Chains of Command

by Dale Brown

  But she grabbed the chain and began pulling it toward the planes as well. “At least let’s do my plane first,” she said.

  “Deal.”

  As they dragged the heavy chain out to Furness’ plane and began wrapping it around the nosewheel, she said to him, “Did you start that fight over me, Daren?”

  “Heck no,” he lied with a smile. “I was trying to stop your wizzo from pounding the shit out of that Turkish officer. Man, he was great.”

  They finished tying the chain around the nosewheel, then extended it out away from the nose and laid it out on the ramp, ready for the fire truck to hook up. Furness said, “You’re a lousy liar, Daren. Thank you. It’s nice to have you here.”

  “Right now, I wish we were back at that bed-and-breakfast,” Mace said. “The last thing I want is—holy shit, look out!”

  Furness turned toward the runway to where Daren was pointing. Careening out of the clear morning sky on the end of a small stabilizer parachute was a string of two large silver bombs, aligned perfectly with the runway centerline. Except for videotapes of training exercises or file footage from Vietnam, neither of them had actually ever seen a parachute-retarded bomb hitting a target before. They saw the weapon at about two thousand feet in the air, and it fell very quickly.

  Its shape, its silver color, its thin profile, its large stabilizer ‘chute—it looked like an American B61 thermonuclear gravity bomb.

  For a brief instant, Furness considered running for the air raid shelter, or at least dropping to the ground and covering her eyes. But that was ridiculous and she knew it. A B61 had the explosive power of twenty Hiroshima bombs and would destroy this base, the nearby city of Kayseri, and everything around it for a distance of thirty miles. She didn’t know what a Russian neutron bomb looked like, but at this distance even a fractional-yield nuclear device would kill.

  “That boom must’ve been a sonic boom,” Mace said in a low voice. He flashed the middle finger of his right hand at where he guessed the retreating aircraft was in the sky. “A supersonic bomber at high altitude. Long time-of-fall—the plane must’ve been really up there, maybe fifty or sixty thousand feet. He’s gonna get a pretty good bomb score. Lucky son of a bitch.”

  All Rebecca could think about doing was reaching for Daren Mace’s hand as she watched the bombs speed toward the center of the runway. She was pleased to find that he was reaching for her hand as well.

  PART FIVE

  The essence of war is violence.

  Moderation in war is imbecility.

  —John A. Fisher

  THIRTY-THREE

  Plattsburgh Air Force Base, New York

  That Same Time

  “For the alert force, for the alert force, klaxon, klaxon, klaxon.”

  Those words blared out of the loudspeakers at the RF-111G Vampire strategic alert facility at Plattsburgh Air Force Base, and at other alert facilities around the country: a B-1B Lancer supersonic heavy bomber wing in Rapid City, South Dakota, carrying cruise missiles and short-range nuclear attack missiles; an F-111F medium bomber wing, also loaded with nuclear SRAMs, in Clovis, New Mexico; a B-52H Stratofortress heavy bomber wing in Spokane, Washington, all carrying cruise missiles; and a B-2 Black Knight stealth bomber wing in Whiteman, Missouri, the aircraft most capable of penetrating stiff Russian air defenses and therefore the only group still carrying nuclear gravity bombs. The TAAN (Tactical Aircrew Alert Network) radios clipped to aircrews’ elastic flight suit waistbands crackled to life with those fateful words, heard by anyone for the first time in over four years, and heard for the first time by one-fourth of the nation’s crewmembers—the ones who had never pulled strategic alert before.

  The phrase “klaxon klaxon klaxon” was not just a term for a loud raucous horn repeated three times—it was an order, with all the force of federal and military law behind it. Upon hearing those words, or a klaxon sound for longer than three seconds, or by seeing a rotating yellow light on street corners on base or flashing lights marked “Alert” in theaters or hospitals, aircrews on strategic nuclear alert were directed to report to the aircraft, start engines, copy and decode the subsequent coded message that would be read on the network, and comply with the message’s instructions. The crews could act like cops on a high-speed chase or fire trucks responding to a fire—they could (cautiously) speed through intersections, drive on aircraft taxiways and runways, even commandeer cars. At Plattsburgh all that was unnecessary: because of bad weather and the base’s close proximity to Russian ballistic missile submarines in the Atlantic, the crews were restricted to the alert facility.

  Air Force Reserve major Laura Alena, a thirty-seven-year-old computer-aided design engineer in civilian life, had just kicked off her boots and was about to unzip her flight suit and get some sleep when the klaxon sounded. After being in the Air Force Reserves only four years, she had never heard a klaxon before, but there was no mistaking what it was. The sound was inescapably loud, tearing at your auditory nerves, and Alena found herself leaping to her feet.

  Her roommate, Captain Heather Cromwell, the Sortie Four weapons officer, was sound asleep when the klaxon went off. She kicked off the old rough green military horse blankets which were tangled around her feet and somehow got up without killing herself. “Shit!” Cromwell yelped, almost rolling off the wrong side of the bed and smacking into the whitewashed concrete wall.

  Alena reached for the light switch and flipped it on, instantly blinding them both. “Get dressed, Heather!” Alena shouted. “Don’t forget your thermals.”

  Cromwell fumbled for her thermal underwear and flight suit—she had made the mistake of hanging all her clothes up neatly in the wardrobes, and for a brief moment she couldn’t find anything. “Do you think this is an exercise, Laura?”

  “No. They briefed us there wouldn’t be any exercises,” Alena replied. She was formerly a KC-135 tanker navigator, so she was familiar with strategic alert. In the old days, alert exercises were common and expected—not anymore. “It’s the real thing, Heather. Hurry and get dressed.”

  “Jeez, I… I can’t believe it.” Cromwell used to be a T-37 “Tweet” FAIP (First Assignment Instructor Pilot) for a year before she was RIFed out of the active-duty Air Force, and like Alena, she couldn’t get an assignment as a pilot and was forced to retrain as a navigator and weapons officer. She spent several years as a Reserve KC-135 tanker navigator before cross-training to the RF-111G Vampire, and had no exposure to strategic alert. As a civilian she was the wife of the president of a major New York construction firm and a mother of one chill. Cromwell was a skilled crewmember and good military officer, but her exposure to the realities of life as a combat aircrewman was limited.

  Of course, the same could be said for most of the members of the 715th Tactical Squadron, even those who had once pulled alert in the active-duty Air Force. Nuclear war was supposed to have ended. The RF-l11 G Vampires, although still called bombers and still retaining a bombing capability, were now only Reserve reconnaissance and stand– off missile launchers—they were not supposed to carry nuclear weapons deep into enemy territory.

  For many crewmembers, especially the young, inexperienced ones like Captain Heather Cromwell, the alert was like a nightmare.

  “We don’t know what the alert means, Heather,” Alena said. “It could be to reposition the alert force, or just a report to aircraft, or . . . something else. Just stay calm. Don’t run in the hallways, but once you get outside the doors, run like hell,” She finished zipping up her boots, threw on her cold-weather jacket and flying gloves, and headed out the door.

  The klaxon horn, an ancient-looking cast-iron thing, was mounted right outside her door, and Alena could hardly hear herself think. Crewmembers were dashing through the halls, knocking into her mindlessly. “Don’t run inside the facility!” she shouted. “Walk until you get outside!” But it didn’t do any good. A moment later Cromwell came out of her room, started running right past Laura Alena, and plowed headlong into a crew chief who was
running out of his room. The impact sent Cromwell flying, but no one stopped.

  “You all right, Heather?” Alena asked as she helped here to her feet.

  “Yeah, I’m okay,” Cromwell replied shakily. With dozens of crewmembers dashing past them, they headed for the outer doors at a slow trot.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Alena asked, releasing Cromwell. She seemed pretty steady on her feet.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Good. I’ll see you after we get back,” Alena said, and sprinted off for her pickup truck.

  Her partner, Major Robert Harcourt, and their two crew chiefs were already in the truck with the engine running. “Where were you?” Harcourt shouted as he put the little pickup in gear and stepped on the accelerator.

  “Somebody smashed into Heather,” Alena replied.

  “You worry about your own butt, Laura,” Harcourt said angrily. “Cromwell is a spoiled brat who can’t stand to be away from her chalet in the mountains.”

  “Hey, go to hell, Bob,” Alena responded. “If it was one of your ‘bros’ on the deck, you’d be helping him out.” That was all the time they had for that argument, and the topic was forgotten as they pulled the truck up to the parking space between the shelters. A security guard with his M-16 rifle at port arms flashed a finger sign, Harcourt gave the countersign, and they were waved into the aircraft shelter.

  Alena took enough time to pull the engine inlet cover off the right engine and fling it off to the side of the shelter before getting on the ladder and yelling “Ready!” When she heard Harcourt yell “Up!” in response, she scampered up the ladder and undogged her cockpit canopy, making sure that he was doing the same. Crews that manned nuclear-loaded bombers had to adhere to the “two-officer policy,” which meant that two nuclear-certified and knowledgeable officers had to be present when access to nuclear release or nuclear launch systems was possible. From the largest nuclear submarine to the smallest nuclear artillery shell, compliance with the two-officer policy was mandatory.

  The RF-111G Vampire was indeed loaded for nuclear war. The 48,000-pound aircraft weighed over 119,000 pounds gross weight, loaded to the gills with fuel and weapons. Along with a full internal fuel load of 32,000 pounds, the Vampire carried four external fuel tanks with 14,400 total pounds of fuel—the outermost fuel tanks were on nonswiveling pylons, so the wings could not be swept back past 26 degrees unless those outer tanks were jettisoned, which would be only after the last refueling and when those tanks were finally empty, before crossing into enemy territory. On the innermost wing pylon, the Vampire carried an AGM-131 short-range attack missile with a 170-kiloton nuclear warhead, and on the outside of the number 3 and 6 pylons the bomber carried an AIM-9P Sidewinder missile for self-defense. Finally, two more AGM-131 attack missiles were nestled in the internal bomb bay.

  Both crewmen jumped into the cockpit, strapped in, and put on helmets. While Alena retrieved her decoding documents and booklets, Harcourt flipped on battery power, flicked both starter switches on the center console to CART, and yelled “Clear cartridge start!” His crew chief, standing with a fire extinguisher by the left engine inlet, gave him a thumbs-up, and Harcourt lifted the throttle grips up over the cutoff detent, brought both throttles briefly to military to get a good shot of fuel into the system, and set the throttles to idle. When he lifted the throttle grips, battery power set off two large high-pressure smoke generators installed in each low-pressure engine turbine section, which started the turbines spinning. In less than sixty seconds, both engines were at idle power, and Harcourt began bringing up all aircraft systems.

  After monitoring the engine start, Alena turned her attention to the coded message. The Plattsburgh command post was reading a long string of characters on the radio. When the controller said, “I say again, message follows,” Alena knew it was the beginning of the message, and she started copying the letters and numbers with a grease pencil on a nearly-frozen plastic sheet, one character per box. When she had the first ten characters, called the “preamble,” she began decoding, using the proper day-date decoding book.

  The first character told the crew if this was an exercise or an actual message—and it read “actual.” “Bob … dammit, cross-check this,” Alena said. Harcourt stopped what he was doing, double-checked that she was using the right decoding document. It was correct. “It’s a ‘taxi-to-the-hold-line’ message,” Alena said after breaking out the preamble.

  “Authenticate it,” Harcourt said.

  “We don’t need to,” Alena said. “We only authenticate a launch message.”

  “Hell, I’ll authenticate it myself,” Harcourt said. He clicked on the command radio: “I got a ‘taxi,’ “ he said. It was not proper procedures, but they were playing with real marbles here, and he wasn’t about to screw anything up.

  “Taxi,” another voice said. They recognized it as the Sortie One pilot. One by one, all six pilots of Alpha Flight reported the same thing.

  “We take our time,” Harcourt said. “I want a full stored heading alignment, I want you strapped in, and I want … I want everything perfect, dammit. We’re not moving until everything is perfect.”

  A full stored heading alignment took only three minutes, and Alena reported that her system was ready to fly. She motioned to the green padded containers mounted under the instrument panel glare shield. “Tac doctrine says we gotta use ’em,” Alena said. Harcourt hesitated, then nodded, and both crewmen opened the containers.

  The crew chiefs watched their crewmembers get ready. Suddenly one of the RF-111Gs, the Sortie Six airplane, began taxiing out of its shelter. Harcourt stood in front of his shelter, waiting for the taxi light to come on his bomber. A second bomber taxied out of the shelter. Then he saw his crewmembers take off their helmets and slip something over their heads that he couldn’t quite make out before replacing their helmets. Then they clipped something onto the outside of their helmets.

  They were PLZT goggles—electronic flashblindness goggles. The other thing they put on under their helmets must’ve been eyepatches for use in case the electronic goggles failed or if it was too dark to use the goggles. The crew chiefs had had briefings on them and had seen them demonstrated once, but they were never to be used …

  … unless it was the real thing.

  With the goggles and oxygen masks in place, Harcourt and Alena looked like two Darth Vaders sitting in the Vampire cockpit. Harcourt turned on the taxi light, signaling he was ready to taxi. The crew chief kept his arms crossed above his head until the second RF-111 bomber taxied past, then motioned Harcourt to move forward, and they taxied clear of the shelter and onto the parallel runway.

  Standing in the dark, freezing cold night, with the roar of six nuclear-loaded RF-111s bombarding him, the Sortie Two crew chief saluted the pilot. The eerie death mask turned toward him, looked at the lone figure for a moment, then slowly returned the salute—possibly for the last time.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  The White House, Washington, D.C.

  That Same Time

  “What the hell do you mean, it was a leaflet drop?” the President thundered. “You mean to tell me the Russians flew a supersonic bomber right over Turkey, in broad daylight, right over the base where the American planes had just landed, and dropped leaflets … ?”

  “That’s exactly what they did, Mr. President,” General Freeman acknowledged. They, along with the First Lady and their young daughter; the National Security Advisor, Michael Lifter; two Secret Service agents; and a Navy captain assigned to carry the “football,” the briefcase with the codes necessary to execute the nation’s nuclear forces, were standing in the pouring rain on the west lawn of the White House, just a few yards away from the whirling blades of Marine One. The large VH-53 helicopter had flown out to retrieve the President and members of the National Security Council when the latest alert was sounded. Seconds earlier, Freeman had received word that no attack was in progress, and the group, now drenched, was heading back into the White House.

/>   The President did not go to the Situation Room, but made his way back to the Oval Office instead. He threw his wet raincoat into a corner and ordered coffee and sandwiches. The First Lady entered the Oval Office a few minutes later with her hair dry and wearing a business suit—it had to be the fastest cleanup in history—and stood beside her husband. “I would like to know,” she said crisply, her hands balled into tight fists at her side, “what in hell is going on here? General Freeman, getting chased out of the White House twice in just a few days on a false alarm is not my idea of fun.”

  “It was no false alarm, ma’am,” Freeman said, swallowing hard, shifting from one foot to the other. To the President, he said, “I’ve got the intelligence branch on their way over for a briefing, sir.”

  “All right,” the President drawled wearily. He stood by his chair, his fingers pressing into the brown leather back, taking a few deep breaths, then swung the chair around and sat down heavily. “Something in North America or Europe, Philip?”

  “Europe, sir, over Turkey,” Freeman replied. “Attack warning. There was no reason why the leadership-evacuation warning was sounded. I’ll check into that personally.”

  The Navy captain with the nuclear codes followed along and unobtrusively took a seat in the corner of the room, the case open on a table beside his chair, a cord running from the briefcase to a wall outlet. He then stood and approached the President, waiting for an opportunity to speak. “Captain Ahrens would like to activate your code card, sir,” Freeman told the President.

  “What for?”

  “Sir, we should establish full connectivity with the National Military Command Center immediately,” Freeman explained. “When the Russian aircraft were detected on what appeared to be a bomb run, we transmitted a taxi-to-the-hold-line message to the bombers and a standby-to-launch message to the Peacekeeper missiles and submarines.”