A Northern Thunder

by Andy Harp

  “God, sir, this is pretty far south—almost at the DMZ.”

  “What?!”

  A chill ran down the officer’s back. Depending on the launch’s direction, his first thought was that this was a North Korean strike across the DMZ. A missile flying south would have already traveled the thirty or so miles to Seoul and detonated. Even with the instantaneous reaction of surveillance satellites and their computers, the distances were too short in Korea. If this missile had been sent south, the death sentence to millions in Seoul, including thousands of American forces in close proximity to the border and the city, was already history.

  “The DMZ?” said the officer.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What do the other systems show?”

  “The launching station seems to be in the eastern coastal region,” said Billy. “It launched in the direction of eighty-six degrees and will be crossing over one of Japan’s northern islands.”

  The officer breathed some relief. It was trouble, but an eighty-six-degree launch that crossed over northern Japan was clearly a test missile, or at least not an offensive missile aimed at Seoul.

  “Okay, CMOC will be monitoring this, but talk to them,” said the officer. “Also, talk to SCC and OIW.” He pretty much covered the bases. NORAD’s massive bunker deep within a Colorado mountain had been reorganized several times since the Cold War thaw. It retained the Cold War responsibility of detecting what Air Force strategists called “airbreathing machines”—or jet aircraft—as they approached North America. But, as technology progressed, space had become a larger and larger part of the job.

  The Cheyenne Mountain Operation Center (CMOC) took in, assessed, and coordinated information from a host of sources. The Missile Warning Center was one of several monitoring centers. Others were the Space Control Center, known as SCC, and Operational Intelligence Watch, or OIW. It was to be moved to nearby Peterson Air Base in the near future. The old mountain had become expensive.

  Space Control had the ever-increasing task of monitoring every detectable object in space. Already, there were nearly nine thousand operating “earth-space vehicles,” as satellites were called, and other space-functioning systems. Billy enjoyed stopping by SCC, especially when the space shuttle was near a scheduled return. One of SCC’s lesser-known tasks was to project and avoid any space objects that might come into the shuttle’s path. SCC folks were the space librarians responsible for precisely cataloging these objects in space.

  “Okay,” said the officer, “by both computer and verbal confirmation, we need to relay to the big guy what we know.”

  “You mean, CO here, sir?”

  “No, I mean the really, really big guy—STRATCOM—and then NMCC and ESC, and further.”

  He was referring to the never-ending layers of Operations Command Centers. The Missile Warning Center fed to CMOC at Cheyenne Mountain, and then to US STRATCOM at Offit Air Force Base, Nebraska, and then to the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon, and then to the Secretary’s Executive Support Center. Finally, NMCC and ESC would be on a direct hookup to the White House Situation Room.

  “Yes, sir,” said Billy. The red phone on his desk was behind the framed photographs of his wife and son. He was chagrined somewhat in moving them out of the way in front of the officer of the day. It was a minor inconvenience, and bothered Billy far more than it did the officer, who was worrying about issues much bigger than protocol or family photos.

  “Offit, this is Cheyenne. We’ve detected an unexpected missile launch from the DPRK.” These words woke up several duty officers, who scrambled to contact their bosses.

  Less than an hour later, General Kitcher at Strategic Air Command convened battle staff at his Operations Center deep below Offit, Nebraska. “Is the VTC online?” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” the young captain responsible for communications said from the back. A panel of screens showed a variety of men in various military uniforms. The attendees of the video teleconference, or “VTC,” had one thing in common: Each was framed from behind by a group of others making up his staff, with the unit’s seal on the wall behind them.

  “Okay, this is Kitcher at Offit.” He ran down the roll call as the varying television screens spoke. “Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center?”

  “Yes, sir, Brigadier General Apps.”

  “Randy, do you have representatives from the Missile Warning Center?” said Kitcher.

  “Yes, sir,” said Apps. “We also have representatives from Space Control and Operational Intelligence.”

  “Great. And NMCC?”

  “Yes, sir. Admiral Tony Vandergrift,” said the next man down. “I’m duty officer at the National Military Command Center.”

  “And ESC?”

  “Yes, this is Assistant Secretary Butler.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Kitcher. “Then I’ll begin this VTC. I’m told we’re locked on for thirty minutes time. This brief is Top Secret—Need to Know. If we need more time, we can discuss that at the last minute or continue these discussions individually offline. MWC—or Randy—why don’t you begin?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Apps, “I have a very basic Powerpoint to help.” A map of North Korea appeared on a split screen as Air Force General Apps spoke.

  “We had a launch at oh-one-hundred local Korean time from a previously suspected, but unconfirmed, underground facility approximately thirty miles south-southwest of the port city of Wonsan,” said Apps. “That places it approximately thirty miles to the north of the DMZ. This is a new launch site. More importantly, the rocket appears to be a multi-staged intercontinental rocket, and may even be the TD-3X.”

  “I thought the Taepo Dong-3X was still in its developmental stages,” said Kitcher.

  “Sir, this is Colonel Thompson of Operational Intelligence,” said a new voice. “They never really had a fully successful flight of the TD-2. This could be a refinement of it or the beginning of this TD-3X. It appears from initial data, however, that this has not only pushed beyond one thousand nautical miles, but has reached GEO orbit.”

  “Not the best time for them to get so adventurous,” said Kitcher, a brilliant four-star general who had once been a Rhodes Scholar.

  Assistant Secretary Butler remained quiet. With the continuing battle waged against terrorism by several administrations, no one liked the idea of having to give this latest news to the Secretary of Defense or the President.

  “Sir, we also had some other bad news,” Randy Apps said in a purposely deep, low voice.

  “What?”

  “A West Coast GPS satellite in the same general path and orbit of this detected missile went offline at 0137 local time for about five minutes.”

  “What does that mean?” said Kitcher.

  “We don’t know yet, sir. It could be a coincidence, random failure, or something else. A GPS backup took over shortly after the bird went down. With an eighty-six-degree launch and a polar orbit, the Korean rocket could have passed very close to this particular GPS satellite.”

  “I have some comment on that, General and Mr. Assistant Secretary,” said Thompson. “We know that a short while ago, the Chinese moved some of their more southern and eastern satellites out of their standard orbits.”

  “Yes, sir. We’ve been tracking that as well in SCC,” said Kitcher.

  “What are you suggesting?” said Butler.

  “They may have been told to get their assets out of the way,” Thompson said.

  “Mr. Assistant Secretary, I suggest the Secretary be advised of this situation immediately,” said Kitcher.

  “Yes, General,” said Butler, “I agree. I’ll have him located by the ESC and get with him shortly.”

  One of the admirals sitting in the National Military Command Center’s conference room turned around as these words were spoken. He had a big smile on his face as he looked to his assistant off-camera. Julius Krowl knew opportunity had just knocked at his door.

  “Is there anything to add?” Assistant Secretary Butler aske
d.

  “No, sir,” said Kitcher.

  “The TD-3X is bad enough,” said Butler. “Let me know what the GPS folks think as soon as practical. And let’s keep this off CNN as long as we can.”

  The several screens went blank.

  Chapter 25

  The young sailor working the flight line heard the low whomp, whomp of the Marine helicopter before he saw it. When he turned, it took him a minute to realize two birds were flying closely together, low on the horizon.

  “CH-46s?” he said.

  “Oh, yeah,” said another sailor, “from Bridgeport.”

  Fallon was a target range for Navy fixed-wing fighters needing space to play with their thousand-pound bombs. Marine helicopters rarely visited the naval air station except for maintenance or fuel. But the chief mate who ran the flight line at Fallon immediately knew why the double-blade helicopters were in Nevada.

  The lead aircraft came in near the tower, and as it approached, the crew line sailor came out to signal the helicopters down. The smell of kerosene filled the air as the chief felt the warm breeze of the helicopters whoosh past him. He saw the aircrafts’ two crew chiefs lean out from their doors, performing a final check before clearing the pilot for landing.

  The two machines touched down lightly, their wheels collapsing and settling into place. Both the crew chiefs dropped their half doors, climbed down, and walked two-thirds of the way around their aircrafts, still tethered to the chopper by long intercom cables. As one chief watched, the crew signaled the pilot to shut down the aircraft, and the whine of the engines slowly purred to a stop.

  A young Marine captain in flight gear put on his “cover,” or “hat” as his civilian friends would call it, and walked jauntily from the helicopter. “The Flight Operations Office?” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” said the flight line sailor, “on the left side of the tower.”

  Over the years, the crew chief had seen his share of Marine pilots, many of them openly displaying their sense of bravado. He had no problem with that. One of the last to serve in Vietnam, he had seen some of the same bravado among helicopter pilots coming in low, no matter how much hot metal was flying, and landing in combat zones. He had seen those same birds, nearly military antiques now that the CH-46s had been flying since the mid-sixties, with holes as large as softballs torn through their sides. Sometimes, the blades had been pelted with so many bullets they looked like Swiss cheese. Stains of fluid from nicked hydraulic lines often puddled under helicopters after a particularly bad mission. But the pilots never turned around—and they rarely failed.

  The captain swung open the door to Operations, not knowing it lacked a spring, and it slammed against the door stop with a bang. “Damn it.”

  The Operations personnel all glanced up.

  “Sorry,” he said meekly.

  “Yes, sir. What can we do for you?” The flight chief ran the office and the small airfield.

  “I’m supposed to be picking up a transit passenger—a Marine colonel—for transfer to Bridgeport,” said the captain.

  “Sorry, sir. No one here,” said the airfield operations chief.

  “What about inbound?”

  “No aircraft scheduled. A C-130 from San Francisco isn’t due until tomorrow.”

  “Damn it,” said the captain. “Can I use your phone?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the chief.

  At that moment, a voice crackled over the loudspeaker—one obviously tied into the flight tower. “Fallon, November One Six Seven for final stop.”

  The captain looked up to the old, brown speaker on the wall.

  “November One Six Seven, please describe nature of your flight. This is a restricted military airfield.” The airfield tower operator’s voice crackled with static.

  “Yes, sir. One Six Seven is a military-approved flight.”

  “Roger, you are cleared to land on Runway Sixteen. Winds out of the northwest at one zero knots. Altimeter two niner, niner two.”

  “Yes, sir, cleared to land on Runway Sixteen.”

  The sailors and captain turned toward the windows facing the field. A long, thin jet banked across and above the runway as it turned for final landing. A young sailor behind his desk exclaimed, “What the hell?”

  “That may be my man,” the captain said quietly.

  The airfield rarely saw the visit of a senior admiral, or even a Gulfstream V, and these arrivals were always announced and planned well in advance. But this mysterious, unannounced flight, on its final leg, was just now making its initial contact.

  The shining, white, long-tubed jet landed, its oversized engines reversing to bring the aircraft to a quicker than expected stop. Then it taxied fast to the large open space across from the two Marine helos.

  “Thanks, folks.” The captain gently pulled the door closed behind him, then walked across the tarmac and signaled his crew chief with a thumbs-up. He spun his index finger around in circles. The helo engines began to whine in unison as their auxiliary power units ran up the jet engines.

  Just as he turned toward the Gulfstream, the door opened, a stairway lowered, and a man in a Marine flight jacket hopped off. He didn’t have a cover on, which was very unusual for a Marine, but he walked like a colonel. He had no badges, no patches, no name tags.

  “Sir, Colonel Parker?” ventured the captain.

  “For this, technically Mr. Parker,” Will said.

  The young captain was impressed by Will’s tanned, strong face and blue eyes. “To Bridgeport, sir,” the captain said. “CH-46 express.”

  “Let’s go.”

  A youthful man in a white airline-style shirt with black epaulets and one gold stripe brought a canvas bag down from the Gulfstream and handed it to Will.

  “Can I get it, sir?” said the captain.

  “No, I’m fine.” Will closely followed the captain as they approached the helicopter at a 45-degree angle to the nose.

  Will now relinquished the bag, tossing it to the crew chief as he approached the hatch. The captain stepped up, put on his flight helmet, and climbed into the left seat. The pilot in command of the helicopter was in the right seat, but occasionally the boss, or senior pilot, would let the junior pilot switch out to get time in his logbooks as pilot-in-command.

  The crew chief pointed to a row of web seats as Will grabbed the one closest to the door. The chief gave him a helmet—more for sound protection than for anything else.

  Will felt the jiggle of the aircraft as the long steel blades swung above. Until they got to a certain speed, the helicopter wiggled around, struggling into a balanced spin. It began to smooth down and get into its rhythm, and Will felt the bird lift up, rise, then tilt forward. In quick succession, it rose above and over the Gulfstream, banked sharply to the left, and headed directly toward the mountain range in the near distance.

  As the helicopter tilted again in a sharp bank, its sister aircraft pulled up in unison to the back left. Will had flown in CH-46s many, many times before, yet always felt the electricity of flight. He sank into his seat. As the second bird leveled off with his aircraft, Will saw the Gulfstream below taxi onto the main runway and then move down it, faster and faster until it lifted off. Like a missile, the G-IV shot up into the clouds.

  Will turned back around, catching the eye of the crew chief, and pointed to his watch. The whomp, whomp of the aircraft blocked out all sounds, so they could only communicate through hand signs.

  The crew chief held up his right hand, and flashed all five fingers once, twice, and then a third time, signaling a fifteen-minute flight from Fallon. The Bridgeport base was actually located several miles from the town, beyond Sonora Junction, and in a small valley called Pickle Meadow.

  Will occasionally leaned forward, catching a glimpse out the crew chief ’s door as the helicopters banked and climbed into the High Sierra Mountain range between Nevada and California. It became colder in the body of the helicopter as they gained altitude amidst the snow-covered mountains. As Will zipped up his flig
ht jacket and turned the fur collar up around his neck, he saw below a rocky ground, covered in deep snow. Occasional groups of pine trees dotted the sides of the mountains. Will Parker had learned to ski in mountains like these near Aspen. His father had sped down the steepest runs, with Will struggling to stay up.

  Damn, Will thought. He had only been to one funeral in his life—a funeral for two. He’d never attended one again.

  Instead of trying to climb directly over the mountain peaks, the helicopter banked and turned back and forth as it made its way through the valley. Will turned over to his left side and looked out through the scratched, oval window and saw a small, two-lane highway just below the helicopter. An old truck seemed to strain as it climbed through the curves of the road below.

  At the same time, he glanced to the rear of the helicopter to the opening above the ramp door and saw the second bird following. It was mesmerizing watching his helicopter, then the trace helicopter, bank in tandem.

  After a short while, his helicopter banked hard to the right as it passed from one valley into another at Sonora Junction, heading deep into the mountain range. It had been many years since he’d been on this small road—it broke off from the main highway and headed up the valley to the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center.

  The helicopter now banked to the left in a continuous circular turn. Will sensed that the helicopter was in its final approach for landing at Pickle Meadow. Below, through the plexiglas, he saw brown and gray rock and stone, and green-tinted buildings tucked against the side of the valley. At this altitude, the remnants of an old storm were evident in patches of brown-stained snow around each of the buildings. He saw the occasional Humvee jeep parked in front of the separate buildings and knew this was the place.

  It had been decades since Will had last been at Bridgeport. As a young officer attached to the First Marine Division in southern California’s Camp Pendleton, then-Lieutenant Parker was assigned to a training unit here. He spent two winters in the Wolf Creek region above Pickle Meadow, teaching young Marines mountain warfare training and winter survival.