Fade Out

by Patrick Tilley

  PATRICK TILLEY

  FADE-OUT

  To my wife Janine who, as always, helped me

  in every possible way

  but didn’t want her contribution acknowledged.

  This one is for you. With love.

  Contents

  Map

  Friday/August 3

  Saturday/August 4

  Sunday/August 5

  Monday/August 6

  Friday/August 10

  Saturday/August 11

  Sunday/August 12

  Wednesday/August 15

  Friday/August 17

  Saturday/August 18

  Sunday/August 19

  Monday/August 20

  Tuesday/August 21

  Wednesday/August 22

  Wednesday/August 29

  Thursday/August 30

  Friday/August 31

  Saturday/September 1-2

  Monday/September 3

  Thursday/September 6

  Friday/September 7

  Saturday/September 8

  Sunday/September 9

  Tuesday/September 11

  Wednesday/September 12

  Saturday/September 15

  Sunday/September 16

  Monday/September 17

  Tuesday/September 18

  Wednesday/September 19

  Thursday/September 20

  Friday/September 21

  Saturday/September 22

  Sunday/September 23

  Monday/September 24

  A Note on the Author

  The date was Friday, the third of August. For some people, depending on where they lived, the day was just beginning. For others, it was the end of another, perfectly normal, day. Suddenly, all around the world, every ground and airborne radar screen went haywire…

  Friday/August 3

  OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE/OMAHA/NEBRASKA

  For the Headquarters Staff of the Strategic Air Command, it was the tensest situation they’d faced since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.

  Created in 1946 as the backbone of America’s nuclear deterrent policy, SAC had been, and still was, the best equipped, most highly trained and motivated force in the world. Its organization was superb, its planning faultless – a brilliant fusion of American money, skill, and dedication. That dedication had been needed. For over forty years, SAC’s bombers had stayed alert and ready behind an increasingly sophisticated screen of electronic devices that monitored every move the Russians made. Suddenly, at 11:13 A.M. Central Standard Time, every radar screen SAC owned turned into a plate of luminous spaghetti.

  Momentarily off balance, SAC started burning the wires between Omaha and the North American Air Defense Headquarters at Ent AFB, in neighbouring Colorado. Roughly translated, the high-speed teleprinter message asked just what in hell was happening. NORAD couldn’t tell them. The worldwide network of American-owned radar stations, designed to give early warning of a sneak Russian missile attack, was feeding back nothing but confused static to NORAD’s Operations Center deep inside the Cheyenne Mountains.

  Instead of tracking Russian planes and missiles, setting up interception courses and simultaneously relaying the appropriate instructions to all Air Defense Command bases, the serried ranks of computers at the heart of the complex system clicked and whirred like distraught fruit machines. It was a totally unforeseen and frightening breakdown of the most foolproof system ever devised by man.

  For years, both the Americans and Russians had spent billions of dollars trying to find a way to jam each other’s radar defences. Was this sudden snafu proof of a Russian breakthrough? And if it was, would they follow it up with a Sunday punch?

  General William Mitchell Allbright, Commander in Chief, Strategic Air Command, pondered these questions as he took the elevator down from the daylight to his underground headquarters at Offutt AFB. To Allbright, it looked like the moment he and the rest of the SAC staff had spent the better part of their lives preparing for.

  Allbright had already set things in motion from his upstairs office in the yellow brick headquarters building. As he settled into his basement seat, he got a quick rundown from his senior staff. The around-the-clock airborne patrols were already on their way to failsafe points around the globe. The remaining aircraft, streaming off runways scattered across the USA, would fly to similar holding points, their radios tuned in on SAC’s special side-band communications network over which would come the crucially important Presidential Go-Code that would, if necessary, transform this defensive alert into an all-out attack on Russia.

  But something had gone badly wrong. Contact had been lost with the orbiting Air Force communications and navigation satellites, and the static that was fouling the radar screens was also causing severe fade-out on the vital UKF frequencies that would carry the President’s order. And without radar responses, there was nothing coming down the line from NORAD in Colorado. Nothing for the millions of dollars’ worth of machinery to translate into coloured position markers on the huge situation maps. Nothing to show what might – or might not – be on its way in from Russia.

  Their birds may already be up, thought Allbright – and we are flying blind. His wife and daughter were on vacation in Santa Barbara, California. His son was in his fourth and final year at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. From the intelligence reports he had read on Soviet targeting, Allbright knew that both places lay within designated first-strike zones. If the Russians had launched their nuclear missiles, it meant that his family would be obliterated within the next seven to ten minutes.

  Allbright lifted his gold telephone and conferred with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington. They had an open line to the Secretary of Defense who, in turn, was briefing the President on the situation. Washington was desperately trying to establish the degree and nature of the crisis that seemed to have engulfed them – and whether or not it had been engineered by the Russians.

  Five minutes and forty-two seconds after Allbright had called the alert, the last of SAC’s big B-52s lifted off the runway at Loring AFB, Maine. It wasn’t the best reaction time the crew had turned in, but they had blown a tyre on the main undercarriage and had had to stop to change a wheel. Allbright reported to Washington that his entire force was airborne.

  At 11:23, after ten minutes of total fade-out, the White House authorized Allbright to bring his ICBMs to Condition Red. Instantaneously, via armoured underground telephone lines, the signal went out to alert the crews of the concrete missile silos sunk deep into the wheatfields and the Rocky Mountain spine of the Midwest. Keys turned in sealed locks to start complex preignition sequences. Target data fed automatically into inertial guidance systems. The great countdown began.

  At 11:24, while General Allbright was still on the line to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a call came through from an Air Force base in Turkey. An airborne electronic surveillance unit patrolling the borders of Soviet Armenia had reported that the Russian radar network was fouled up too. Allbright asked for independent verification of the report. While he was waiting, the Russian Premier came through on the hot line to the White House.

  At 11:33, while the two leaders were still reassuring each other of their peaceful intentions, the radar screens blipped back into life and the sitation maps in SAC’s underground headquarters lit up like overloaded Christmas trees. There were plenty of Russian planes in the air, but their missiles were still on the ground. General Allbright sat back and watched the screens for the next hour as the US and Soviet Air Forces pulled off their collision courses and headed for home.

  It was all over.

  Somewhere around 15:30, Allbright handed over control to his senior duty officer and drove from Offutt Air Force Base to his nearby home. He dismissed his aide, poured himself a large drink and took a long, thoughtful showe
r. As he dried himself, he saw in the mirror that the stress of the sudden alert plus the gut-wrenching breakdown in the radar defences had turned his face into a taut, deeply-lined mask.

  Allbright poured himself another drink and put in a person-to-person call to his wife in Santa Barbara. He asked her about the weather on the West Coast and his daughter Lynn. His wife told him, adding that she’d heard on the car radio that there had been a sudden breakdown in the Air Traffic Control system covering the major California airports. It had happened around 9:15 local time. Airlines had been diverted to avoid midair collisions and flight schedules had been disrupted throughout the day. The people next door were anxiously awaiting news of a relative who had, so far, failed to signal his safe arrival in Los Angeles.

  Allbright told her he’d heard most of the states had been briefly affected but that he didn’t know what had caused the breakdown. He checked the date of her return to Nebraska and hung up without telling her about the alert.

  Saturday/August 4

  THE WHITE HOUSE/WASHINGTON DC

  The urgent inquest on the twenty-minute radar breakdown instituted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not produce any satisfactory answers in time for their breakfast meeting with President John “Jake” Lorenzo at the White House.

  When the three of them arrived, they found Mel Fraser, Arnold Wedderkind and Bob Connors already sitting around the table with the President. Fraser was Secretary of Defense, Wedderkind was the Administration’s chief scientific advisor. Connors’ title was Special Assistant to the President.

  There were plenty of rolls, bacon, and coffee on a side table, but no one seemed to want any.

  The President raised a hand to acknowledge the arrival of Admiral Edward Garrison, Air Force General Chuck Clayson and Army General Vernon Wills. Admiral Kirk, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was cruising somewhere north of Diego Garcia aboard the US Navy carrier Lexington, getting a firsthand impression of the growing Russian naval presence in the Indian Ocean.

  As the three Chiefs of Staff sat down, Arnold Wedderkind recapped briefly what he’d been saying about solar flares. ‘The interference that hit us on Friday is known to radio buffs as “fade-out”. It’s a familiar problem and, in varying degrees, one that is with us most of the time –’

  ‘Except nothing on this scale has ever happened before,’ interjected Clayson.

  ‘Not in the last ninety years,’ admitted Wedderkind. ‘But until Marconi invented the radio, the problem didn’t exist.’

  The President, Fraser and the others nodded in sombre agreement but General Chuck Clayson found little comfort in Wedderkind’s reply. Of the three armed services, the Air Force had been the hardest hit by the paralysing effects of the radar breakdown and he was probably the most worried man in the room.

  Wedderkind directed his explanation at the President and kept it as simple as he could. ‘Fade-out is caused by magnetic storms in the upper layers of the Earth’s atmosphere. They, in turn, are usually caused by bursts of short-wave radiation coming from the sun and they’re emitted by volcanic eruptions of incandescent matter known as solar flares. Flares are associated with sun-spots – which I’m sure you’ve heard of.

  ‘By our scale of measurement, they’re all huge but some are absolutely gigantic – exploding with the force of a billion H-bombs and flinging great arching plumes of molten lava tens, sometimes hundreds, of thousands of miles into space. These eruptions – which are even brighter than the sun itself – are accompanied by an equally massive blast of radiation which travels outwards like a shock wave. Twenty-six hours later, it hits the Earth – BAM!’ Wedderkind thudded his fist into an open palm.

  ‘I’ll spare you the details of what happens in the ionosphere. Let’s just say it starts quivering like a bowl of Jello. And instead of going where they should, our radar and radio waves start bouncing around all over the place. After a while it settles down – just like the Jello – and we’re back in business.’

  ‘That’s all very neat, Arnold,’ said Fraser. ‘But don’t we have people watching out for these things?’ As Secretary of Defense, Fraser had been over at the Pentagon harrying his own experts for most of the night.

  Bob Connors, a friend and ally of Wedderkind, saw him blink rapidly and adjust his glasses. A purely defensive reflex.

  ‘Yes. I have to admit that is one of the things that is puzzling me.’

  The President waited for a few seconds then asked, ‘Do we have to guess what it is or are you going to let us in on the secret?’

  ‘Yeah, go ahead,’ said Fraser. ‘This should be interesting.’

  Wedderkind adjusted his glasses again. ‘What Mel is referring to is the fact that Mount Wilson – which constantly monitors sun-spot activity – recorded unusually large solar flares over a six-hour period last Thursday morning. As I was explaining, the resulting short-wave radiation could be expected to cause a partial fade-out in the high-frequency radar and radio wave-bands – rising to a maximum intensity some forty-five hours after the initial eruption.’

  ‘And did it?’ Another Presidential question.

  Wedderkind threw a sideways glance at Mel Fraser before answering. ‘As expected, the magnetic storm peaked around seven this morning. The problem is, the interference, although severe, didn’t even begin to compare with the level of disruption we experienced on Friday.’

  ‘Let me play that back to you to make sure I’ve understood,’ said the President. ‘If whatever hit us on Friday came from the sun then it would have been picked up by the people at Mount Wilson earlier in the week. In fact, from what you’re saying, the explosion, or eruption, or whatever it is, would have to have been so big it would be impossible to miss.’

  ‘Right…’

  ‘But there wasn’t one…’

  ‘No.’

  The President threw up his hands. ‘Then why are we wasting time talking about this!?’

  Wedderkind leaped to his own defence. ‘Because the disruption had all the hallmarks of what happens when the Earth is hit by a heavy burst of cosmic radiation.’

  ‘Hold on, Arnold,’ said Connors. ‘You just moved the goal posts. Don’t you mean “solar” radiation?’

  ‘Solar, cosmic… it’s the same thing.’

  ‘Except it wasn’t a solar flare that screwed things up for us yesterday,’ said Fraser, appearing to relish the fact that Wedderkind had painted himself into a corner. ‘My science is a little hazy but, as I understand it, solar radiation comes from the sun while cosmic radiation comes from some other point in the cosmos.’

  ‘If you want to split hairs, yes.’ Wedderkind fingered the bridge of his glasses. The people at Mount Wilson and some other colleagues of mine are looking into it. Until I hear from them we can’t dismiss the possibility that some, as yet undetected, solar activity is the cause of the problem. What I can state, quite categorically, is that the source of the interference lies somewhere in outer space.’

  ‘A meteorite, perhaps…?’

  Wedderkind aimed a beady eye at Fraser. His staff over at the Pentagon had certainly been doing their homework. He turned back to the President. ‘Several stations around the world have been tracking a large incoming meteorite. It was expected to enter the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up harmlessly at about 11:15 on Friday morning.’

  ‘About the same time we got hit by the fade-out,’ said Connors. ‘Could this –?’

  Wedderkind shook his head. ‘It’s possible that it might have had some temporary effect on the ionosphere – and thus the propagation of radio waves – but what we’re discussing is of a different order of magnitude altogether.’

  All this may have been clear to Wedderkind, but it was hard going for General Wills. He pulled out a large stogy, lit up and chewed on it aggressively to combat a sudden feeling of inadequacy.

  The President picked absently at the corners of his scratch-pad. ‘What d’you think, Mel?’

  Fraser weighed up Connors and Wedderkind then exchanged a covert g
lance with the Chiefs of Staff before replying. ‘Well, we all know Arnold has stars in his eyes but – based on what my people have told me, I think we’ll find the cause of the fade-out is a little nearer to home.’

  ‘You mean the Russians…’

  ‘Who else?’

  Wedderkind snorted dismissively. ‘You can’t be serious! Have you any idea just how – ’

  Fraser cut him off. ‘Why not, Arnold? They’ve got themselves a nice new shiny space-station up there now. I’d say that was in “outer space” – wouldn’t you?’

  Fraser was referring to the growing collection of space modules that had been locked on to the orbiting Russian spacelab Mir, launched in 1986 to reinforce the ageing Salyut 7. Skylab – America’s answer to the Salyut program and long since abandoned – had plunged earthwards in the early eighties, burning up on re-entry. It had not been replaced and, following the disastrous loss of Challenger in February ’86, NASA’s space-shuttle program had slowly foundered as interest switched to the development of an orbital vehicle that could take off and land like a conventional Jumbo jet. Since the first flight was years away, the net result had been to leave the Soviet cosmonauts in sole possession of outer space. Mir was the Russian word for “peace” but everyone around the table knew that ever since Marx had dreamed up dialectical materialism on a wet afternoon in the British Museum, communists the world over have tended to say one thing and mean another.

  President Lorenzo turned to the Navy Chief of Staff. ‘Any thoughts on this, Ed?’

  Admiral Garrison tapped the file of intelligence reports into line with his notepad. ‘We don’t have any data that would indicate they have developed or deployed this type of capability.’

  It’s in moments like this, thought the President, when I long for people who can say ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

  ‘However – ’ Garrison paused.

  ‘They must have a few things we don’t know about.’

  ‘True, but – ’