Red Hammer 1994 (24 page)

“The others will have to take another helo. The colonel will help them,” he added, pointing to an army colonel barking orders nearby.

“All right,” Alexander said, wearily. “General Thomas, Secretary Genser, his aide, Colonel Bensen, and the doc.” Colonel Bensen carried the top-secret nuclear release codes and authenticators; the doctor was an expert in trauma injuries and radiation sickness.

“Follow the major.” Alexander turned and let Thomas pass, touching his arm in a comforting gesture. Thomas began to say something. The words caught in his throat. He remembered the chairman’s parting words; he would serve Alexander to the end.

“To the left, gentlemen.” The major took off at a jog up the last few yards of the incline. The group struggled to keep up. The sight at the top of the ramp was stunning. A dozen helos, a mix of huge CH-53Cs and army Blackhawks, sat idling on the grass and frontage roads, their turbines whining beneath slowly turning rotors that whipped the foliage on the trees. To the right, an army UH-60 Blackhawk leaped in the air, hanging momentarily then banking sharply and accelerating toward the north.

Across the Potomac, additional helos filled the sky, whisking important senators, congressmen, and federal officials to the safety of command centers or air-raid shelters. Most assumed they were heading directly to Mount Weather, FEMA’s highly acclaimed crown jewel in rural Virginia, which had its cover blown in 1991. It was still used for annual crisis-action exercises. But that was it. Mount Weather was a well-maintained museum to the 1950s, when officials in Washington would have been moved to that underground city to fight the war and run the nation for months on end. Anyone there today didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell, unless the Russians missed or decided not to waste an RV on a location they knew held no one particularly important.

The real dispersal sites were randomly spread throughout Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania at innocuous government-owned buildings. The effectiveness of this short-notice evacuation was remarkable given the compressed timeline.

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 warning, 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.