“Tell him we are a commercial airliner with 240 passengers bound for Beijing.”
The girl spoke rapidly into the handset and awaited a response. The speakers burst to life, and all turned to await her translation, but from the look on her face James knew it wasn’t good.
“You are an imperialist spy plane disguised as a commercial airliner and I have been given authority to shoot you down should you refuse to comply with my demands,” she translated between cries.
“We are a commercial plane!” the captain asked her to reiterate.
The clipped response from the Russian pilot did nothing for the girl’s demeanor.
“He says he has watched you fly over a number of secure locations and the plane is full of surveillance equipment!”
“This is ridiculous, get me the Russian president!” insisted James to the captain.
“We can’t, we’re over Mongolia, we’re not even in Russian airspace,” explained the co-pilot.
“Well just get us on the ground!” demanded James, before turning to the girl. “Tell him we’re going to land at…” James turned back to the co-pilot, who was hurriedly checking charts.
“Chinggis Khaan International!” he replied hurriedly.
James turned back and didn’t repeat what she obviously heard as she was already relaying the information.
As the speakers filled the cockpit again with the Russian voice, the already whitened face of the young girl grew paler.
“He cannot allow us to land and let our spies steal the motherland’s secrets!”
The plane shuddered as the Russian fighter rose into the sky and its afterburners left a wave of turbulence for the plane to contend with.
“He’s just fucking with us!” announced the co-pilot, as much to convince himself as the others.
“Can we get anyone else on the radio?” asked James as the radio burst into life again.
The voice was different. This one the pilot did understand, it was heavily accented but the words were English.
“American Airlines, Heavy, this is Chinese ATC, we have heard your transmissions and have requested fighters be scrambled to assist you. They are three minutes out.”
A sense of relief descended on the cockpit. James congratulated the young girl for her first-rate work and thanked the lord for his help.
Colonel Ivan Petlin listened to the Chinese Air Traffic Controller as he leveled out three miles to the rear of the far larger Boeing jet. He flicked the small cover from the fire switch and on hearing the long tone, hit the switch. The missile dropped before the boosters kicked and sent it hurtling towards the jet. Petlin didn’t wait for the explosion. At that range and the size of the target, the possibility of missing was inconceivable. His job was done. He fired his afterburners and pulled away. He was a thousand miles from home and he had, if he were lucky, two hundred miles worth of fuel.
Just enough,
he thought as the blast wave rocked his fighter.
The White House
Washington D.C.
All thoughts of three years earlier dissipated instantly as Jack’s office door burst open. The sight of Kenneth Lee fighting off a Secret Service agent, although not common, usually did mean disaster had struck somewhere on the planet.
“I must speak with the president!” insisted Kenneth, who was being unceremoniously dragged back.
“I’m very sorry, he just barged by us, sir!” said the humbled agent, having failed in his duty.
“Let him go, it’s fine!” waved Jack dismissively. He just thanked God that whatever happened had waited until this morning. He checked the column; its decorative façade remained firmly in place.
Kenneth brushed his suit back into place and waited for the agents to remove themselves from earshot.
“Well?” asked Jack.
“Reports have come in that the flight James Marshall was on has crashed,” he replied somberly.
The news hit Jack hard. He had few lifelong friends and James Marshall was his oldest. “Reports or confirmed?”
“Ninety-nine percent confirmed,” replied Kenneth, as his cell phone buzzed. He answered and listened before hanging up.
“It’s much worse than we thought. The Chiefs are in the Situation Room,” said Kenneth, concern etched across his face.
Jack rushed from the room. A civil airliner crash should not normally concern his military chiefs of staff. The mention of their involvement was ominous. Al Qaeda sprung immediately to mind.
When he and Kenneth entered the room, an eerie silence descended. Nobody wanted to talk first. Whatever it was, the gravity of it weighed heavily on men whose duty was to deal with whatever came at them.
“I’ve lost a very good friend today, somebody start talking!” he commanded.
“Mr. President, American Airlines AA187 has crashed over Mongolia, and all souls on board are presumed lost.”
“Okay, planes crash, I accept that and my friend was on board. It doesn’t explain
this
,” he waved his hand around the room at the collection of his most highly ranked military personnel, his Secretaries of Defense and State.
“Just as boats sink, but it’s how they sink that counts. For example, take the Lusitania in 1915, or any of our boats in Pearl Harbor in 1941,” said the Secretary of Defense.
President Jack King was a highly intelligent man and former head of the military. He did not need any further explanation. “Who?” he demanded.
“The Chinese sent us this a short while ago, it’s the recording of a transmission that they picked up. Play the tape.”
When the first word in Russian came through the speakers, Jack realized just how much he had underestimated what his military staff were thinking. He had assumed terrorism. Relations with the Russians had been cool for some time. Their support for the Syrian regime amongst others had cost many innocent lives throughout Jack’s presidency and he wasn’t one to hide his feelings, although nothing suggested they were even near the depths of cold war relations, never mind war.
As the translator conveyed what had transpired, Jack’s blood chilled. If this was real, he was going to be at war with the greatest threat to the American people in the history of the nation. He had to assume a declaration by them meant they had planned and were ready to strike, if they had not done so already.
His vice president read his thoughts. “We have no warnings or signs of any movements of troops or machinery. We’ve been in contact with all of our stations and fleets. No out of the ordinary movements have been noted. It’s as if it never happened.”
“Well it did! And I’m not going to sit and wait for the sneaky fuckers to catch us unawares,” announced Jack, the loss of his friend secondary to the attack on his country on his watch. “Have we had any contact from the Russian president or the premier?” he asked of his Secretary of State.
“Nothing, and we’ve been unable to contact them,” replied the secretary, receiving a shake of the head from his aide.
Jack pondered the response. Being unable to contact both of them at such a crucial moment did not bode well. He looked at the world time map: it was 3:00 p.m. in Moscow.
“Gentlemen, unless anyone has a good case against it, we are at DEFCON 2.”
The room was stunned into silence. DEFCON 2, the highest state of alert for war, had not been visited since the Cuban Missile Crisis. After a brief spell of everyone looking to see if any challenges were going to be lodged, the room erupted. America had its arsenal to prepare.
President Jack King surveyed the organized chaos before him. Planned drills had prepared them for just such an event, but the real thing was something no one ever wished to imagine, let alone witness. Jack watched the chairman of the Joint Chiefs oversee his men’s action.
Jack’s previous role gave him a unique insight into what was being undertaken across the world by US forces. Fighters would be scrambled, bombers fuelled and readied for take off, bases locked down, all leave cancelled and personnel recalled. Ambassadors would be briefed and allies informed of the US’s actions. DEFCON 2 was not a decision he took lightly but he’d rather be ready by assuming the worst than caught with his zipper down, fully exposed. President Jack King was not a man who would ever be caught napping. He was a man that took the big decisions when they were needed. After three years of waiting for a decision he needed to make, it wasn’t as if he wasn’t ready.
Russian Federation
Defense Ministry
Moscow
The Russian defense minister watched with dismay as the threat board that covered the far end of the Intelligence briefing room moved steadily from green to red. The Americans were readying their war machine, a machine that could crush them many times over. He checked the schedules. There was absolutely no suggestion or hint towards such a massive and high profile drill. Normally, anything of the scale they were witnessing would have been notified to them months in advance.
Calls to the president and premier remained unanswered. They were, he was informed, at a meeting at the state dacha in Barvikha and only to be disturbed as a matter of urgency. He explained it was a level of urgency never before seen in the history of their nation, only to be informed there was a difficulty with communications.
“Sir, we have just been informed that all US ballistic missile submarines have gone to sea!”
“All of them?” he asked squeamishly. This was becoming very real.
As each update was shouted across the room, the scale of the American maneuvers were like nothing in modern history. They were preparing for war and readying their nuclear arsenal.
“B2’s have just departed Diego Garcia”
“We’re seeing significant activity at the US’s silo bases.”
The Russian defense minister tried desperately to zone out the updates, each bringing an even greater level of concern than the last.
“Does anyone have any idea what the fuck is going on?!” he screamed in frustration. Everyone was feeding him information but nobody was telling him anything.
His emergency phone line rang. He prayed to God it was his president.
“Hello?” he snatched the handset to his head.
“Dmitry, what the hell is happening? I have the Americans trying desperately to speak to the president or premier?”
Dmitry Simonov, the defense minister, recognized the voice of the Russian ambassador to America.
“It looks like the Americans are about to declare war,” Dmitry replied, matter-of-factly, summarizing the evidence before him.
“Don’t be ridiculous, relations are not great but they’re certainly not about to declare war!” bellowed the older and wiser statesman based in the heart of Washington.
Dmitry took a few minutes to explain what he was seeing before him and listened as the protests from his colleague based in Washington dissipated.
“I’ll call you right back,” announced a far less confident ambassador.
It took five minutes for the ambassador to call back.
“They have a recording that we shot down a civil airliner that just so happened to have been carrying the new US ambassador to China, one of the US president’s closest friends!” he explained with panic in his voice.
“The American Airlines plane?” asked Dmitry, instantly wishing he hadn’t. He had not had a chance to alert the American ambassador with everything else that had transpired.
“You
knew
about it?” screamed the ambassador.
“I’ve been rather busy,” the minister said defensively.
“Shooting down defenseless airliners by chance?”
“Of course not, it crashed!”
“Not according to a tape intercepted by Chinese Air Traffic Control.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You’d better well find out then and disprove it and get a hold of our president in the meantime,” warned the ambassador.
“What the hell do you think I’ve been doing? I’ve got a helicopter on the way to the dacha now.”
“As far as the Americans are concerned, we have declared war, and every second we allow them to think that--”
A shout from the across the room caught Dmitry’s attention and he turned to focus on the other side of the room. “The Chinese have begun to mobilize troops and aircraft near our borders.”
The news was all he needed. The two largest armies in the world were mobilizing against them.
“The Chinese are mobilizing their troops also!” he said, turning back to the ambassador.
Both paused as the news of this added danger sank in. Dmitry spoke first.
“It is without precedent that we are able to contact neither the resident nor the prime minister at a time of crisis. I have no option but to assume that this is a coordinated and preemptive attack on our country.”