Arc Light (18 page)

Lambert turned away, and the President joined him at the door for the walk to the conference room, the eyes of every airman they passed searching the President's haggard face. When they were almost to the conference room door, the President stopped and turned to Lambert. The look in his eyes was that of a shattered man.
He's losing it,
Lambert thought. “All my life, Greg, I dreamed of being President.” His face was pale and he looked sick. “But I never dreamed . . . ” He shook his head. “It was never this way.”

General Thomas stepped out of the conference room and said, “The
CINCNORAD
assessment is coming in, sir.”

The President turned and went into the conference room, Lambert following.

“We're all here, Al,” Thomas said in the direction of the speakerphone. “Go ahead.” Thomas held up ten and then three fingers to the President—thirteen minutes—as General Wilson began to speak.

“Okay,” General Wilson said over the speaker. “It's a classic ‘counterforce' attack, but with a piss-poor targeting plan. It's full of holes and phased all wrong. We've got roughly 70 warheads coming down on the 341st Strategic Missile Wing at Malmstrom, 230 on each of the 312nd at Grand Forks and the 91st at Minot, and 270 on the 90th at Warren. Mr. President, those'll put a whole lotta hurt on our Minutemen IIIs and MXs.”

“Where are those bases?” the President asked, composed again and sitting upright in his chair.

“Malmstrom's in Montana,” Starnes answered, “Grand Forks and Minot are in North Dakota, and Warren is in Wyoming. Twelve minutes, sir,” he said as if to chastise the President for wasting time.

“Next, there's the ACC bomber/tanker bases,” General Wilson said. “A dozen or so warheads are headed toward each of Blytheville in Arkansas, March in California, McConnell in Kansas, Loring in Maine, Sawyer and Wurtsmith in Michigan, Whiteman in Missouri, Griffis in upstate New York, Ellsworth in South Dakota, Carswell and Dyess in Texas, and Fairchild in Washington State. Those plus the warheads targeted at Grand Forks and Minot will hit all of our
CONUS
Bomb Wings and primary FB-111, B-1B, B-2, B-52G, and B-52H bases. Most of our aircraft are airborne now, but we'll have to operate out of alternate relocation and overseas bases, and we'll lose a lot of our support, maintenance, and rearmament capabilities.”

“Excuse me,” the military liaison officer, previously quiet as a church mouse, said at the opposite end of the table. “Should I . . . ?”
he asked, putting both hands on the combination lock of the black leather satchel.

“Open it,” Thomas ordered as Wilson went on in the background.

“They also went for our boomer bases,” Wilson said as Lambert heard the sound of the zipper running down the case. “Eight to ten were fired at each of New London, Connecticut; Bremerton, Washington; Kings Bay, Georgia; and Charleston, South Carolina. They left out Norfolk and San Diego, but they may be targeted from ballistic missile subs. They also went for our C
³
—command, control, and communications. Eight are targeted at Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs, three at Raven Rock on the Pennsylvania-Maryland border, and two are headed for ACC headquarters at Offut. They didn't target D.C., Mount Weather, or Greenbriar, or something went wrong.”

“What about our early warning and air defense systems?” General Thomas asked.

“They sh-o-t,” Wilson said, casually stretching out the last word as if reading a grocery list, “let's see, between one and five warheads each at Elmendorf and Shemya Island in Alaska, Beale and Vandenberg in California, Falcon in Colorado, Robins in Georgia, Kaena Point in Hawaii, Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts, Goodfellow in Texas, and McChord in Washington State, plus the warheads that they already had for Griffiss in New York and two warheads for Thule, Greenland, the only target outside the U.S.”

“That may indicate an intention for a follow-on attack with bombers and sub-launched missiles,” Thomas said to the President, who listened impassively.

“I'm sorry, but TTG's eleven minutes,” General Wilson said over the speakerphone. “I need to hurry. To finish up, there are twenty warheads in the ‘Special' category. Three of ‘em are up and down each of the coasts about a hundred miles out to sea, plus another south of Mississippi in the Gulf of Mexico. The others are a mystery. Some, I'm sure, will end up being high-altitude electromagnetic pulse bursts, but the rest just look like flat-out misses that won't even fuse—I hope.”

“Al,” General Starnes said, “this is Bill.”

“Hey, Billy,” Wilson's voice came over the speaker, the address oddly familiar in tone.

There was a brief pause during which Starnes's head dropped, and then rose again. “What's the total count, Al?” Starnes asked.

“One thousand one hundred and twenty-two warheads in all,” Wilson said. “One one two two,” he repeated.

“Thanks, Al,” the Secretary of Defense said, and the Joint Chiefs then all mouthed their thanks also. “Overall, Mr. President,” the Secretary continued, “it's not a ‘strategic attack.' It's not an attempt to reduce our general war-fighting capabilities or to eliminate our population. It's a ‘counterforce' strike like we thought, directed at our nuclear forces.”

“Any SLBMs or cruise missiles yet?” Admiral Dixon, Chief of Naval Operations, asked.

“Nope,” Wilson answered over the speaker. “Nothing but the ICBMs. Not even any bomber activity. I think that might explain the poor firing plot. They've left a lot of holes that presumably should've been—or are gonna be—filled by Backfires, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and surface- and air-launched cruise missiles.”

“Ten minutes,” Thomas said.

“And they could be on the way,” the CNO said to the President. “The seven warheads being shot into the water are clearly intended to ‘blue out' our sensors before exposing their boomers.”

“What the hell does that mean?” the President asked.

“The Russians keep most of their subs in a ‘bastion' defense,” Admiral Dixon explained, “which are operational areas just off their ports at Kalina and Murmansk in the Kara Sea. They keep the bastions defended with combined arms naval and air units. They try to sneak out a few subs, however, to get them close to us and cut down the flight time. We've got tails on about two thirds of ‘em and they'll never get a shot off on
DEFCON
1, which we went to twenty minutes ago. As for the rest, we've got a few dozen P-3s and P-7s headed out to sea with a bellyful of torpedoes just waiting for us to give ‘em coordinates, but those bursts are going to mean that we'll have to wait until their missiles break the surface before we get a solution.”

“Mr. President,” Lambert interrupted, “what are your orders?”

“Our tubes are flooded and ready to go,” the CNO said. “I say we turn the bastards we got in our sights into scrap metal right now.”

“I've got to go,” General Wilson said, interrupting over the speakerphone.

The President spoke up. “I'd like to know what's happening out there, General,” he said to the speakerphone. “Give me a call as soon as you start getting reports.”

“I'm”—the hesitant voice came back over the speaker—“I'm afraid this is probably it for me, Mr. President. On behalf of my command and me, it's been an honor to have been at your service. Good luck to you all. See ya in hell, Billy.” The line clicked and went silent quickly, General Wilson clearly not wanting to force the men to respond.

Starnes was standing behind the military liaison officer, the
general's normally erect frame slumped slightly.
They were friends,
it suddenly dawned on Lambert.

“Nine minutes, Mr. President. It's time—right now,” General Thomas said, his jaw set firmly. “They've got roughly two warheads targeted at each of our ICBM silos and launch centers. We've got to use those weapons now or they're gone.”

“I've already decided,” the President said, looking up from the table. There was a long pause before the President asked, “What are my options?”

General Starnes quickly took the three black ring binders the military liaison officer had removed from the bag—the football—and placed them on the table between Lambert and the President.

“Do you have your code card, sir?” Thomas asked as Lambert read the books' covers: “Procedures Manual for Emergency Broadcast System,” “Presidential Emergency Facilities,” and the book whose importance dwarfed that of the others, “Nuclear Control Orders—SIOP-6C.”

“There is one in here,” the military liaison officer said, rummaging around in the nearly empty bag.

“I've got mine,” the President said. He fished his wallet from his back pocket and pulled out a blue, red, and black plastic card, handing it to General Thomas. General Thomas peeled off the gold tape at the bottom and read “Alpha Tango Five Seven Six Bravo.” The Chief of Staff of the Air Force repeated the code into the “gold phone” of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Alerting Network. Over the gold phone's speaker, the
CINCACC
from his airborne command post and his doomed deputy commander standing on the balcony overlooking the half-football-field-size underground Air Combat Command Headquarters in Omaha could be heard passing the message along to their respective senior controllers.

At almost the same time, both men's voices came over the speakerphone saying, “Authenticated!”

“Okay, Mr. President,” General Starnes said, slowly opening the “Black Book” with the nuclear options, all printed in red. “We've got eight minutes,” he continued in a calm voice. “You've just given nuclear weapons release authorization to all nuclear capable commands. We now need an Emergency Action Message, which will be the nuclear control order. Under Single Integrated Operational Plan 6C, you've got twelve nuclear execution messages divided into major attack options, selected attack options, limited attack options, and regional attack options. Each of the attack options is divided up into types of targets: counterforce, other military—including leadership—and economic. You've also got ‘country withhold' options. There are about six thousand warheads
programmed for use in SIOP, some of which would be held in reserve. It sounds like a lot, sir, but it's a whole helluva lot less than we used to have before the strategic reduction treaties.”

“What would you recommend?” the President asked.

“The major attack options,” Starnes said. “Since they haven't targeted any of our larger cities or our economic infrastructure, I'd recommend retaliation in kind: counterforce. We should take out every nuclear weapon we can while withholding Russian cities.”

“Okay,” the President replied. “Get rid of as many of their nuclear weapons as possible. That's the plan I want.” An airman stood beside the President with message slips in hand.

Starnes's hand jerked his telephone receiver off the hook, and he issued the orders.

“There are about five thousand warheads allocated to the major attack option—Russian counterforce strike,” Thomas said. “Do you want to run over the target list, sir?”

“No, no. I'll leave that to you,” the President said, getting up and walking toward the door.

“What about the subs they've got out in open water, Mr. President?” Admiral Dixon shouted as the President stood in the doorway. The airman said, “The prime ministers of Canada and Great Britain and the president of France are on the line, Mr. President.”

“Sink them—sink them if you think you have to,” the President said, pausing a moment longer as if in confusion before taking the message slips and leaving.

The CNO grabbed his telephone to issue the orders. As Thomas and the Secretary of Defense picked up their own phones, Lambert watched the men's lips moving but couldn't hear their words. It all seemed like a dream, not the way a war was supposed to be fought. It was too rushed. Too panicked. Lambert looked over at Marine General Fuller, the only officer with nothing to do. Fuller's eyes were closed, and his lips were moving, mouthing words that only he and his Maker could hear.

Falling from an altitude of 610 miles, the Post-Boost Vehicle was picking up speed rapidly. Just before the first wisps of atmosphere began to tug at the PBV, it reached its top speed of 12,160 miles per hour.

The inertial guidance system did its best to predict the PBV's
actual position in space. Over the past few decades, highly refined geophysical measurements had been undertaken by Russian satellites to give the SS-18's instrument package precise information on the locations of the silo from which it was launched and the American air base at which it was aimed. The complex mathematical model of the earth's gravitational field had been refined over the years by teams of academics, and the model was programmed into the computer in the nose cone of the PBV. The precise positions of the moon and the sun had been predicted for decades into the future so that a launch at any moment in time during those decades would be able to factor in their ever changing gravitational effects.

The flight profile over the North Pole, however, had never actually been tested due to the inability to conduct over-the-Pole test flights. The gravitational field over the North Pole differed slightly from the gravity over the east-to-west test range from Kazakhstan to Siberia. A huge dome of dense molten nickel miles beneath the seafloor under the polar ice cap had created a gravitational anomaly that tugged the PBV downward slightly. The shot was low, as were many of the other shots from the missile's squadron that overflew the nickel dome.

The shroud eject motor in the PBV's nose jettisoned the cone, uncovering the missile's four-ton load of ten tightly packed warheads. At the precisely appointed moment the first warhead was ejected and the storable hypergolic liquid propellant fired briefly from the small fourth stage rocket in the tail of the PBV. A second warhead was released, and the rocket pivoted on its mount and fired again, vectoring the PBV in a slightly different direction and changing its momentum to target the third warhead 1,200 meters away from the second. The ballet continued for several seconds more through the thin upper atmosphere until the last of the warheads, coal-black cones with needle-sharp points, were flying free.