The War Cloud (11 page)

“Much.” She sat down in the high-back leather chair at the desk and warily eyed the stack of executive orders he had brought her to sign, along with a steaming mug of hot tea. “Did you make this, Colonel? Or did Doctor Nordquist?”

It was almost funny, but he didn’t dare crack a smile. “Captain Li did, ma’am.”

“OK, I guess I have to trust her now—and you.” Sachs took a sip, exhaled and looked around the compartment. “I just noticed there are no windows in here.”

“Flash effects from nukes, ma’am. They can burn your eyes out. What windows we do have on the plane are made from the same stuff you’ll find in your home microwave door.”

“Of course,” she said with a frown.

At first Koz thought she felt embarrassed by her technical ignorance. Or maybe she thought his microwave remark was as patronizing as Marshall’s coffee order options. But then he decided she was simply sad.

She asked, “Where are we going?”

“We’re following a pre-designated route to avoid enemy detection. We should be out of U.S. airspace shortly.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t want us straying from U.S. airspace. We can’t leave.”

Koz muffled his real reaction, namely to lecture her on the realities of airspace and nuclear cloud bursts. But she would probably le soon enough.

Sachs leaned forward and looked at the stack of Presidential Emergency Action Documents on her desk. “More proclamations?”

“You gotta sign them while you can,” Koz said.

Sachs stared at the first one, an order freezing wages, prices and rent. Then she signed with a flourish and said, “And I thought you were all Republicans,” she quipped.

Koz cracked a smile. He was beginning to enjoy having her around, especially when everything else about the world right now felt so rotten.

“This one,” he said, “is guaranteed to warm a liberal’s heart.”

He pushed another classified document across the desk for her to sign. It was a draft bill authorizing the IRS to collect money via a national sales tax of 30 percent. It even waived interest penalties against taxpayers who filed late returns “due to reasonable cause and not due to willful neglect.”

“I’m not a liberal or conservative, Colonel, I’m an American,” she said, signing the order. “And nuclear war seems as reasonable a cause as any for these extreme—and temporary—measures. Anything else?”

Koz slid a thick binder across the desk to her. “The latest National Strategic Target List,” he explained. “It ranks more than forty thousand places and things in China, the Far East and elsewhere deemed worthy of destruction.”

He watched as Sachs tentatively ran her finger down the list, pausing at a target and moving on. He could tell she couldn’t do it, couldn’t let her finger rest on any single item, knowing thousands of human beings would die if she did.

She said, “I guess I had forgotten that the United States has considered China its No. 1 enemy since the end of the Cold War.”

“Until 9/11,” Koz said. “General Marshall made his career at the Pentagon with his quadrennial reports stating that the war on terror in the Middle East had distracted America from containing the real threat in China. By the way, for every target you don’t pick, you might as well put your finger on a map of the United States, because that’s who will suffer instead.”

“Thanks for the information, Colonel.”

“You wanted presidential authority,” he reminded her, and pushed a second operations manual at her, this one thicker than the first. “Now you have it.”

“And what’s this?” Sachs asked, looking overwhelmed.

“The Single Integrated Operational Plan,” he explained. “The plan for destroying the places and things on the target list.”

Sachs thumbed through the pages slowly. “This says that even after we and our enemies exhaust all our nuclear warheads and destroy the planet, America still has a secret reserve of nukes for after Armageddon.”

“That’s right,” said Koz. “The winner will be the one who can continue the fighting and inflict still more damage.”

“But there will be nothing left to destroy! There will be no America left for our bombers or subs to return to.”

Koz said, “They could land or dock at foreign airstrips and ports. As you’ll see, secret treaties with foreign allies would enable our government to political entity even if the United States itself were destroyed.”

“Sure, it just wouldn’t have any people,” Sachs said. “Doesn’t thinking about this all day drive Marshall insane?”

“You have to be a little insane to dream up these nightmares in the first place.”

“So why do we do it?”

“It’s an insane planet.”

She picked up her mug of tea and curiously looked at the decal on the side, which depicted an F-16 fighter jet and the tag line:
Air Force: When it Absolutely, Positively Has to be Destroyed Overnight.

Koz asked, “Something wrong?”

“It’s just that nothing today is playing out like the likeliest scenario detailed in this report.” She tapped her finger for emphasis on a graphic of the Taiwan Strait, the 112-mile strait of water between China and the island of Taiwan. “This says the Chinese would attack Taiwan before they ever risked attacking a U.S. target, let alone our seat of government. It also says with 99-percent probability that such an attack would take the form of a thousand land-based cruise and ballistic missiles in China blasting over the strait to knock out Taiwan’s defense shields, followed by invasion before our fighter jets and carrier groups could arrive on the scene. Even then, China wouldn’t strike the United States itself.”

She was good, Koz thought. He tested her further. “So what exactly are the Chinese supposed to be doing?”

“According to Brad Marshall?” She didn’t even have to glance at the report. “First, they’re supposed to be hitting us at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, hoping to strike before our F-15E fighters get in the air and knock out our best staging area for combat patrols. Second, they’re supposed to blind us in the theater of war by knocking out our overhead communication and imaging satellites. Third, if necessary, they might launch their new anti-ship ballistic missiles at our carrier groups plowing toward Taiwan. But they’ve done none of those things yet.”

“No, they haven’t, Madame President,” he told her. “But General Zhang has proven to be irrational in the past, and it sure looks like the Chinese hit D.C. and accomplished an unimaginable regime change in the United States. A regime change that put you in charge, Madame President, and your actions or lack thereof can only stoke speculation.”

“Meaning I’m a Chinese sleeper of some kind?” she asked him.

He knew the idea was ridiculous, but had to push. She had enough doubters already in the ranks of the military, and she couldn’t afford having her authority questioned. “It was you, after all, and not the Central Locator that found a way for you to get out of Washington before the blast, ma’am. That’s a fact.”

“I am not an agent of any foreign power, Colonel,” she said firmly, her brown eyes on fire with rage. “How can I prove it to any of you?”

“With this, actually.” He reached into his pocket and removed an authenticator card with the presidential seal on it. “This secret code card will establish your identity as president to military commanders if you’re ever caught away from secure communications facilities.” He paused, and then gave her his warmest smile. “I know you’re not a plant. But you might have to prove it to others. That card will help.”

“Thank you,” she said and slipped the card inside her flight suit’s outside pocket.

Koz wasn’t satisfied. “Not a secure location.”

Sachs started to unzip the top of her flight suit.

Koz tried to keep a straight face as he watched her stuff it inside her flight suit. It was certainly the first time he was aware of an authenticator card occupying that kind of space, except maybe for the time when former President Bill Clinton lost his while in office and the worry was that one of his women stole off with it.

She asked, “How’s this?”

“Better,” he nodded when Captain Li opened the door in time to see Sachs adjust her bosoms.

Koz leaped to his feet in embarrassment, as if he had been caught in some sordid act. “Captain.”

“Excuse me,” said Li without batting an eyelash. The iron-rod discipline of the USAF had taken over. “NORAD reports a massive wave of Chinese missiles heading our way.”

“Trajectory?” Koz demanded.

Li was grim. “They’re silo killers.”

“U
se ‘em or lose ‘em?”

General Block watched President Sachs make a face on the big screen from his office perch overlooking the underground Northern Command. But he was more concerned with the two big screens in the operations center below. The left screen displayed TOT MISL 50 — total number of Chinese DF-5 ICBMs launched. The right screen displayed TTG -34.07.12 — time to go before detonation. Meanwhile, six other screens providing real-time data from the USAF Space Command’s early warning radar sites at Clear AFS in Alaska and Beale AFB in California projected their trajectory toward Minutemen III missile fields in Montana, Wyoming and Colorado.

“That’s what I’m saying, ma’am,” Block told her along with Generals Marshall and Carver on the split screen. “These Chinese DF-5s are silo-killers. We either launch our M-III’s or lose them, along with the ability to retaliate.”

He could see Sachs flinch at the either-or scenario, and sure enough she said, “Two options are a dilemma, General Block. Three options is at least a choice. What about our satellites? Do we have any visuals from space? Or even our forward-deployed fleet in the South China Sea?”

Block paused. “Our satellites over China were blinded minutes before the DF-5s launched, and neither our air base at Kadena in Japan nor the 7
^th
Fleet has a visual confirmation.”

“Then maybe they haven’t launched, General Block,” Sachs said. “Maybe this is a phantom missile strike generated by the War Cloud cyberweapon. Isn’t it convenient that we’re denied visual verification at the same time our radars are registering incoming missiles? General Marshall?”

Marshall was visibly taken aback. “You’re probably half right, Madame President. The Chinese technically could have used the War Cloud to blind our satellites, but in political and military terms it would make no sense for them to fake a missile launch and prompt a massive U.S. nuclear retaliation.”

“Not for the Chinese,” Sachs said. “But maybe for another party.”

There she goes again, Block thought, refusing to accept the obvious for some shadowy conspiracy.

Sachs addressed Brad Marshall again, and said, “General Marshall, do you agree with General Block?”

Block could only hope the kid could make Sachs see straight. Or use his baby blues to hypnotize her or something. Anything.

“I have to, Madame President,” he told her. “Right now we have the advantage of not only firepower but accuracy in striking Chinese military targets. We would spare most of the civilian Chinese population while degrading their military’s ability to destroy ours.”

“Even if that prompts them to strike back?”

“Well, it looks like they already have, Madame President. And if they haven’t, I don’t see how they could strike back if we hit them now while we can.”

Block could see Sachs try to keep a poker face, like she was thinking it through. But that was two votes of the NCA to her one, with Carver left to cast his ballot.”General Carver,” she finally said. “If the Chinese attack is for real, and if we do lose our land-based ICBMs, will our nuclear-armed bombers and submarines survive the attack?”

Block knew Carver had to nod a yes, which is what he did.

Carver said the only thing he could in his position: “The airborne and seaborne legs of our defense triad will indeed survive, Madame President, with enough firepower to destroy the world several times over and, per our war plan, preserve the continuity of government for the United States of America.”

Block could see that was enough to satisfy Sachs and give her what she needed: a 2-2 split between the four of them. Worse, she clearly interpreted her vote as commander-in-chief to count as two in a tie. “So we can live without land-based ICBMs.”

We can live without ICBMs?
Block sensed that this failed Cabinet secretary was losing her grip on reality.

“Of course,” Marshall cut in, “you realize that if you allow the enemy to attack yet again without retaliation, you’ll only encourage further aggression against America.”

Block watched her reaction on the screen. The woman looked positively constipated.

“General Marshall, you’re the one who told Congress that great care and billions of dollars have been spent to construct American nuclear weapons systems that will survive a nuclear attack,” Sachs replied testily. “The point was to give the president—that’s me and not you—the luxury of determining his or her response after the shape of the battle is clear.”

Marshall said, “But you’re letting the enemy shape it.”

“No,” she insisted, summing up. “We’ve got conflicting signals about the reality of this incoming attack. Northern Command says DF-5 silo killers are coming our way. But our satellites show nothing. The best course of action is to ride this out and determine our response after the shape of the battle is clear.”

Ride this out?
Block thought with almost unbearable frustration.
This has ing to do with conflicting signals. She’s incapable of pulling the trigger.

“With all due respect, Madam President,” he said, knowing the inflection in his voice sounded anything but respectful, “the shape of this battle looks pretty clear on my screens, and that looks like one big mushroom cloud over Cheyenne Mountain in 24 minutes and 53 seconds.”

“Then I suggest you prepare for impact,” she said. “General Marshall, please send me a prioritized target list for those Mavericks you talked to me about earlier. The bunker-busters we’ve got up in the air now that we can always recall. I think you called it the Tall option.”

She had to put that little tweak in the nose at the end, thought Block. Couldn’t leave well enough alone. But at least this was something.