by Larry Bond
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Table of Contents
About the Author
Copyright Page
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
The demands of publishing require that only one name appear on the front cover, but my coauthor, Chris Carlson, had as much to do with the work of creating this book as I did. As a matter of fact, Chris came up with the idea of a fifth book in what was supposed to be a four-book series.
Our ability to stay in synch, to carry virtually the same story in two different minds, is a tremendous advantage, and while I’ve worked with Chris for more than thirty years now on dozens of joint projects, I do not take it for granted.
We plotted this story out together, edited each other’s chapters, and had a lot of fun telling a story about characters that we know very well.
PROLOGUE
8 March 2017
0915 EST
The White House
Washington, D.C.
* * *
Joanna Patterson saw the major’s excited expression and tried to stay calm. Pausing for just a moment, she announced to the small group in her office, “We’ll have to continue this later. Kathy will give you a time this afternoon.”
There was no discussion. The meeting was over, and the staffers quickly gathered their materials and filed out of her office as Walsh stepped aside. There were a few questioning looks, but nobody spoke.
Major Kevin Walsh, U.S. Army, remained silent, almost motionless, until they’d left, then quickly closed the door. He didn’t bother sitting down. “Dr. Patterson, DSP satellites report a nuclear detonation in Kashmir.” He glanced at the wall clock. “Detonation was eight minutes ago.”
Her heart turned to ice and she asked, “How big?,” then shook her head. “No, they don’t know that yet. Where, exactly?”
Walsh opened his tablet and passed it to her. It showed the entire Indian subcontinent, with a small red dot over the disputed territory lying between India and Pakistan. She zoomed in until Kashmir filled the screen. “It’s in the part of Kashmir controlled by Pakistan,” she observed. “And square in between the front lines.”
“The detonation was close to Muzaffarabad.” Walsh pronounced the city’s name smoothly. He spoke Pashto as well as Arabic, one of the reasons she’d picked him for her staff. “Lashkar-e-Taiba’s principal base in Kashmir is located fifteen kilometers to the north of that city, tucked into one of those mountain valleys.”
Patterson zoomed the map in again. The red dot looked to be a little north and west of the city. “Right on target. Were the Indians that angry about the stalled peace talks?” She felt a flash of anger, then confusion. No, they couldn’t be that stupid. Could they?
Walsh explained, “The whole area’s mountains and valleys. The terrain should shield the town from the blast and heat flash, but the fallout…”
She started to zoom in again, but stopped short and quickly handed the tablet back to Walsh. They’d worry about civilian casualties later. She was the national security advisor, and had things to do. “Is the quick-look report ready for the president?” She was confirming, not asking.
“Yes, ma’am. Captain Cruz is ready to brief him right now, and Commander Ashe is standing by to brief Chief of Staff Alvarez.”
“Get them going, now. The president’s going to be calling me five minutes after the briefing to ask for my recommendations. Call Cheyenne Mountain back and get an amplifying report on what the satellites saw. Then get ahold of NGA and see if they have any imagery of the blast area. I’ll also need an estimate of the yield. Be back here in four minutes.”
“Yes’m.” Walsh almost ran from the room, and as he left, she called, “Kathy!”
Her secretary, Kathy Fell, knew that tone and hurried in, notepad ready. “Yes, Dr. Patterson.”
“Kathy, a nuclear weapon’s exploded in Kashmir, and it’s going to look like one’s gone off around here when the media finds out. That’ll be in about fifteen minutes if CNN is on the ball, and I’ve got to give President Myles my recommendations before that.”
Fell’s eyes widened a little, but she replied simply, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Get all our senior staff in the conference room for a brief and retasking.”
“When should they be there?” Fell asked.
“As soon as they’re told,” Patterson answered. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Schedule an NSC meeting for eleven o’clock. Principals or deputies, but I want someone there, with whatever information they have about the Kashmir bomb, then another meeting for six tonight of the full National Security Council—no deputies at that one.”
“Secretary Geisler’s in Cleveland,” Fell reminded her.
“We’ll set up a video link if he can’t get back before then,” Patterson quickly answered. “The SECDEF is a must. And reschedule anything on my calendar for today and tomorrow that isn’t an ultraviolet priority.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Fell answered, writing as she spoke.
The phone rang, and Fell started to reach for it, but Patterson waved her off. “I’ve got this one.”
Patterson picked up the phone and listened for a moment. “Yes, Mr. President. No, sir, we don’t have any details at the moment. We’ve started working the problem and I’ll have an update for you in fifteen minutes. Excuse me for one moment, sir.”
Kathy Fell was almost out the door, and Patterson called after her, “Make sure someone is working on the OPREP-3 message, and get someone to start working on the weather patterns right away—all the way out to the western Pacific.”
She raised the phone again. “No, sir, I don’t know what the Indian government thinks they can accomplish…”
8 March 2017
2145 Local Time
USS North Dakota
South China Sea
* * *
The sudden knock on the stateroom door jolted Jerry Mitchell from his dazed state. Shaking his head and clearing the mental mist, he managed, “Come in.”
The door swung open and a mess specialist walked in, a stainless-steel carafe in his hands. “Here’s the coffee you asked for, Skipper. Can I get you anything else?”
Jerry swiftly extended his well-tarnished mug toward the sailor; like a destitute street beggar, he desperately needed the empty volume filled. “Thank you, Petty Officer Johnson, but this is all I really need right now.”
Johnson filled the mug and set the carafe on the fold-out work desk. Jerry thanked him again as he left, then took a sip and looked up at the clock. He still had another hour of work reviewing the engineering logs before he could call it a day—a long day. No sense procrastinating. His XO would deposit the next batch of paperwork into his in-box by tomorrow afternoon. Jerry was silently grateful that this patrol was far less eventful than the last one.
It had been almost six mon
ths since the war between China and the Littoral Alliance had come to an abrupt end. A lot had happened in those six months: President Myles had been reelected, his close friend Joanna Patterson had become the national security advisor, his boat had been formally transferred to Squadron Fifteen, and to top things off, Emily was expecting their first child. Jerry winced as he recalled the unpleasant move from Hawaii to Guam during her first trimester. Cleaning, packing, and teaching didn’t mix well with morning sickness—an empirical observation that Emily had reminded him of, and often.
Jerry’s family was beyond enthusiastic when they received the news of Emily’s pregnancy. His sister Clarice reported that their mother had actually shouted, “Alleluia! About time!” Their dad began chuckling ominously and muttering, “My little revenge.” This sinister comment had prompted Jerry to recall the knuckleheaded antics he’d pulled as a child.
Still, with the move behind them, Emily feeling better and teaching again, and the soon-to-be grandparents waiting with bated breath, happiness and serenity had returned to the Mitchell household.
Jerry sighed, refilled his coffee cup, and got back to work. He’d only made it through the first set of engine room logs when the Dialex phone rang. Grabbing the handset, he answered, “Captain.”
“Skipper, this is the XO, sir. Please come to radio immediately. We just received an OPREP-3 Pinnacle Nucflash message.”
Jerry shook his head in confusion; he must be more tired than he thought. “Ah, Bernie, would you repeat that, please? Did you say ‘Nucflash’?”
“Yes, sir. We just received a no-shit OPREP-3 Pinnacle Nucflash message. It looks like the Indians popped a nuke in Pakistan.”
“I’ll be right there,” Jerry said, barely pausing to hang up the phone. Racing to radio, he wondered why the Indians would do something so stupid. The current Indo-Pakistani War was the last remnant of the larger Sino–Littoral Alliance conflict, but up to this point, the cease-fire was holding. Even with the talks stalled, and despite some verbal saber rattling from senior military officers on both sides, nothing suggested that either nation was ready to start shooting again. And a single nuclear weapon? This just didn’t make any sense. It had to be some sort of mistake.
As Jerry reached the radio room, Lieutenant Commander Bernie Thigpen handed him a hard copy of the message. “The nuke went off over the Pakistani-controlled portion of Kashmir,” he reported. “It was a big one, too. Initial estimates put the yield at one hundred–plus kilotons.”
Jerry remained silent as he read the message. The contents failed to answer any of the truly important questions. It was just a basic report announcing the time and place of the event. There was nothing to explain the “why” behind it. He went over the text again, just to be sure, then handed the paper back to his XO, a look of sheer amazement on his face.
“I’m just as flummoxed as you are, Skipper,” Thigpen empathized. “Why in the world India would do something so irrational is beyond me. Trying to kickstart peace negotiations with a nuke isn’t exactly a winning tactic. Kind of defeats the purpose, don’t you think?”
Jerry was still analyzing the news when a dreadful thought jumped into his mind. Alarmed, he turned toward Thigpen and said, “The wind! Which way…”
“It’s coming from the west-northwest, sir,” Thigpen interrupted. “It’s a problem for India, Nepal, and parts of China; Emily and the rest of the crew’s family members won’t be affected by the fallout. At least not this time.”
“Always the pessimist,” quipped Jerry, his tone betraying his relief.
Thigpen smiled slightly. “No, sir, a realist. We both know this is really bad news, and it’s very likely to get worse. Nothing good could possibly come from this.”
1
SHOCK WAVE
9 March 2017
1100 EST
CNN
* * *
They’d changed the studio’s backdrop to a map of the Kashmir region that slowly morphed into a Google Earth landscape that then zoomed in on the specific area where the detonation had been reported. The network was still waiting for satellite images of the actual explosion site, so the graphics team had marked the spot with a small animated mushroom cloud. Occasionally the background would go to split screen, with one half devoted to the map, and the other showing photos of the Kashmiri countryside, some taken prewar, others since India’s invasion of Pakistan six months ago.
CNN had its best national-security correspondent, Jane Bergen, anchoring the desk. She was a known commodity, with dark hair framing a square face and black-rimmed glasses.
“Good morning and welcome to CNN’s continuing coverage of the nuclear explosion in Kashmir. It’s been just over twenty-four hours since the detonation of what is now agreed was a nuclear weapon of over one hundred kilotons in Kashmir, a disputed territory and the object of so much recent fighting between India and Pakistan. India is at the center of a public firestorm of accusations, but denies any knowledge of or responsibility for the blast.
“Our entire CNN team is covering different aspects of the developing crisis, which is complicating the already difficult and tense peace negotiations between the two warring countries in Geneva, Switzerland.
“Sources in the U.S. intelligence community have confirmed to CNN that the apparent location of the blast is a major base and training camp for Lashkar-e-Taiba, a large Islamic terrorist organization operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan. LeT is responsible for dozens of attacks in India, including the infamous Mumbai hotel siege in 2008 that killed a hundred and sixty-four people and wounded hundreds more. During India’s recent participation in the Littoral Alliance war with China, the terrorist group attacked the Indian naval bases at Visakhapatnam and Rambilli, damaging the Indian Navy’s nuclear ballistic missile submarine Arihant.
“One of India’s publicly stated goals in this fourth war with Pakistan is to, quoting India’s defense minister, ‘remove, once and for all, the threat of Islamic terrorist attacks against India launched from inside Pakistan’s borders.’
“Our first guest this hour is Dr. Mark Ulrich, from the Council on Nuclear Weapons. He is an expert on the design and construction of atomic bombs, and has an update for us.”
Ulrich was a heavyset man, with an untidy appearance. His hair was mussed, and he needed to straighten his tie. “We’ve concluded, based on seismographic readings from several different sources, that the weapon was larger than we originally estimated, approximately one hundred and fifty kilotons, about ten times the size of the Hiroshima blast.”
“Does this increased size of the blast change the casualty estimate your group published last night?”
Ulrich riffled through the notes in front of him. “Of course, those were early estimates, but the biggest driver is still the lucky fact that the area is sparsely populated, and isolated by high valley walls, which run southeast to northwest.”
He zoomed in on the satellite image. “This small village of Nullaa is closest to the camp’s location, and has probably been annihilated, since it’s just a few kilometers from ground zero, and lies near the floor of the valley, in line with the blast effects. The uneven terrain complicates calculating the effects at any given place, but any structure within, say, three miles will be virtually destroyed, light damage and injuries could happen as far away as ten miles.”
The landscape background stopped moving, and two circles appeared on the map three and ten miles from ground zero. Ulrich pointed out almost a dozen villages and hamlets within the affected area. “There will be a lot of broken windows and minor injuries, even in the local capital, Muzaffarabad.”
He sighed. “It’s a remote area, which is good, because it means few people live there, but because it’s so remote, it will be hard to get help in to them.”
“And of course, the whole region is a war zone,” Bergen added. “Although there’s been a cease-fire since October. What about the fallout?” she asked.
The scientist sighed again. “It’s obvious from
the seismic readings that it was a ground burst, so hundreds of tons of material have been vaporized, irradiated, and lifted to high altitudes. There will be a lot of fallout. The north-northwesterly prevailing winds will carry it across the parts of Kashmir controlled by Pakistan and India, then into western China. Although Xinjiang Province in China is thinly settled, many parts of Kashmir in the path of the fallout are populated and farmed. The Himalayas will prevent the cloud from spreading south into the densely populated parts of India.
“Our meteorologist will have better estimates later today of the fallout’s path, based on the current and predicted weather over the next few days.”
He shook his head. “Our estimate of casualties from the explosion hasn’t changed significantly, because we really have very little demographic information on the region. Our guess, and it’s only that, is that several hundred, at most a thousand souls were killed by the initial blast. That includes many who will not be able to receive medical help for their injuries in time. There may be twice that many injured who will recover, but there will be tens of thousands, possibly many more, who will suffer long-term health effects from the fallout-induced radiation.”
9 March 2017
2130 Local Time
U.S. Navy Support Facility
Diego Garcia, Indian Ocean
* * *
It had been a long flight from Nebraska, but the crew barely had time to eat while the aircraft was refueled. By the time they got back to the flight line, the ground crew had the plane ready for engine start.
They’d brought over thirty people with them to Diego Garcia from their home base in the U.S., but for this flight, there’d be the bare minimum complement—only enough crew to safely operate the aircraft. That was to minimize any exposure while they flew through the fallout cloud.
There was an atmosphere of urgency, but not haste. The sooner they got to the area and collected their samples, the better. Not only were the radioactive remnants of the blast decaying and dispersing by the minute, there were a lot of people who were waiting for answers.