Red Hammer 1994

by Ratcliffe, Robert

  Suddenly an air-raid siren energized from the direction of Rosslyn, the high-pitched whine waxing and waning. Heads jerked skyward. Washington was under attack. The sound made Thomas’s skin crawl. A rumbling in the basement signaled panic as the masses understood the meaning. The marine major picked up the pace.

  Directly ahead was a flat-black helicopter. The bulky helo with large external fuel tanks was poised for takeoff. An in-flight refueling probe protruded from its nose. It was a MH-53J Pave Low III Special Operations Forces helo, which incorporated state-of-the-art avionics into a basic CH-53 airframe. The kit included terrain following/ avoidance radar, a GPS terminal, secure communications, and a sophisticated ECM suite, providing all-weather and night-flying capability. The bird itself was upgraded with titanium armor, a 20 mm mini-gun, and flares to decoy IR homing missiles. Customized for the National Command Authority, this model had a padded interior to cut down internal noise and an expanded communications suite. Its express purpose in life was to rescue the secretary of defense to fight another day.

  The air-raid siren continued to wail, joined by a companion across the Potomac. If any doubt had clouded their minds, it evaporated. They forged ahead. They were greeted by an army colonel in full combat gear, a portable radio in his hand, a determined toughness painted in the weathered lines of his face. He smelled of infantry.

  “Colonel Harcourt, Mr. Secretary, 75th Rangers.” He shouted to be heard over the racket from the helo’s engines. The colonel looked every inch the professional ranger. Lean and determined. “We’d better move, sir. I’ve been ordered to get this helo airborne in three minutes. Washington is under attack,” he said grimly. Alexander grunted a reply. He scrambled aboard, followed by the others.

  The helo’s cavernous cabin was a dramatic transition. The thick, gray padding covering the interior muffled the engine whine, while an air-conditioning system dropped the temperature by twenty degrees. The cool air felt wonderful on Thomas’s face and neck, bringing a feeling of relief. He peered down to the far bulkhead. Seated nearest the forward cabin in a jump seat was Air Force General Roderick Bartholomew, vice chairman of the Joints Chiefs. Bartholomew was the archetype bureaucrat, a master at playing the Pentagon power game. He and Thomas went way back.

  Thomas took the jump seat next to Alexander, directly across from Bartholomew. The general’s face was fixed with a hostile glare. He was bracketed by two other general officers, one army and one marine corps. An admiral sat directly aft of the cockpit bulkhead. Genser and his aide were farther aft, clumsily hooking themselves into the intercom system and staring at the seat harnesses in dismay. At the rear of the cabin were others. The doctor had taken station by a medic, the two of them talked softly as they examined radiation detectors. The cabin door slammed shut, and the helo lurched skyward. It hovered twenty or thirty feet off the ground, maneuvered to port, then slowly advanced to the west, accelerating smoothly.

  Plans called for them to fly to a rendezvous with a ground mobile command center. The port turn meant they would proceed on a westerly course, fly south of Fairfax, then follow Interstate 66 until they broke to the southwest toward Front Royal and then straight south to Bentonville. If all went well, a rendezvous with a fully functional GMCC would be waiting, protected by elite troops. It would only be a pit stop to get them back in the communications net before moving on. Movement was the key. They couldn’t stay in one location for any length of time this early in the war. The final destination would be a secure bunker, either in North Carolina or Georgia.

  Despite being strapped in and the noise, Alexander wanted to conduct business. He keyed his microphone for a comm check. One by one the passenger’s acknowledged him. The secretary of defense wanted to hit the high points. “Where do we stand on comms?”

  Bartholomew leaned forward from across the cabin. “NEACP and Looking Glass are airborne, and we have comms. STRATCOM’s airborne command posts, the airborne launch control centers, and the UHF relay aircraft all escaped. PACCS is in place. So far the satellites have survived. The Russians have detonated high-altitude bursts. HF and LF are holding up. EHF is good; SHF is marginal, UHF SATCOM, worthless.” Bartholomew thought for a moment. “If the MILSTAR and DSCS satellites go, we’re in trouble. We need the bandwidth to get the targeting updates to the forces. Can’t do that over HF or LF.”

  The general fidgeted, waiting for a signal from Alexander.

  “Electro-magnetic pulse effects have been negligible,” Bartholomew added as an afterthought. “Only the old gear has been affected.”

  Alexander was surprised that communications had held. The money spent on strategic C3 in the 80s had paid off. He paused while digesting the general’s words. Mentally he created an image of the United States, placing the players in their respective locations like so many pieces on a board game. “Where’s the Commander-in-Chief Strategic Command?” he asked.

  “CINCSTRAT evacuated Offut and is heading to his mobile command center.”

  Alexander nodded. They had to rapidly establish communications with all the mobile command centers spread the entire length and breadth of the country. Sooner or later the airplanes would have to come down. Then it would be up to the mobiles to carry on the fight for the duration—however long that was.

  Thomas leaned and poked his boss. He had overlooked the most important question. “Where’s the vice president?” he interjected. He said it to Alexander, but they all heard.

  “He’s being flown directly to the North Carolina bunker,” came the answer from somewhere in the cabin. The secretary grimaced. “Who the hell made that decision?”

  “He did, sir,” answered Bartholomew. “His staff felt it was too risky to bring NEACP down.”

  Alexander showed a flash of anger. “Those idiots. All the fixed sites will be hit. STRATCOM HQ in Omaha, the CSOC at Falcon, NORAD, the ANMCC at Fort Ritchie, Mount Weather, they’re all gone. The vice president should be airborne with a battle staff, ready to be sworn in.”

  The secretary stewed. “All right,” he said, too fatigued to remain angry. “How about Indications and Warnings?”

  Bartholomew signaled the army major general on his left.

  “Ground based I and W is getting shot to hell, Mr. Secretary, just like the fixed comm sites. The early warning radars are gone, including the over-the-horizon backscatter radars. That means we can’t detect cruise missiles except with AWACS aircraft. The Defense Support Program satellites are still operational, so we can detect ballistic-missile launches, but we can’t get any worthwhile tracking data. We don’t know where the weapons are headed anymore. The nuclear detonation sensors on the Global Positioning System birds are working, so we’re getting damage reports.”

  “What are the casualty numbers?” interrupted Genser. “How bad is it?”

  The general was unsettled by the question.

  “We don’t have time for that,” said Alexander. He stared hard at the secretary of state to shut him up. “What about the other satellites, General?” he asked, glancing away.

  Genser had been treated badly and knew it. He became flushed; the anger exploded as his face tightened. “You’re all insane. We should be talking to the Russians,” he shouted. “Not plotting to bounce the rubble.”

  Alexander accepted the outburst calmly. He replied, choosing his words carefully. “This has a long way to go. We’d be wasting our time trying to negotiate a cease-fire until we’ve cut into the Russians’ strategic reserve.”

  Genser glared. The general now answered.

  “It’s too soon to give you a complete answer, Mr. Secretary. We detected a direct ascent ASAT launched against one of our photo recon birds, but it missed. We’ll have to wait and see if they fire at others when they pass over Russian territory. The coorbital ASATs they launched will take a few orbits to position themselves before an attack.”

  Thomas felt an urge to focus with time critical. “The key,” he interjected, “is whether they try to take out our geosynchronous early warnin
g, comm, and ELINT satellites. And the GPS constellation. Direct ascent ASATs take six to eight hours to reach geo, and with our I and W shot, we may not even know we’re under attack. I recommended defensive maneuvers while we still can.”

  Bartholomew didn’t appreciate the tutorial. “I’d save the onboard fuel,” he countered, “until we’re certain. We don’t know they can attack satellites at geo. Maneuvering the satellites could disrupt comms.”

  “We can’t assume they’re safe,” Thomas countered.

  The vice admiral nodded approvingly. So did the marine to Bartholomew’s left. “General Thomas is right,” said Alexander. “Send the order. And include the recon birds; raise their altitude, even if we lose ’em for a time.” Bartholomew freed himself and moved aft, jerking one of the handsets from its bracket.

  Alexander sat massaging his temples, trying to ward off one of his occasional migraines. This was not the time. His thoughts converged to one irrefutable fact. The survival of the United States hung on the momentous air battle shaping up over the Arctic. The war’s outcome would be settled over a desolate frozen wasteland, where magnetic anomalies distorted radar and communications, and atmospherics impaired visual acuity. It was up to the AWACS, the interceptors, and the bombers now.

  CHAPTER 21

  The lone nuclear bomb that incinerated the Pentagon struck at 7:52 p.m. The 500-kiloton reentry vehicle was hurled effortlessly over seven thousand nautical miles by an SS-25 ICBM. The mobile SS-25, a thorn in the side of American arms-control negotiators for a decade, had proven to be a masterstroke by the old Strategic Rocket Forces. Initially shunned, the old men in Moscow had finally recognized a trump card.

  The portable missile was renowned for its accuracy, responsiveness, and survivability. Unlike its big brother, the ten-warhead, rail mobile SS-24, the SS-25 was ideal for ad-hoc targeting against enemy targets. No need to waste excess warheads on worthless piles of rubble. The SS-25 was a sharp surgical knife, perfect for limiting collateral damage, rather than the traditional multimegaton nuclear bludgeons the Russians had previously favored for decades. These mobile missiles gave the US Strategic Command fits. It was like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. In this case, the haystack was millions of square miles of rugged Russian territory.

  The five-foot-tall reentry vehicle started its journey perched atop an SS-25, protected from the harsh elements and the hazards of flight by a filament-wound fiberglass nosecone. Its booster had been jettisoned from its canister, solid rocket motors propelling the sleek three-stage missile skyward. Accelerating hard by the second, it became a brilliant fireball trailing a slender tail of flame, illuminating the still night sky over Izhevsk. The missile discarded spent booster casings and rocket motors as each successive stage consumed its solid rocket fuel, shedding excess weight and rapidly gaining speed and altitude. At final burnout, well above the atmosphere, with the nosecone now discarded, the remaining hardware reached required suborbital velocity of over 16,000 feet per second. It then entered a ballistic trajectory, relatively free of atmospheric drag. At this point, the post-boost vehicle or bus commanded by the guidance computer gyrated through a series of precise thruster maneuvers to deploy the conical reentry vehicle. Spewed in tandem were heavy and light decoys and pounds of aluminum chaff to confuse detection and tracking radars and infrared sensors. By midtrajectory, a widely dispersed cloud of objects sped through space in lockstep, inexorably toward the target coordinates. Dropping from the near vacuum of space over North America, the light chaff, debris, and decoys were stripped away, disintegrating in the dense air of the upper atmosphere, leaving the red-hot reentry vehicle or RV to deliver its deadly nuclear cargo.

  This particular SS-25 warhead detonated a few feet above the top of the Pentagon Metro station, more than seven hundred feet southeast from its designated ground zero or DGZ, the center of the Pentagon courtyard. Within a millisecond, the enormous release of fusion energy vaporized hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of dirt and rock and consumed the massive superstructure of the Pentagon as if it were swallowed whole. The blinding, incandescent fireball, heated to millions of degrees by the release of deadly X-rays, transformed the pinkish glow on the horizon into blazing daylight for tens of miles in all directions. The clear night sky enhanced the devastating thermal radiation effects, extending their lethal range far beyond that of hazy or overcast skies. Far below ground, the manned command center sagged and groaned like a wounded beast under the tremendous overpressure. The transmitted shock wave ruptured the main support walls, crushing and burying hundreds on duty under tons of cement slabs and debris. Vital communication links worldwide suddenly went dead, signaling the instantaneous evaporation of the NMCC, and with it, the president of the United States.

  The split-second pause was broken by a loud cracking noise heard for tens of miles as the vicious blast wave rolled smoothly outward like a stone thrown in a still pond, traveling at the speed of sound. After the initial scorching flush of ultraviolet rays in the first tenth of a second, the nuclear cloud caught its breath then belched forth the full fury of its thermal energy in the visible and infrared wavelengths in a second horrific thermal pulse lasting several se-conds. Combustible material out to almost two miles was instantly incinerated, long before the arrival of the blast wave or the sound of the detonation. The fireball jerked violently upward, sucking up the weapon debris and dirt, rising at hundreds of feet per second. A close observer would swear the earth was vomiting its molten core. Cooling rapidly, it formed an expanding, reddish-brown nuclear cloud of vaporized material and water vapor, later to be dumped as lethal fallout far downwind from the explosion.

  The monstrous detonation dug a crater over 180 feet deep and nearly 750 feet across. It was rimmed with a neat, concentric bank of pulverized ejecta that extended the total disfigurement of the earth to a third of a mile in diameter. The surrounding landscape out to three-quarters of a mile from ground zero was mangled, looking like the surface of the moon.

  At one point eight seconds, the blast wave, now traveling at over seven hundred miles per hour, had surged to one mile, exerting twenty pounds per square inch of overpressure and packing unbelievable 490 mile per hour winds. Only 60 percent of the thermal energy had been deposited in those brief two seconds, but any exposed, living organism was cremated by over two hundred calories per centimeter squared, bursting into flames like dry wood long before they would be swept away by the rushing winds. To the east, the Twin Bridges Marriot was obliterated, while to the south the invisible tidal wave of death devastated the Crystal City complex, leaving only twisted steel skeletons amid the flames, smoke, dust, and flying debris. Not a living soul was left.

  The shock front rushed inexorably onward, unstoppable by any man-made object. At three seconds, it skimmed over the still surface of the Potomac, boiling the waters, collapsing the near ends of the numerous bridges to the east and twisting the rest into unrecognizable forms. Its ferocity roiled the surface of the Tidal Basin, only superficially scarring the smooth, rounded, Jefferson Memorial, while the boxy Lincoln Memorial to the northeast lay decapitated. To the southeast, the busy Washington national airport was literally blown skyward by hurricane winds with parked airliners popping like firecrackers from detonating fuel, shredded into kindling.

  The first prominent federal office buildings, the Department of State, the Federal Reserve, the Bureau of Engraving, survived the vicious onslaught. Their massive granite block construction withstood the attack of eight psi overpressure and 240 mile per hour winds, standing scarred by thermal energy and debris. Their windows had all been blown out, with all interior walls and furnishings torn to pieces and in flames.

  At six point five seconds, the deadly destruction extended past two miles. The deluge slackened, unleashing its energy over greater and greater surface areas for each linear increment of travel. Overpressure was a mere five psi, enough to trash residences and light commercial structures and shatter windows and blow unfortunate inhabitants out of tal
l commercial buildings. Those in the open would become airborne at over thirty feet per second, thrown about like rag dolls, battered and broken. Death would come from impact or by flying debris, if they hadn’t been hideously burned by over 70 kilocalories per square centimeter. Surviving structures provided protection from the ravages of thermal effects, which need uninterrupted line-of-sight to kill. This only meant fewer prompt casualties, but more lingering deaths. The benefit of a ground burst with a reduced destructive radius was offset by the hellish fallout which would curse downwind survivors for weeks.

  The shock front traversed the Ellipse and visited the White House, leaving a scene reminiscent from storms, which occasionally pounded the East Coast. Trees were ripped out by their roots, charred, denuded of leaves. Debris covered the grounds, now brown and gray in the rapidly fading light. The majestic house was scorched, pitted and marred, with a few windows curiously intact. It stood defiantly amid smoldering ruin. Vehicles were thrown about on the surrounding streets, some protruded bizarrely from adjacent buildings.

  By the time the blast wave reached the Capitol at ten seconds, its wrath had mostly been spent. Overpressure had dropped to less than three psi, winds to one hundred miles per hour. At this range only hapless observers caught in the open or near windows were victims, knocked off their feet, struck by flying glass or scraps of wood, or their exposed skin charred and blistered by twenty kilocalories per square centimeter, twice the amount required to precipitate third-degree burns. Those huddled indoors were temporarily safe, unless victims of the fires that quickly spread from ruptured gas mains. Fuel loading precluded a firestorm or conflagration, as long as the fires could eventually be brought under control. Time would tell.

  In the air, the dynamic pressure coupled with two to three psi overpressure was sufficient to swat circling aircraft from the skies, like so many irritating flies. Complete immunity from the death and destruction wouldn’t come until at least four to five miles, where both blast effects were negligible, and the thermal effects were tolerable.