Mitchell leaned towards the speakerphone. “We’ve been out of it for a while. Any new developments… um,” he checked his notepad for NORAD’s designation, “Storm Rock?”
“The situation is fluid at the moment, Mr. President,” reported General Allen’s voice. “But we’re not getting any ELINT from inside Russia. That’s largely because of the blast effects, but it’s worrying all the same. It means we don’t know what they’re thinking.”
“What about the KH-12’s?” Bishop asked, referring to the network of photoreconnaissance satellites in low orbit.
“Who is this?”
“DCI Bishop.”
“We’ve retasked some of the KH-12’s, sir. The data is being processed as we speak.”
“Mind telling me what we’re looking for?” the President asked.
“Increased activity around missile fields,” Lewis informed him. “Subs being put to sea. Anything indicative of a strategic response.” He turned to the speakerphone. “This is Lewis Stein. I was just thinking that perhaps the reason you’re not hearing anything from Russia, and the reason they haven’t reacted yet is because the attack decapitated their C3ability.”
“I doubt that,”Rain Flower objected. “They’ve got provisions for command succession same as we have.”
“Not necessarily,” Lewis said. “My guess is that all the potential successors were in Moscow for Godonov’s funeral. Imagine if a nuclear warhead landed on Washington. Imagine if we had no warning until it happened. Now imagine if the President and all his constitutional successors were in town at the time. Who would issue the order to retaliate?”
“We could do it directly from here,”Looking Glass said.
“And so could we,”Storm Rock added.
“Perhaps,” Lewis accepted. “But if you add the time element into the equation, then by the time you’ve reacted to the breakdown in C3and made the necessary provisions to act unilaterally, you may have nothing left to fire at the enemy.”
“What are you getting at, Dr Stein?” Westwood said impatiently. His tone suggested that he still didn’t trust this outsider with the English accent.
“What I’m saying is that if you multiply that problem tenfold, you’ve got some indication of what the Russians might have to contend with. Their nuclear launch protocols work on a primary control basis, you see, and…”
Night Diggercut him off. “Excuse me, Mr. President, but I think I know where Dr Stein is coming from. Their launch systems are completely automated. They authenticate a launch using two sets of communicators carried in briefcases, similar to The Football. If either one of those is destroyed, then it’s extremely difficult for them to launch. The communicators are launch mechanisms in themselves. There are back-ups, but there would be a considerable time delay involved in producing and authenticating new codes, and providing them to a viable command authority.”
“Exactly,” Lewis concurred. “And there’s every reason to suspect that a huge number of their ICBMs have fallen into such a state of disrepair, they wouldn’t be able to get off the ground in any case.”
“What about their subs?” the President asked, turning to the Secretary of the Navy.
“They work on a similar basis to ours,” Dunster told him. “They surface every eight to ten hours to receive new orders, and…”
Nielsen cut him short. “And what if there’s nobody to send them any orders?”
Tense looks were exchanged. Dunster finally took up the question. “If they operate on a similar basis to ours, sir, which I suspect they do, then if they surface and hear nothing, they would launch on the assumption that command authority has been neutralized. I don’t know that for sure, of course, but it would seem a logical assumption.”
Before anybody could take up the point, the speakerphone emanated the strident buzzing noise of a warning klaxon. A sense of dread filled the KNEECAP conference room.
“What’s that?” the President asked, suddenly looking very pale.
“Are you getting this,Alice ?” General Allen’s voice yelled.
“Yep, I’ve got it, Rob,”Looking Glass replied calmly. “Running SRV check.”
The President leapt to his feet, his brow knotted in rage. “Will somebody please tell me what the fuck is going on?”
NORAD, CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN, COLORADO
“We’re picking up two… wait,three possible SS-11 launches from Perm ICBM field,” Allen yelled into the phone, suddenly more frightened than he’d ever been in his life. He knew that if Russia were planning to retaliate against Ukraine, they would be more likely to use bombers or shorter range IRBMs. The SS-11 ‘Sego’ ICBM was roughly equivalent to the U.S. Minuteman III missile and was capable of carrying either a one-megaton warhead or three smaller warheads.
They’re aimed at us! Allen’s mind screamed.
“Where are they headed?” the President demanded to know.
Another launch detection appeared on the Big Board. This one was from the SS-18 field in Kartaly. Allen swallowed hard. The SS-18 ‘Satan’ was perhaps the most powerful ICBM ever built. It served but one purpose - the pinpoint destruction of hardened military targets, such as missile silos and command bunkers.
Such as Cheyenne Mountain, he thought grimly. In as long as it took for that thought to occur to him, five more ICBM launches were detected at Perm, Kartaly and Aleysk.
“Still waiting for confirmation of that, sir, but my best guess is CONUS.”
PERSPECTIVE: U.S. PREPAREDNESS FOR NUCLEAR WAR
America has been preparing for the possibility of nuclear war since the late 1940’s. An entire generation grew up on a diet of civil defense films; the main consequence of which was to convince the American people that it was possible to survive a nuclear war providing that you “Ducked And Covered”. Later generations would look back on these public information films as touchingly naïve.
But that was no reflection on the American Government’s seriousness in preparing for the aftermath of a nuclear attack. If anything, the hopelessly optimistic tone of such material was designed to maintain public calm and ensure continued popular support for America’s costly nuclear weapons program. It also helped to conceal the true nature of the Government’s nuclear war planning.
In 1949, a system known as CONELRAD was established. This was America’s first national civil defense system, enabling National Command Authority to communicate attack warnings to local authorities and coordinate recovery efforts in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. This was replaced in the early 1960’s by the far more advanced Emergency Broadcast System, which provided a key element of U.S. Civil Defense Planning until 1997. During those years, most Americans became familiar with the EBS test broadcast; a high-pitched hum that indicated imminent disaster. Fortunately, it was never called upon to warn of a real nuclear attack. Other nations likely to be involved in a nuclear conflict implemented similar systems of their own.
Following the end of the Cold War, Civil Defense in the nuclear context had all but vanished. By 1998, FEMA’s National Preparedness Directorate - which had provided the key element in U.S. Civil Defense Planning - was abolished(1) . The Emergency Broadcast System itself was replaced by a new high-tech system known as the EAS (Emergency Alert System). Funding for Civil Defense was delegated from Federal to Local level, effectively entrusting responsibility for nuclear attack recovery to local authorities. Although National Security Directive 66 states that the U.S. Government would “respond to emergencies of all kinds, including attack”, there was no mention of Civil Defense in either FEMA’s 1998 Mission Statement or the DoD’s graphic in the same year on “Responding to the Proliferation threat”(2) . Funds previously earmarked for Civil Defense were instead diverted to environmental research and planning. Indeed, the EAS itself was designed with environmental disasters in mind, rather than the threat of nuclear attack. This prompted Representative Bob Dornan (R-CA) to warn in 1994 that nuclear defense was being “dangerously under funded or totally ignored”. The DoD’s resp
onse was to claim rather cryptically that it would “issue defense planning guidance to the services to make sure everyone understands what the President wants.”
By 1999, FEMA’s official advice to those wishing to learn about its plans for nuclear attack was to contact the local office of emergency planning for further information. In other words, FEMA had abrogated responsibility for Civil Defense in the nuclear context, focusing its attention instead on more tangible threats such as freak weather and other environmental disasters. Although fallout shelters continued to exist in every town and city in the United States, little if anything was done to inform the public about their whereabouts or what to do in the event of a nuclear attack.
The Reagan years saw increased public awareness about the effects of nuclear war. This was partly fuelled by Hollywood movies, which painted a far darker picture of the aftermath than did movies of the 1950’s and 60’s. But this public canniness soon festered into apathy, and by the late 1990’s into total indifference. Much of this had to do with the nothing-I-can-do-about-it mentality. But it had far more to do with the perception that the nuclear threat had almost entirely disappeared. The Clinton administration did nothing to discourage this perception.
With the emergence of an assertive Russian Government in the early years of the 21stCentury, American defense planners once again began to prepare for the possibility of nuclear war. Two bomb wings were placed on permanent strip alert for the first time since 1993. Expenditure on nuclear weapons was increased. But still nothing was done to educate the public about the threat of nuclear attack. The Civil Defense budget remained diminutive. And the public perception (which, incidentally, was not shared by senior Defense planners) was that the threat of Russian missile attack remained miniscule.
Meanwhile, Russia continued to escalate its program of nuclear weapon modernization.
(1) Physicians For Civil Defense, “1994 Civil Defense Perspectives”
(2) Journal of Civil Defense, Spring 1997
Part 2
THE WAR
VIII
IMPACT POINT
"Each of us bears his own Hell."
(Virgil:Publius Vergilius Maro , 70-19 B.C.)
UPPER ATMOSPHERE - ABOVE NORTHERN EUROPE
Weighing over 480,000 pounds, the first of the Russian SS-18 ICBMs reached the peak of its boost phase some sixty miles above the earth.
The missile was armed with a single one-megaton thermonuclear warhead, behind which was situated a highly sophisticated inertial navigation system. Assembled in a clean room in a facility north of Moscow, this comprised a powerful microchip capable of some several billion calculations per second whose purpose was to measure the missile’s relative acceleration and convert it into far simpler variables of speed and distance to target. Based on these constantly changing variables, a guidance system made minor adjustments to the booster thrust.
At the precise moment that the accelerometer decided that the missile’s inertial boost had matched the required trajectory for it to reach its target, the solid fuel boosters were abruptly shut down. Timing was critical here. If the boosters burned for one thousandth of a second too long, the warhead could land up to four hundred yards wide of its target, and once the booster had been shut down, it could not be restarted.
The SS-18 went ballistic when the Post Boost Vehicle detached from the main body of the missile and carried the warhead on the next stage of its journey. From this point on, it was little more than an artillery shell, drifting silently through space without any further encouragement or direction from its internal systems.
It crossed over the Arctic poles and began to descend as gravity embraced it.
NORAD BMEWS FACILITY: FYLINGDALES MOOR, YORKSHIRE, ENGLAND
The phased array radar was approximately the size of a football field. It moved in perpetual rotation, probing the atmosphere with thin rays of energy.
As the rays struck the casing of the SS-18, they were bounced back, colliding at various points on the huge antenna. This rare event activated an alarm in the facility’s mainframe computer system, which easily separated the returned signal from the normal transient background noise. A second set of rays was also bounced back. The second return was significant, for it not only provided confirmation that the first hadn’t been a fluke, but it allowed the mainframe to make estimates on speed and trajectory, using an algorhythm that worked by calculating the difference in location and time between the two returns and drawing a line between them.
That calculus took approximately one hundredth of a second.
Within another tenth of a second, the data had been uploaded onto a SBIRS satellite, which compared it to its own calculations and transmitted the results to NORAD, USSTRATCOM, NMCC, Space Command andLooking Glass .
ABOARD KNEECAP
“We now have positive verification of thirty six - correction thirtyseven - ICBM launches from central Russia,”Looking Glass reported matter-of-factly. “SBIRS and BMEWS at Fylingdales and Thule have confirmed missile tracks. Estimated impact area is CONUS.”
“We’re moving toHot Pepper ,”Storm Rock announced.
“What the hell…?” the President muttered.
“Attack Condition Yellow,” Westwood explained, swallowing hard. “It means that a hostile missile attack is in progress against the Continental United States.”
“We are now at DefCon Two,” Dunster observed flatly.
The President seemed to shrink before everybody’s eyes. He sunk his head into the palms of his hands. Nobody could see his expression, but it wasn’t hard to imagine what he was thinking.
“Where in the US?” Bishop voiced the question that was on everybody’s mind.
“Still uncertain,” Allen said. “The ‘18s are likely to be headed for hardened targets such as ICBM silos and C&C facilities. The ‘11s are probably aimed at softer targets.”
It was Copeland who reached the conclusion first. “Like cities, right?”
“Forty-two confirmed inbounds,”Earth Digger reported.
“Quite possibly,” Allen accepted. Even on a telephone line, the urgency in his voice was obvious. “But more likely soft military targets. The attack pattern seems so far to be consistent with a classic counterforce strike rather than countervalue.”
“They’re going after our ability to retaliate,” Nielsen thought aloud.
“Fifty-three inbounds.”
Lewis reacted instinctively. Had he the time to consider the available options, his advice might have been different. But time was one commodity that was in desperately short supply right now. “I think this is the time to consider an ACC alert order,” he suggested. When he saw the confusion in the President’s eyes, he elaborated. “That means implementation of the SIOP plan to destroy Russia’s strategic forces before they can do any more damage.”
Nielsen and General Westwood nodded agreement. It seemed to them like the only rational course of action under the circumstances.
“Sixty-one inbounds.”
“I concur with Dr Stein,” Westwood said to the President. “Those missiles will hit us in about twenty-five minutes. Once they do, our ability to respond will be severely inhibited.”
Mitchell looked up with a wry smile. “Perhaps I don’t want torespond , General. Perhaps I think that enough people have already died tonight. Several million Russians, and now possibly several million Americans. If we - as you say -respond , do you think the Russians will just say okay and call it quits?”
Westwood allowed his irritation to show. “I’m not sure that’s the issue here, sir. The whole point of having an integrated early warning and response system is to give us the ability to respond to an enemy attack. Are you just suggesting that we sit here and do nothing while America blows up?”
“Use ‘em or lose ‘em,” Nielsen added. “Sir.”
Lewis leaned forward so that he could make eye contact with the President, at the other end of the table. “Mr. President, nobody wants this war,” he said in a calm to
ne that masked his true fear. “I don’t believe the Russians really want it any more than we do, but we have to face some hard facts here. One: We are the likely target of a massive Russian nuclear strike. Two: We cannot establish communications with whoever’s in charge in Moscow to ascertain their intentions. Three: For these reasons, this may be just the opening stage of a full nuclear commitment on the part of the Russians. They obviously think, for whatever reason, that it was us who attacked them.”
The President slammed the table with a clenched fist. “Dr. Stein, I’m not going to escalate a situation that’s already been escalated far enough. No! I want every possible effort expended to contact Pushkin, or whoever the hell is in charge over there now. We need to turn this thing off.”
At the other end of the table, Lewis squeezed his eyes shut, hoping more than ever that this was just a terrible nightmare. But when he reopened them, the nightmare was still very real. He was theNational Security Advisor , for fuck’s sake. If he couldn’t offer his best advice now, when could he offer it? The problem was, he didn’t know what his best advice was. This was one of those occasions when political expediency just wouldn’t reconcile to moral propriety. The old paradigm of nuclear war was being realized. Insofar, the President was quite correct. Retaliating without even having communicated with the Russian leadership could very well be just the sort of irrational decision to invite a murderous response. Yet, was it just as wrong to let the murder of millions of Americans simply go unanswered? It came down to one simple question:
To avenge or not to avenge?
Lewis had once acquiesced to the need to exact revenge upon Sandra Quinnan’s killer. Had that been right? He couldn’t answer that honestly. Again, it may have been the right thing to do in the abstract; yet it had still been an immoral act. So did that make the murder of one individual any less immoral than that of ten million? What value could one place upon human life - be it a singular or a multitude? It was the old Hitler question so beloved of philosophy professors: If you could go back in time and murder Hitler as a baby, or kill his mother before she became pregnant, would it be morally correct to do so? As a Jew, that provided an interesting dilemma. Lewis’s maternal grandmother had been one of seven Jewish children from Rotterdam. She and four of her siblings had fled to England shortly before Hitler’s invasion of the Netherlands. Her remaining two sisters had chosen to stay behind with their mother and father. The last time anybody had seen them, they were being herded onto a cattle truck destined for Belsen.
FOREWORD Page 27