by James Rosone
“General, those missiles appear to be tracking toward Texas, Louisiana, and Florida,” an Air Force major called out.
Barrett sat back down, whispering to herself, “They’re going for our air bases.”
“What!” screamed the President from Air Force One.
In that moment, Barrett realized everyone on the conference call had heard the interactions in the command center. She turned to face President Alton. “Sir, I believe this is a preemptive attack on our fighter and bomber bases across the southeast. The only viable military target we have in Louisiana is Barksdale Air Force Base. It’s a B-52 base and the head of the Air Force Global Strike Command. I’ll bet the missile heading toward Texas will eventually track toward Dyess Air Force Base, a B-1B base. Both Florida and Georgia have several fighter bases and command-and-control facilities as well.”
The President shouted some obscenities before demanding to know what they should do next.
The National Security Advisor, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the Pentagon watch officer were all advising Alton to alert those bases and see if they could get any of their bombers under shelter or in the air before the cruise missiles hit.
“General Barrett,” the President finally said over the shouts of advice and information being thrown at him. “Move us from DEFCON 4 to DEFCON 2. Order our remaining bombers to get airborne with nuclear weapons, and order our silos to begin spinning themselves up for possible launch orders. If any of those missiles are nuclear, we must be ready to respond in kind. In the meantime, do we have the exact location where those Chinese missiles originated from?”
Turning to look back at the large monitor on the wall, General Barrett saw a couple dozen tracks originating from a small group of Chinese warships northwest of Cuba in the Gulf and a few locations on Cuba proper. She relayed the coordinates to the President and the Pentagon.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs advised, “Mr. President, I recommend we order our naval forces in the Gulf to engage and sink those Chinese warships before they can fire additional missiles. I also recommend we send some Tomahawks at those ground base systems on Cuba that fired on us. For all we know, they could be reloading those launch vehicles to hit us with a second wave of missiles.”
President Alton sat back in his chair for a moment, a conflicted look on his face.
“Damn it! They struck first! We need to hit them back! What’s there to think about?” shouted the President’s Chief of Staff angrily.
General Barrett cleared her throat as she pulled a phone receiver down to her shoulder. “Excuse me, Mr. President. I’m on the phone with the CO of the USS Hue City, the task force command ship in the Gulf. The CO is telling me their AEGIS systems aren’t tracking any missiles heading toward the US from those Chinese vessels or Cuba.”
“That can’t be possible,” interjected General Pike at the Pentagon. “I’m looking at the missile tracks from the various early-warning systems and our satellites. Their AEGIS must have a gremlin or malfunction.”
No one said anything for a moment as they tried to figure out what this meant. General Barrett raised the receiver to her ear, asking them to run a diagnostic on their equipment.
The President’s Chief of Staff spoke loudly to cut through some of the chatter. “General Barrett, if the Hue City runs a diagnostic on their system, how long will that take, and how close will those missiles be to their targets?”
She relayed his question to the captain of the ship. “Sir, it’ll take them close to five minutes to run a full diagnostic. As to when will those missiles impact? In two minutes, they’ll be outside of Hue City’s ability to interdict. But, sir, it’s not just their ship—the other two Arleigh Burkes with them aren’t tracking any missiles either. It would appear it’s only our ground-based radar and satellites tracking them.”
“None of this makes sense. Why would the Chinese launch a preemptive attack on us like this? What do they have to gain from it?” the President said aloud to no one in particular.
“Mr. President, we don’t have time to figure out why they would launch an attack at us. In less than two minutes, those missiles will be out of range for our ships to engage. We need to start shooting them down now,” the Chief of Staff said urgently.
More loud chatter broke out, both on Air Force One with the President and the advisors with him and among the people at the Pentagon and NORAD. Everyone was trying to voice their opinions on what President Alton should do next.
“Enough! I need a minute to think!” barked Alton.
“We have less than sixty seconds to engage those missiles or they’re gone!” one of the officers said forcefully from the Pentagon feed.
The President scrunched his eyebrows together in anger and frustration. He clearly wanted more time to think this problem through, but there wasn’t any more time left.
President Alton finally looked up at the NORAD screen. “General Barrett…order the Hue City to engage those missiles.”
General Barrett lifted the receiver to her ear and relayed the order. The airborne early-warning and control or AWACS plane on station over the Gulf started relaying the satellite feed and early-warning radar feeds they were getting from NORAD to the naval ships. Now they were seeing what the President and his advisors saw.
“Mr. President, I recommend we launch a counterattack. Take those enemy ships out and hit those launchers before they can either reload them or relocate them to fire more missiles,” Admiral Thiel said with perhaps a bit more forcefulness than he should have.
President Alton slumped in his chair, looking defeated by the situation. He nodded in approval after a few seconds. “Fine. Take them out. Make sure they can’t hit us any further.”
Admiral Thiel then turned to look at Barrett. “Order the Hue City and the Burkes with her to engage and sink those Chinese warships. They’re also to engage those ground launcher sites with their Tomahawks immediately.”
General Barrett took a deep breath in and held it for a moment, almost not comprehending the orders from the President. They were officially attacking the military forces of the People’s Republic of China.
Chapter Two
Task Force Dupre
Gulf of Mexico
USS Hue City
“Sir, I say again, USS Barry Actual requests—”
“I heard you, damn it. Very well,” Commander Michael Dupre snapped, more harshly than he’d intended to. The junior officer of the deck was just doing his job. Standing from his chair, he took the handset from the JOD.
“Barry, Hue City Actual, send it.”
In the two weeks since the aptly named Task Force Dupre had been thrown together, he had tried to express to the captains of the more modern Arleigh Burke destroyers that when it was ship-to-ship comms, he wanted to forgo typical Navy formality. The fact that they ignored him validated his suspicion that they didn’t respect the Hue City.
He couldn’t blame them. Hue City was old, and as more than one junior sailor said in hushed tones, she was haunted. Of course, he didn’t believe that—despite his superstitious upbringing in Louisiana. The Navy desperately needed to replace the Hue City and all her sister Ticonderoga cruisers, but in true Navy fashion, the brass had wasted two decades on pipe dream “Charlie Foxtrots” like the Zumwalt class.
Shaking the frustration from his head, he focused on what Commander Ziegler of the Barry was droning on about.
“Hue City, Barry. We have confirmation of four Type 52D Luyang III–class destroyers north by northwest of Cayo de Buenavista, Cuba.”
“Barry, Hue City. Very well,” Dupre acknowledged.
“Helm, plot your course to intercept, all ahead full.”
“Plot my course to intercept. All ahead full, aye, sir.”
Dupre had received orders to chop his task force from the Carrier Strike Group Twelve, set sail at best speed into the Gulf of Mexico and close with any Chinese warships they found. They were now less than two hundred nautical miles from the lead Chinese
destroyer.
In the briefing with the admiral prior to his departure, it had sounded like unicorns and rainbows to lead his own task force. But the Hue City was the weak link in the task force, and Dupre knew it. He could barely keep pace with the newer and faster Arleigh Burkes. The captains of the USS Barry and Laboon were rising stars in the destroyer community. At one point he had been a rising star in the Arleigh Burke world. Then his mouth and inability to suffer fools had seen him cast off to the world of aging and ignored cruisers. This command was like last year’s Christmas present. The Navy in its infinite wisdom had yet again opted for younger and faster.
I should have joined the Coast Guard, thought Dupre.
For all his griping, Dupre actually loved this old “Tico.” She was old and beat up, but she was like a comfortable pair of sneakers. He knew in his bones that, if push came to shove, this old girl could fight. Driving this fact home was Lieutenant Clarissa Price, in his opinion the best tactical operations officer in this or any navy.
She was sharp, driven, and capable of multitasking on a level that made his head spin. During war game scenarios, she and her watch could assess and prioritize targets almost as fast as the ship’s computer. She was his ace in the hole, and the reason the Hue City had gotten this assignment. For all intents and purposes, the Gulf of Mexico belonged to Task Force Dupre.
*******
Lieutenant Clarissa Price knew she was a bit of a taskmaster. She ran the combat information center or CIC hard. She was constantly running her personnel through their paces. She ran scenarios, drills, and system checks throughout every watch. If each watch didn’t meet her time expectations, there would be hell to pay.
From the moment she had set foot aboard the Hue City, she’d fallen in love with it. A previous chief petty officer or CPO who’d worked for her in the CIC had told her, “Where there’s a will, you’ll find the Hue.” That had stuck with her, and no matter what, she wouldn’t let her division or her ship down. Commander Dupre was another matter. She found the man insufferable. She’d heard him called “The Crazy Cajun” before she’d reported for duty aboard the Hue City.
When she’d reported in, she had done so in proper naval fashion, wearing a crisp uniform, with orders in hand. She’d stood at rapt attention and presented herself. He’d had his feet on the desk, listening to country music. When she’d seen him spit in a Gatorade bottle, the disgust on her face had been obvious to Dupre, which had made him laugh.
He’d glanced at her Annapolis ring and asked her what year she’d graduated. The sudden change in topic had thrown her off. That was Commander Dupre in a nutshell—he always kept you on your toes. When she thought she had a handle on the man, he threw a curveball at her, or went astern full and kept changing rudder direction.
In the two years she’d worked for him, she had never been able to get a read on the man. It infuriated her to no end. The only time she had even come close to getting to know the man was at a port call in Singapore. He’d invited some of the junior officers to the Goodluck Beer House on Haji Lane. Most had declined as they didn’t want to get drunk in front of the boss. She’d seen it as a challenge and charged in headfirst. After a couple of hours, it was just the two of them. She found his charm to be unnerving; he was a completely different man off the ship.
It had absolutely floored her when he’d told her she was one of the best officers he ever served with. At first, she’d thought he was making a pass at her, which wasn’t uncommon for an attractive woman in the Navy. No matter how many sexual harassment and rape prevention PowerPoint briefings they sat through, men were still men. She’d hardened herself to it, to the point of being numb.
When she’d realized he was being sincere, she’d blushed, cursing herself for again being caught on her heels by this man. Since that night nearly a year ago, she had considered him a friend and mentor, but he still annoyed her.
She stood from her station and walked around the CIC to make sure the sailors of her watch were all focused. God help the sailor who nodded off at their station.
Looking at the various monitors and the big board in the CIC, she saw something odd. The Electronic Warfare Control and the Tactical Information Coordinator flickered for a few seconds. She looked at every screen she could see, and all seemed to have the same glitch.
Lieutenant Price called out, “Attention in the CIC. All stations perform immediate diagnostic.”
As the sailors responded to the new orders, she went to the wall and picked up the phone.
“Captain, TAO,” said his Tactical Action Officer.
“TAO, Captain. Send it.”
“Captain, CIC reports a system glitch. All our screens were garbled for approximately seven seconds. I ordered a diagnostics to be run on all stations.”
“TAO, Captain, very well.”
*******
Commander Dupre placed the phone back in its cradle as he digested what his TAO had just told him. Pausing for a moment, he picked up another phone for the ship-to-ship communication.
“Barry, Laboon, Hue City Actual.”
Both ships responded. On a hunch, he asked if they’d experienced any system glitches. Both ships reported they had, at precisely the same time as the Hue City.
“Barry, Laboon, very well. Run your diagnostics and report back your findings.”
He hung up the phone and sat back in his chair. His initial reaction was to ignore it. After all, his ship was over twenty years old. But the Flight III Arleigh Burkes weren’t, and for all the ships to experience the glitch simultaneously was damned odd. He couldn’t write this off to random chance.
Dupre picked up the phone again and instructed his communications officer or COMMO to send the information to Fleet HQ.
*******
Cape Cod Air Force Station
6th Space Warning Squadron
Joint Base Cape Cod
Major Mario Espinosa had been on shift for two hours. He paced around the operations center, trying to wake up. The first hours on shift were the worst. He glanced at the two other airmen on watch with him. They were typical geeks. Both wore glasses and had complexions that screamed, “My girlfriend lives in Canada; you wouldn’t know her.”
They were also incredibly smart, even brilliant at their jobs. But when it came to a twelve-hour shift looking at objects in synchronous and geosynchronous orbit, conversations with them were as exciting as watching paint dry.
He cursed his luck that he couldn’t get a shift with First Lieutenant Childs. He cursed the fact that he couldn’t muster the guts to even talk to her. Brushing that aside, he glanced up at the two one-hundred-inch displays at the front of the room, then down at his watch.
“Hey, guys, the International Space Station is about to pass overhead again.”
It had become a running joke on their watch that when the ISS passed over them, they’d recite the intro monologue to Star Trek. He had known Staff Sergeant Tate was the bigger nerd of the two the first time they’d done it, when Tate had played the soundtrack to the original series from his Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network or NIPRNet workstation. The icon representing the ISS blinked on screen and the two younger airmen stood as Tate pressed play. In unison, they all started, “Space: the final frontier. These are the vo—”
At that moment, every screen in the room flickered for a few seconds. The three immediately forgot about Star Trek.
“What the hell was that?” Tate asked.
“Beats me, is your system rebooting?” inquired Technical Sergeant Bishop as he opened his systems manual to begin the functions check process.
Major Espinosa was on the phone, checking with his counterpart at Beale Air Force Base in California before calling Site 6 down at Eglin.
Responding to a question from Beale, Espinosa said over the secured hand receiver, “Yes, our systems flickered. All of them. I don’t want to get all geeked out, but every system in the room did.”
Espinosa held up his hand to quiet Tate and Bish
op, who were starting to talk a bit too loud. The two settled down and looked at him while he finished the call.
“OK, you two run a full system diagnostic. Beale reported the same glitch. I’m calling Eglin next and then I’ll check in with NORTHCOM. I’ll call the boss and let her know.”
Espinosa learned Eglin had the same problem, which meant this wasn’t a random glitch. No way three of their sites would be reporting the same system issues at the same time. Reaching for the phone that would connect him with NORTHCOM, he pressed the speed dial to reach Lieutenant Colonel Patricia Benson, his boss, when the alarms wailed.
The large wall screens that displayed a view of the world around the United States started blinking in a couple of different areas in the direction of the Caribbean. This signaled missile launch detection warnings.
Espinosa dropped the phone, oblivious to the fact that Lieutenant Colonel Benson had picked up on the other end.
“What the hell?” he demanded, looking at Bishop.
“Sir, multiple launches detected!”
“How many? From where?” Espinosa could feel himself losing his bearings as his body dumped adrenaline. He stopped long enough to take a deep breath to regain control.
“Sir, the missiles appear to be sea-launched, roughly fifteen miles north-northwest of Cuba.”
Before Espinosa could reply, Tate interrupted, “Sir, I’ve got multiple new missile launches originating from Cuba.”
“Designate those tracks and alert NORAD!”
Espinosa picked up the phone from the floor and updated his boss. She said she was alerting the other operators on standby to head into the office to assist them and that she’d be over there in a few minutes to help him as well.
Just as he hung up the phone, every phone in the watch center started ringing. Each time he answered, there was an immediate demand for information and then confirmation that this was real. Every US early-warning and detection system had reported the same tracks, to include their satellites. The number of missiles heading toward the US had increased rapidly until it leveled off at two hundred.