by Dale Brown
Hal Briggs threw his parka and hood onto a chair. “Someone get me coffee, and someone else talk to me,” he said, “or I’m about to get very cranky.”
“Some increased NORAD activity, sir,” Chris Wohl responded.
“We know that already, Top,” Hal said irritably. “That’s why we’re here. The general convinced NORAD to put fighters on patrol until they can push out the radar surveillance.”
“It’s something else, sir,” Wohl went on, handing Briggs a large mug of steaming coffee. “NORAD just issued a BEELINE report for sudden, unexplained radar outages along the North Warning System.”
That didn’t sound good. “Where are the fighters?”
“NORAD put one fighter from Eielson on patrol over the Arctic Ocean—his wingman should be airborne shortly,” Wohl responded. “AnAWACS radar plane and a couple F-15 interceptors from Elmendorf are on their way now to fill in for the long-range radars that are out.”
“So at the present time, all the surveillance we have north of Alaska is one fighter?”
Wohl nodded. “Thought you’d need to know that right away, sir,” he said.
He did. Hal thought hard for a moment, then spoke into the air, “Briggs to Luger.”
“I was just going to give you a call, Hal,” Brigadier General David Luger, commanding the Air Battle Force, responded via the secure subcutaneous-transceiver system. “I got the message just now.”
“What do you think is going on?”
“Whatever it is, it’s not good,” Dave said. “What’s your status?”
“I just need to get the children out of bed and the planes rolled out, and we’re off,” Hal responded. “Fifteen minutes max.”
“Good. Stand by.” There was a slight pause. Then Luger said, “Civilian approach controllers just issued a ‘pending’ notification to NORAD—an unidentified target heading east, altitude unknown, groundspeed five hundred and forty knots.”
“A plane at low altitude going point-seven-two Mach over Alaska?” Briggs remarked. “Either it’s Santa Claus on a training flight—or it’s trouble.”
“It’s trouble,” Luger said. “I’ll see if the Navy can get any look-down eyes out there. Get your guys airborne. Disperse them someplace nearby. Adak?”
“The bad guys are the other way, Dave,” Hal said. “The Coast Guard said we can use their hangar on Attu Island, so that’s where we’ll go.” Attu Island, about fifty miles west of Shemya, was the largest and rockiest of the Near Islands, and the westernmost of the American Aleutians. It also had the worst weather in the Aleutians—if it wasn’t having driving rain or snow with hurricane-force winds, it was blanketed in thick, cold fog. The U.S. Coast Guard maintained a small search-and-rescue, maritime patrol, communications, and ground navigation facility there, with just twenty people manning the small site—they welcomed visitors and encouraged all services to use their facilities. “They usually have plenty of fuel and provisions, too. We’ve made a few resupply flights for them just since we arrived.”
“Good. Disperse there and keep in touch.”
“You think Shemya could be a target?”
“No, but it doesn’t hurt to be safe—and that big old radar out there plus all the ballistic-missile defense stuff sure are pretty inviting targets,” Dave said.
“Rog,” Hal said. He turned to Wohl and twirled his index finger in the air, telling the master sergeant to get his men ready to fly. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure,” Dave said. “I’m not authorized to fly my bombers….” He thought for a moment, then added, “But no one said I couldn’t fuel them and hoist them to the surface, just for a systems-test run. Maybe I’ll see how fast my guys can get them upstairs.” Unlike any other air base in the world, Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base was built twelve stories underground in an abandoned national alternate military command center first built in the 1950s. The facility was originally constructed to house an entire fighter-bomber air wing and over five thousand men and women and protect them from all but a direct hit by a one-megaton nuclear device. Aircraft were raised up to the surface on eight large elevators located at the end of the airfield’s twelve-thousand-foot-long runway and at the mass parking ramp.
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Hal said. “We’ll report in when we’re safe on Attu.”
“Roger that.”
“Any word from the general?” Even though Patrick McLanahan had been gone for several weeks now, everyone still referred to him as “the general.”
“He’s not at AIA headquarters anymore,” Dave said. “He may be heading back to Sacramento. I think he may have gotten spanked for going around Houser and Samson about what the Russians are doing.”
“I have to admit, it’s quite a stretch to see a bunch of tankers at one base in Siberia and conclude that the Russians are going to bomb the United States,” Hal said. “But that’s the general. He’s a smart guy and one hell of a leader, but he does tend to lead with his chin sometimes.”
“Hal, it scared the hell out of me when I saw all those bombers and tankers at those bases—and now with that BEELINE report about the North Warning System radars down, I’m more scared than ever,” Dave Luger said. “We’ll know what happens this morning. In the meantime I want to make sure our unit is safe.”
“We’re on our way, boss,” Hal said. “We’ll report when we’re on alert on Attu. Briggs out.”
Back at Battle Mountain, Luger thought about the situation for a moment, then spoke, “Duty Officer, set condition Alpha-Foxtrot-one for the Air Battle Force Alpha alert team, and set condition Echo-Foxtrot-two for all other aircraft. Then get me Colonel Shrike at Elliott Air Force Base.”
“Roger, General Luger, set condition Alpha-Foxtrot-one for the Alpha team and Echo-Foxtrot-two for all other aircraft,” the Duty Officer responded. “Please stand by for counterorder.”
“Furness to Luger,” Rebecca Furness radioed excitedly a few moments later. “I didn’t hear an ‘exercise’ classification. What’s going on?”
“This is not an exercise, Rebecca,” Dave said. “I want all the Alpha-alert aircraft into Foxtrot-one.”
“Luger, I damned well shouldn’t have to remind you that we’re not authorized to fly our aircraft anywhere,” Rebecca said angrily. “You remember that little order from the secretary of defense, don’t you?”
“By the time the crews arrive and the planes are hoisted to the surface, I’ll have authorization,” Luger said.
“Then why not order an Echo generation for all aircraft?” Rebecca asked. “You ordered an Alpha launch for the Alpha force—that’s a survival launch for our aircraft with weapons aboard.” Even though the planes were decertified and declared non-mission ready, David Luger and Rebecca Furness had directed that the Air Battle Force’s Alpha force—composed of two EB-1C Vampire bombers, four EB-52 Megafortress bombers, and four KC-135R tankers—remain loaded with weapons, fueled, and ready to respond at short notice for combat operations. These planes could be airborne in less than an hour. The other planes were all in various stages of readiness, but in general the Bravo force could be ready in three to six hours, and the Charlie force could be ready in nine to twelve hours.
“Rebecca, something’s happening up in Alaska,” Dave said, “and after what we’ve seen in Siberia, that’s enough warning for me. I need you to countersign the order to launch the Alpha team right away.”
“You’re going to end up out on your ass even faster than McLanahan,” Rebecca said.
“Rebecca…”
“I want your word that you won’t launch any aircraft, even the tankers, without my counterorder,” Rebecca said. “Otherwise I’ll defer my countersignature to higher headquarters.”
“Agreed.” A moment later he heard the Duty Officer report, “General Luger, generation order verified by General Furness, A-hour established.” A moment: “Colonel Shrike is on the line, secure.”
“Put him on.”
“Shrike here, secure,” Colone
l Andrew “Amos” Shrike was commander of Elliott Air Force Base at Groom Lake, Nevada, the supersecret weapon-and aircraft-testing facility north of Las Vegas.
“This is General Luger at Battle Mountain.”
“What do you need, General?” Shrike said testily. Shrike was a twenty-three-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force. He’d received an Air Force commission through the Officer Training Corps program after graduating from the University of Texas A&M in electrical engineering. Through hard work and sheer determination, he rose through the ranks all the way to full colonel, wrangling a pilot-training slot for himself at a time when the Air Force was RIFing (Reduction in Forces) pilots left and right. He was hand-selected by Terrill Samson to take over the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, with strict instructions not to turn it into a secret combat base—specifically, not to let McLanahan, Luger, Furness, Mace, or Cheshire turn it into their private combat-operations center.
But on a personal level, Shrike resented the young, brash men and women like Luger who got promoted by doing outlandish, audacious things that Shrike himself would’ve been busted for in his early years. He had been taught that the way to get promoted was to follow orders and run a tight ship, not contravene orders and disregard the chain of command. Luger was ten years younger but was already a one-star general—in Shrike’s book that was pure crapola.
“I’d like my AL-52s fueled and ready to load the laser as soon as possible,” Luger said now. “I’m flying flight and technical crews down on a KC-135 in one hour.”
“I’d be happy to give them to you and get them the hell out of my hangars, General—as soon as I see some paperwork,” Shrike said. To call Andrew Shrike “anal” would be an understatement: He took a personal, direct interest in every aspect of all operations at the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center. Nothing happened there without his express knowledge and approval. “But since I haven’t seen or heard anything from you guys in weeks, it won’t happen. It’ll take you an entire day just to get authorization for your tanker to land here—and another week at least to get permission to launch those things out of here.”
David Luger could feel that familiar tension creeping into his brain and spinal cord—the feeling of dread, of abject fear, of impending pain—and he felt his body start to move into self-defense mode. He found he couldn’t speak, couldn’t react. He just looked straight ahead, feet planted firmly on the floor, arms becoming rigid….
“Anything else, General? It’s early, and I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“I…I…” Dave stammered, but no words were coming out.
“Nice to talk to you, sir,” Shrike said flatly, obviously not meaning one word of it. “Good—”
“Colonel,” Dave finally spit. He blinked, gritted his teeth, and willed his back and neck muscles to move.
“Yes, General? What is it?”
“I want…those planes ready for my crews in one hour.”
“I told you, General, it won’t happen,” Shrike said. “You need the proper—”
“Damn it, Colonel, you do as I goddamned tell you to do!” Luger suddenly blurted out. “You don’t need authorization to fuel those planes and open the fucking hangar doors, and you don’t need authorization for an R&D team that already has clearance to both the aircraft and the facility to arrive there. I’ll get all the other authorizations. Now, move those planes like I told you to do, or I will nail your ass to my front gate, warning all you other insubordinate assholes not to mess with me!” And he disconnected the line.
When he looked up, he saw most of his senior officers—Rebecca Furness;Colonel Daren Mace, her ops officer; Colonel Nancy Cheshire, commander of the EB-52 Megafortresses and the AL-52 Dragons of the Fifty-second Bomb Squadron; and Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Hellion, commander of the EB-1C Vampire bombers of the Fifty-first Bomb Squadron—staring at him as if he had grown an extra head.
“What are you standing around for?” Luger snapped. “I want the Alpha force ready to launch into the Foxtrot One airborne-alert area in one hour, and I want the rest of the force on the roof and ready to fly in two hours. Nancy, get your Dragon crews loaded up on a KC-135 and ready to fly to Dreamland to get the birds ready for combat operations.”
“Are you serious, sir?” Nancy Cheshire asked incredulously. Cheshire was a veteran Dreamland test pilot and one of the original program directors of both the EB-52 Megafortress airborne battleship and the AL-52 Dragon airborne laser, both modified B-52 bombers. “We’re going into combat even though we haven’t been recertified?”
“Not quite—I said I want all our planes ‘ready’ to go into combat,” Luger said. “But I’m authorized to do everything necessary to have my force survive an attack against the United States, and that’s what I plan to do.”
“What attack against the United States?” Cheshire asked.
“The one that very well could be happening right now—if what Patrick thought might happen really does happen,” Dave said. “I’ve got a feeling he’s correct. And if he is, I don’t want my planes sitting around here on the ground like wounded ducks. Let’s roll, folks.” He paused, then said, “Duty Officer, get me General Muskoka’s office at Langley right away—urgent priority.”
Clear, Alaska
A short time later
The Tupolev-160 supersonic bombers accelerated to twelve hundred kilometers per hour and climbed slightly to five hundred meters above the ground shortly before crossing just north of Wolf Mountain in central Alaska. They received a READY indication moments later, but the navigator/bombardier knew well enough to wait until the designated launch point, because his Kh-15 missiles would lose valuable range if they had to climb over or circumnavigate the mountain.
At the preplanned launch point, the bombardier flipped a switch from SAFE to COMMIT, which started the Kh-15 missile countdown. The Tu-160’s attack computers immediately downloaded navigation, heading, and velocity information to the missiles, which allowed the missiles’ gyros to perform their final transfer alignment to prepare them for flight. As soon as the missiles reported ready, the aft bomb-bay doors flew open, and four Kh-15 missiles were ejected down into the slipstream, one every fifteen seconds. Each one fell about a hundred meters in a slightly nose-low attitude while the air data sensors sampled the air, computed roll and bank velocities, set the rear fins for stabilization, and then fired its first-stage solid rocket motor. The Kh-15 shot ahead of the bomber in the blink of an eye, sped ahead for a few kilometers, then started a fast climb. The second Tu-160 fired four missiles from its rear bomb bay as well.
In fifteen seconds the missiles were at twenty thousand meters’ altitude, where they began to level off as the second-stage motor ignited. They cruised at twice the speed of sound for another forty-five seconds, then started a descent. Their precision inertial accelerometers kept them on course for their target, now less than eighty kilometers away.
Like Shemya, Clear Air Station in central Alaska was a rather isolated location that was growing in importance and development with the advent of the Aerospace Defense Command’s ballistic-missile defense system. Along with the existing Ballistic Missile Early Warning System radar, Clear Air Station hosted civilian air-traffic-control radars and NORAD surveillance radars. As part of the national missile-defense system’s expansion, the Air Force was also constructing a Battle Management Command and Control Center and an In-Flight Interceptor Communications System, plus eight silos, each housing four ground-based interceptor (GBI) rockets, spread out over eight hundred acres. The rockets were modified Minuteman II ballistic missiles fitted with a kill-vehicle warhead, designed to track and destroy ballistic-missile warhead “buses” outside Earth’s atmosphere. Three hundred military and over five hundred civilian contractors and construction workers lived and worked at the base.
Clear Air Station was definitely a “soft” target—perfect prey for the Kh-15 missiles.
In less than two minutes from launch, the first Russian attack missile reached its target
. When the Kh-15 missile was still a thousand meters aboveground, its warhead detonated. The fireball of a one-kiloton thermonuclear device was very small and barely reached the ground, but the shock and overpressure of the explosion were enough to destroy every surface structure within four kilometers of ground zero. Every fifteen seconds another explosion ripped across the Alaskan wilderness, burning, crushing, or sweeping away buildings, radar antennae, and trees—and killing every living thing standing within a sixteen-square-kilometer area.
Each bomber’s third and fourth missiles were fitted with a deep-penetrating warhead and a delayed-action fuze and programmed against the ground-based interceptor silos. Although these were not as effective as the air-burst warheads programmed against aboveground targets, over half of the thirty-two GBIs were destroyed by the burrowing Kh-15 nuclear warheads.
For the alert force, for the alert force, scramble, scramble, scramble!”
The radio announcement came as a complete surprise. The four F-16C Fighting Falcon alert crews were inside the ramp-maintenance supervisor’s truck, sipping coffee while they reviewed their jets’ Form 781 maintenance logs prior to accepting the aircraft for alert status. Coffee cups dropped to the floor, and confused, scared eyes turned to each other inside the truck.