Holding Their Own: A Story of Survival (14 page)

The president was meeting with his cabinet. He had spent more time in the situation room during the last 20 days than most presidents had in their entire terms. As usual, the news was not good and getting worse. The chief of staff was discussing his third PowerPoint slide, and it looked like he had many more to go.

“Mr. President, we have two major issues right now, food and energy
. Swarms of people surround almost every food outlet in the country and have since the attacks. The shelves are bare, and we can’t get trucks into the major metropolitan areas fast enough to replenish the supply.”

The
Secretary of the Commerce Department interrupted him, “It doesn’t do any good to deliver food. People are so scared right now, they are hoarding. Even when we have the Army escort trucks in, the shelves are empty in less than 10 minutes. We had riots at distribution centers in San Diego and Denver yesterday. Five more people are dead. On the black market, a can of soup is going for $20 in some places.”

This statement caused
the Secretary of Homeland Security to inject his view. “We can’t move the trucks any faster. Do you want another Chicago on our hands? The public blames the terrorists right now. If it happens again, they will blame us. We are barely holding on. Another attack, and I can’t guarantee what will happen. Mr. President, we have over 200,000 people protesting on the mall this morning, not 500 yards from this room. So far, they remain peaceful. The Marines from the Washington Navy Yard have been deployed in front of the White House and the Capital Building, along with the D.C. Police, but there are only 400 of them. If that crowd decides it wants us out of office, the Marines and the Secret Service will not be able to hold them. My analysts tell me the public is on the edge, and another event will push them over it.”

Several in the room shuddered at the concept of a complete revolt and what might become of them if a mob stormed the White House
. One of his advisors interjected, “Mr. President, perhaps we should move the administration to Camp David?”

The p
resident looked at the man with fire in eyes and said, “ABSOLUTELY NOT! This country has endured greater threats than this, and I am not going to be the first president to turn tail and run, especially not from the American people!”

After the p
resident’s outburst, the room remained silent for a few moments.

The head of the Secret Service looked down at the floor
. He had intended to recommend that the president visit Camp David shortly after this meeting was finished. In reality, he thought Fort Hood, home of the 4
th
Infantry Division and their 1,200 battle tanks might be a better idea.

F
inally, the chief of staff cleared his throat. The president, slightly calmer now, addressed the advisor. “Please continue.”

“As I was saying
, Mr. President, we have
two
problems. Energy is the second. Electrical grids are failing all over the country. Almost every part of the US has experienced issues ranging from complete disruption to rolling brown outs. The combination of fuel shortages, naturally failing equipment, and inability of maintenance staff to travel freely to perform repairs precipitated this dilemma. These same issues are also impacting the delivery of gasoline. Failing infrastructure, lack of personnel, and extended delays in spare parts delivery are all taking their tolls on refinement, production, and distribution. The public is hoarding fuel as well. Gasoline is now in very short supply in the northeastern states as well as along the west coast. Availability of diesel is practically non-existent. Sir, I received a call from the governor of Iowa yesterday. He told me that there was only enough diesel fuel in the entire state to harvest 5% of the crop this fall. While I haven’t verified his claim, he also told me that the governor of Nebraska had called him that very morning to ask if he could spare any diesel fuel for their harvest.”

The p
resident paused. “Gentlemen, I would like to take a short break. Let’s reconvene in 30 minutes.” As he pushed his chair back from the table and stood up, his personal secretary handed him a stack of telegrams and messages. He accepted the stack, and as he walked out of the room, began to flip through them:

The c
hairman of the New York Stock exchange wants to know when they can reopen.

The head of the Dairy Producers Association wants to know what he should do with 10.5 million gallons of spoiled milk and 30 tons of rotting cheese.

Governor of Florida….

Governor of Maine….

The director of the FBI requests an urgent, private call immediately.

He almost flipped past that last one
.
Odd,
he thought,
why would the director make such a request without coming through the normal chain of command and Homeland Security?

After he left the situation room and was alone with his
secretary, the president instructed, “Get me the director of the FBI on the phone please.”

The
director made it clear to the president that he needed to see him, immediately and in private. This was not a matter that could be discussed over the phone. The president started to schedule the appointment for later in the day, but the director would have none of it. “Sir,” he said in a stern voice, “You need to know this information
right now
.”

“How s
oon can you be over here?” the president asked.

“Sir, I am already in the White House and waiting outside your office
,” was the reply. He was shown in immediately.

Fifteen minutes later, the p
resident sat the three-page briefing on his desk, closed his eyes, and began to rub his temples. He had gazed outside for a few minutes at the well-manicured grounds surrounding the White House, then turned to the director and asked, “How sure are you of this information?”

“I am positive
, sir. There is no doubt. The National Security Administration (NSA) confirmed my inquiries, and while they haven’t put two and two together, facts are facts.”

The p
resident stood and walked out from behind his desk. The director, as a show of respect, stood as well. The president went to the pair of facing sofas in the Oval Office and sat down, and instructed, “Take a seat, Director. Explain this to me. I need to know the details. What you are telling me is that a foreign power has attacked the United States of America. Not terrorists, not some vague zealot organization, but a foreign country has committed an overt act of war. I need to know the details.”

The d
irector sat and began.

“
Sir, a Chicago traffic camera captured the license plate number of the truck spraying the VX. The address of the owner was traced to an apartment complex that had been destroyed by a gas explosion and burned to the ground that very morning. We initially thought he was an illegal from Mexico, but one of our agents interviewed a local storeowner and found out that the suspect had an aversion to pork. It seems a mistake by a sacker had caused the man to return the offensive meat and had threatened the storeowner’s life if it ever happened again.

We then traced every delivery made to the
address. He had received tanks of insecticide two days before the attack. We attempted to trace the source of the shipment, but it dead-ended. This was clearly a very professional job. We had almost given up when an analyst on loan from the CIA said he had seen this before. It took a few days, but he found the case file from Iraq in 2009. The exact same method used to originate the shipment of VX had been used before. It was a front for an Iranian weapons shipment.

We
asked the NSA to focus on all cell, email, and phone traffic originating outside of the country and going to the Chicago man’s accounts. It took the supercomputers at Fort Mead a while, but we have matched up identical emails, originated out of MISIRA
in Iran and received in Chicago. They were lost in the net for a while, but then at least 23 people in the United States received emails of identical content. We now have hard evidence that 11 of those 23 people were involved in the attacks against us.

Last night, Border P
atrol intercepted a man trying to cross from the US into Mexico. This man finally started talking two hours ago. While he claims that he was working for Al-Qaeda, he identified a picture of a known MISIRA agent in Morocco. Sir, he said the agent was his instructor. He welded the bombs used to drop the bridges and was trying to get back home to Iran.”

In addition sir, the man in Houston
, the alleged “illegal Mexican” was actually from the Middle East. This information has been verified. I believe the man’s truck was to have been used as a weapon by design.”

The p
resident held up his hand and stopped the director. “How many people know of this?” he asked.

“I typed the report personally
, sir. Just you and I have the entire picture.”

“
Can we backwash it?” asked the president.

“
Yes, sir. I will have other case files assigned to the inquiries made to verify these facts. No one will be able to trace the questions back to the reason they were being asked after I backwash it.”

“Good. See that it is done
, and thank you. I will be in touch soon.”

“Those rotten sons of bitches,” was all the chairman of the Joint Chiefs could say after finishing the FBI brief. He quickly looked up to apologize to the president and the chief of staff, but both men waived him off.

“Mr. President,
as one of the world’s most knowledgeable experts on warfare, I do not know how to advise you on this situation, sir. My initial reaction as a United States Army officer and a patriot is to roll right over there and kick their sorry asses, but I don’t know how our nation or the world would react to that. Given the events of the last few days, I’m not sure if we can even afford the postage to deliver the threat.”

The chief of s
taff chimed in, “General, the political situation here at home requires that this matter, and our response, be handled in a different way. No one will debate that. The president and I have to ask, can we execute ‘Blind Drop’ without any leaks?”

The g
eneral pondered the question, but only for a moment. “Sir, if you were to share this report with the five Air Force officers required to execute the mission, I would stake my life that not a single one of them would ever say a word.”

The p
resident was staring out the windows again, seemingly lost in thought. He slowly turned, “General, let Iran know we are
unhappy
with their actions. Deliver the message
hard
. Let them
never
forget what happens when the United States of America is attacked. Proceed with Blind Drop as soon as possible.”

Two days later
, a single B2 Stealth Bomber lifted off from its home at Whiteman Air Force Base, 80 miles southeast of Kansas City. After 15 years of war, such flights were so commonplace that any locals awake at that hour would not have paid it the slightest attention. The two-man crew welcomed the mission. They had personally performed many of the pre-flight tasks, normally the duty of the ground crew, in order to keep prying eyes away from its secret purpose. The loading of the special cruise missiles had been especially stressful, however. While both men had flown with nuclear weapons as part of their training, this was their first “real” mission, and both officers were proud that they had been selected to execute it.

The aircraft’s captain
often wondered how he would feel if ever ordered to deploy nuclear warheads against an enemy of the United States. While he had never doubted he would execute those orders to the best of his ability, he had questioned how he would feel afterward. This mission was different in many ways. Being personally briefed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the secretary of the Air Force was motivating enough, but after he read the justification for the strike, he was eager to execute his orders.

The jet
reached a cruising altitude of 50,000 feet and both crewmembers ran their checklists twice. There really wasn’t much for them to do. A technological marvel, the B2’s computer- controlled systems could almost fly unassisted. The two humans onboard were merely a backup in case the computer systems failed.

Above the Atlantic Ocean and moving over 12,000 miles per hour, a low Earth Orbit Satellite deployed its solar panels into a 100-foot wide set of wings. Its enormous bank of ultra capacitors began to store the sun’s energy being collected by the panels. Like a battery, the capacitors could store electrical energy, but unlike chemical devices, they could discharge their power at virtually any rate required. The satellite’s purpose required millions of volts of energy.

The s
atellite was the best-kept secret in American military history. It had become operational in 2007, when it was tested for the first time in conjunction with the Israeli Air Force. Israel had bombed the Syrian nuclear reactor being built at Deir ez-Zor. While the world was not particularly shocked that the Israelis had destroyed the facility, what did surprise most military experts was that they got away with it. Syria was equipped with the latest Russian-built anti-air defenses and radars, and their system was considered by many to be one of the best in the world. Israel attacked the reactor using common F-15I aircraft, which should have been detected and shot out of the air before even getting close to the doomed Syrian reactor. As inquiries were made, several different stories were leaked, including such lucidities as “Israeli secret agents had covertly installed a kill switch on the radar when it was being installed in Syria.”

Of course none of this was true, and most experts knew
that tale, as well as many of the other explanations, was ridiculous. The saying that “truth is stranger than fiction” was actually accurate in the case of the Israeli attack. IRISS, an acronym for Inter-wave Radar Integration Suppression Satellite, was a weapon that generated a beam one kilometer wide – from orbit. The beam energized an aircraft’s surface, blocking any radar waves from bouncing back. Harmless to pilots and crew, the beam could be directed to follow a flight of attacking aircraft making even non-stealth units invisible. While the Israeli Air Force didn’t know how the Americans had pulled it off, their aircraft flew to the target without so much as a warning light flashing on Syrian radar screens.

The United States had used IRI
SS on very few actual missions. Like any secret weapon, the more it was exposed, the greater chance of its discovery. And of course, once uncovered, counter-measures could be developed. The mission to kill Osama Bin Laden had been an exception. IRISS had been used to plow a road through Pakistani air defenses, opening a corridor for the American helicopters delivering their teams.

The problem
for Blind Drop was not the B2 bomber itself, but the refueling planes required for its long flight toward Iran. Several friendly and unfriendly militaries knew that American refueling tankers flew an identifiable pattern in a predictable number of areas. Additionally, mid-air refueling required the massive airborne gas stations to fly in a very straight line at a very precise speed while they were transferring fuel. It was not difficult to track the big planes when they went into their refueling flight pattern. If no other aircraft was detected on radar, it was a safe bet that a stealth aircraft was being serviced. One could simply trace the line between the tankers and have a surprisingly close vector on the invisible planes.

During the two wars
in the last 15 years, the United States could care less if China, Russia, Great Britain or Japan knew where their bombers were headed. What were they going to do – call the Taliban and let them know a B2 was on the way? This operation, however, was different. No country was to have any evidence or warning of the flight, so IRISS was used to hide the refueling tankers as they met the B2 somewhere over the Indian Ocean.

After several hours of flight, the B2 started its approach run
. The flight and ballistics computers were functioning perfectly as the plane lowered its altitude to less than 100 feet over the Indian Ocean. The doors opened underneath its main fuselage. One by one, two Tomahawk Mark 8 special purpose cruise missiles were launched.

Initially, the pilots thought that there had been a malfunction
when they did not see the normal exhaust flare associated with the Tomahawk’s jet engine. Their instrumentation reassured them that all was well, and the captain remembered that these were very special missiles.

The Mark 8 was essentially identical to any other
Tomahawk except that it was a stealth weapon. The body was coated in a substance that absorbed radar waves, rather than bounce them back. Odd shapes and angles further assisted to reduce its radar signature. Even the relatively small jet engine used to power the missile had its exhaust vented to defeat heat-seeking technology. During the tests at Area 51 in Nevada, one radar operator claimed the Mark 8 bounced back less radar signal than a common house fly.

As the B2 banked away and headed home, the first missile accelerated to 600 mph
. The second missile obeyed its programming and continued at 500 mph until a gap of 150 miles had been established between the two. It then increased its speed to keep pace with its sibling.

As Tomahawk One crossed into Iranian airspace
, a single monitor in the White House situation room indicated the progression of both missiles on a regional map. The president, chief of staff, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs all stood looking over the shoulder of a very attentive Air Force major.

Th
e missile traveled over the low-lying swamps of the Iranian coast along the Gulf of Oman. Within a few minutes, it began to transverse the valleys of the Zargos Mountains. Its twin continued to follow, precisely 150 miles behind.