by Td Barnes
The Beatty residents could only hide from this onslaught of armed strangers in their usually isolated community, shuttering their windows with any available lumber and refusing to answer the door to the escalating invasion. Knocking on a door in many cases turned to pounding and then assault by desperate refugees seeking water and food. Pitiful cries of hungry and scared children filled the air.
Bodies lined the side of the highway through town with violence escalating with the increasing degree of hopelessness and desperation. Some refugees targeted the roaming burros, dogs, and anything else that might provide a meal for their family. A gun battle raged at the school with a mob of refugees attempting to gain access to several local families taking refuge there.
****
T plus 6 days - 2 hours 34 minutes - the Pacific Ocean 235 miles west of San Francisco.
The captain of the Chinese Jin-class SSBN submarine eased his boat to the surface again in hopes of detecting anything that might explain what had happened to his homeland and its navy. Somehow managing to return to his assigned sector following the missile launch in the strait off the shores of Taiwan, he attempted to raise his port on the radio to no avail. Now in the third day of following radio procedure, he realized something drastic having occurred to his home port.
He summoned his XO to the bridge where they followed the protocol of producing their individual keys and opening the safe to retrieve detailed instructions carried for precisely this type of event. He followed his written instructions and again managed to avoid detection by the Americans and was now arriving at the coordinates prescribed by his orders. He received no such requests after surfacing the submarine four hours earlier to listen passively for further orders on the radio frequency designated by his written standard operating procedure.
He again followed SOP protocol and reluctantly opened another sealed set of orders to determine what to do next.
He waited on the surface six minutes longer than allowed while desperately hoping for a last-minute communication from authorities. He received no such relief and reluctantly ordered the boat to submerge to a depth of 200 feet and summoned his XO to open the safe again to retrieve their remaining set of instructions. He and the XO each inserted their key to open the safe to retrieve the sealed envelope inside.
He read his instructions, which included target coordinates for his missiles and handed them to the XO for him to read also. The XO finished reading the instructions and gave them back with a grave expression on his face. Both knew the consequences of what they must do next.
“XO, bring the crew to battle stations,” the captain said somberly. “Enter the coordinates.” He picked up the boat’s intercom and said, “Weapons officer, ready your missiles for launch. This is not a drill.”
****
Same time - North American Air Defense Command, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Seventeen hundred feet beneath the solid granite of Cheyenne Mountain, activity in the war-room of the North American Air Defense Command appeared routine but busy with a shift change.
Enlisted men somberly briefed their replacements reporting for duty at the radar and communications consoles.
Air Force officers likewise briefed their duty replacements at their monitoring, communications consoles, or their command stations.
The oncoming parties in both instances diligently took notes, recording any special instructions or information for which they might have a need. A large, illuminated sign mounted high on the forward wall the room silently announced the alert status of the nation's military: DefCon II.
The parts of the world surviving the madness appeared hunkered down to avoid blame for the EMP attack following the nuclear exchange in the Middle East or the self-inflicted atomic detonation in China. Heads of state talked nonstop to distance themselves from blame.
Even the Chinese military appeared to have gone underground while Beijing burned. Many felt the one missing Chinese submarine might have accidentally released the Chinese missile during some catastrophic occurrence that sunk it to the bottom of the sea.
Defense Support Program (DSP) reconnaissance satellites spinning in geostationary orbit scanned the entire earth six times a minute with infrared sensors of a wide-angle Schmidt camera. It surprised everyone when the DSP sensors detected the heat signatures of multiple missile launches one after another from the submarine and immediately notified NORAD the moment the Chinese missiles broke the surface of the ocean.
It probably did not make any significant difference having two shifts of personnel on the floor when the first launch detection notifications chirped in from the satellites. In some cases, it probably caused a few seconds of confusion regarding responsibility, the current shift, or the one replacing them.
Some of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line belt of radar stations in northern Canada had failed to survive the EMP attack. However, monitoring DSP satellites of the 460th Space Wing at Buckley Air Force Base, Colorado provided NORAD with the first warning when the alarm alerted them of the missile launches.
The operators sprung to action, quickly determining the launches being real and hostile before communicating the missile launch warnings on their communication links.
The banks of monitors at the command post displayed launch images from the Command’s surveillance and warning sensors around the world. The NORAD and USSTRATCOM early warning centers within Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado confirmed what the satellite watchers in the Space Computation Center saw and reported.
The worldwide US military alert status elevated to DefCon I, indicating war.
The Boeing 747 E-4A Airborne Command post (NEACP) aircraft received and confirmed the missile launches while airborne near Sacramento, California. The crew of the modified plane served the National Command Authority, the President, and the secretary of defense, all operating from secret underground command posts ever since the EMP attack. This time the missiles stayed on course to their programmed targets because of the EMP having taken out the satellite transmitting DIA’s Chinese missile-go-home script.
Controlled pandemonium existed with the outgoing shift felt obligated to remain on station, and the incoming turn felt the need to assume their duties. The leadership and training of everyone quickly settled everyone down though stunned briefly by the surprise attack. The massive defenses of the United States kicked in while information flooded in from detection and tracking devices scattered around the world.
The missile launch operator at the Pave Paw early warning radar at Beale Air Force Base reported, “Confidence is high” to NORAD, indicating the launches being real.
The flying command post in the sky near Sacramento, California quickly plotted the multiple launches as having trajectories to targets at Silicon Valley, Los Angeles Air Force Space and Missile Command Base, El Segundo, Naval Base San Diego, and the Marine base at Barstow. They were all in California except those at the naval facilities at Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington.
The closeness of the launches gave none of the targets more than a few minutes to react.
Unfortunately, neither the AWACs nor the expected 15-minute warning provided any help to those at ground zero. Like the earlier missile launched in the Taiwan Strait the warning arrived four minutes too late. The missiles ignited their booster one after another after breaking the ocean surface and ascended to 80,000 feet before leveling off on course to their target. They had hardly reached altitude before each made its course correction and moments later begin to descend.
The war-room beneath Cheyenne Mountain received the PARCS alert data and immediately confirmed the number of warheads en route and their specific impact areas. Phased-array radar antennas located along the Atlantic, Pacific, Alaskan, and Gulf coasts also provided warnings of the SLBM launches confirmed by the early warning satellites using this data and aiding in tracking their trajectories.
With no warnings because of the previous EMP attack having taken out all regular communications, residents living in the tar
get areas never knew what hit them despite this rapid detection and issuance of alerts.
The fireball immediately vaporized over 800,000 people in the radius of ground zero in Los Angeles and 560,000 in San Diego. Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington did not fare any better with the warheads bringing hell to them at temperatures reaching thousands of degrees.
****
International Space Station - same time.
Rendered a severely crippled and doomed piece of space junk by the EMP attack, the space station continued orbiting the Earth with its solar panels fried. Its computers and radios survived only because of their circuits being EMP hardened to endure the solar radiation in space. The space station contained nothing but fried junk — its air conditioner controls, electric razors, toasters, ovens, and electric toothbrushes, all little things— climate control sensors, and instruments required for comfort and experiments underway. This included instruments in the Russian-built escape vehicle where the pulse rendered it useless.
The astronauts, with the United States space, shuttles no longer flying and the emerging American private company, Space X still in the testing stage, remained dependent on the Russians for rescue, something that they realized being impossible when no one answered their radio calls while the batteries still held a charge.
With the batteries now dead, only their oxygen supply continued functioning with enough oxygen to last five months, one month before the marooned astronauts exhausted their supply of food. The astronauts and cosmonauts could position the station manually using bursts of the positioning jets to capture the heat of the sun; however, the interior of the stations became cooler each day.
The space station crew did not witness the Chinese missile detonating over Beijing, but saw the aftermath minutes later when China came into view of their orbit.
With the EMP attack extinguishing the lights and all other indications of global activity, they witnessed the spreading of the nuclear fallout clouds each subsequent pass afterward. They realized that the events below marooned them in space, this knowledge amplified by their now seeing only total darkness where brilliant lights of the main cities once beckoned them, a dead planet during the periods of darkness. The heavens, however, remained filled with the ever twisting, whipping, fast-moving Aurora light display.
The crew had spent their time since the EMP attack longingly staring out the portals hoping to see the contrail of a plane, light, any indication of life on the planet. For six days now, they had seen nothing on the earth below, a situation about to change drastically.
The space station had entered another night cycle and became feet dry over the West Coast of the United States with the crew wistfully watching the lightning strikes of a thunderstorm in the Pacific when suddenly the blackened view of the earth burst into something resembling the early stages of a fireworks show. Streaks of brilliant light suddenly appeared, marking the trails of the missiles ascending before beginning their trajectory on target.
The plumes of light followed the missiles reaching their programmed altitude and continued following them when they turned to speed horizontally like meteorites before suddenly disappearing when the propulsion shut down.
The missile reappeared moments later a brilliant fireball over Portland Oregon. The darkened city suddenly burst into an ever-widening ball light when the warhead exploded in a dual flash of extremely white light at the edge of a fireball violent, ultra-hot atmospheric gasses.
The fireball rolled, jetted, bellowed like molten metals in a crucible of an assayer's oven while it widened and grew closer. Cities and communities became a large circle of firestorms starting at ground zero, enough of them to lighten up the region.
Shock waves emerged from the explosions, creating incredibly high winds up to six hundred miles per hour to fan burning combustible materials. The spread of the fires grew with each pass of the ISS over that area of the planet.
The same sudden, violent scene appeared in the Los Angeles area over a space of a few minutes followed by one near San Diego.
Immediately after the appearance of the first fireball emerging out of darkness, another appeared in Los Angeles, and then a second nuclear explosion occurred over San Diego, creating a repetitious sequence for those watching from the ISS. The Marine base at Barstow followed and then the shipyards at Portland, Oregon when another bomb exploded there. The annihilation of Seattle soon followed.
The earth below turned from a blackened dead planet to a string of firestorms during one orbit of the space station. The scene continued to repeat itself in a myriad of darkened cities turned to firestorms while the space station orbited around the planet.
****
Yucca Mountain
SSGT Herman Adams looked at his windup watch, the only type to survive the EMP, and noted it was time to check on his perimeter guards. He stepped out of the guardhouse while the Chinese captain of the submarine Xia 092 opened the safe to obtain his launch orders.
Before deploying to the mountain, he had served with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and with the 485th Military Police Company of the 757th CBT Sustainment Support Battalion of the Nevada National Guard.
He glanced up out of habit at the lights dancing in the sky above him. Also, out of habit, he used his natural senses to watch, listen, and smell of a rattlesnake on the move. Most reptiles and other desert critters stayed under cover during the heat of the day to hunt and prowl at night. The temperature even now in the wee hours of the morning remained well above a stifling 100 degrees.
Looking ahead, he saw his guard suddenly stand up and look intently in a westerly direction over the mountain ridge. The guard heard his Sergeant of the Guard approaching at the same time. He cast his eyes to the sound of the approaching sergeant and immediately returned his gaze skyward.
“Yo, Sarge,” the guard called softly.
“How’s it going, corporal?”
“Is that a plane? If so, it is one fast mother.”
SSGT Adams followed his guard’s gaze. “Too far north to be Vandenberg Air Force Base,” he said. “Damn, there’s another one headed up. This does not look right. The first one is much too high to be a plane.”
Both watched the missiles for another couple of minutes before deciding their identity and their trajectory being inland.
“Officer of the guard,” SSGT Adams screamed to raise the alarm while running back towards the guard post, caution regarding snakes now irrelevant.
Next, to the Command Center inside the mountain, an armed operator operated the radio and data center equipment always to send and receive radio check calls every two hours. It startled the young operator when the speakers suddenly blared out an alert message followed by an authentication code.
“This is NORAD with a command Flash Traffic message to follow in five minutes.” The broadcast started over with the same message and authentication code using the Internet-based data system protocol. The guard desk speakers and those of the duty officer received the same message. The Officer of the Guard immediately transmitted an audio alert to mobilize the defenders of the mountain.
Bradley awoke from a deep sleep to the sound of the audible alert and to the duty officer urgently whispering his name at the entrance to his private quarters. “Colonel Bradley, sir, Colonel Bradley, sir.”
“Yes, Bradley here,” Bradley said to acknowledge the officer.
The duty officer listened hard to understand the colonel’s low, raspy voice. “Sir, we have a command flash message arriving from NORAD in three minutes.”
Radio sounds in the radio room typically overlapped one another with their continuously communicating updates and military messages over the military Internet, but flash messages did not occur except for a threatening situation.
Bradley recognized this being the first “all stations” flash message ever received at the mountain. He hastily slipped on his trousers and rushed with the duty officer while putting on his shirt. He ran over the officer of the guard, knoc
king him against the wall when he rushed into the Command Center, both converging at the same time to where three other guards staffed the internal security desks inside the complex. “Sir, we have - - -.”
Bradley knew without hearing the upcoming message that it could only mean a national emergency. The missing Chinese sub instantly came to mind. He interrupted the duty officer. “Lieutenant,” He paused to include the other three guards with his gaze. “Standby to call an alert on my command.” He turned to the lieutenant and ordered, “Assemble my staff officers into the Command Center immediately.”
The Officer of the Guard, also serving as Duty Officer recognized that the colonel already knew more than he could offer and stood down. The National Guard signal company had also installed computer monitors inside the Command Center that connected to the EMP hardened security cameras outside the Yucca subterranean facility.
These included one mounted on the Yucca Mountain ridgeline, which the operator made active to display on the screen so all could witness what the Sergeant of the Guard reported.
Bradley and a few of his arriving staff members in the Command Center watched in stunned awe on a monitor the events occurring over the horizon along the West Coast.
The meeting room quickly became an actual military Command Center with the spread of the alarm. They witnessed on the monitors the missiles ascending on the West Coast to the same approximate altitude before leveling out on headings to their target.
An enlisted man controlling the camera from inside the Command Center tracked one of the missiles heading south along the coast towards southern California. He managed to follow the missile later, it dropped below the camera’s line of sight. Only minutes before it detonated its warhead to vaporize everyone and everything within eighteen miles of the Navy piers at San Pedro.