by Dale Brown
“Triple-C, ADOC, Village reports fighters have engaged multiple Russian bomber aircraft, Tupolev-95 Bear-H bombers,” the senior controller of the Air Defense Operations Center cut in. “The bombers are launching small missiles from their bomb bays and have apparently shot down the AWACS—”
“They what?”
“—and the Bear bombers have also launched larger missiles from wing pylons. Each Bear seems to have two very large wing missiles and an unknown number of the smaller missiles in its bomb bays.”
“How many Bear bombers, ADOC?”
“They’ve counted over a dozen so far, Triple-C, and there may be many more,” the ADOC controller replied. “They’ve shot down three so far. There’s only two CF-18 Hornets up there, and without the AWACS they don’t have a complete picture.”
Kearsage keyed the Aerospace Reporting System button again: “Warning, warning, warning, all stations, NORAD air forces have engaged multiple Russian bomber aircraft, position near Great Bear Lake in Alberta, Canada. Enemy aircraft have been observed launching multiple hypersonic attack missiles. All NORAD regions are being ordered to launch alert aircraft to their assigned patrol orbits and to launch all other flyable aircraft to dispersal or survival anchors immediately.”
The phone lights started blinking, but all Kearsage could see were the growing track lines of missiles speeding south toward the United States. She flipped open her codebook to the next section and started to compose a new missile-track report, working as quickly as she could: “Warning, warning, warning, all stations, Missile Warning Center issues the following special hostile track report Sierra-Bravo-seven. AWACS issues Flash special hostile track report Tango-Alpha-one-three, stand by for—”
And then she stopped. Because now the computers were issuing their predictions for missile impacts. Her mouth dropped open in surprise. The codebook forgotten, she pressed the ARS button and spoke, “All units, this is Anchor, inbound track reports…missile targets—Oh, my God, we’re under attack! America is under attack. For God’s sake, America is under attack!”
6
Kansas City, Missouri
That same time
The chief of the Presidential Protection Detail of the Secret Service didn’t call first before rushing into the president’s hotel suite, but he wasn’t surprised to see President Thomas Thorn hurriedly putting on his trousers in the sitting area. The president had always exhibited a weird second-sight ability to anticipate events before they happened. “What’s happened, Mark?” the president asked.
“NMCC called a ‘campfire,’ sir,” the PPD chief said, his voice wavering in terror. The president’s mouth dropped open in surprise, and he was going to ask the PPD chief to repeat, but one look at the man’s face told him that he’d indeed heard the right code word—the one for an “enemy nuclear attack on the United States under way”—and that this was no exercise. In moments the president was dressed for quick travel, wearing his dark brown leather flying jacket over a white shirt, a dark blue Air Force One ball cap, dark gray business slacks, and thick-soled casual shoes.
“Let’s get moving, gents,” the president said, and he rushed past the astonished agents and out into the hallway, toward the staircase. Members of the Secret Service were trained to physically take control of their charges in the process of evacuation—usually the evacuees were too confused, sleepy, or scared to know which way to go, and they never moved fast enough to suit the PPD—but Thorn, an ex–U.S. Army Green Beret, was moving so quickly that the agents couldn’t get a grasp on his arms.
Inside the armored limousine, Thorn met up with the U.S. Navy officer who carried the “football,” the briefcase containing coded documents and communications equipment that would allow him to issue orders to America’s nuclear forces anywhere in the world. “Marine One is ready to fly, sir,” the chief PPD officer said as they peeled out of the hotel entryway, surrounded by police cars and flanked by Secret Service armored Suburbans. “We’ll be at Union Station pickup point in three minutes.” He listened to the reports through his earpiece. “Your staffers are asking us to return to pick them up.”
“Negative. Let’s roll,” the president said. He obviously did not want to wait for anyone—which suited the PPD just fine. The chief made a report on his secure cell phone, then handed it to the president. “This is Séance,” he responded, using his personal call sign. “Go ahead.”
“Thank God you’re all right, Mr. President,” came Vice President Lester Busick’s voice. When he was excited, Busick’s thick South Florida drawl became obvious, almost indecipherable. “Are you okay?”
“Fine, Les. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know yet. The Secret Service blew the whistle, and I’ve been on the move ever since,” Busick replied. “I thought those bastards were going to rip my arms off carrying me out of the residence. I do know we’re on our way to Andrews, not High Point. I think I’m going airborne.”
“Who’s with you?”
“Nobody,” Busick responded. “Hell, I couldn’t even get the old lady out of bed.”
“I’ll talk to you after I’m airborne, Les.”
“Okay, Thomas. I’ll see you back at the ranch after they’re done screwing with us.” The heaviness in his voice said much more than his words—they both knew that something serious was happening, and they most likely wouldn’t be going back to Washington for quite some time.
“Everything will be okay, Les,” the president said. “I’ll call as soon as I hear anything.”
“You take care, Thomas,” Busick said. Thorn was about to hang up when he heard, “Thomas?”
“Go ahead, Les.”
“You need to be tough now, Thomas,” Busick said. “I got a feelin’ the shit’s hittin’ the fan. I want you to be strong, Thom—I mean, Mr. President.”
“Since when do you call me ‘Mr. President’ when we’re—?”
“Damn it, Mr. President, please listen,” Busick said earnestly. “We may not be able to talk for a while, so just listen. I’ve seen this before, sir—”
“Seen what?”
“Seen this shit that’s happenin’ right now,” Busick said. “The last time was in ’91, when we thought the Iraqis were launching biochem weapons at Israel and we were getting ready to drop a nuke on Baghdad. I was the Senate majority whip. We were hustled out of Washington faster than shit from a goose. And it wasn’t just to the Mountain—we were dispersed to preserve the government, sir.”
“What are you talking about, ‘preserve the government’?” Thorn asked. “This is a precaution, a contingency. With all that’s happening in Turkmenistan and the Middle East, the heightened tensions, the saber rattling, it’s understandable—”
“Mr. President, with all due respect, sir, you have no friggin’ idea what’s about to happen,” Busick said seriously. “As soon as you step aboard Air Force One, you will become the executive branch of the United States government—not just the White House but every department and every executive agency that exists. You may be alone and isolated for days, maybe weeks. You may not be in contact with your cabinet or advisers.
“What I’m tryin’ to tell you is that I think this is it, Mr. President,” Busick went on. “The warning came right from NORAD. They were talkin’ about missile tracks and flight times. They—”
“What are you saying, Les?”
“I’m tellin’ you, Mr. President, I think we just caught the bolt from the blue,” Busick said. “And I’m telling you that you need to be strong and you need to be tough. Because there will be a lot of hurt people in this country very, very soon, and they’ll be looking to you for leadership. You’ve got to give it to them. And sometimes being the leader means doin’ the most horrific thing you can damned well think of.”
“Les…” Thorn tried to tell him again that everything was going to be okay, that this was just some sort of mistake or false alarm, but he didn’t know what it was, and he would sound silly trying to reassure the veteran politician of so
mething he himself knew absolutely nothing about. Finally he said, “Les, my family…?”
“Helicopters picked them up from Rutland minutes ago. They should be launching from Burlington International about the time you go airborne.” The first lady was a former state supreme court justice from Vermont, and she visited her family near the Vermont state capital whenever the president went out on his infrequent political travels.
The phone buzzed, interrupting their conversation—a higher-priority call than the vice president had to be pretty damned important. “I’ll talk to you soon, Les.”
“Yes, sir,” Busick replied. Then he added, “Be tough, Thomas. You’re the fucking president, sir. Shove it down their throats.” Thorn was going to ask him to elaborate, but by then Busick had hung up.
Thorn hit the TALK button. “This is Séance.”
“Mr. President, this is General Venti. I’m en route to the NMCC, but I’ve received the latest from NORAD. I request permission to change your escape routing.”
“Whiteman…?”
“Sir, Whiteman is not secure.” Whiteman Air Force Base, an hour’s drive east of Kansas City in Knob Noster, and the home of the B-2A Spirit stealth bomber, was where Air Force One was based while the president was in Kansas City.
“Tell it to me straight, General.”
There was a slight pause before Venti said, “Yes, sir. NORAD has issued an air-defense emergency. The Missile Warning Center is tracking a number of high-speed, high-altitude cruise missiles, launched by Russian Bear bombers. We count twenty-seven tracks so far. We believe that each missile carries two nuclear warheads, yields unknown. One track is definitely headed for Whiteman Air Force Base. Time to impact, approximately thirty-five minutes.”
“Oh, my God…”
“Other confirmed tracks are headed for Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska; Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota; Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota; Twentieth Air Force headquarters at F. E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming; and several missile-launch control facilities in Wyoming, Montana, and Colorado. It appears that the Russians are attempting to take out all of our land-based strategic nuclear-strike weapon systems—our ICBMs and bombers—in one massive preemptive strike.”
“I…I can’t believe it,” Thorn muttered. “This can’t be happening….”
“It’s confirmed, sir,” Venti said, his voice a bit shaky and strained. “The first missile will hit Minot Air Force Base in less than thirty-four minutes. Minot has thirty-two B-52 bombers, twenty-eight KC-135 aerial-refueling tankers, and other support aircraft; plus, they serve as Ninety-first Space Wing headquarters, controlling one hundred and fifty Minuteman III missiles.”
“Can…can any of those bombers escape?”
There was another slight pause. “We’re trying to get as many aircraft as we can off the ground, sir, any way we possibly can—maintenance troops, students, transient alert crews, anybody who can start the engines and take the controls and have any chance at all of landing it afterward. We have no strategic strike aircraft on ready alert. I’m afraid that the only survivors might be aircraft that are ready to launch on training or operational-support missions, are deployed, or already airborne.”
“My God…”
“Mr. President, our first consideration is to be sure you can escape,” Venti said. “Whiteman is definitely out. The other Air Force base within range of Marine One is McConnell, near Wichita, but it was once an Air National Guard B-1 bomber base and might be a target as well.” He was silent for a moment. “The staff recommends you be evacuated to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. It’s the most secure location nearby. Once Angel escapes, we can arrange a rendezvous.”
“Sounds fine to me,” the president said. “Angel” was the unclassified code word for the Air Force VC-25 transport planes, known as “Air Force One” when the president was aboard. Both planes in the fleet were always deployed with the president on his travels, and at least one was always kept ready to fly at a moment’s notice.
“Is Foghorn with you, sir?”
Thorn looked at the Navy officer with the “football.” “Yes.”
“Sir, I recommend you change the national defense configuration to DEFCON One,” Venti said. “All surviving military forces will begin preparations for war, should you order it in the future. You don’t need to give me an authorization code—your verbal order is enough until we can formalize it in writing.”
“Very well. Issue the order,” Thorn responded immediately.
Venti barked out an order over his shoulder, then returned to the phone: “I also recommend you increase the strategic force posture to red, sir,” he said.
Thorn hesitated. The Defense Configuration, or DEFCON, ordered all military units to various readiness states, with DEFCON One being maximum readiness for war. The “posture” told the units with weapons exactly what state or operational status their weapons and delivery systems should be in. The exact state varied by unit and weapon system but was broken down into three stages: red, yellow, and green, with green meaning that weapons in secure storage and coded documents and launch or enabling devices locked away; to red, which meant that weapons were loaded and the crews had all the documents and devices they needed to prearm and launch live nuclear weapons. The crews still needed the execution order from the president to release live nuclear weapons, but under a Posture Red, the crews were just a few switches away from unleashing hell on the enemy.
“Sir?”
“Go to Red Posture, General Venti,” Thorn said finally.
“Yes, sir. Understand. Posture Red.” Again he gave a verbal order to his deputy to issue the posture change to military forces around the world. Then he said, “Sir, I know we’ve game-planned this out in advance, but I still want to ask you: Do you wish to order any retaliatory or preemptive strikes at this time?” Any particular combination of DEFCON and posture initiated a series of actions by various military units around the world, depending on the nature of the emergency. Several actions were automatic—dispersing ships and aircraft, retargeting missiles, activating shelters, and sending commanders to alternate and airborne command centers—and other actions were optional. Among the optional actions were nuclear and nonnuclear strikes on selected important targets.
Thorn had made it clear early on in his administration that he would not initiate nuclear retaliation based on just an attack notification—the so-called launch-on-warning option—but the plans were still in the bag sitting on the shelf anyway, and Venti thought it his duty to ask. There were several targets he’d like to see vaporized right now, he thought.
“No. Proceed as planned, General,” Thorn replied. The president’s standing order to any attack on the United States, from another September 11–style terrorist attack to a massive nuclear attack, was the same in all cases: Ride it out, then plan a response based on all available intelligence and advice. It assumed that every other aspect of emergency planning remained the same: survival of key government officials, ensuring constitutional succession, and maintaining positive and unambiguous control of the nation’s nuclear weapons; but in any case, Thomas Thorn insisted on complete and absolute control over his nuclear forces. “Any word from Gryzlov?” Thorn asked.
“Stand by, sir….” A moment later: “Yes, sir, there are numerous hot-line messages, both voice and e-mail.”
“Have Signal connect me to President Gryzlov, General,” Thorn ordered.
“Sir, we don’t have time—”
“Link us up, General.”
“Mr. President, I…sir, whatever they say, I hardly think they have the slightest bearing on what our response should be!” Venti said. “The Russian Federation has initiated a sneak attack against the United States of America, and the first weapon impacts in about thirty minutes. They certainly didn’t consult us before launching this attack!”
“General…”
“With all due respect, sir, it doesn’t goddamn matter what Gryzlov has to say!” Venti stormed. “You know he’s goi
ng to come up with some cockamamie reason, invent some crisis or trigger event, blame the whole event on us, and warn us not to retaliate. What the hell difference does it make if he apologizes, if he says it was a mistake, if he’s sorry, if he’s angry? He still launched an attack on us, squarely aimed to take out most if not all of our land-based long-range attack forces!”
“It’s all right, Richard,” the president said, trying to soothe his obviously agitated Joint Chiefs chairman. “I’m not going to make a decision without consulting the Joint Chiefs and the Cabinet. Now, get him on the line. I’ll be on Marine One in a few minutes.”
“Yes, sir,” Venti finally responded, the outrage obvious in his voice. “Stand by.” It took several minutes, during which time Thorn had transferred to Marine One and was on his way across Kansas City to Fort Leavenworth, about thirty miles to the northwest. It was risky making such a call—although the circuit was encrypted to protect eavesdroppers from listening in, the bearing to Marine One could easily be measured and the helicopter tracked across the sky.
“Marine One, this is Signals, your party is on the line, secure,” the Army communications officer announced.
“President Gryzlov, I assume you have an explanation for this attack,” Thorn said without preamble or pleasantries.
“President Thorn, listen to me very carefully,” the voice of the Russian interpreter said. Anatoliy Gryzlov’s voice could be heard in the background. He did not seem to be agitated in the least, as if launching missiles at the United States were an everyday occurrence. But he was the former chief of the general staff of the world’s second-largest military, and he was accustomed to giving orders that sent thousands to their deaths. “This action is nothing more than retaliation for the attack against Engels Air Base, Zhukovsky Flight Test Center, and our paramilitary forces near Belgorod, perpetrated by Major General Patrick McLanahan and his band of high-tech aerial terrorists, acting under your full authority and direction—”