9 Days Falling, Volume I k-5

by John A. Schettler

  “It’s a dual launch,” he said calmly. “Fits the pattern we’ve seen in recent years. Close-ups on the nose of those birds look a little ominous.”

  Air Force General Henry Lane folded his arms, eyes tight as he listened. “Our people don’t think it’s a nuke,” he said.

  “You want to play Russian Roulette here, General?” Reed had no qualms about engaging the brass in a spirited discussion. That was what he was there for. “I hope we have adequate defensive assets in theater by now, because it looks like another fuse is about to be lit here.”

  “We’ve got a full squadron of twelve F-22 Raptor fighters at Osan AFB in South Korea to beef up fighter defenses there.” Lane was looking at his deployment list. “Similar packages are slated for Okinawa and mainland Japan, but it I’m afraid it’s a little too late to get them to Taiwan.”

  “We should have had them there a week ago,” said Reed, “but I guess ‘should of’ never won a race. Looks like the Chinese mean business this time. Word is they hit the Taiwanese with at least 600 missiles.”

  “We took down a good number of those with the ABM batteries.”

  “Not enough, General. They beat up the airfields pretty bad over there, and then punched through with those damn J-20s.”

  White House Chief of Staff Leyman leaned forward, a question in his eyes. “Those the same planes we talked about earlier, Mister Reed?”

  “Yes sir, fast, deadly, and now a proven threat. The Chinese blew a hole in the coastal defense perimeter and pushed in a major strike package at high altitude. They were up above the service ceiling of the HAWK systems over there. Patriots were the only thing that could get up there, and they were saturated by the missiles. What we need now are assets in theater for a counterattack, but forgive me if I say I’m more than a little nervous about this North Korean launch prep. Everything we’ve moved into the Pacific in the last 48 hours is sitting on Guam.”

  “Talks are underway with Manila to obtain basing rights there,” said Leyman.

  “Another Raptor squadron was deployed as theater reserve at Anderson on Guam,” Lane put in. “If the situation warrants, we can move those birds to the Phils. We’ll have some heavy metal to throw around today as well.” The US was digging up ‘the bones,’ flights of B-1 Lancer Bombers that were arriving on Guam by the hour.

  At that very moment Captain Hap Jason of 7th Bomb Wing out of Dyess AFB in Abeline Texas was on the radio at 311.000 MHZ STRATCOM PRIMARY for some routine radio traffic. He was coordinating a rendezvous with KC-135 Air refueling tankers designated GASSR-11 and GASSR-12.

  “Dark flight of twelve requesting ETA on GASSR 11. We’ll need Tanker Drag to BAB, over.” BAB was the call sign for Beale AFB in California as the bombers prepared to top off before they started the long flight across the Pacific.

  Jason’s squadron, “Dark 1” would soon be joined by another designated “Slam -1” out of Ellsworth AFB. At Guam their bellies would soon be filled with extended range 2000 lb GBU 3 JDAMS. The Joint Direct Attack Munitions was a kit installed on ‘dumb’ bombs that would convert them into GPS guided munitions, and the new satellite that would direct them was already being moved to compensate for the loss of two GPS birds when the Chinese launched their preemptive ASAT strike. The bombs could be dropped from an amazing range of 80 kilometers out and still fall unerringly to their targets.

  The bomber squadrons were being accompanied by two E-6 Mercury airborne command post planes out of Tinker AFB, an ominous sign as these planes were cast in the TACAMO role for coordination of battle orders to US nuclear capable assets, including both boomers and bombers. They were once coded “Looking Glass” for their ability to mirror or duplicate the control of nuclear capable facilities in the event that the Global Operations Center at Offut AFB was destroyed or otherwise off-line. The nuclear giant was waking up, and slowly stretching in bed, flexing its muscle for the long planned war that no one wanted yet everyone was prepared to wage.

  Out on Guam, the B-1s would be joined by the ‘Batwings,’ B-2 stealth bombers flying from Missouri. The B-2s could deploy, strike targets, and then return to those bases if necessary, but many were now scheduled to muster at Anderson AFB on Guam to be more readily available in theater. Even the old B-52s, with well over 50 years in active service, were also on the move from Nellis AFB in Nevada and Barksdake AFB in Louisiana, all headed for the vital forward operations base at Guam. One thing was certain that night, the heavy iron was airborne and flying west over the Pacific, ready for battle.

  Missile defenses there were beefing up on the tiny island outpost as well. The THAAD Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile batteries were already arriving. Deployed from mobile truck systems like the Patriot, THAAD was designed to find, track, and hit ballistic missiles in their re-entry phase and destroy them by kinetic impact.

  As to the satellites, discussion was over in the White House Situation Room. While the US and China had not yet faced off against one another with direct military assets, the Chinese ASAT attacks were deemed hostile acts and it was decided to quickly reply in kind. The US Skybolt system had been resurrected in 2018 as part of the DOD’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) Program. The need for redundant ASAT capability had become apparent, and the system now used an air launched version of the SM-3 Anti-Ballistic Missile on US AEGIS capable ships. Late on the second day of the war, the Skybolts were flying to repay China in kind for the pre-emptive strikes on US satellites prior to their attack on Taiwan.

  At the same time the US was quick to get new assets in place, and a Delta IV at Vandenberg was launched to put another GPS satellite into mid-level orbit at 20,350 kilometers. The Pentagon had already decided they would take immediate steps to prevent any further attacks on its satellites by China, and the B-2s mustered at Anderson would soon be airborne with a little surprise for the Chinese.

  Tech Sergeant Jason Banks was up early that day, out of the HC-5 barracks and through the line in the chow hall to hit the tarmac by 05:00 hours. The base was on full wartime footing and the activity had been frenetic the last 48 hours. Yet all the many years of drills and practice exercises paid off, and the whole operation was running smoothly, under the watchful eyes of Master Sergeants from one end of the airfield to another. The Captains and Lieutenants might be flying the planes, but down on the ground things got done on the E level pay grades, and done with precision and skilled expertise that was par for the course.

  Banks met up with his special work detail, an E-4 Senior Airman and a couple grease monkeys and bomb bay brats on loadout operations. The B-2 was an awesome plane, its silhouette so striking and unusual when viewed from certain angles that it had often been reported as a UFO. The ordnance trucks had just pulled into the hanger and the special delivery had arrived.

  Airman Thomas Knox was the first man on the job, detailed to unload and prep the missiles prior to final mounting. “Holy shit, will you look at those baby’s” he said as Banks watched the first missile on the hoist, hands on his hips, a toothpick still in his mouth from breakfast. “It looks like a god-damned shark! How fast you figure this thing is, Sarge?”

  “Fast enough, Tommy Knockers, just watch that hoist and run your hydraulics.”

  “Hell this thing looks mean. No wings or tail, Sarge. How does the damn thing fly?”

  “That’s classified, Knox. All you need to know is that you load a pair and get it done by zero-six flat, kapish?”

  It was mean, and it was also very, very fast. The weapon was called the X-51C, a hypersonic stealthy cruise missile developed by Boeing that was dubbed the WaveRider because it rode its own shockwave for lift, and therefore did not need wings. Originally tested on the older B-52s and designed as a technology demonstrator, the weapon was moved into production in 2018 and a limited inventory was available for this special strike mission. The marriage of a fast, stealthy cruise missile with the B-2 was inevitable, as the B-2s could carry two of the X-51s and, given their proven ability to penetrate hostile airsp
ace undetected, the new weapon’s effectiveness was practically guaranteed.

  With a range of 740 kilometers, the X-51 was propelled by an MGM-140 ATACMS solid rocket booster to achieve an initial speed of Mach 4.5 after launch. This first stage would be ejected and then the second stage would ignite a Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne SJY61 scramjet that moved the shark-nosed cruise missile to Mach 6.0 and beyond. The first targets assigned to the B-2s would be the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center and the Guangde Rocket launch site west of Shanghai, respectively known as Base 25 and Base 603. These targets were within 500 kilometers of the coast and could be struck by B-2s over the South or East China Seas.

  The Xichang Satellite Launch Center, or Base 27, which handled most of China’s GPS satellite launches, was a tougher nut to crack, as it was more than 1000 kilometers inland. The B-2s would be required to penetrate and overfly the Chinese mainland before launching their missiles. An alternate route was devised for the bombers to quickly cross the narrow neck of Vietnam, then turn north over Laos and approach the base from the south. Once the missiles were launched and airborne, they were virtually unstoppable.

  “My, my,” Knox went on chattering. “Look what momma’s bringing home to Texas.” Sergeant Banks and his detail were working on bomber AV-7, the Spirit of Texas, in active service in the B-2 fleet since 1994. The “Spirits” were all lined up in the hangers that morning, Missouri, California, South Carolina, Washington and Kansas, Banks home state. They were all assigned to the famous 13th Bomb Squadron of the 509th Operations Group out of Whiteman AFB, Missouri. Formed in 1917, the Squadron had been hit on the ground at Port Moresby by the Japanese in the second World War, and lost all their B-25s. They were reconstituted with A-20 Havocs and raised hell for the duration of the war. Over the years they flew the A-26 Invaders in the Korean War, and a thousand sorties in Vietnam with the B-57 Canberra. Years later they moved on to the B-1B Lancers and now they were flying something quite different than the old B-25s from WWII.

  “I never will get used to these things,” said Knox as he looked at the B-2. They don’t even look like a plane. Hey Sarge,” Knox grinned at his Tech Sergeant. “Why in hell would anyone want to name a something like this Spirit of Kansas?”

  “Load the weapons, Knox, not the bullshit. You come on down to Topeka sometime and I’ll show you some good food and good bars to go with it.”

  “They let you drink in Kansas? I thought all you guys did down there was smoke that damn blue grass until you were blue in the face.”

  “You’re gonna be blue in the face if you don’t wire that jaw shut, Knoxwurst. I’m going down the line to check on Harley’s group. When I get back here that first missile better be in the bay and ready to rumble.”

  “Don’t worry, Sarge. I’ll have ‘em both up and ready in no time.” Knox waved at another Airman and maneuvered the ordnance cart under the planes enormous wing, heading for the central bomb bay under the plane’s fat fuselage. “Look out, Watson! Here comes the doom buggy. Outta my way.”

  Banks shook his head and started down the line. Doom indeed he thought, wondering what was in the warheads on these sleek new cruise missiles. He had heard a little about them and knew they were fast as greased lightning, with a heavy wallop. Chinese asked for it, he thought. So we’ll serve dinner tonight—take out. They won’t even see the damn planes coming, let alone the missiles.

  The distant wail of an alert siren cut through the pre-dawn stillness, its shrill warning suddenly sending a shiver up the Sergeant’s back. You didn’t hear that all too often out here, unless the weather was real bad and there was a high wind warning up. Something about it chilled him, even in the humid, languid airs of the base. He listened intently, suddenly realizing what the siren meant.

  “Christ almighty!” he said aloud, stopping and looking back over his shoulder at Knox and the rest of the crew. “On the double, gentlemen—we’ve got incoming!”

  ~ ~ ~

  Guam sat in the middle of the vast Pacific ocean like a big New York strip steak. The fat end of the steak was in the south of the thirty kilometer long island, where Naval Base Guam established facilities for the Commander of Naval Region Marianas, and Submarine Squadron 15, with three Los Angeles Class subs in attendance. The bay was empty that morning, as all three boats were out to sea, heading north at high speed now to screen the advance of CVBG Washington. South of the harbor was the big Joint Region Marianas Ordnance Annex, where both conventional and nuclear weapons were stockpiled for the navy. It was one of two large depots in the island. The narrower strip of the steak in the north was the site of Anderson AFB and the base munitions storage area where tons of ordnance were stored in a wide area of underground bunkers. Just west of this area was the Naval Computer and Telecommunications Station, with the Marlock 25 meter satellite tracking antenna.

  The assets now being gathered on the island and its strategic location made it one of the most valuable US bases in the Pacific, perhaps second only to Pearl Harbor and Hawaii. As such it would soon become a rich target of opportunity for anyone wishing to wage war against the Americans. China had not yet fired on US territory in anger, their ASAT attack being deemed “defensive” in nature in the debates still raging in the UN. This thin rein of restraint still held the Chinese in check even as their missiles launched on Taiwan. But China had other wayward sons, and the volatile regime in North Korea was one of them, with the world’s fourth largest standing army snarling at the south across the DMZ.

  North Korea would do the dirty work and launch the first blow, or so it had been planned. This would present the US with the impossible choice of having to attack North Korea and bring it into the war if they acted in reprisal. The nightmare scenario of having to defend Japan, South Korea and Taiwan at the same time was now becoming a dire reality.

  Defense analyst Reed had argued that the US should take prompt preventative measures and destroy the Musudans on the launch pad before they could fire. “This deployment appears to be identical to the tests we observed earlier,” he said hotly. “If I’m correct, then we’ve got to get the damn things in their boost phase. Once they hit apogee it will be too late.”

  “We still have THAAD out on Guam, Mister Reed,” Air Force General Lane replied. “The system is tried and true. We can get these missiles just as they tip into their descent phase.”

  “And what if they explode before they tip over, general?” Reed gave the Air Force officer a wide eyed challenge. “What then?”

  Lane eyed the feisty analyst, inwardly resenting a civilian trying to tell him how to do his job, but he realized what Reed was getting at. “You are suggesting this is an asymmetrical weapon?”

  “Damn right I am! They still can’t hit the broad side of a barn from three feet away, but they can get a missile close enough to put some serious hurt on the assets at Guam. All it has to do is get up over the island and go kaboom.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Rod Leyman, White House Chief of Staff. “What good will that do them, even with a nuclear bomb if they have one? Don’t they have to hit the island itself?”

  “EMP,” Reed said flatly. “That’s what’s written all over this deployment, Mister Leyman, and General Lane here knows exactly what I’m talking about.”

  “Electro Magnetic Pulse,” said Lane. “A high altitude explosion would have a fairly wide footprint.”

  “Which is why you have to either get the missiles before they launch,” said Reed, “or else that footprint is going to stomp on every computer and electronic device on that island and you can write the whole place off as an effective operational military base.”

  “We can put cruise missiles on that launch site in a heartbeat,” said General Lane. “I’ve got bones at Kadena on Okinawa, B-1 bombers. They’re ready on the Tarmac now.”

  “Then what are you waiting for?” Reed argued.

  “He’s waiting because the President has yet to make the decision to strike the first blow here, Mister Reed. To do so we will have to ma
ke a direct military attack on a regime in North Korea wound up tighter than a coiled spring. We already have a hornet’s nest on our hands in Taiwan. All we need is for a million North Koreans to come surging over the border into the Seoul, right?”

  Then word came in that the North Koreans had already fired Musudan I and the tension in the room was palpable. As the minutes passed, Reed shifted uncomfortably in his chair, tapping his pen on a notepad in front of him. They were too late, or so he thought. The missile was going to explode at high altitude and send a violent EMP burst through the atmosphere that would knock the base off the operational list for the foreseeable future, but this time he was proved wrong. The US had picked up the launch by satellite, tracked it through the ascent phase and then keyed assets to intercept as it passed through apogee and began its terminal descent.

  The Musudan tipped over and it was soon bait for the very capable ABM systems the US had deployed on the island for just this contingency. Alpha Battery, 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment on Guam was given the order to fire, and it sent up two THAAD missiles using the “hit-to-kill” strategy to destroy the incoming Musudan by kinetic impact.

  The first shot was an easy kill for the advanced US ABM system, and the rhetoric that accompanied the attack would end up being far worse than the event itself. North Korean media announced that the US and its allies were “waging madcap war maneuvers against it to plan a pre-emptive nuclear strike.” They were not too far off the mark with that one, because there were two rockets positioned on the east coast of North Korea, and defense analyst Reed and others like him now believed they knew what the second missile housed in its red tipped nose.

  Musudan II was indeed carrying an EMP super-bomb, technology the North Koreans had obtained from the Russians years ago through espionage. Their first shot was just target practice to test US defenses as much as anything else. By watching the destruction of the first missile, the North Korean military could reap the political harvest while also determining the approximate altitude of the kill so they could set their warhead to explode well before the US ABM system could do its job. It would raise the altitude of their intended detonation, and also increase the lethal footprint of the effects on the earth below. If Musudan II fired as planned, and did its intended job, there wouldn’t be a silicon circuit worth the name functional on Guam and surrounding areas for hundreds of miles.