FOREWORD

by Ten To Midnight--Free(Lit)

  PRIMARY TARGETS:

  (SS-11 mode of delivery):

  Naval Bases (Air Burst):

  New London, Connecticut (16); San Diego, California (22); Norfolk, Virginia (24); Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (20); Kings Bay, Georgia (24); Charleston, South Carolina (22); Bremerton, Washington (20)

  Army Bases (Ground Burst):

  White Sands (14), Fort Campbell (12), Fort Bragg (8), Fort McNair (16)

  (SS-18 mode of delivery):

  Air Force Facilities (Ground Burst):

  Grand Forks (26), Whiteman (24), Eglin (18), Offutt (24), Minot (24),

  Ellsworth (18), McConnell (14), Malmstrom (30), Travis (10), Fairchild (12), Kirtland (14), Nellis (16), Dyess (20), Tinker (14), Barksdale (18)

  Mountain Home (28), Edwards (20), Columbus (12), Kessler (12), Elmendorf (28), Goodfellow (22), Maxwell (14), Robins (18), Schreiver (20), Vandenberg (30), Pope (12), Warren (30), Altus (16), Brooks (14), McChord (22), McDill (18), Petersen (20)

  C&C Facilities:

  Cheyenne Mountain (14), Raven Rock (10)

  SECONDARY TARGETS:

  (SS-11 mode of delivery - Air Burst):

  BMEWS at Fylingdales, England (3); Cobra Dane, Aleutians (3); Thule, Greenland (3); Clear, Alaska (3)

  PAVE PAWS at Cape Cod (4), Beale (4)

  (Special Release Orders):

  Nine (9) 1mt warheads reserved for Electro Magnetic

  Pulse at Extremely High Altitude. Objective to

  disrupt enemy communications

  BALLISTIC MISSILE SUBMARINES:

  (Special Release Orders):

  Authorization of fail deadly attack mode

  CITY WITHHOLDS:

  (Special Release Orders)

  (SS-11 mode of delivery - Airburst):

  Washington D.C. (1), Seattle (1), Houston (1)

  The attack profile was designed specifically to inhibit America’s ability to visit any further damage upon the Russian Federation. The targeting of American cities, however, was direct retribution for the destruction of Moscow, Tula and Volgograd. Of course, Yazov knew that a large number of American submarines and nuclear-armed bombers had already been scrambled, and this would leave U.S. forces with an extensive range strategic options, but the subs and bombers would not be in a position to attack for several hours. That pause would give both sides an opportunity to negotiate a truce, he hoped.

  All the same, he felt physically sick. He had no grievance with America. In fact, he’d met his U.S. counterparts on several occasions over the years, and had found them to be polite, hospitable and worthy of his professional respect. Now he was about to order the deaths of several million of them. Why? Because the U.S. government had made a deadly miscalculation. He winced at the thought. The United States was no different to Russia in many respects. There too, ordinary people would suffer for their leaders’ folly.

  Yet, in the final analysis, he knew that this catastrophic situation was of his own making. It was he who had persuaded Pushkin to use nuclear weapons in the Ukraine. And now it was he who would have to live with the deaths of millions - possibly many more - on his conscience. All because he had been arrogant enough to assume that he had known best how to save his country. He had acted with the loftiest of intentions, and now it looked as though he might succeed only in turning his country into a radioactive morgue. Now Yazov truly understood why he had never wanted to be a politician. A military officer could always blame the politicians for failure on the battlefield, while a political leader had to assume absolute accountability for all actions taken in his name. An American euphemism came to mind, one that a former President had once uttered: The buck stops here. For the first time, he understood what that really meant.

  He read the attack option and authentication codes aloud, watching intently as the RVSN officers entered them into the communicators. The launch buttons on each communicator needed to be pressed simultaneously to confirm the order.

  Yazov nodded. With that one solitary gesture, he had ordered the deaths of millions.

  The officers, with the flawless professionalism that Yazov had always demanded of his men, pressed their buttons on the count of three.

  Yazov remembered a passage from the sacred Hindu text Bhagavad-Gita, recited by Robert Oppenheimer, creator of the atomic bomb. It seemed particularly apt at this darkest of moments in human history.

  “I am become Death,” he intoned in perfect English. “Shatterer of worlds.”

  Everybody stared at him.

  THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON D.C.

  “Outpost Mission!”

  That single phrase - spoken into a thousand phones and radios across Washington within moments of the first Ukrainian warhead detonating over Moscow - started in process the operation to evacuate the President and senior government officials from Washington.

  WhileOutpost Mission had always worked in the abstract, nobody could be certain that nothing would go wrong when human fallibility came into the equation. That itdid work was a credit to both its architects and to the hundreds of men and women charged with implementing it.

  The operation was, to say the least, a highly complex proposition, required to work on a number of different levels. At the Federal Reserve records center in Culpeper, Virginia, trillions of megabytes of data were transferred onto ultra-dense optical discs at extremely high transfer rates. Similar measures were being taken at other government buildings throughout the capital. Elsewhere, the Alternate Seat of Government in Albany, New York, and the AT&T National Emergency Control Center in Netcong, New Jersey, were placed on standby.

  Meanwhile, senior officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency were liaising with their Secret Service counterparts to ensure that every possible measure was being taken to ensure the continuity of a functional Government. Central to this objective was the implementation of what FEMA officials termed the Presidential Successor Emergency Support Plan. This involved dispersing constitutional and extra-constitutional successors (excluding the Vice President, who was presumed dead in Moscow) to secure locations within the ‘Federal Ark’, a series of government shelters within a hundred mile radius of Washington. Such facilities included the FEMA bunkers at Mount Weather in Virginia, Raven Rock on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border and the Civil Defense bunker in Maynard, Massachusetts.

  Those Senators, members of Congress and Supreme Court Justices who could be located were evacuated with their families to the Mount Weather complex, eighty miles from the capital, and to Raven Rock. A few VIPs in the Midwest and on the west coast were evacuated instead to the NORAD facility and other secondary bunkers in Nevada, Oregon and New Mexico.

  Measures were also taken to protect America’s heritage. The original Declaration of Independence, the American Constitution, the Bill of Rights, a Gutenberg bible and the papers of Jefferson, Mason and Madison were flown to the Greenbriars facility in White Sulphur Springs, Virginia. At the National Gallery, precious works of art such as Leonardo da Vinci’sGinevra de’ Benci and Rogier van der Weyden’sSt George and the Dragon were packed in pressurized metal containers - which were cushioned with bags of chemicals to counteract any humidity in the air - before being moved.

  Yet no special provisions were made for the millions of terrified civilians who helplessly watched this awful drama unfold on television.

  Senior executives at Exxon and Amtrak were alerted; the former to execute emergency procedures designed to ensure a continuation of energy supplies; the latter to make special provisions for military transportation across a country that was now, for all intents and purposes, under a State of Emergency.

  Government employees received notification of the alert according to a system that ranked them on a three-grade scale of importance. This system was called the Joint Emergency Evacuation Plan (JEEP). There were fifty-nine JEEP-1 cardholders in Washington, including the President, Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of State. Naturally, their safety took precedence over that of anybody e
lse. Three hundred and eighty-one JEEP-2 cardholders – comprising FEMA officials, senior government agency employees and selected members of the National Science Foundation - were evacuated to the nearest secure location to where they happened to be at the time. Those with JEEP-3 status – including middle ranking government employees, selected academics and senior executives of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation – received ‘Advanced Alert’ telephone calls and were ordered to stand by.

  At the White House, Reynolds was explaining the key aspects ofOutpost Mission to the President as the Secret Service detail rushed them and other key staff into the Rose Garden and across the lawn. A chopper was awaiting their arrival, its blades already in motion.

  Lewis noted that two agents were hurriedly erecting a Stinger missile battery on the lawn. Searchlight beams could be seen rising from the roof of the White House, probing the sky for aerial dangers. A company of Marines crouched low, their rifles pointed upwards, ready to deal with any threat. Even though it was too dark to make out their faces, the experienced soldier in Lewis could sense the tension emanating from them. He had only to look at the way they held their weapons to know they were serious. Beyond the perimeter fencing, a steadily growing band of protesters was forming. Lewis saw that many of them were holding placards, but the buzz of the helicopter blades mercifully drowned out their chants.

  “The E-4 is waiting for us at Andrews, sir,” Reynolds was telling the President, whose bodyguards were helping him climb into the helo. Mitchell barely acknowledged the chief of staff. He appeared to be in a state of shock. Noting his pallor, Margaret gripped his hand tightly as they took their seats. Lewis was sitting opposite her. She momentarily locked eyes with him and saw her own anxiety mirrored on his face. She sensed that he was trying to shut out his own emotions by concentrating on the task at hand. In this case, his primary task was to advise the President on how to turn off this rapidly escalating crisis. The President looked like he needed all the advice he could get right now.

  “Baptism of fire for you, hey, Dr. Stein?” Nielsen shouted at him above the sound of the rotating blades.

  “Perhaps you might choose another euphemism, Mr. Secretary,” Lewis said dryly, leaving the Secretary of Defense feeling slightly embarrassed. I could have been in a bar right now, drinking myself into oblivion, Lewis mused grimly. Instead, I’ve got to try and stop the President stumbling into World War Three by accident.

  Once the Presidential entourage was on board and securely strapped into their seats, the helicopter lifted off. As it banked over Pennsylvania Avenue, Lewis glanced down at the army of camera crews and protesters camped outside the White House. If this crisis did turn into a shooting war, he imagined that everybody down there would be vaporized in a millisecond. He wondered if that thought had crossed their minds. In many respects, he envied them. Their instant annihilation would make them far more fortunate than the survivors, condemned to stagger blindly through the post-nuclear landscape, many of them dying from their injuries and from radiation sickness. He recalled something that Nikita Khrushchev had once said: The living would envy the dead…

  He reproached himself for that thought. It was his job to ensure that things didn’t go that far. But the problem, he knew, was that the nature of crisis was to fulfill itself. Crisis was all a matter of perception, really. If one side considered a situation serious enough to present a danger to its existence, then it would be theoretically prepared to wipe the other side out of existence in order to defend itself, evoking a similar reaction in the other side, which in turn served to escalate the crisis, and so forthad infinitum or until the point of implosion. That was a rule so simple, yet one that was often overlooked by politicians. Two things were fueling this crisis, he knew. Firstly, the fact that the last taboo of war had been broken. Secondly, the mutual distrust that still existed between Russia and the United States. And no crisis could be

  Russia had dropped nuclear weapons on Ukraine; an event that would not have even made the headlines had the weapons been conventional. In fact, a heavy conventional bombardment would have probably caused just as much damage as that inflicted by the tactical nukes. So why hadn’t Russia used conventional weapons to the same effect? For precisely the same reason we didn’t level Hiroshima and Nagasaki with conventional bombing raids rather than with atomic bombs,Lewis thought. They wanted to make a point. Insofar, there were similarities in the mentality surrounding the nuclear attacks on Japan in 1945 and Ukraine in the present day. In a pouch beneath his seat was a complementary notepad and pen, both bearing the legendThe White House, Washington D.C . He rested it on his lap and started scribbling notes, a technique he often used when brainstorming a conceptual analysis. He wrote the heading ‘Why nukes?’, then proceeded to outline the answers:

  A. More efficient. Cost less than conventional equivalent.

  B. Political statement. Demonstrating resolve to enemy.

  C. Detrimental effect on enemy morale.

  But the Russians obviously hadn’t expected the Ukrainians to retaliate with nuclear weapons themselves. If nothing else, the old popular theory that ‘once one uses nukes, everybody will let loose’ had been proved at least partly true tonight. But that still left questions unanswered. As he thought of them, Lewis scribbled notes:

  Q1. Who survived in Russian government? What capacity to retaliate?

  Q2. Did they know it was Ukrainians who attacked them?

  Q3. Why haven’t they tried to contact us?

  The truth was - and this frightened Lewis more than anything else that had happened so far - that nobody really knew what shape the Russian government was in and what it might be thinking right now. If any surviving members of the government were watching GCN, they would see their American counterparts evacuating Washington. That might cause them to put two and two together, and come up with…

  “Oh my God,” Lewis muttered to himself, realizing that the United States might have just inadvertently upped the ante.

  He wasn’t to know that, at that precise moment, his worst fears were already being realized.

  OUTSIDE HUNTSVILLE, TEXAS

  “Shee-it! Where the hell’s all this traffic comin’ from?”

  Tabatha thumped her steering wheel in frustration. The roads had been relatively clear until just a few miles back, allowing her to test the speed limit and get further away from Dick. And then traffic had begun to appear from everywhere. Many of the vehicles around her were loaded with what looked like personal possessions, as if their occupants were going on vacation. But at this time of night? Something wasn’t right, although she didn’t know what. She’d seen quite a few vehicles dodging erratically through the traffic with total disregard for speed limits, but the cops were doing nothing to stop them. In fact, there wasn’t a single cop in sight. That was even stranger still.

  The increasing congestion had eventually created a gridlock, and Tabatha found herself stuck firmly in the middle of it, surrounded by the raised voices and blaring foghorns of other drivers. The commotion had awoken Gary, who was now crying again, instinctively aware of grown-ups being horrible to each other. He knew that when grown-ups shouted at each other, he normally ended up getting hurt. In the back seat, Nina tried to calm him down, to reassure him that the grown-ups weren’t going to hurt him any more. But she wasn’t entirely convinced of that herself.

  Tabatha watched as two men climbed out of their respective cars and began fighting for no apparent reason as their wives tried to break them up. Another man climbed out of his car and inexplicably started to kick it, cursing loudly as he did so. A woman was running through the gridlock, hands aloft, screaming as a man wearing a nothing more than a Stetson and a pair of shorts chased after her.

  It was as though the whole world had gone crazy.

  Instinctively, Tabatha locked her door, then leaned across Nina to lock the passenger door also. She was aware that she was low on gas; a couple more miles in the tank at most. And there was nowhere for her to go. She’d end
up stuck out here, pregnant, in the middle of Nowhereville, Texas, responsible for the welfare of her younger siblings until the cops picked her up and took her back to Louise and Dick. Way to go, girl, she thought to herself.

  “So what now?” Nina asked, nervously taking in the cacophony surrounding her.

  “How the hell should I know?” Tabatha snapped. “The roads are s’posed to be clear this time of night.” She momentarily considered her options, then wound down the window. The car to her left - a battered silver Chevy Nova - was carrying an elderly couple. They looked harmless enough. Certainly not as crazed as some of these loonies around her.

  “’Scuse me,” Tabatha called out, leaning through the window.

  The old woman in the front passenger seat unwound her window. “Yes, dear?”

  “What’s going on? Has there been an accident or sum’ tin?”

  For a moment, the woman just stared at her as if she were a visitor from another planet. Then her expression relaxed, and she addressed Tabatha in a slightly condescending tone. “Haven’t you heard? We’re going to war.”

  War? What the… Tabatha blinked, not quite believing what she’d heard. Of course, she didn’t make a habit of reading the newspapers - it wasn’t exactly a cool thing to do - but she still considered herself relatively well informed about such things. Compared to her peers, anyway.

  “War with who?” she asked.

  “With Russia, of course. You should listen to the radio, dear.”

  No, that wouldn’t be a good idea at all, Tabatha decided. It would only scare the kids even more than they were already scared.

  The old man leaned across his wife, correcting her. “Actually,” he called out, “we’re not at war yet. But the Russians have gone nuclear in Ukraine.”

  “Uke-where?” Nina said. Even she was attentive now.

  “Ukraine, duh!” Tabatha said. “It’s in Europe. S’been some kinda war goin’ on over there for ages. Don’t you know nothin’?” She turned back to the old couple. “So why we involved in all this?”