by John Lilley
Michael had been told that once the British Navy was out of the way, there shouldn’t be much of a fight, the Marines would see to that. The EDR forces were all gone, not that they were ever that effective. How could they expect to control an army when every decision could be questioned by 28 Heads of State and an EDR civil-service committee? It was hard to imagine what could stand in the way of the fleet air arm drones and it would be over before the Brit’s knew what was happening. Thanks to the Russians’ (Gregory), there were no working satellite surveillance systems for either side. The USA’s radio jamming systems were now completely foolproof, and there was little chance that any British radio-hams, or their Government, would have any idea what was heading their way.
Michael had walked the full length of deck nine and was now stood overlooking the stern of the mighty vessel. He enjoyed these late watches, the wind always died down in the evening, once the over-heated seas had got out of the sun. From his lofty position over the waves, there was no spray, just that continuous salty fresh smell that he knew so well. The wake from the New England’s large propellers turned the sea milky-white for hundreds of yards astern. Michael always knew when the engines were operating, his body could detect their vibrations from anywhere on the huge mass of metal. They’d been cruising for four days now and were already more than halfway to their destination. He had just turned around to walk back when his deck-phone buzzed:
‘Andrews here,’ he said into the small device.
‘Andrews, prepare for a missile launch. Tell the other guys, it should be quite a show. The sub is at three miles NNE,’ said the Chief. He didn’t want all those greasy marines up out of their bunks, but he didn’t like to disappoint his boys.
‘Really, at this range, it must be a big one. What’s the target Chief?’ enquired Michael.
‘Well, I’ve heard that we have some Irish intelligence that the British Fleet is massed off western Ireland. It’s about time those bogtrotters paid us back. I think the idea is to hit them hard and take out 90% of the threat in one go. Ireland will take most of the fall-out leaving the mainland free to plunder as we see fit,’ said Chief.
‘Sound good. How long to launch?’ asked Michael.
‘Ten minutes, be sharp,’ barked Chief.
Michael snapped off his communication and saluted a group of senior officers passing his post on the way to their mess.
‘Sounds too easy to me,’ said one.
‘Yeah, but can we really trust the Irish?’ asked the second.
‘Hey, butt out, I’m Irish,’ said the third.
‘Hey, Lieutenant Patrick O’Reilly, I’d never have guessed,’ said the first to derisive laughter from the others.
The mess was already packed as they entered. The PA system squelched into life, and the Captain made his announcement: ‘We have accurate intelligence reports from our Irish colleagues that the British Fleet, what is left of it that is,’ - pause for laughter -, ‘is currently massed off the west coast of Ireland. There’ve been confirmed sightings of a least four of their submarines and our seabed sensor arrays have not detected their other three for over eight months, so we, therefore, have to assume that they are currently out of service. This is a golden opportunity for us to take out the British fleet with minimal damage to ourselves. One ICBM should be enough. The six warheads have a 20 megaton delivery which should ensure the end of the “Senior Service” and provide a further demonstration of our capabilities and intent. It may seem like a little heavy-handed and cowardly to some of you, but it should save lives in the long-run, mostly our own. The missile will be a sub launch from the Obama in eight minutes from approximately three miles NNE. We’ll keep you fully informed of the outcome. Goodnight for now gentlemen and enjoy the show.’
There was a rush for the door. Michael had already left his post before they got to him, but nobody noticed. Missile launches were as rare as hen’s teeth. At night it would be even more spectacular, and nobody wanted to miss this one.
This would be the US Navy’s finest hour. They’d seen little real action in recent years, just dreary coastal patrols and reclamation expeditions to depopulated areas. Most of the New England’s crew were now on deck awaiting the fireworks.
Unseen and undetected, 160 km directly ahead of the American fleet something began to break the surface. A black metal pod emerged on top of a thick telescopic shaft. The pod split open, and a large kite immediately began to rise in the steady Atlantic trade winds. Its payload was a small array of antennae. At five hundred metres the kite’s cable grew taut and stopped its ascent.
‘Array fully deployed. No signal yet sir,’ said Midshipman Steve Cox, as he manoeuvred the kite using a small finger-joystick on the arm of his console chair.
‘Right you are Cox. Keep an eye open for the fireworks. The Obama has just risen to launch depth. I don’t think it will be long now,’ said Captain Rupert Phillips, ‘Ready to send the signal Radio?’
‘Ready and waiting sir’ said the Chief Radio Officer, his face glued to his video screens.
‘Missile airborne sir,’ barked Cox excitedly.
‘OK Radio, do your stuff,’ ordered Phillips.
‘Over there’ shouted someone in the crowd on the decks of the New England. Everyone spun around to look where the sailor was pointing. It all happened very quickly. Water boiled as the compressed air system forced the missile to the surface where its rocket engines ignited. The magnesium-white flames from its exhaust lit up the entire fleet in a sharp silhouette. The white flanks of the missile were only visible for a few seconds as it accelerated to escape velocity climbing rapidly on its crackling, thunderous exhaust.
Back on the New England everyone cheered and prepared to crane their necks to watch the remainder of the flight.
‘Take ‘em out bad boy,’ shouted one rating.
However, deep inside the nuclear-hardened electronics of the missile, something was changing. Its receivers had picked up a coded signal. The information was relayed immediately to its encryption decoding unit for translation. The signal was unlike anything that the unit had processed for many years. Typically the standard test set messages included many mutated and false signals. The decoder could easily filter out the genuine telemetry instructions from the rogue ones. All of the genuine messages contained a standard code encrypted in the first few bytes that was synchronised with the missiles internal clock at launch. A genuine transmitter of messages would have had a similar clock synchronised to the exact same nanosecond. It would be impossible for anything unintended to get through. Well, that is if it followed the usual rules when it reached the decoder. This message was different however, its leading bytes passed straight through the initial logic of the decoder. It seemed to know exactly where the holes in the coding of the encryption algorithms were. The signal instead switched on the decoder’s internal trace software and forced it to reboot. With six seconds of reboot time, the now established virus had relative aeons of time to complete its mission. With the decoder out of action, the rest of the missile’s systems became an open book. The virus didn’t need to provide the correct three-part failsafe codes to the trigger switches; it just triggered them instantly by switching them to their commissioning mode. Normally this mode would only be available when the warheads were not in place, during diagnostic testing. But these missiles were now nearly 30 years old, and their warheads had been in place for most of that time. The last person to put the switches into commissioning mode had been a young British engineer called Chris Wallis. A double first from Cambridge University he’d been snapped up by the American military machine during the last years when international travel had still been available to an agreed select few. Chris had been working for them for more than two decades before he began tinkering with the missiles. By that time he had an American wife, a large house and two overweight teenage kids; living the dream. However, he’d been disillusioned with what was going on in the US for some time before the final straw came with the invasion of Iran. It
was at that time that he had a surprise conversation with another fellow ex-Brit at the tennis club one weekend. Shortly after that meeting, Chris began working for a new master. As an engineer, computer scientist and master dev-op, it proved relatively easy to set up the desired route into the missiles’ control systems. He knew that the most rigorous tests would be done on the separate systems in isolation. Then during full integration testing, they would not be looking for a threat from combinations of separate components that in theory would never exist. Everyone would do their bit and so long as their project managers met their agile story-point target and burn-down commitments they would all be happy.
‘Signal sent sir’ announced the Radio Officer.
‘Cut the kite Cox. – Dive, dive - 800 metres - flank speed -crash positions -- strap yourselves in lads,’ barked Captain Phillips.
Everyone moved at once. They all knew that they would be lucky to survive the next ten minutes.
The missile’s six warheads detonated at 600 feet above the ocean. The flash from the explosion burned into the retinas of the watching Americans. Closing their eyes made little difference, apart from giving them something to do before the fireball hit them. When it did, they had little use for their eyes as their bodies were instantly vaporised into hot ash. The aluminium and steel of the ships’ superstructures didn’t fare much better; instantly melting and exploding. The troops asleep below had no awareness of what had happened before they too were vaporised. Within seconds the fuel and munitions of the ships had added to the expanding fireball. What was left of even the largest carriers was shattered into millions of tiny fragments by the ensuing shockwave. A perfect two-mile diameter spherical section of the ocean surface just flashed instantly into super-heated steam while the mushroom cloud forced its way at supersonic speed into the upper atmosphere. Seconds later, as the air-pressure diminished, the ocean rushed back into the “crater”. The thunderous mass of still boiling water crashed into the epicentre of the explosion and rapidly formed into a three hundred foot high radial tsunami.
Back on the Wakeful, the first of the shock-waves had already hit. Midshipman Cox was holding onto the grab handles near to the periscope for dear life. The 22,000-tonne boat was tossed around like a piece of driftwood. Several electrical fires had broken out, and a water main had burst in the forward control room.
‘Keep the pedal to the metal helm,’ shouted Phillips above the chaos and smoke. He was finding it difficult to keep focused as his command chair turned from side to side. His main concern was that the hull would be compromised. He could hear the plates groaning under the strain. At 50 kph they were going as fast as they could and were assisted further by the surf effect of the blast. The main tsunami front was close on their heels and would overtake them in minutes.
‘Trench in two minutes sir’ announced the sonar operator.
‘Helm, 20% planes. Get us down there as soon as possible,’ said Phillips.
‘Aye-aye sir,’ said the helmsman as he rotated the small wheel on the arm of his command chair causing the boat to tilt dramatically. All the items that had been bouncing around the walls now slid forwards.
‘Get that bloody leak fixed No. 2,’ barked Phillips into the forward control room. ‘I’ve already had one wash this week; I don’t want to have another one.’
Everyone around Phillips smiled without breaking their concentration. It was just the required level of levity at that point in time, and Phillips knew it.
‘800 metres sir,’ shouted Helm.
‘Continue descent and level at 1,200 metres, steer 216 degrees,’ said Phillips. ‘Let’s put Terceira between us and the wave. The trench should give us some protection but prepare for the churn from the tsunami.’
The Wakeful sped onwards as the shockwave ploughed along the ocean floor liberating huge volumes of mud and rocks. The many ridges either side of the Mid-Atlantic Rift had a damping effect on the pressure wave, and much of its energy was dissipated by moving large boulders the size of office blocks off the ridges. The Wakeful screamed onwards down the subterranean canyon as successive massive undersea landslides from the towering sides of the canyon attempted to bury the tiny vessel. Onward and downwards went the Wakeful relentlessly cutting through the billowing clouds of debris.
On the surface, the tsunami had already reached and inundated the Azores but continued on over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge virtually unabated. A deafening rumble permeated every centimetre of the living space within the Wakeful as every hard surface began to vibrate in sympathy. Several of the primary information monitors went completely dead. Two more large electrical fires made the already acrid air unbearable.
‘Masks on,’ commanded Phillips. ‘I won’t tell you again, get those bloody fires out.’
Extinguishers spewed clouds of CO2 onto the flames. The view across the control room had vanished. Ventilation systems screamed to scrub the air clean while the rumbling continued for another five minutes before gradually diminishing.
‘Helm, take her up to 900 metres, slowly,’ shouted Phillips into his mask-mike. ‘I think we’re over the worst of it, let’s get some of the pressure off the old girl.’
‘Aye, aye sir,’ said the helmsman.
‘Radio, get a message through to the fleet, tell them that the White Knight has been taken,’ continued Phillips. He removed his gas mask, sank back into his command chair and stretched out his legs to remove some cramp.
We’ve only bloody done it, he thought, and his smile spread.
‘Three cheers for Captain Phillips,’ shouted the Helmsman.
On the British Flagship Ark Royal, 50 km out of Donegal Bay:
‘Sir, I’ve just received an encrypted sub-sea message from Wakeful. They say that White Knight has been taken,’ announced the Radio Officer.
‘Great News Radio, check the hydrophones for evidence of the pulse. Point every other scanner we have at the target area,’ said Admiral Dennis Hargreaves.
Behind the Admiral, a small grey-haired man was sitting in one of the control chairs. He’d not enjoyed this trip one bit. It wasn’t too bad when the ship was making way but just sat still in the heavy North Atlantic swell Chris Wallis was now a delicate shade of green.
‘Sir, radiation signature detected in the upper atmosphere. Pressure pulse detected. Tsunami predicted in five hours,’ chirped the Radio Operator.
‘Well Chris, it looks like we’ve done it, with a lot of help from you. Well done, I’m sure that the Prime Minister will be calling you soon,’ said Hargreaves, as he turned toward Wallis. Just in time to see Chris vomiting vigorously into a bucket next to his chair.
Poor bugger, thought Hargreaves, not a good time to be told you’re a hero.
‘OK Radio, send out the order to disperse: Pattern 5. We need to be well out of the way when the worst of it hits,’ he said.
Pattern 5 took the fleet back into the shelter of the Irish Sea.
The next few days would be interesting, to say the least, thought Hargreaves. He wondered what the USA would do now it had lost virtually all of its military forces. Would they take their usual knee-jerk reaction when someone gets the better of them and launch a land-based ICBM attack? Their bombers no longer had the range to get to Britain and back without mid-air refuelling from European bases they no longer had. They’d also just become rather short of drone pilots and drones. Mother had correctly predicted the missile launch after presenting the opportunity by bringing the fleet together. It did mean that there were still some Irish informants, but they would be tracked down forensically over the next few days. The Yanks had obviously not planned an initial land-based missile strike, so perhaps the intelligence about the obsolescence of their ageing missile stock was accurate. Anyone planning such an attack now would be looking for guidance from senior members of the armed forces, people who had just been scattered to the four winds. Mother was banking on the chaos of the US losses resulting in no further action.
Deep inside the Pentagon, the main activity was to
determine why they’d just lost communication with the entire invasion fleet, a difficult task with the slimmed-down staffing levels. At the time of the explosion, there were no flights on their way to or from the fleet. One high-level drone was in the sky directly above the fleet, but its signal suddenly disappeared. The Atlantic sensor array appeared to be completely dead too as did the land-based ICBM network. There had also been several unconfirmed reports that there had been fires in many of the ICBM silos. Most high-ranking officers from all divisions had been on board the fleet since this mission was to be their moment of glory. The true horror of their loss didn’t sink in until the tsunami hit the east coast. The main naval base at Columbia harbour along with most of the east coast ports took a tremendous hammering. Within minutes what remained of their naval infrastructure was swept away.
17 THE SIX
The heavy chrome plate on Lenox’s motorcycle glinted in the intense morning sunshine. He’d been careful with his approach and had parked the bike out of sight of the fortress. For the past hour, he’d been lying on the nearby ridge, and the small stones beneath him were beginning to cut into his chest. He readjusted the zoom control on his binoculars. The coastal fortress was a good 500 yards away; he was not taking any chances. Scanning its security fencing, moat and walls, he could see no signs of life, nothing, not even the birds were out today. Yesterday had been quite a different experience even though he’d ridden to exactly the same spot, they had somehow seen him. He didn’t even have time to put his side stand down before the first bullet hit home. Perhaps it was the noise or dust from his ride, but either way, he’d immediately fired up the machine again and sped off into the shelter of a nearby gulley. He was really pissed about the large hole in his pillion seat, with no replacement it would have to be patched. At times he felt like his whole life was a series of patches.