Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06 (83 page)

 
          
That
basic information saved a lot of time and wasted efforts—and a lot of officers
and technicians who were holding their breath finally could breathe. It was
well-known to everyone that Peterson Air Force Base would be a likely target
for any enemy seeking to wipe out America’s defense network—but these missiles
were not heading for the continental United States. “Good,” Wyle said. “Let’s
notify the Pentagon and the NCA, but put it out over the non-emergency priority
net.”

 
          
“We’ve
got a BMEWS confirmation of ten, repeat ten, inbounds powering up through the
atmosphere,” another controller reported. Space surveillance radar sites in
Alaska, South Korea, and the Philippines called BMEWSs, or Ballistic Missile
Early Warning Systems, now started tracking the inbound missiles, and
trajectory projections appeared on the large full-color monitors in the
operations center; they were backed up by radar satellites called DSSSs, or
Defense Surveillance Satellite Systems. The probable target was pinpointed less
than a minute from first detection: “Impact area,
Guam
,” the controller said.

 
          
“Ah,
shit—the Chinese launched an attack on
Guam
,” Wyle muttered. “Get it out on the
network—target
Guam
. Time to impact?”

           
“Twelve minutes,” the controller
responded.

           
“Dammit. I hope the Army toads are
on their toes this afternoon.” “Sir, now we have a track update via BMEWS and
DSSS,” the controller reported. “We’re showing three of the missiles taking a
different trajectory—”

           
“Where?” Wyle asked. “
South Korea
?
Japan
?
Alaska
?”

 
          
“No,
sir—it’s a flatter trajectory, possibly a satellite insertion profile,” the
controller responded. “The three missiles are using power to maintain a
two-hundred-and-ninety-mile altitude. They could be ready to insert satellites
into orbit.”

 
          
“FOB
warheads?” Wyle speculated. He knew the Chinese had FOB, or Fractional Orbital
Bombardment technology—the ability to put a nuclear warhead into low Earth
orbit, then deorbit it anytime it circled the Earth. The warheads could stay
aloft for weeks, virtually untouchable, and could threaten targets all over the
globe.

 
          
“Unknown,
sir,” the controller said. “We should be able to get an eyeball on the payloads
when they separate.” Space Command maintained space surveillance telescopes all
over the world, which would allow technicians to visually observe and identify
a satellite in orbit—the telescopes were powerful enough to read a newspaper
fifty miles away!

 
          
As
the Chinese missiles reached apogee, their highest point in their ballistic
trajectory at almost 400 miles up, the long-range Space Command radars detected
the warheads separating from the boosters and beginning their reentry. “We have
one missile making an erratic track—looks like it’s breaking up in reentry,”
the controller said. Wyle muttered a silent prayer, hoping more would follow
suit. “Three boosters are inserting payloads into low Earth orbit, repeat,
three payloads entering orbit. We have three boosters MIRVing, repeat, three
MIRVing... DSSS now reporting a total of twelve reentry vehicles, repeat,
twelve MIRVs inbound, target
Guam
. BMEWS
confirms that track, twelve reentry vehicles inbound, target
Guam
.”

 
          
“Confirm
for me that an air attack alert has been issued to all installations and on
civil defense nets on
Guam
,” General Wyle asked in a low, somber
voice.

 
          
“We’ve
confirmed it, sir,” a communications officer said. “Full military and civil EBS
notification.” Wyle thought about all the times he had heard the Emergency
Broadcast System tests on TV and radio and simply ignored the nuisance
interruption. Of course, he had been in many places where people paid attention
to EBS—during the floods near Beale Air Force Base in
Marysville
,
California
; the tornadoes near
Omaha
,
Nebraska
; and even on
Guam
during frequent typhoon warnings in the
summer. But civil defense was a thing of the past, and suitable hardened,
underground shelters outside of the military bases were rare on
Guam
. The population of that tiny, sleepy
tropical island in the middle of the
Pacific Ocean
was going to take the full force of the Chinese missile attack . . . unless the
Patriot missiles could stop them.

 
          
As
fast as the information could be beamed out by satellite, the air defense units
on the
island
of
Guam
were scrambled and activated. Two U.S. Army
Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries were stationed on
Guam
, one on Andersen Air Force Base in the
northern part of the island, and one at Agana Naval Air Station in the central
part. Each Patriot battery consisted of a command trailer, three large flat
“drive-intheater screen” radar arrays, and twelve transporter-erector-launcher
trailers, with four missiles per trailer, plus associated electrical power and
communications relay trucks. The radars did not mechanically sweep the skies,
but they electronically scanned huge sections of airspace up to fifty miles in
all directions, so between the two sites the entire
island
of
Guam
was covered.

 
          
The
phone at his console buzzed, and he picked it up—he knew exactly who it would
be. “Wyle.”

 
          
“General
Wyle, this is Admiral Balboa,” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
“Fm at the White House. The President and the SECDEF are here with me. What’s
the situation?”

 
          
“We
detected ten missile launches from central
China
,” Wyle reported. “We’re tracking a total of
twelve inbound ballistic vehicles, all heading for
Guam
. All tracks confirmed. We believe with high
confidence that the missiles are Chinese East Wind-4 intermediate-range nuclear
ballistic weapons. The reentry warheads are believed to be everything from
sixty-kiloton to two-megaton yield.”

 
          
“Sweet
Jesus,” Balboa muttered. “Any other launch detections anywhere?”

 
          
“None,
sir.”

 
          
“Anything
headed for us at all?”

 
          
“Three
missiles launched from
China
inserted small payloads into
two-hundred-and-ninety-mile orbits, inclined approximately thirty degrees from
the equator, sir,” Wyle said, reading information off the large monitors in the
command center. “We haven’t identified them yet. Their orbits will take them
over the Pacific, within about two hundred miles of the
Hawaiian islands
, but not over the CONUS. They fly over
central
China
on the backside of their orbits, so they might be weather or
communications satellites, or just decoys.”

 
          
“I
want those payloads positively identified as soon as possible, General,” Balboa
said sternly. “Status of the air defense sites on
Guam
?”

 
          
“Two
Patriot batteries on
Guam
. Both are on full alert and will be
directly tracking the inbounds in about five to six minutes,” Wyle responded.

 
          
“The
NCA wants an immediate notification on any other launches,” Balboa ordered.

 
          
“Yes,
sir, Fll do it personally,” Wyle said. “Is the NCA going airborne?”

 
          
“Negative,
but we’ve got Marine One and Two standing by.”

 
          
“Might
be a good idea to get them airborne until we sort this out,” Wyle said. “If any
of the inbounds hit, we’ll lose the 720th Space Group on
Guam
—that cuts out a lot of missile and
satellite tracking and control functions in the Pacific. The warning net might
go down, or suffer a bottleneck. ”

 
          
‘Til
pass along your recommendation, General,” Balboa said. “We’ll keep you
advised.” And the line went dead.

 
          
Everything
that could be done was being done. Along with providing land-based nuclear
intercontinental missiles to Strategic Command in case of a crisis, Space Command’s
primary function was surveillance, detection, tracking, and notification of an
attack from space on the
United States
, its territories, and allies. That function
was completed— now it was up to the last line of defense to minimize the
damage.

 
          
The
Patriot air defense missile batteries first detected the inbound warheads at
ninety seconds time-to-impact, but they could not begin firing the first
two-missile volleys until thirty seconds time-to-impact. The launches were done
completely by computer control, sequencing the launches from both batteries so
each salvo would not interfere with another. Every battery fired all of its
missiles—that meant that every incoming nuclear warhead had
eight
Patriot missiles flying up to
attack it, launched in four different volleys of two missiles each.

 
          
But
despite software and hardware upgrades on the system since its debut as a
ballistic-missile killer during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the Patriot antiair
missile system had never been designed to be an anti-ballistic missile weapon.
The Patriot had the advantage of its own onboard terminal guidance radar, which
meant it was much more responsive and agile and was more capable against
fast-moving targets such as inbound ballistic missiles or warheads, and the new
Tier 3 PUG (Patriot Upgrade Group) gave the missile a larger warhead and a new
high-pressure hydraulic actuator system, so it could move its control surfaces
faster to chase higher-speed targets. Nonetheless, it was still a matter of
“bullet-on-bullet,” nose-to-nose precision aiming that was still several years
from perfection.

 
          
Out
of twelve inbound warheads, three survived the onslaught of Patriot missiles.
One sixty-kiloton warhead exploded two miles west of Orote Peninsula, a total
of eight miles southwest of Agana, just 3,000 feet above the ocean, leveling
most of the high-rise oceanfront hotels and condominiums and creating an
instant killer typhoon. Another sixty-kiloton warhead was blasted off course by
a nearby exploding Patriot missile and was harmlessly fratricided by the
preceding nuclear detonation near
Agana
. Although the blast damage, heat, and
overpressure effects were enormous, casualties in the central part of the
island would be termed minimal.

 
          
But
one two-megaton warhead exploded just one and a half miles north of Andersen
Air Force Base at an altitude of less than 3,000 feet— and every aboveground
building on the base was wiped away in a blast that was greater than the power
of five hundred typhoons. The nearby
village
of
Fafalog
completely disappeared in the fireball.
Mount
Santa Rosa
, the verdant green hill overlooking the
military airfield, was instantly denuded of all vegetation and then sliced
nearly in half. The entire northern one-fifth of the island was immediately set
ablaze, which was extinguished only by the 200- foot nuclear-spawned tsunami
and typhoon-force winds that ripped into the scarred tropical island.

 
 
          
“One who is able to change and transform in
accord with the enemy and wrest victory is _ termed spiritual!”

 
          
—SUN-TZU,

 
          
The
Art of War