others, and the satellite sensors, it’s how we would know of a nuclear missile launch.”
President Griffin watched the general who had been receiving this information. His eyes widened a bit. He stood up, checked his watch, and then nodded to the Secret Service agent standing in the corner of the room. The general cleared his throat and said, “SUNSET.”
The president was trying to shake the cobwebs off, wondering what the hell SUNSET meant, when the already-active room spun into overdrive. The Secret Service agents nearest the president each left their statuesque position near the wall and rapidly walked towards him.
“Mr. President, we need to evacuate you from the White House immediately.” One of the Secret Service agents physically pulled the president from his seat and stood him up, walking him towards the door.
The president said, “The First Lady—”
“She’ll be evacuated as well, sir. We’re at SUNSET.”
The president was rushed out of the room and up through a maze of stairs and hallways, with Secret Service agents spaced out along the way.
“Let’s go!” one of them called, eyes wide with adrenaline.
The next thing the president knew, he was heading towards the underground parking garage where the Secret Service kept its vehicles. The military officer who carried “the Football” had appeared and was now walking just behind him, looking tense.
The Football.
SUNSET.
SUNSET was the code word for one of the doomsday evacuation scenarios. While they had made him train for these situations, the president honestly couldn’t remember which one SUNSET referred to. It hadn’t seemed important at the time. Those national security drills were just a part of the job. Like a fire drill. An annoyance to be minimized in duration so that he could get back to the real meat of running the country.
“Which one is SUNSET?” the president asked the military man.
“Strategic attack on the continental United States. Missiles inbound.” The colonel’s voice was without fear or judgment. The latter would come from God, it seemed. The president suddenly felt dizzy. The thought occurred to him that he should not have had that third scotch this evening. He wasn’t supposed to drink with the blood pressure meds he was taking. Another thing that hadn’t seemed important until now.
“Who’s firing on us?” The president breathed heavily as he spoke. If a missile didn’t kill him, trying to keep up with these young Secret Service agents might.
The military aide responded, “I don’t have that information, sir.”
“And they’re firing at Washington?”
“We don’t know yet, sir. STRATCOM will give us an update soon.”
The president, his security detail, and the national security entourage made their way to the end of a long well-lit tunnel. President Griffin had heard about the maze of secret tunnels and bunkers underneath Washington, but he’d never been in this particular one. A set of double doors swung open ahead of them at the end of the tunnel. They walked through the doors and into an underground parking garage.
A column of dark SUVs stood with their engines humming, doors open. Two dozen Secret Service agents, weapons at the ready, stood at various locations along the garage driveway, scanning for threats and listening carefully for any commands coming from their earpieces.
President Griffin ducked into The Beast, the armored presidential limousine. The doors slammed shut and the train of vehicles accelerated forward.
“You’re sure my wife will be evacuated?” he asked the agent in the passenger seat.
“She’s being taken out of the area now, Mr. President.”
Wheels squealed through the sharp turns. The cars made their way up the ramp and onto the street in seconds. The president noted the face of one of the agents at the entrance as his car zoomed past. He had the oddest expression on his face: relief. My God, if there reall
y are missiles inbound…they were leaving all of these men behind. The thought didn’t fit with the expression the agent wore.
SUNSET. Each of the agents would have heard the term in their earpiece and known what it meant. Doomsday. A high probability of nuclear-tipped missiles headed inbound towards their location. How long would they have? Thirty minutes? Yet this agent was relieved. For a moment, President Griffin couldn’t understand why. Then it occurred to him. The agent was relieved that his part of the job had been accomplished. Whether he lived or not.
“We’ll be at Air Force One within two minutes, Mr. President. The rest of your national security team will meet us there. We’ll evacuate to a secure location, away from any…from any potential target zones.”
“The vice president?”
“He’s being moved to a secure location.”
“What are DNI and State saying about this?”
“Sir, this just happened. We haven’t yet had time…”
There were two military men in the SUV. One monitored communications equipment. The other officer was the carrier of the Football—the bulky black apocalypse suitcase resting comfortably on his lap.
The officer manning the communications equipment was now wearing a headset, relaying information in a monotonous voice as if he were a computer program. “Nightwatch is airborne.” Pause. “We’re now at DEFCON 2.” Pause. “Confirmation that Guam is under attack.” Pause. He looked up at the president. “Mr. President, a National Event Conference has been activated and the National Military Command Center will be in communication with you shortly.” The NMCC was the Pentagon’s command and communication center for the National Command Authority. They were the ones that generated emergency action messages to the nuclear triad and to commanders in the field.
The president felt like he was in the middle of taking a test that he hadn’t studied for. He kept hearing terms that he didn’t recognize. And this damn kid in a uniform was talking so fast. What the hell is Nightwatch?
The military officer manning the communications console said, “Pentagon is up on secure UHF. The deputy director for operations’ ETA is sixty seconds.”
Their vehicle continued to bounce and swerve along the empty streets of D.C., racing east, the leader of the free world feeling clueless as he fled to safety.
For a brief moment, everything was quiet, and the president was alone with his thoughts. President Griffin was glad for this momentary reprieve. His pulse still raced from the physical exertions of his evacuation. He glanced out the tinted window, rubbing his eyes. Damn, he was tired. Floodlights lit up the Washington Monument, the clear night sky a dark backdrop. Would there be missiles streaking through that sky soon? Was he cut out to be a wartime president?
War.
War on an unimaginable scale. War that could begin and end with the flash of thousands of nuclear detonations. Or a conventional war that dragged on, transforming the entire globe into a muddy and bloody battlefield, ruining economies, and decimating a generation of lives.
God, let this madness come to an end.
The last time the world had been this close to a world war had been the Cuban Missile Crisis. Cooler heads had prevailed then. The president tried to convince himself that they would again.
But for this madman in China.
Cheng Jinshan. The newly installed Chinese president. Self-made billionaire and former Chinese intelligence official.
During President Griffin’s daily briefing a few months ago, the CIA’s analysts had painted a formidable yet frightening portrait of the man. A brilliant businessman. A master spy. A cunning strategist. He was an enigma. Unpredictable, and harboring a ruthless ambition.
It was only a few weeks ago that Cheng Jinshan had been in a Chinese prison for crimes against the state. He, along with a cadre of Chinese military, intelligence, and political leaders, had conspired to overthrow their government and, soon after, attack the United States. But the CIA had discovered the plot, resulting in a small naval battle in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
Until then, Jinshan had kept the plans hidden from the former Chinese president and any leaders who were not in his inner circle. His rebellion had yet to be executed, and American intervention had exposed the plot to the former Chinese leader. The coup had been stopped, and for a brief time, with Jinshan behind bars, the world was once again at peace.
Then the former Chinese president had been assassinated. Chinese state media claimed it was a religiously motivated attack. The masked men had executed the Chinese leader, along with his wife and daughter, and live-streamed it over the internet.
The Chinese president and his wife’s cause of death was hard to determine. It was either asphyxiation from hanging, or burning to death while hanging. Then, with billions of people watching around the world, their teenage daughter had been shot in the head.
The event had occurred on the rooftop garden of their Beijing penthouse. Cameras from nearby skyscrapers and news helicopters had caught the whole thing. The executioners had worn masks while on camera and had supposedly been killed by Chinese police immediately after the assassination.
One of the attackers had been ID’d as an American citizen. Some lunatic religious extremist. One of those guys with a loudspeaker and a sign around his neck, standing at the street corner. Chinese state media released videos the man had made, calling for the death of Chinese political leadership.
A horrific killing of the Chinese president and his family, on live TV, blamed on a US religious fanatic. But the Chinese populace wasn’t being told he was a fanatic. They were led to believe that this was the new normal in the United States. That Americans’ views were becoming radically anti-Chinese, inspired by religion. President Griffin knew that was untrue. But fighting a government-sponsored propaganda machine in a state like China was impossible.
The CIA believed the assassination to be a ruse, carefully orchestrated to maximize the emotional impact to the Chinese populace. The deaths themselves weren’t faked. They were very real. But there was no way some aged Midwestern religious fanatic who spoke no Chinese and had no military training had been able to fly to China, get past the Chinese president’s security detail, and do what he had supposedly done.
So who had done it?
According to US intelligence, Cheng Jinshan and his allies.
After the Chinese president had been killed, Cheng Jinshan had pulled off a political resurrection. He had vanquished his rivals and consolidated power within a matter of days. Anti-American policies had been enacted, and Chinese military readiness had never been so high.
State-sponsored media fanned the flames of civil unrest. Hate and angst directed at countries that promoted religious freedom, and at America specifically. The CIA analysts guessed that the religious angle was just a convenient fuel for the fire. Jinshan was not motivated by religion or hatred of it. But he needed an excuse to create anti-American loathing among the Chinese people. Propaganda soon began flooding onto Chinese social media and TV, all carefully curated by 3PLA. Jinshan’s cyberwarriors.
And now, it seemed, Jinshan was finally able to execute his plans.
“Mr. President, you’re on the line with the National Military Command Center. The Pentagon’s deputy director of operations, General Rice, is speaking.”
“Mr. President, this is General Rice, can you hear me?”
“Yes, General. What’s happened?”
“Sir, we now have reports of large-scale attacks on multiple US bases in Korea and Japan, as well as Naval and Air Force assets in the Western Pacific region.” President Griffin thought the general sounded shaken. “Mr. President, an ICBM launch alert was also just issued by NORAD.”
“What does that mean, General? Are we under nuclear attack?”
Another voice over the speakerphone. “Mr. President, this is General Sprague at STRATCOM. I’m on board Nightwatch.”
The president remembered what Nightwatch was now. It was the other Boeing 747 that the Air Force operated in
conjunction with Air Force One, as a second mobile command center. The doomsday machine, there to pick up the reins in a flash in case Air Force One became “unavailable” in a different type of flash. President Griffin remembered smiling at the idea of such a plane when he’d first heard it. The term doomsday machine had sounded darkly comical then. Certainly unnecessary. Some silly holdover from the Cold War, never to be used.
How his mind had changed this evening.
General Sprague said, “Sir, our ability to detect and track nuclear threats has been diminished. We’ve lost our entire Space-Based Infrared System and eighty percent of our DSP birds. They were hit simultaneously during the past thirty minutes.”
The president felt his face flush. “Now hold on just a second. I thought we didn’t even have satellite capability, after last month’s cyberattacks? How can we be so sure of all of this?”
The national security advisor said, “NRO and the Air Force have relaunched several reconnaissance birds to get our Defense Support Program back up since then. The new satellites have updated software. It’s been a top priority. Our detection systems were in place today.”
“Who fired, General?”
“We received initial indications of ballistic missile launches in the vicinity of North Hamgyong and Chagang provinces—”
The president said, “Where the hell is that? Can somebody please—”
“North Korea, sir,” replied General Rice.