Patrick McLanahan Collection #1 (101 page)

They watched out the small jet's windows as they broke through a thin overcast layer and caught a glimpse of the air base off in the distance. Nothing looked out of the ordinary—no smoke or fire from a plane crash, no signs of any sort of terrorist attack or of an approaching tornado or severe thunderstorm. They appeared to be lining up for a straight-in approach. Gary Houser felt relieved when the landing gear came down, indicating they were cleared to land.

On the five-mile final, Houser was busy packing up his briefcase and getting ready for landing when he noticed a bright flash of light, like a nearby bolt of lightning. At that exact moment, the lights inside the airplane cabin popped out.

“Holy crap!” Terrill Samson said, “I think we just got hit by lightning.”

“It sounds like the engines are spooling down, too,” Houser said. It was hard to tell with the noise from the landing gear and flaps—or
was
that noise from the gear…or something else? This was bad. They might be able to drag it in from this altitude, but these jets didn't glide too well. He tightened his seat belt and waited for the impact. He could hear the jet engine's starters roaring and the igniters clicking as the pilots frantically tried to restart the engines. They
had
flown through that thin overcast, but there didn't seem to be any thunder-heads nearby—where did the lightning come from? He glanced out the window.

And saw what he thought was a huge tornado, like something in a disaster movie, that had instantly materialized out of nowhere right in the middle of the base. It was an immense column of dirt rising vertically, at least a mile in diameter—with what looked like orange, red, and yellow volcano-like rivers of fire mixed in. He opened his mouth to yell out a warning to the cockpit when he heard an earsplitting blast, like a thousand crashes of thunder.

Then he felt, saw, and heard nothing.

A short time later

P
resident Thomas Thorn sat at his desk in the executive office suite in the nose section of Air Force One, staring at a computerized map of the United States. Several dots on the map, representing military installations, were blinking; others had red triangles around them. Another flat-panel digital monitor had images of the vice president at the Mount Weather Continuation of Government Special Facility, known as “High Point,” in Berryville, West Virginia; another showed images of Secretary of Defense Robert Goff and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Venti, both airborne aboard the E-4B National Airborne Operations Center, orbiting out over the Atlantic Ocean with two F-15C Eagle fighters in formation with it. Several members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—the ones that managed to make it to Andrews in time for takeoff—were also present in the NAOC's conference room and listening in on the teleconference, but were not visible on the screen.

“NORAD is showing no more tracks, Mr. President,” Goff said somberly over the secure videoconference link. “Looks like the attack is over.”

It was over, all right—over for thousands of military men and women, their families, and many thousands more innocent civilians living near the military targets.

As hard as he tried, Thomas Thorn found himself growing angrier by the second. He knew before receiving any estimates that the death toll was going to be huge—ten, twenty, maybe thirty times greater than
the number of lives lost in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania on September 11. How could the Russians do something like this? It was such an unbelievable act of pure homicidal madness. Calling this an “act of war” just didn't seem to cut it. This was an act of insanity.

“You okay, Thomas?” Vice President Busick asked over the secure video teleconference. “You look like you're flying through some rough air.”

“I'm okay,” Thorn replied.

“I know what you're feelin', Thomas,” Busick said. “You wanna go wring someone's neck.” Thorn glanced at Busick's face in the monitor. “Get over that, Thomas. You have a lot of dead Americans out there, and a lot more that want to know what's gonna happen next. You're the man that's going to need to have some answers. Let's get organized.”

Thorn stared blankly at a window—thick silver curtains had been installed over all the windows in Air Force One to prevent injury by flash blindness, should any more nuclear warheads explode nearby. He felt helpless, overwhelmed. He and a handful of military and government advisers were locked up in an airplane, flying over the ocean, far away from the capital. Bits of information were dripping in, but for the most part they were disconnected from the rest of the country. They were cut off.

No, even that wasn't exactly true. They were
running.
They had abandoned the capital and were doing nothing more than fleeing to save their own lives, while the rest of America had to sit and take whatever the Russians were going to fire at them next.

He had faced many such unexpected disasters in his years as a special-operations officer in the U.S. Army. When an operation went wrong or when they were discovered, the team went into a sort of mental shock. They had planned and sometimes rehearsed many alternate and emergency-contingency missions, but when the shit hits the fan for real, the only plan they usually thought of was escape. It was confusing, chaotic, and, frankly, it didn't look very heroic. Weeks and sometimes months of planning gave way to a headlong, almost irrational fleeing instinct. Some of the more experienced troops remembered to tell the others important things—like which way to go, what to watch out for, and to remember to collect up things like maps, comm gear, weapons, and fallen comrades. But for everyone the bottom line is simple: Get out. Save yourself. Run.

Once they had escaped, rendezvoused, and inventoried themselves
and their equipment, the very next thing they did was look to the team leaders, the officer and NCO in charge, for guidance and a plan of action. They didn't want anger, or vows of revenge, or signs of grief and sorrow—they wanted and needed leadership. That's what President Thomas Thorn had to provide—
now.
Even if he didn't know exactly what he wanted to do, he had to have the strength and courage to gather up his forces and get them moving.

Thorn drew in a deep breath, retrieved a bottle of water, took a deep swig, then turned back to the video teleconference camera, “facing” his team of advisers. “Analysis?” the president asked simply.

“I've got a very preliminary tally, Mr. President,” General Richard Venti, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, responded. He took a deep breath, steeling himself to deliver a report he thought he would never, ever have to present:

“First to be hit was Clear Air Station in Alaska,” he began. “Clear is…was…is a major radar and command-and-control base for the entire state of Alaska and the approaches into North America. The attack destroyed several radar systems, communications facilities, and a ground-based interceptor silo complex being built for the ballistic-missile defense force. Clear was the main ballistic-missile and aircraft-tracking station in the north, manned by approximately one thousand men and women. It was hit by a total of eight low-yield nuclear weapons, some with air-burst fuzes to destroy aboveground facilities, others with penetrating bunker-buster fuzes to destroy the ground-launched interceptor silos.

“Next was an attack against three major military bases in eastern Alaska, near Fairbanks,” Venti went on. “Eielson Air Force Base is the home of the Three-fifty-fourth Fighter Wing, an F-16 and A-10 attack wing, but it also houses several components of the national missile-defense infrastructure, including the Alaskan headquarters for the system. Fort Wainwright and Fort Greely are Army installations housing several infantry units, but they also contain several key NMD facilities. The bases were hit by eight nuclear-tipped missiles.”

“How many men and women at those bases, General?” the president asked woodenly, dreading the answer.

“About…approximately fifteen thousand in all four bases, sir,” Venti responded.

“My…God…” Thomas Thorn felt his face redden, and tears flowed into his eyes. He could barely fathom such a number killed all at
once. His voice cracked as he said, “Those
bastards…!
” He rested his head on his fingers, blankly staring straight ahead. After a few moments, with his head still bowed, he asked, “Do we know what kind of bombers they used?”

“The attacks against Alaska were accomplished by an unknown number of high-speed bombers, probably Tupolev-160s, code-named ‘Blackjack,' ” Air Force Chief of Staff General Charles Kuzner responded. “The Blackjack's standard strategic attack armament is sixteen AS-16 ‘Kickback' missiles, inertially guided, short range, high speed, similar to our obsolete AGM-69 short-range attack missiles that used to arm our strategic bombers. The bombers probably came in at treetop level all the way from Siberia. FAA and NORAD spotted them as they came ashore, but we couldn't get any more interceptors in the air fast enough.” The president raised his head and stared accusingly into the camera, which prompted Air Force General Kuzner to blurt out, “Sir, we had already launched fighters from Eielson and Elmendorf because of the air-defense threat farther north and—”

“I'm not blaming anyone, General,” Thorn said.

“We had four fighters rolling at Eielson when the base came under attack,” Kuzner went on. “We had two more coming up from Elmendorf searching for them, but the electromagnetic pulses from the aboveground nuclear explosions were scrambling radar and communications for hundreds of miles. The F-15s couldn't see a thing, couldn't talk to anyone, couldn't do a damned thing to stop them….”

“I said I'm not blaming you, General Kuzner,” the president repeated. He could see Kuzner's Adam's apple bobbing up and down and his facial muscles slacken as he silently tried to deal with the horror—the horror that his forces might have prevented, had they been more prepared.

Venti waited until he could see the president look at him, silently asking him to continue, then cleared his throat and went on. “The first CONUS base to be hit was Minot Air Force Base, thirteen miles outside the city of Minot, North Dakota. That base is the home of the Fifth Bomb Wing, with twenty-four B-52H Stratofortress bombers and twelve KC-135R Stratotanker aerial-refueling tankers. Minot is also the home of the Ninety-first Space Wing, a Minuteman III missile wing, which comprises fifteen underground launch-control centers spread out over eighty-five hundred square miles of North Dakota. Each LCC controls ten LGM-30G Minuteman intercontinental ballistic
missiles; in compliance with the START II treaty, each Minuteman has been downgraded from three independently targeted warheads to just one W78 nuclear warhead. We have detected direct hits on the base itself and several hits near the LCCs, but we don't yet know how many were knocked out.”

“What about the base?”

“Unknown yet, sir,” Venti responded somberly. “It took two direct hits.”

“How many personnel on that base?”

“About…about five thousand military.” Left unsaid was the obvious fact that perhaps two to four times that many military dependents and civilians living near the base could have perished.

“My God,” the president breathed. He could scarcely believe that this was happening—and yet he reminded himself that the death toll had not even
begun
to be calculated. “What about the city?”

“A few reports of damage, a few casualties, but it appears the city itself was not affected.”

“Thank God.”

“The attacks on the continental U.S. appear to have been done by Tupolev-95 Bear bombers, launching very long-range AS-19 hypersonic missiles, code-named ‘Koala,' ” Venti said. “The Bear bombers are not supersonic, but their range is almost twice that of the Blackjack bomber. Several Bear bombers were intercepted and shot down over Canada by Canadian air-defense forces.”

“AS-19—isn't that the same missile supposedly used over Uzbekistan?” Vice President Busick asked.

“Yes, sir,” Secretary of Defense Goff said. “Apparently the attack against our CIA station in Uzbekistan was an operational test launch.”

“Oh, shit…”

“Next to be hit was Grand Forks Air Force Base, sixteen miles west of the city of Grand Forks, North Dakota,” Venti went on. “Grand Forks is the headquarters of the new U.S. National Missile Defense Command, the agency that will control our ballistic-missile defense forces. The base also has a reserve nuclear-weapon storage facility that houses approximately four hundred and forty Minuteman-missile warheads, air-launched cruise-missile warheads, and B61 and B83 nuclear bombs, all in secure storage. It was hit by a single Russian cruise missile with great accuracy. It's possible the direct casualty count here is very small, although that doesn't take into account the fallout and contamination
from the warheads that were not incinerated in the blast. The base was also home to the Three-nineteenth Air Refueling Wing, with twenty-two KC-135R tankers.”

The president could do nothing but shake his head, almost overwhelmed by the enormity of this disaster. The effect of the fallout—dirt and debris bombarded by gamma radiation, making it radioactive, then carried aloft by the force of the blast, spreading over hundreds of thousand of square miles by high-altitude winds, then falling back to Earth—was something to which very little attention had been paid since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Thorn remembered the civil-defense exercises he'd participated in as a child, and fallout was one of those fearsome things that caused nightmares in impressionable young children. Now they had to face it for real—and he found he was still scared of the harm it might cause.

“Next was Malmstrom Air Force Base, just six miles east of Great Falls, Montana,” Venti went on. “The Three-forty-first Space Wing there deploys two hundred Minuteman III missiles in twenty LCCs spread out over twenty-three thousand square miles of Montana. The base itself, which does not have an operating runway, did not appear to be hit. Unfortunately, the missile-silo fields surround the city of Great Falls on three sides, and we have detected explosions all around the city. It's possible casualties could be relatively small here, too, but it's too early to tell.

“Next was Ellsworth Air Force Base, twelve miles east of Rapid City, South Dakota. Ellsworth is the home of the Twenty-eighth Bomb Wing, a B-1B Lancer-bomber base. It was hit by a single missile. This target is somewhat unusual, in that all the other places targeted by the Russians were related to nuclear warfighting—Ellsworth's B-1 bombers were made nonnuclear eight years ago to conform to Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty limits. Although it's possible to make them capable of carrying nuclear weapons, it would take many months to do it, and it would greatly downgrade our conventional bombing capability. This signals a flaw in the Russians' intelligence matrix—either they forgot that we made the B-1s nonnuclear or they thought we were about to turn them back into nuclear bombers.”

“Which is precisely what we should be doing, sir,” Kuzner interjected, “along with the aircraft in flyable storage. As soon as we convert them and train crews to man them, we should put them on alpha alert.”

“I have no intention of putting nuclear-loaded bombers back on alert, General,” President Thorn said. “Those days are over.”

“With all due respect, Mr. President, it looks to me like those days are back again,” Kuzner said bitterly. “Without the ICBMs we have no choice but to put every aircraft we can back on nuclear alert—not just the bombers but every tactical jet capable of carrying a thermonuclear weapon.”

“General Kuzner…”