Red Hammer 1994

by Ratcliffe, Robert

  The GMCC has been staged out of Harrisonburg, north of town, in an industrial building. The multiservice peacetime garrison had been augmented by military forces from around greater the DC area and Maryland and Virginia suburbs. That included duty personnel from the NSA at Fort Meade and the CIA at Langley. The DIA has provided analysts and linguists. It was an impressive cast.

  The mobilization plan was sound for a deliberate dispersal, but not for this chaos. The troops and techs pulled together heroically to get underway, driving to the primary location and beginning the setup. It was like watching a circus troupe go through the motions—fast and efficient.

  After the trip down the Shenandoah, the helo banked right and followed US 33 toward the West Virginia line. Well before the next mountain range, they dropped from the sky near what looked like a small town. When the wheels touched, it was a repeat of the previous landing. Unload, march single file, meet security, get oriented. They were better at it this time.

  Thomas noticed nothing until he could make out an irregularly shaped mound looming in front of the far tree line. It wasn’t until they were twenty yards away that he saw a canopy of interwoven camouflage netting supported by a forest of ten-foot fiberglass poles. Expertly concealed was a stable of military trucks and commercial tractor trailers that comprised the NCA’s Ground Mobile Command Center, an invention of the late 1980s to counter Russian ICBM accuracy and still kept on alert. The emergency compound was difficult to identify from the ground and most likely impossible to spot from the air. A near acre of the multicolored netting absorbed probing radar energy and suppressed the infrared signature of the diesel generators chugging in the night. Upon closer inspection, the plastic canopy bristled with antennas protruding from communications vans tucked below. Posted around the perimeter were pockets of Harcourt’s Rangers, equipped with night-vision goggles that made them look like aliens. Dug deeply into the ground were army troops, with a full complement of crew-served weapons. The Army Rangers and supporting soldiers were prepared for the worst.

  Alexander’s entourage was greeted by an army brigadier with a rifle slung over his shoulder.

  “General Ogden, Mr. Secretary,” he shouted over the loud chugging of a nearby electrical generator. “STRATCOM liaison. First order of business is a quick change. Please follow me, sir.”

  Alexander nodded, vaguely familiar with the drill. A select few administration officials had been thoroughly briefed on the center’s capabilities, but it had been a long time ago. Regularly scheduled crisis-management drills had avoided even a hint of the traveling command post, instead assigning congressman and senior officials to either Mount Weather or Fort Ritchie for their mandatory training.

  The others followed Alexander to a nearby commercial tractor trailer in the guise of an eastern seaboard shipping company. The pinstriped silver and blue van was serviced by a broad ramp leading to a door within a door in the rear. Thomas trudged up the steep metal plank in the number-two position and ducked through the shipboard-like hatch. The dull metal interior was bathed in the soft glow of red fluorescents; a low electrical hum was the only noise detectable. A group of nervous soldiers stood by piles of clothing and gear.

  “Please listen up, gentlemen,” instructed Ogden, business-like in a flak vest and helmet. His M-16 had been handed off to an aide. “Remove all your clothing, and put on fatigues. We don’t want anyone standing out. One of the soldiers will help you in getting the right sizes.”

  Thomas had found the slat bench next to Alexander, first pulling off his shoes and socks then moving on to shirt and pants, peeling off the sweat-soaked clothing. Alexander’s head was down, avoiding eye contact with his bench mate. The rush of cool air on Thomas’s skin felt magnificent. He silently begged to sit for just a moment, a respite from reality. The civilians hesitated, awkward at disrobing in the truck. They seemed to be waiting for guidance.

  “Looks like a large for you, sir,” said a corporal. Thomas nodded in the affirmative. “Eleven-and-a-half boot,” he added. He pulled on the trousers, then the socks. The corporal came back with the boots and a properly starched cap. The rest went on quickly, a brown T-shirt, a belt with brass buckle, and a loose-fitting top. When Thomas stood to his full height, he felt the tug of the freshly pressed cammies. Gone was the uniform of a desk-bound officer. It all felt proper. The corporal walked over with an olive-drab webbed belt and a holstered Beretta. Somehow he knew Thomas wanted a weapon.

  Thomas cinched the belt against his flat stomach. He sensed his role. The last few years had unwittingly prepared him for this trial, the constant bombardment of strategic issues, arm wrestling the power players. He had to focus on the task at hand, guiding Alexander as best he could. His family? His heart had broken hours ago. His personal concerns had to be put on hold till another day.

  The group sat quietly, hunched over, their forearms on their thighs, collectively distraught and emotionally drained. When the last had finished dressing, Ogden addressed Alexander, his hands folded in his lap. Like the other civilians, Alexander felt awkward in the military garb, tugging at the seams, moving in jerky motions and resisting the stiff fabric. They had irretrievably entered the fighting man’s world.

  “Mr. Secretary, we have tents for you and Secretary Genser. The others will have to make do. Both the conference van and the command-and-control van are fully operational.”

  Alexander stood wearily. He was in charge. The usual sharpness to his words was gone.

  “General Bartholomew, I want a status of comms with NEACP and Looking Glass, and anyone else important. General Thomas, I want you and General Ogden to remain. We’ll convene in the conference van in thirty minutes. Get something to eat.”

  The players quietly filed out the door, ducking and disappearing into the night. Alexander addressed Thomas personally for the first time since they left the Pentagon. His sad brown eyes told the story. The usual spark and quick intelligence were gone, replaced by an extreme weariness.

  “Bob, I want an accurate estimate of damage. Get me the status of our surviving forces, same for the Russians. Get the best picture you can.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Secretary.”

  Alexander gently touched Thomas’s arm before he could leave. “Bob, I’m counting on you.” Thomas stopped dead in his tracks and sighed. His eyes met Alexander’s. “You don’t have to worry, Mr. Secretary.” He turned and left.

  Alexander refreshed himself with a deliberate, deep breath. “Any plans for relocation, General Ogden?”

  “We’ll remain here for the time being, sir, then evaluate the situation in the morning. This is one of five surveyed sites within eighty miles, so we have options. Fallout is a factor. With the silo fields hit, we’ve got up to thirty hours, maybe more, depending on the winds. If we’re lucky, the majority of the fallout will go due east, missing Virginia. The winds could shift, though. If it’s bad, we’ll have to helo you out. Maybe get you airborne.”

  Alexander listened intently.

  “No aircraft,” he said. “The Russians will be throwing everything they have at the airborne command posts once they land to refuel and re-crew. They’ll have agents covering every field in the country and an ICBM RV on top in forty minutes. That’s if they don’t shoot them down first.” The life expectancy of NEACP and the other key aircraft was thought to be twenty-four to forty-eight hours at best. If they got the SIOP off, they had done their job.

  His energy fading, Alexander sat down heavily. “How secure are these sites?”

  “Elements of the Rangers and the 82nd Airborne are scouting the area, looking for agents and any saboteurs. But there’s no guarantee, sir; that’s why we’ll keep on the move.”

  “The bunkers?” prompted Alexander.

  “If they’re not hit over the next two days, they’re probably OK. We believe the Russians don’t know about either site, North Carolina or Georgia. If forced to, we’ll get you out of ICBM and bomber range for the long haul.”

  Alexander looked puzzled. �
��You mean out of CONUS?”

  “If need be, sir. The sites will be ready.” There were things even the secretary of defense didn’t know. Alexander let out a long sigh and slapped his hands on his thighs. “Very well, show me to my tent.”

  Thomas stood at the entrance to the command-and-control trailer. Troopers checked his identification. The trailer was marked with the logo of a grocery chain, and except for the recessed topside compartments housing small EHF satellite dishes, even a trained observer would have difficulty distinguishing it from any other eighteen-wheeler cruising the nation’s highways. The inconspicuous entrance was through a small hatch behind the tractor’s sleeper cab. Thomas hoisted himself to the tractor then gripped the handrail and swung his body through the hatch.

  His eyes adjusted slowly to the soft white glow. The hum of cooling fans and air-conditioning blowers greeted him. An officer stepped over and reported with a salute. Thomas followed through a cramped passageway between floor-to-ceiling racks of communications equipment, computer CPUs, and multiterabyte disk drives. At the trailer’s rear was a horseshoe-shaped cluster of powerful engineering workstations networked to a database server. Three operators glanced up then went back about their business.

  “You can sit there, General.” The army captain pointed toward a vacant seat. His guide knelt unobtrusively, working the mouse with his free hand. He brought up a detailed globe, which hung effortlessly in computer-generated black space. A click of the mouse energized ring after ring of brightly colored satellite tracks circling the globe; the platforms themselves appeared as detailed icons in the same color scheme. The mini-satellites inched along the orbital tracks while the earth rotated imperceptibly beneath. A second click activated day/night shading.

  “General Ogden said you want a detailed rundown, sir.” Thomas nodded. The officer used the mouse to rapidly rotate the globe, positioning the United States front and center. A double click zoomed until the continental United States filled the ample screen. He froze the image then popped open a series of menus to query the underlying database. He cocked his head up at Thomas, waiting for directions. Thomas paused to soak up the new view of the world that had unfolded before his eyes.

  “Can you expand the view to include Canada and Alaska?”

  The officer obliged with an effortless swirl of the mouse. The forty-eight states shrunk to accommodate the expanded landmass. “How’s that, sir?”

  “Fine. Start with CONUS-based forces pre-attack.”

  The officer triggered hundreds of small icons, which bloomed in bright colors across the map. Bombers sortied or on the ground, ICBMs, submarines in port or near the coast, the entire US arsenal sprang to life in the wink of an eye.

  “Overlay C3,” added Thomas.

  The previous symbols were joined by almost one hundred others, which marked fixed communications, radar, and satellite control sites and the multitude of command centers, including the dozen or more aircraft.

  Thomas pointed to a menu selection permitting a historical replay. “Run the attack at sixty-times normal.” he said, tapping the screen. The first hour of the attack would be reduced to less than sixty seconds. An additional minute would capture the devastating Russian second wave.

  In the first twenty seconds, the only movement was bombers and tankers scrambling for their lives. Suddenly red symbols appeared, blotting out targets on the East Coast. Next, the US ICBMs were fired in salvoes from STRATCOM bases. They were countered by hundreds of red icons, which methodically hammered targets across the breadth of the country, moving north to south.

  Thomas was stunned by the sheer power of the onslaught. Nearly fifteen hundred weapons had detonated with unimaginable ferocity, yet this was still less than half of the Russians’ arsenal, one-tenth of the peak in the mid 1980s.

  Thomas sagged backward in the seat, closing his eyes. His country couldn’t stand any more.

  “General?” The young officer had replayed the horror show enough times to be numb.

  “Too fast. Slow it down.” The captain obliged. The second go-around left Thomas with a seed of hope. So far only military targets had been hit. Industrial complexes had been spared, as had cities. Collateral damage appeared tolerable. Thomas frowned. The nasty word “relative” had crept into his thought processes, a cold-hearted frame of reference for evaluating human misery.

  “Show me Russia.” The globe spun, and the captain clicked the mouse.

  Now the Russians were the recipients, pounded with over one thousand US warheads. But the sheer vastness of the former Soviet Union seemed to swallow up the weapons with little discernible effect. Thomas intuitively knew what damage had been done, but the map did show the Russians with impressive numbers of ICBMs in reserve and surviving missile submarines at sea. A sick feeling swept through Thomas. In four minutes, he had seen everything meaningful, all the pie-ces on the board, in space, in the air, on land, and under the sea. The United States was locked in a deadly stalemate, one that threatened to escalate into an unparalleled disaster for the country and the planet.

  Alexander leaned over the soldier feverishly tuning the WSC-10 satellite transceiver. The SHF satellite link had collapsed in a heap of static. They struggled to restore comms with NEACP and STRATCOM. Various combinations of antennas, couplers, and crypto devices had failed miserably. A sudden amber synch light on the shoebox-sized transceiver signaled success.

  “I’ve got STRATCOM’s mobile headquarters,” cried the youthful comm operator as the first decoded characters clattered across the adjacent daisy-wheel printer. “It’s their call sign; I’m certain, sir.”

  “Send them the frequencies for secure voice,” prompted Alexander, handing the operator a message. “Keep trying NEACP.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Alexander straightened. “General Bartholomew, if we get NEACP, arrange a conference call.” The heavyset vice chairman acknowledged his request. Alexander signaled Thomas to follow him out into the night.

  Thomas stepped from the cramped trailer out into the sticky evening air. Deep breaths momentarily relaxed his tight muscles. The shredded plastic canopy hanging above intensified the humidity. Alexander stood motionless a few feet from Thomas and peered off into the distance.

  “Now what am I supposed to do?” he complained bitterly, his hands resting on his hips. He answered himself before Thomas could. “We’ve got to get the chain of command sorted out.”

  Thomas lowered his head and stared at the black ground under foot. Interleaving the National Command Authority’s hierarchy with presidential succession was a recipe for disaster. The NCA org chart positioned the secretary of defense right below the president, with power emanating from the secretary of defense directly to the various Commanders-in-Chief of the Unified and Specified Commands. They were the war fighters, not the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose role was advisory and administrative. The Joint Staff, the equivalent of the general staff in many foreign countries, worked directly for the Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs as their analysis and planning arm. They ensured that the NCA’s orders were transmitted, received, and properly executed by the CINC’s, war or peace, but the words came directly from the lips of the president and his secretary of defense.

  The other side of the coin, the constitutionally mandated succession list, following the now-dead vice president, was topped by the speaker of the House, then by the president pro tempore of the Senate. The chance that others farther along the seniority chain—the cabinet secretaries in order of their department’s creation—would receive the call was normally dismissed out of hand. It simply couldn’t happen. Alexander was actually number two after Genser in the cabinet sweep-stakes, with state taking precedence over war, the forerunner of defense.

  Thomas bowed his head in dismay. That would be the ultimate irony; Genser giving Alexander marching orders. For the moment, that wasn’t a concern. With the president dead, Alexander alone called the shots until the proper successor took the oath.

  Thomas stepped parallel t
o Alexander and folded his arms across his chest. He too searched the forest. His ghosts were the men and women he knew in Washington proper—soldiers, sailors, airmen, and civilians, now little more than charred dust. It was a bitter pill to swallow.

  Alexander looked over at his friend, forlorn and distant. “Do we have a chance of ending this before the entire country is destroyed?

  Thomas stared straight ahead, not blinking, his breathing shallow. He was enjoying the irregular tree line; his pale blue eyes delineated each tree’s outline from the black smudge touching the horizon. It was soothing.

  “I don’t know, Mr. Secretary, I honestly don’t know.”

  Alexander sighed sadly in reply. “What the hell happened? This is the nineties, not the seventies.”

  “Mr. Secretary, General McClain’s on the line. But we don’t have NEACP yet.” The voice drifted across the compound to claim Alexander’s conscience. He quickly strode the thirty yards and up the steps, Thomas behind, then grabbed the outstretched handset from Bartholomew. Every pair of eyes was glued on their leader.

  “General McClain, this is Secretary Alexander.”

  There was a gush of emotion at the other end. “Mr. Secretary, I can’t tell you how relieved I am that you’re alive.” Alexander leaned against the wall. His voice dropped in tone, the words coming slowly.

  “Have you heard about the vice president?”

  McClain was silent for a moment. Alexander was ill prepared for his reply. The general’s delivery was steady.

  “Yes, sir, we received word directly from NEACP. They had comms with Air Force Two before it went down. The battle watch has located the speaker. He’s demanding that his plane be diverted immediately. He’s outraged that he hasn’t been sworn into office yet. Seems the officials escorting him are requiring definitive proof that the president and vice president are dead before they administer the oath of office. He says they’re stalling on purpose. Those were his words. His aides are pushing for him to can all of you. It’s going to be a fucking mess, Mr. Secretary, no doubt about it.”