by Dale Brown
“You okay, Thomas?” Vice President Busick asked over the secure video teleconference. “You look like you’re flying through some rough air.”
“I’m okay,” Thorn replied.
“I know what you’re feelin’, Thomas,” Busick said. “You wanna go wring someone’s neck.” Thorn glanced at Busick’s face in the monitor. “Get over that, Thomas. You have a lot of dead Americans out there, and a lot more that want to know what’s gonna happen next. You’re the man that’s going to need to have some answers. Let’s get organized.”
Thorn stared blankly at a window—thick silver curtains had been installed over all the windows in Air Force One to prevent injury by flash blindness, should any more nuclear warheads explode nearby. He felt helpless, overwhelmed. He and a handful of military and government advisers were locked up in an airplane, flying over the ocean, far away from the capital. Bits of information were dripping in, but for the most part they were disconnected from the rest of the country. They were cut off.
No, even that wasn’t exactly true. They were running. They had abandoned the capital and were doing nothing more than fleeing to save their own lives, while the rest of America had to sit and take whatever the Russians were going to fire at them next.
He had faced many such unexpected disasters in his years as a special-operations officer in the U.S. Army. When an operation went wrong or when they were discovered, the team went into a sort of mental shock. They had planned and sometimes rehearsed many alternate and emergency-contingency missions, but when the shit hits the fan for real, the only plan they usually thought of was escape. It was confusing, chaotic, and, frankly, it didn’t look very heroic. Weeks and sometimes months of planning gave way to a headlong, almost irrational fleeing instinct. Some of the more experienced troops remembered to tell the others important things—like which way to go, what to watch out for, and to remember to collect up things like maps, comm gear, weapons, and fallen comrades. But for everyone the bottom line is simple: Get out. Save yourself. Run.
Once they had escaped, rendezvoused, and inventoried themselves and their equipment, the very next thing they did was look to the team leaders, the officer and NCO in charge, for guidance and a plan of action. They didn’t want anger, or vows of revenge, or signs of grief and sorrow—they wanted and needed leadership. That’s what President Thomas Thorn had to provide—now. Even if he didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do, he had to have the strength and courage to gather up his forces and get them moving.
Thorn drew in a deep breath, retrieved a bottle of water, took a deep swig, then turned back to the video teleconference camera, “facing” his team of advisers. “Analysis?” the president asked simply.
“I’ve got a very preliminary tally, Mr. President,” General Richard Venti, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, responded. He took a deep breath, steeling himself to deliver a report he thought he would never, ever have to present:
“First to be hit was Clear Air Station in Alaska,” he began. “Clear is…was…is a major radar and command-and-control base for the entire state of Alaska and the approaches into North America. The attack destroyed several radar systems, communications facilities, and a ground-based interceptor silo complex being built for the ballistic-missile defense force. Clear was the main ballistic-missile and aircraft-tracking station in the north, manned by approximately one thousand men and women. It was hit by a total of eight low-yield nuclear weapons, some with air-burst fuzes to destroy aboveground facilities, others with penetrating bunker-buster fuzes to destroy the ground-launched interceptor silos.
“Next was an attack against three major military bases in eastern Alaska, near Fairbanks,” Venti went on. “Eielson Air Force Base is the home of the Three-fifty-fourth Fighter Wing, an F-16 and A-10 attack wing, but it also houses several components of the national missile-defense infrastructure, including the Alaskan headquarters for the system. Fort Wainwright and Fort Greely are Army installations housing several infantry units, but they also contain several key NMD facilities. The bases were hit by eight nuclear-tipped missiles.”
“How many men and women at those bases, General?” the president asked woodenly, dreading the answer.
“About…approximately fifteen thousand in all four bases, sir,” Venti responded.
“My…God…” Thomas Thorn felt his face redden, and tears flowed into his eyes. He could barely fathom such a number killed all at once. His voice cracked as he said, “Those bastards…!” He rested his head on his fingers, blankly staring straight ahead. After a few moments, with his head still bowed, he asked, “Do we know what kind of bombers they used?”
“The attacks against Alaska were accomplished by an unknown number of high-speed bombers, probably Tupolev-160s, code-named ‘Blackjack,’ ” Air Force Chief of Staff General Charles Kuzner responded. “The Blackjack’s standard strategic attack armament is sixteen AS-16 ‘Kickback’ missiles, inertially guided, short range, high speed, similar to our obsolete AGM-69 short-range attack missiles that used to arm our strategic bombers. The bombers probably came in at treetop level all the way from Siberia. FAA and NORAD spotted them as they came ashore, but we couldn’t get any more interceptors in the air fast enough.” The president raised his head and stared accusingly into the camera, which prompted Air Force General Kuzner to blurt out, “Sir, we had already launched fighters from Eielson and Elmendorf because of the air-defense threat farther north and—”
“I’m not blaming anyone, General,” Thorn said.
“We had four fighters rolling at Eielson when the base came under attack,” Kuzner went on. “We had two more coming up from Elmendorf searching for them, but the electromagnetic pulses from the aboveground nuclear explosions were scrambling radar and communications for hundreds of miles. The F-15s couldn’t see a thing, couldn’t talk to anyone, couldn’t do a damned thing to stop them….”
“I said I’m not blaming you, General Kuzner,” the president repeated. He could see Kuzner’s Adam’s apple bobbing up and down and his facial muscles slacken as he silently tried to deal with the horror—the horror that his forces might have prevented, had they been more prepared.
Venti waited until he could see the president look at him, silently asking him to continue, then cleared his throat and went on. “The first CONUS base to be hit was Minot Air Force Base, thirteen miles outside the city of Minot, North Dakota. That base is the home of the Fifth Bomb Wing, with twenty-four B-52H Stratofortress bombers and twelve KC-135R Stratotanker aerial-refueling tankers. Minot is also the home of the Ninety-first Space Wing, a Minuteman III missile wing, which comprises fifteen underground launch-control centers spread out over eighty-five hundred square miles of North Dakota. Each LCC controls ten LGM-30G Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles; in compliance with the START II treaty, each Minuteman has been downgraded from three independently targeted warheads to just one W78 nuclear warhead. We have detected direct hits on the base itself and several hits near the LCCs, but we don’t yet know how many were knocked out.”
“What about the base?”
“Unknown yet, sir,” Venti responded somberly. “It took two direct hits.”
“How many personnel on that base?”
“About…about five thousand military.” Left unsaid was the obvious fact that perhaps two to four times that many military dependents and civilians living near the base could have perished.
“My God,” the president breathed. He could scarcely believe that this was happening—and yet he reminded himself that the death toll had not even begun to be calculated. “What about the city?”
“A few reports of damage, a few casualties, but it appears the city itself was not affected.”
“Thank God.”
“The attacks on the continental U.S. appear to have been done by Tupolev-95 Bear bombers, launching very long-range AS-19 hypersonic missiles, code-named ‘Koala,’ ” Venti said. “The Bear bombers are not supersonic, but their range is almost twice that of the Blac
kjack bomber. Several Bear bombers were intercepted and shot down over Canada by Canadian air-defense forces.”
“AS-19—isn’t that the same missile supposedly used over Uzbekistan?” Vice President Busick asked.
“Yes, sir,” Secretary of Defense Goff said. “Apparently the attack against our CIA station in Uzbekistan was an operational test launch.”
“Oh, shit…”
“Next to be hit was Grand Forks Air Force Base, sixteen miles west of the city of Grand Forks, North Dakota,” Venti went on. “Grand Forks is the headquarters of the new U.S. National Missile Defense Command, the agency that will control our ballistic-missile defense forces. The base also has a reserve nuclear-weapon storage facility that houses approximately four hundred and forty Minuteman-missile warheads, air-launched cruise-missile warheads, and B61 and B83 nuclear bombs, all in secure storage. It was hit by a single Russian cruise missile with great accuracy. It’s possible the direct casualty count here is very small, although that doesn’t take into account the fallout and contamination from the warheads that were not incinerated in the blast. The base was also home to the Three-nineteenth Air Refueling Wing, with twenty-two KC-135R tankers.”
The president could do nothing but shake his head, almost overwhelmed by the enormity of this disaster. The effect of the fallout—dirt and debris bombarded by gamma radiation, making it radioactive, then carried aloft by the force of the blast, spreading over hundreds of thousand of square miles by high-altitude winds, then falling back to Earth—was something to which very little attention had been paid since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Thorn remembered the civil-defense exercises he’d participated in as a child, and fallout was one of those fearsome things that caused nightmares in impressionable young children. Now they had to face it for real—and he found he was still scared of the harm it might cause.
“Next was Malmstrom Air Force Base, just six miles east of Great Falls, Montana,” Venti went on. “The Three-forty-first Space Wing there deploys two hundred Minuteman III missiles in twenty LCCs spread out over twenty-three thousand square miles of Montana. The base itself, which does not have an operating runway, did not appear to be hit. Unfortunately, the missile-silo fields surround the city of Great Falls on three sides, and we have detected explosions all around the city. It’s possible casualties could be relatively small here, too, but it’s too early to tell.
“Next was Ellsworth Air Force Base, twelve miles east of Rapid City, South Dakota. Ellsworth is the home of the Twenty-eighth Bomb Wing, a B-1B Lancer-bomber base. It was hit by a single missile. This target is somewhat unusual, in that all the other places targeted by the Russians were related to nuclear warfighting—Ellsworth’s B-1 bombers were made nonnuclear eight years ago to conform to Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty limits. Although it’s possible to make them capable of carrying nuclear weapons, it would take many months to do it, and it would greatly downgrade our conventional bombing capability. This signals a flaw in the Russians’ intelligence matrix—either they forgot that we made the B-1s nonnuclear or they thought we were about to turn them back into nuclear bombers.”
“Which is precisely what we should be doing, sir,” Kuzner interjected, “along with the aircraft in flyable storage. As soon as we convert them and train crews to man them, we should put them on alpha alert.”
“I have no intention of putting nuclear-loaded bombers back on alert, General,” President Thorn said. “Those days are over.”
“With all due respect, Mr. President, it looks to me like those days are back again,” Kuzner said bitterly. “Without the ICBMs we have no choice but to put every aircraft we can back on nuclear alert—not just the bombers but every tactical jet capable of carrying a thermonuclear weapon.”
“General Kuzner…”
“Mr. President, we can’t waste any time on this. It’ll take four to eight weeks to recertify a new B-1 aircraft with positive-control switches and devices for nuclear weapons, plus twenty to thirty weeks to train a new aircrew and forty to sixty weeks to train a new maintenance technician. We need to—”
“That’s enough, General,” Thorn said sternly. “We’ll discuss this when the time comes.”
“Will we? Or are you just going to let another six thousand airmen on one of my bases die?”
“I said that’s enough, General,” Thorn snapped. He noticed that neither Vice President Busick, Secretary of State Goff, or Joint Chiefs chairman General Venti attempted to shut Kuzner down—they wanted him to go off, and they wanted to see how Thorn would handle it. “I assure you, when the time comes, we’ll plan an appropriate response and use every weapon in our arsenal to implement the plan. In the meantime I want to hear what we’ve lost and what we might have left before I start loading nuclear weapons on bombers again. Is that clear, General?” Kuzner said nothing and responded with the faintest of nods. Thorn noticed this and gave Kuzner a stern glare but decided not to argue further. “General Venti, continue your report.”
“Yes, sir. Next was Francis E. Warren Air Force Base, adjacent to the city of Cheyenne, Wyoming. F. E. Warren is Twentieth Air Force headquarters, responsible for all of America’s land-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles, and is also the home of the Ninetieth Space Wing, which controls one hundred and fifty Minuteman ICBMs. One cruise missile hit on the base itself—we don’t know exactly where yet. Most of the other missiles were targeted on the fifteen launch-control centers spread out over almost thirteen thousand square miles of Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska.
“The next target was Whiteman Air Force Base, located in a relatively rural area of western Missouri, about forty-five miles east of Kansas City. Whiteman is the home of the Five-oh-ninth Bomb Wing, with nineteen B-2A Spirit stealth bombers and fourteen KC-135R tankers, plus an OA-10 Thunderbolt II close-air-support fighter wing. Two Russian warheads hit the base itself. Again, approximately four to five thousand personnel were stationed at Whiteman.
“The last target was Offutt Air Force Base, eight miles south of Omaha, Nebraska. Offutt has the Fifty-fifth Wing, which controls all of the nation’s strategic electronic reconnaissance and electronic command-and-control aircraft, and of course it is the headquarters of U.S. Strategic Command, the Joint Intelligence Center, the Air Force Weather Agency, and the Pentagon’s National Airborne Operations Center—all important military agencies necessary in planning and executing strategic combat missions, such as what we would employ if we fought a nuclear conflict with Russia. The base was hit by at least four warheads.”
“Military contingent at Offutt?” the president asked woodenly.
Venti hesitated, swallowed, then responded, “Over eight thousand, sir.” “Jee-zus,” Vice President Busick exclaimed.
“There was one clean miss, sir—unfortunately, it could be the greatest disaster of the attack,” Venti said. “Two warheads from one missile were apparently targeted for the weapon-storage facility at Fairchild Air Force Base near Spokane, Washington, which stores approximately five hundred nuclear gravity bombs, and warheads for cruise missiles, naval missiles, and torpedoes. The missile fell short and hit outside the city. No specific casualty reports yet, but damage is extensive.
“DSP reports a total of sixty-three explosions in the United States,” Venti summarized. “Thirty-one warheads targeted against Minuteman III launch-control centers, obviously intended to prevent the missiles from being launched; sixteen against ballistic-missile defense installations; ten warheads targeted against nuclear-capable bomber bases and weapon-storage facilities; and six against strategic command-and-control bases, mostly involving nuclear warfighting. The Air Warning Center tracked over fifty missiles inbound on the attack against the CONUS, so perhaps as many as ten Russian cruise missiles malfunctioned and failed to detonate; one missile malfunctioned but its warheads did detonate, with disastrous results.”
“Still no contact with anyone at STRATCOM?” the president asked.
“No, sir—it looks like Offutt to
ok a direct hit with three warheads,” General Venti said. “The airfield took one, and two hit the underground command center. No word yet if anyone survived. One warhead exploded north of the city of Bellevue—damage and casualty estimates are not in yet. All of the warheads used in these attacks were very small, perhaps one or two kilotons—less than a tenth the size of the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.”
“What are the chances anyone survived at STRATCOM?”
“The command center was designed to take the shock and overpressure from a one-megaton warhead,” Venti responded. “Many of the warheads used on this attack were designed to explode deep underground. It’s very possible anyone inside the underground facility could have survived, if the complex was sealed up and fully disconnected from all external power and air in time. Same with the Minuteman-missile launch facilities. They are built on shock absorbers that are designed to survive tremendous overpressure. But they can’t survive inside the fireball. If the earth and the facility shielding couldn’t stop the fireball from forming underground, they couldn’t make it.”
“Just one aircraft made it away from Offutt?”
“One E-4B Airborne Operations Center, which was on alert at the time. They have checked in and are fully functional, although they do not have a complete battle staff. Rear Admiral Jerrod Richland is the battle-staff director. Although it does not have a complete crew, it can do all the command-and-control functions of the STRATCOM command center. No other aircraft made it off in time.”
“So I can still talk to our subs and military headquarters?” the president asked. “I still have control of the nuclear warheads?”
“The E-4 is a global communications platform, able to communicate directly with any civilian or military person on planet Earth with a radio receiver or computer—it took over for the old Strategic Air Command EC-135 ‘Looking Glass’ aircraft, which were designed to ‘mirror’ operations in SAC’s underground command center,” Venti responded. “The E-6B is a communications aircraft, designed to communicate with military units and ballistic-missile submarines deep under the ocean, but the difference is that the B-model can format and send execution messages to nuclear forces and can also monitor and launch land-based ballistic missiles.”