Nuclear Winter

by Td Barnes

  “Shit!” Bradley nodded his head for her to continue.

  “The satellite recognized the opportunity and transmitted the DIA script through the open write hole of the missile’s guidance circuitry. If we are right, the script should have located, reprogrammed the target coordinates and codes set by the Chinese, and camouflaged the changes.

  “Do we have verification?”

  “No, sir. Not really. We won’t have unless they launch the missile. We feel comfortable that everything worked as intended and that the embedded script closed the write hole to prevent detection of the tampering. The satellite downlinked a mission-accomplished signal and resumed monitoring its sector with particular emphasis on this one missile.”

  “You’re right. Now that we know about the missile being programmed for a target, we have no telling how many satellites and radar sites monitoring it.”

  “Correct. We know that the satellite tracked the missile leaving the port two hours later aboard the submarine. If it even farts, our satellite will know — and we will know.”

  Bradley flashed a satisfied smile at Harrison’s clearly expressing confidence in the satellite monitoring the missile. “Good job, everyone. We have waited a long time for this opportunity to test our missile defense. Nonetheless, we can only hope we do not see the proof of the pudding of them launching the sonofabitch.”

  ****

  Space Intelligence Center. Two hours later.

  The sounds of the worsening storm went unnoticed by Bradley’s administrative assistant while she turned her attention from her computer to answer the ringing phone.

  She glanced out at the downburst of rain pelting the window beside her desk after seeing a local meteorologist on the office television pointing out storm cells and warning residents about a possible tornado forming 20 miles southwest of the city.

  Hardened by almost a month of similar daily tornado sighting reports, she did not give a second thought to this sighting and the distant siren sound of the accompanying tornado warning.

  “Sir, it is DIAC. General Hanson is on line three,” her pleasant voice announced through the door standing open to his office. The DIAC was the Defense Intelligence Analysis Center at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Washington, DC and General Hanson their boss.

  Bradley expected the call. He slid aside his morning brief on overnight world events to engage the encryption circuit and answer the phone. “Thanks, Annette” he called out to his assistant. “Bradley here — good morning, sir.”

  “Good morning, Colonel. Please stand by on the encrypted line for General Hanson.”

  The click of the phone of LtGen Ronald Hanson, US Army, and director of the Defense Intelligence Agency coming online modulated softly with the faint white static of the encryption circuits. “Good morning, Tom,” the general said with an air of warning. “You’d better take this call sitting down.”

  “Sir, why do I have a feeling that you intend to confirm Bill O’Reilly’s predictions?”

  “Fox News nailed it. The President has released a communiqué again recognizing Iran’s right to become a nuclear state. He is pushing containment rather than backing Israel and our other allies who depended upon the United States military might to prevent the Iranians going nuclear. He is at the same time talking tough about the US backing Israel should Iran carry through with their rhetoric about eliminating the Jewish nation. “

  Long ago Bradley realized and ceased to anticipate his ever making the rank of general despite his being highly decorated. He simply could not buy into the political correctness bullshit expected of military officers today, which limited his career because of his Officer ERs noting his numerous scolding and veiled reprimands for candid comments about some politician presently on his shit list. His recent rant focused on national politicians and the military brass arguing about deleting the word "terrorist" in their reports dealing with Muslim barbarities.

  His face reddened with outrage while he released a few dyslogistic adjectives against his commander in chief to express his flash of dissatisfaction.

  “That fence-straddling pussy knows he has given Iran, Syria, and those Hezbollah bastards the green light to rocket the shit out of Israel,” he said quietly, but forcefully. "There is no way that Egypt’s Islamic leader can hold reins on the Muslim Brotherhood now, especially considering the chaos he is facing even in his own country. All those brave men and women will die in vain,” he continued, referring to those expected to be lost if the United States and the United Nations again traded off supporting a preemptive Israeli attack on Iran. “The politicians bought into Iran’s ploy of giving up developing a nuclear weapon. Why would Iran rebuild to develop a nuclear weapon when it can trade oil for nuke weapons built in China? Either way, Iran becomes a nuclear power and a threat to destabilizing the entire region.”

  “Between us, Tom, I fear he is selling Israel out to be annihilated like General Custer by all those Cherokee Indians at the Little Big Horn.”

  Bradley chuckled at the general’s attempt to defuse his anger at their commander in chief. The general knew the pride Bradley felt for his Cherokee heritage. “Sir,” he said with a light laugh in acknowledgment of the successful attempt. “Custer was a prima donna pussy also. The combined forces of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians, not the Cherokees kicked the butts of our good general and his 7th Cavalry Regiment. Other than that, you have adequately described what our commander-in-chief is doing with our Israeli partners. Instead of Indians, religious radicals will accomplish this massacre. What about the GBU-57? Has he gotten off the nickel on providing Israel with the bomb? Let’s give them the fucken bunker buster, so we don’t have to repeat this conversation.”

  Bradley was referring to the 30,000-pound GPS-guided bunker buster GBU-57A/B bomb developed and tested by the Air Force at Tonopah, Nevada and the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The guided bomb unit MOP, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, could zero on a target with a GPS navigation system guiding the device with enough kinetic energy to penetrate over 200 feet of hardened concrete before exploding its 5,300-pound warhead.

  “This is politics, Tom. The Democrats are fighting for their political lives. He is still receiving a load of crap about our not supporting Israel when they wanted to take out Iran's nuke facilities two years ago. Everyone remembers our losses dating back to Iraq and those we left in Afghanistan after pulling out our combat troops. He does not want the appearance of starting another one after getting us out of those two unpopular wars. The Iranians might well accept the annihilation of their country to destroy Israel in a mega suicide bombing. Iranians' rhetoric is evidence of their fanaticism. He has not pulled the plug on Air Force giving the Israelis the 57. Nonetheless, he does not want to show support for Israel conducting a preemptive strike. He still says the sanctions scared Iran into not producing the bomb. Meanwhile, what little military we have left today is locking and loading their muskets.”

  “I wish he would stop his community organizing crap and play presidential for once. I bet he did not even mention the Chinese,” Bradley said with a smirking tone of disrespect.

  “Colonel, you have improved your political correctness. Your devoir today is rather unexpected,” General Hanson dryly said. “If I recall correctly, the last time instead of saying he, you called him ‘that cocksucker.’”

  Bradley laughed. “I lost my civility when I remembered that we were on an encrypted line. Am I right, sir, that the president is still not reading our warnings about China?” Bradley asked in a more reconciliatory tone.

  “If he is, he is certainly not letting on. The administration appears oblivious to China’s role in Iran. China is desperate to preserve their source of oil, and the Iranians are taking advantage of it. It solves both their problems. Meanwhile, the US is so deeply in debt to China that the administration is looking the other way to appease our creditor.”

  Bradley unconsciously drew some electronic circuit of a Chinese missile on his notepad while he
listened. The general continued.

  “The sanctions do not work in a country that does not give a shit about their people. Regarding the Chinese, they can only blame themselves for getting into their predicament. Everyone else has been securing other sources of oil to reduce their dependency on Iranian oil while China has blocked sanctions and protected Iran every way it can. I would do like everyone else and secure alternate sources if I depended on 60 percent of my petroleum having to pass through a strait or waterway controlled by a rogue nation like Iran.”

  “It goes to show how much we have lost respect around the world.”

  “True. Thanks to the generosity of the Western alliances, the bastards see themselves being a Communist state with acquired superpower status. They intend to prove it by taking a bully position. Changing the subject, how are you making out on that little project you hinted at being a Plan B should the sanctions and psychological warfare fail? Grown any more Stuxnet worms in your basement? Your people did a fine piece of work, Tom. We know how you and the Israelis worked your asses off to pull it off.”

  A brief smile flickered across Bradley’s face at the general’s referring to the malware codenamed Stuxnet that Bradley’s DIA computer department and the Israelis developed out of Huntsville, Alabama. His staff and the Israeli Intel engineers shared tremendous pride in the successful results. The worm did little harm to computers and networks by its hitting only designated targets with safeguards to prevent each infected computer from spreading the worm to more than three others and erasing itself on a set date.

  The Plan B project mentioned by General Hanson involved adjustments to an incredibly successful secret project where the US clandestinely leaked something about some components built in China that linked them to US missile guidance components.

  It started when President Clinton played up to the Chinese and the NSA and DIA realized the Chinese taking advantage of the US’s letting its guard down. The two agencies teamed up on a ploy to get altered electronics into the Chinese missile systems by allowing the Chinese to copy a circuit design, believing it belongs to the American aerospace companies helping China develop a viable missile guidance system. It looked the same but carried a disguised alteration designed by NSA.

  The defensive missile scheme remained inert in the hundreds of rockets and missiles lining the Chinese mainland and aimed at Taiwan. The importance of this came into play with CIA Intel’s recent discovery of a secret plot by China to ship some of these missiles and rockets to Iran. Analysts at both NSA and DIA felt that China intended the missiles to ward off a preemptive strike by Israel or the United States that might interfere with China’s source of oil.

  “We believe we have it worked out, sir. Mostly we solved some shielding modifications contained in some of the newer Chinese warheads. We feel confident getting our signal in.”

  “Make it happen, Colonel. I am counting on you. Give our best to Stacey. By the way, the grandkids are still thrilled about their getting to ride the horses last month. You guys are lucky— all we get to ride here is the Metro.”

  “Yes, sir.” Bradley shut down the connection and resumed reading his briefing report. What he learned deeply concerned him. The entire world appeared to have gone mad with Jihadist groups in Sinai and Gaza Strip attacking the Suez Canal, rising unemployment now standing at near 40 percent in Italy, and militant insurgency attacks occurring in Thailand’s Muslim-majority. Syria continued killing its citizens, Tajik troops remained in the country’s eastern Gorno-Badakhshan province, and members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and the PKK continued their roadside bomb attacks.

  ****

  SFC Janet Harrison stared out at the rain while waiting outside Bradley’s office for the colonel’s receptionist to grant her the green light to enter. She smiled at the photo of Bradley hanging to the right of the door. Today the picture displayed him in his dress uniform with his condiments to indicate him being in a good mood. On his bad mood days, his receptionist always flipped the photo to display a picture on the reverse side that depicted him in his Special Ops combat uniform with a mean expression on his face marked with camouflage paint. Display of this photograph warned any visitors of the colonel being in a sour mood, and that they best come back another time.

  “Sir? Annette said you are off the phone.” The dark headed sergeant from his engineering staff marched in without waiting for his reply and stood before him with a bundle of schematics in hand. She deserved most of the credit for his team’s designing the electronic means of tampering with the guidance programming of Chinese missile systems.

  “Sure, sergeant. What did Y'all come up with?” Bradley asked in his West Texas drawl.

  “We feel confident that the script worked in the CSS-NX-5. We cannot be certain because they shut down the missile immediately after they tested it. We reran everything in the lab, and it worked like a charm.”

  “Excellent,” Bradley exclaimed optimistically with no thought entering his mind that insertion of the script might not work. "This means we can still write our ECM code in the CAM ID,” he said, referring to the unique identification number present on the missile’s memory circuit. “What happens if they reboot or conduct a ZKT, zero knowledge table encryption to verify the CAM ID?”

  “Nothing, unless they change the script beforehand. I can’t see that happening unless they learn that we have tampered with the ZKT algorithm to the IRD’s EEPROM.”

  “Good work, Sergeant. Things have changed. It will not be cryptography of our satellites changing the coordinates. Have your department work on other means of transmitting the ECM script other than by satellite — think the Middle East.”

  “Israeli?”

  “Affirmative. Keep this SDI, selective dissemination need-to-know information. We need to know ASAP what the Israelis need to control the Chinese delivery systems should they suddenly appear in the hands of some bad guys in the Middle East.”

  “Gotcha, sir. I will have the rest of the crew programming the small data transmitter pods that we came up with a while back for UAV delivery. You will have everything you need before the day is out.”

  “See to it. Get a babysitter and assemble a team for a classified boondoggle. I want you with me to deliver and install this package.”

  Harrison appreciated her job working with the Colonel during moments like this. It provided him the opportunity for learning the full spectrum of specialties in the Intel field called C41SR within the industry.

  The sergeant glanced around Bradley’s office before leaving and noted that nothing appeared to have changed. His desk seemed spotless like it always did, displaying only the essentials consisting of a pen, small notepad, a nameplate bearing his name and rank, and the always-present coffee mug. Bradley attributed his widely-known craving for coffee to a habit acquired while a young man working on a ranch.

  The rest of his office looked like the office of a mad scientist. Engineering books, notepads with his notes, schematics, and drawings lay piled on every flat surface available where he allowed no one to move a thing. Not surprisingly, he knew where exactly everything lay and could retrieve a note of information without searching and digging for it.

  ****

  T minus 18 days - 0823 hours ZULU.

  Tel Aviv International Airport.

  The plane pitched with mild air turbulence, catching Bradley in a yawn while placing his MacBook Air computer in its case for landing. He glanced out the window in time to see tremendous lightning flash zigzag above the plane. The Gulfstream V plane, or in this case a military C-3A, left Huntsville in a thunderstorm and under a tornado watch. The storms continued, forcing the flight to skirt one after another the entire flight to Tel Aviv.

  Bradley’s plane might not be Air Force One, but when it came to functional communications capabilities, it came close. It provided him with a steady stream of Intel updates and while his supply of coffee held out that suited him just fine. The Intel report currently under his review gave him pause to wonder i
f anyone in the world possessed the Intel capability of the United States.

  He knew from this intelligence obtained from US Satellites detecting two Israeli diesel-electric, German-made Dolphin-class submarines, the Rabin and the Ben-Gurion, leaving Germany containing a "wet and dry" compartment for special operations in addition to four 650mm torpedo tubes also used for Swimmer Delivery Vehicles (SDVs). The report included satellite images of both boats rendezvousing with an Israeli supply ship for supplies and ordnance on the second day at sea after leaving Germany to include Israel-adapted Harpoon cruise missiles carrying an indigenously developed nuclear warhead and guidance system capable of 1,500-mile delivery. The boats’ air-defense capability created the world's first air defense corvettes — also giving the Israeli surface fleet independent air cover for the first time.

  The latest string of reports received by Bradley while in flight contained a combination of satellite coverage, secret sensors existing in the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, and a UAV operated by the CIA.

  The play out of events showed him a full moon and calm seas near the Iranian oil terminals at Khark Island. The NSA data noted when the Rabin and the Ben-Gurion entered the northern end of the 615-mile long waterway in the northeastern Persian Gulf and hid beneath a mammoth ultra large oil supertanker like parasites to avoid detection.

  The report included satellite photo coverage of a flotilla of Exocet missile-armed Iranian naval vessels greeting the supertanker leased by a Danish firm and registered in Bahrain.

  He noted the sensors recording the two modernized Dolphin-class submarines simultaneously peeling off to settle on the bottom of the long, narrow body of water separating Iran to the north from the Arabian Peninsula to the south.

  The Rabin settled in at the two-mile-wide passage able to face any incoming traffic to the terminal while the Ben-Gurion maneuvered to face outgoing traffic. Together, the two submarines were now providing Israel undetected command of the most strategic waterway in the world.