Sky Masters

by Dale Brown

  ever seen. It was just on the horizon, almost directly off the nose.

  And just as quickly the light enveloped and blinded him. His eyes

  became two red-hot spheres of excruciating pain, burned, it seemed, by

  molten lava. Behind him, Pilas was screaming and Tamalko realized he,

  too, was screaming. The roar of the F-4E's big engines was gone, which

  meant they had been hit by something big enough to cause a double

  flameout-a big missile must have exploded right in front of them,

  blinding them and shelling out the engines. The control stick was

  beginning to tighten up as hydraulic power bled away-soon it would

  freeze up completely. He hauled back on the stick to try to start a zoom

  maneuver and trade some of their Mach one speed for altitude-if they

  ejected at Mach one, the windblast would tear them apart. He couldn't

  tell if they were gaining altitude... there wasn't time to think.

  "Eject! Eject!" Tamalko screamed, then crossed his wrists in front of

  him, grasped the ejection ring between his legs, and pulled. The canopy

  ripped off in the slipstream before the crewmen's heads crashed through

  it, and both he and Pilas were rocketed free and clear of the stricken

  plane. Tamalko's body was flying forward at almost seven hundred feet

  per second. The wall of compressed, superheated air rushing toward him

  from the explosion of the single RK-55 nuclear warhead of the Fei Lung-9

  missile was traveling at two thousand feet per second. When the two

  met, Tamalko, Pilas, and the crippled F-4E Phantom II fighter were

  mercilessly crushed into powder, then vaporized by the

  five.thousand-degree heat of the fringes of the fireball that had

  already destroyed the Philippine corvette Quezon and its three antiship

  helicopters. FIRST AIR WING COMMAND AND CONTROL OPERATIONS CENTER

  CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN AFB, COLORADO SAME TIME A young Air Force staff

  sergeant, Amy Hector, was on the FOREST GREEN console at the U.S. Air

  Force Space Command's Command and Control Operations Center, deep within

  the Cheyenne Mountain NORAD complex, when her detection board went

  crazy. "Red Collar, Red Collar, " Staff Sergeant Hector called on the

  center-wide intercom, pressing the "Call" button on her console so that

  her warning message would override all the other transmissions in the

  Operations Center. The words "Red Collar" would also ensure immediate

  attention by all-the effect those simple code-words had was akin to her

  screaming at the top of her lungs: "FOREST GREEN with an event-detection

  warning, all stations stand by.. ." Hector waited a few more

  'heartbeats, then quickly began reading her detection figures aloud,

  knowing ~7~~~, :r'~ ~~//~ ~~i~~~Ur~~j~/hJPJf~~rP >cr~zzibJizig to their

  ~~ats azid chcc&zg ~~ "FOREST GREEN shows three units with amphtu~e

  pu'Ise threshold readings. System reports confirmation of readouts,

  repeat, system reports readout confirmation, event confidence is high."

  Technicians at Cheyenne Mountain seldom used words like "nuclear

  detonation" or "explosion"-these were collectively called "events" and

  "readouts." emotional detachment prevalent inside the Mountain, as if

  they could somehow block the horrors they saw by naming them something

  harmless. It was a relatively low-tech device that issued a warning on

  that Wednesday afternoon, a device that had gone all but unused for

  years. In an effort to increase the number of nuclear detection devices

  in orbit without increasing the actual number of satellites, in the late

  1 970s and early 1 980s a secret program code-named FOREST GREEN was

  implemented. NAVSTAR Global Positioning System navigation satellites

  were fitted with electromagnetic pulse sensors and devices called (quite

  appropriately for nuclear detonation detection) Bhangmeters, which were

  sensitive optical flash detectors that could determine the explosive

  yield of a nuclear explosion by the brightness of the flash. Unlike

  AMWS, which were used only on specific (albeit very wide) areas of the

  Earth, FOREST GREEN had global coverage because the eighteen-satellite

  NAVSTAR constellation had at least three satellites looking at every

  piece of the Earth at every moment. A nuclear explosion has a definite

  pattern of two pulses-the first less intense than the second-caused

  first by the detonation of the triggering device, followed exactly

  one-third of a second later by the main explosion; this was the reason

  Bhangmeters were mounted in pairs, with one more sensitive than the

  other. The EMP detectors on the three FOREST GREEN satellites also

  registered the disruption of the ionosphere before communication between

  the satellites and their receivers on Earth were abruptly cut off. The

  senior controller in the Operations Center, an Air Force colonel named

  Randolph, immediately put the staff sergeant's console display up on the

  "big board, " a rectangle of six 2-by-3foot screens in the front of the

  Operations Center. The display was relatively uninformative at this

  point-three lines out of eighteen on the display were flashing, with a

  string of numbers showing the system readings and the threshold levels

  preprogrammed into the system. "All stations, this is Randolph. I

  confirm a FOREST GREEN event detection and classification, I need a

  status check and report in thirty seconds, all stations stand by." The

  problem with the FOREST GREEN sensors was that they were not highly

  directional-the sensors could accurately record a nuclear detonation but

  not precisely pinpoint the explosion's location; when the Bhangmeters

  were installed on older Vela nuclear-detection satellites, the device's

  telescopic eye could pinpoint the location of the detonation, but on

  NAVSTAR satellites the sensors were relegated to area reports only. In

  a few moments Amy Hector had replaced the cryptic lines of data with a

  graphic pictorial of the information: a chart of the Earth that was

  within line-of-sight reach of the three NAVSTAR satellites that had

  suddenly gone off the air. Somewhere within the three overlapping

  shaded spheres, the first aboveground nuclear device in thirty years had

  detonated. Unfortunately, the display showed the explosion could have

  occurred anywhere from Hawaii to Thailand and from Japan to Australia.

  "I need better information than that, " Colonel Randolph said. "Find

  out why no DSP systems issued an alert." DSP was a constellation of

  satellites so sensitive that they could detect brush fires, structure

  fires, or even high-performance aircraft using afterburners-all from

  twenty-two thousand miles in space. "Sir, this is Staff Sergeant Hector

  on FOREST GREEN, " Hector interjected. "I think I can come up with a

  rough triangulation."

  "Let's have it, Sergeant." "I've got the exact time when all three of

  the NAVSTAR satellites shut down, " Hector explained, "and I've got the

  time down to one-one-hundredth of a second. I can Randolph looked at

  her. "I get the picture, Sergeant Hector. Speed of gamma particle

  versus time. Are the off-air times that different?"

  "Stand by, sir." There was a slight pause, then Hector replied: "Two

  times are the same;
the other is different. I can poll the sensor

  threshold-release circuits and get a more exact time; I can also try a

  laser orbital velocity measurement to see if the event changed the

  orbits-"

  "Just do it, Amy." This was the first time he had ever recalled calling

  Hector by her first name, but it seemed oddly appropriate now. "But

  first, I need an acknowledgment of a suspected FOREST GREEN event from

  CINCSPACECOM right awayalso get SAC and JCS on the line."

  "Yes, sir. "NORAD hasn't issued an alert yet, " Randolph muttered

  half-aloud. "Why the hell haven't they said anything? Something big

  enough to knock out three satellites is not good news. ABOARD SKY

  MASTERS DC-10, OVER CALIFORNIA SAME TIME Jon Masters had his feet up on

  the bulkhead, was on his third plastic squeeze bottle of Pepsi and

  halfway through a bologna and cheese sandwich when the toneless,

  emotionless voice of the Air Force mission control tracking officer on

  the radio said, "Masters One, College, contact lost with Jackson One."

  Masters sat upright, put down the Pepsi, and quickly checked his

  readouts. "College, this is Masters One, I-" He did a double-take.

  Seconds ago he'd been getting a stream of position and velocity readouts

  from the NIRTSat in its orbit. Now the readouts were zero. Masters

  sighed. "Confirmed on this end. Stand by. I'll try to re-establish

  communications." On the interphone to his crew, he said, "Give me a

  turn westbound and a climb to best altitude. We've got a problem with

  the satellite." Helen Kaddiri entered the flight deck. "What is it,

  Jon?"

  "We lost contact with the satellite." She looked at him as if to say,

  I'm not surprised. Instead, she said, "Same problem we had before?"

  "That was a loose plug, Helen, this"-he scratched his head in an

  uncharacteristic moment of confusion-"has got to be something else. But

  what, I don't know." ABOARD WHISPER ONE-SEVEN, OVER POWDER RIVER MOA,

  MONTANA SAME TIME McLanahan began programming the final launch

  instructions on his Super Multi Function Display so they could take out

  the last few sortie targets in General Jarrel's setup and then head

  home. The display shimmered and abruptly changed. "What the-" McLanahan

  muttered. Instead of the gently rolling hills and dry gullies of

  southeastern Montana, the SMFD showed a confusing pattern of light spots

  in a blank, featureless background. It did have one very prominent

  terrain feature-a mountain nearly twenty thousand feet high and sixty

  miles wide. It was as if Mount Everest had just been transplanted into

  the middle of the Great Plains. "I don't believe this . . ." McLanahan

  said, staring at the SMFD. "What is it?" Ormack asked. "That doesn't

  look like the target area."

  "The computer must be decoding the signal wrong, McLanahan guessed.

  Amazingly, the computer began plotting a recommended course on the

  erroneous computer display, with sharp changes in heading away from the

  larger moving spots but fairly close to the smaller, non-moving ones.

  The computer even made weapon selections, although with only two weapons

  on board the choice was relatively simple-the longer-range SLAM missile

  for the large moving spots that were to be circumnavigated, and the

  STRIKER glide-bomb for the smaller, stationary ones. The strike computer

  began the arming and countdown procedures to attack these "targets, "

  and that's when McLanahan got tired of this. "There's some glitch in the

  system and it's not 1 clearing. I'll reset the system and go manually

  until I get a usable display back." But he did not simply reset the

  computers-he used the on-board computer memory to save the last few

  seconds of images first before clearing the bogus display. "What do you

  think is the problem?" Ormack asked. "I don't know, " McLanahan

  replied. "I'll check switchesthe system will report on any switches out

  of position in the post-mission computer dump. Maybe there was a glitch

  in the satellite. Who knows?" He bent toward the screen and began

  identifying radar aimpoints, getting ready for the "bomb" releases.

  "Probably something minor. . But that new satellite image did not look

  like something minor, McLanahan thought uneasily. It was more than a

  glitch. The computer was processing the data it received from NIRTSat

  as if it were real, uncorrupted data, and he knew enough about the

  NIRTSat system to know that the computer would reject false data. No,

  whatever that twentythousandfoot~high "mountain" was, McLanahan thought,

  it was real. Something very serious had just happened somewhere in the

  world. HIGH TECHNOLOGY AEROSPACE WEAPONS CENTER "What the hell

  happened?" Colonel Wyatt exclaimed. They were looking in stunned

  amazement at the high-definition TV monitor, and at the monstrosity that

  the computer was showing them: a mountain thousands and thousands of

  feet high and dozens of miles wide, engulfing ships in its path with

  devastating power. "Must be a sensor glitch. .. a solar flare or a

  power spike, " Major Kelvin Carter tried. He spoke with the

  technicians, but none of those present could understand the display.

  "Whatever it is, it killed the satellite, " Carter said. "This is the

  last image received; the satellite is off the air."

  "Too bad, " Wyatt said. "McLanahan's run was looking real good, too."

  Captain Ken James' attention was riveted on the display frozen on the

  screen. "It's a weird picture, but the computer is displaying valid

  data on it, " he said. "Look: height, width, speed, density, course-the

  thing is moving and growing all at once. "But it's showing it as

  terrain, Ken, " Carter said. "That can't be right. We were looking at

  the Philippines first, then at Montana. There's no mountain in either

  place." Wyatt shrugged, then began packing up his notebook. "It was

  still a spectacular display, gents, " he said, "but I-"

  "Sir, phone call for you, " one of the technicians said. "Urgent from

  NMCC." As Wyatt trotted to the phone, James turned to Carter and asked,

  "Nimic? What's that?"

  "National Military Command Center, " Carter replied. "The War Room at

  the Pentagon." James nodded, making a mental note. STRATEGIC AIR COMMAND

  HEADQUARTERS OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, NEAR OMAHA, NEBRASKA WEDNESDAY, 21

  SEPTEMBER 1994, 1425 HOURS LOCAL neral Larry T. Tyler, commander in

  chief of the Strategic Air Command, was getting ready to make his first

  serve of the tennis match between members of the headquarters staff when

  the beeper on his portable radio went off. But, like a baseball pitcher

  halfway into his windup, he completed the serve and managed to hit his

  Reserve Forces Advisor, Colonel Hartmann, in the left leg. Hartmann was

  distracted and didn't expect his boss to finish his serve. "Cheap shot,

  General, " Hartmann shouted. Tyler raised his racket to offer an

  apology to Hartmann, who politely waved it off, then trotted over to the

  bench, where his radio was sitting. Tyler's driver, a young buck

  sergeant named Meers, heard the beeper and immediately started up the

  General's staff car, which was waiting just a few dozen yards away. In

  Tyler's
footsteps was his doubles partner, the former commander of

  Pacific Air Force's Philippine-based Thirteenth Air Force, Major General

  Richard "Rat Killer" Stone, who was to become Tyler's Deputy Chief of

  Staff of Pacific Operations in a few weeks. It had been said that

  CINCSAC-the Commander in Chief of the Strategic Air Command-was a

  prisoner of his job, and to a certain extent it was true-the radio, the

  car, and the driver were his constant companions. But the

  fifty-six-year-old ex-Notre Dame football quarterback was determined not

  to let the awesome responsibility of his position disrupt his lifeand

  that responsibility was truly awesome. Tyler was in charge of the United

  States' smaller but still potent nuclear combat force of ninety B- lB

  Excalibur bombers, two hundred B-52G and H-model Stratofortress bombers,

  ten B-2A Black Knight stealth bombers, six hundred Minuteman III

  intercontinental ballistic missiles, one hundred railgarrison

  Peacekeeper ICMBs, fifty MGM-134A Mustang road-mobile ICBMs, eight

  hundred AGM-129A advanced cruise missiles, and one thousand AGM-131A

  Short-Range Attack Missiles. In addition he commanded several hundred

  aerial refueling tankers, strategic reconnaissance aircraft, airborne

  command posts, and communications aircraft, and a total of about eighty

  thousand men and women, civilians as well as military, all around the

  globe-and his job was to stay within momentsnotice contact with each and

  every one of his sixty active and reserve units at all times. Although

  he was at the very pinnacle of his Air Force career, he was determined

  not to get jabbed in the ass by its sharp point. As Tyler made his way

  to the bench where his radio sat, he noticed the amber rotating lights

  at the street intersection nearby-the SAC command post was recalling the

  alert crews, and the amber warning lights told other drivers to be aware

  of alert crews heading toward the flight line. Offutt Air Force Base

  had an alert force of four KC-135 aerial refueling tankers that would

  prepare for takeoff to support airborne command post aircraft at Offutt,

  as well as other strike and communications aircraft. The alert crews

  were tested regularly to make sure their response time was always within