Thunderbolt

by M. L. Buchman

  Just a damned CNN feed that he hoped to God was part of some bad movie.

  His assistant was feeding him reports from the Pentagon over the secure phone. Drake was repeating them as they came in.

  “We got an unannounced North Korean missile launch, Mr. President. A smaller surface-to-air one, not the big ballistic missiles he’s been launching lately. A flight of A-10 Thunderbolts were on a routine show-of-force flight along the DMZ when they were targeted and downed.”

  “Downed?” President Roy Cole leaned forward abruptly.

  “Yes sir.” Even now, his assistant Bart was confirming that in his ear over the phone.

  “I’ll have imaging in a moment,” Lizzy spoke up from her seat at the Situation Room table. The three of them had been meeting about the changes to the US Air Force Space Command when he’d been alerted to an incoming priority call. Which meant that his information was only seconds ahead of the President.

  A hazy satellite image flickered on one of the side screens as Lizzy tapped furiously at her keyboard. Another, sharper image replaced it moments later.

  “What are we looking at?”

  “Nothing useful. Please give me a moment, sir.” Lizzy didn’t even look up.

  Not “Lizzy.” Drake had better be damned careful. She was General Elizabeth Gray, Director of the National Reconnaissance Office in this room—not Lizzy sitting beside him at the Metro 29 Diner’s counter last night.

  He’d wanted to have an atypical date and going to a Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives location seemed like a good first choice for two members of the Washington elite. It should never have taken him so long to follow up, but her recent promotion had overwhelmed her and he’d foolishly waited to give her time to settle in.

  What took you so long? General Gray had asked him over a shared appetizer of Buffalo chicken wings.

  Unable to dodge her questions for very long, he’d finally confessed to being an idiot over her crab-stuffed filet of flounder and his own boneless ribeye topped with onion rings. And it was true. She was as smart and charming as he remembered. Also, out of uniform and wearing a casual blouse and jeans, she was equally impressive in such a different way.

  Most would just see the slim, pretty Eurasian woman with the bright laugh he was dining with. But that, combined with being the head of one of the most powerful and clandestine agencies in the entire government, was just head spinning.

  The counter waitress had teased him and Lizzy (because she was definitely Lizzy by the end of the meal) into splitting a massive three-scoop banana split with patriotic strawberry, vanilla, and blueberry ice cream. He’d still been able to taste it when she’d kissed him as he had his driver drop her off.

  We aren’t teenagers anymore, you know? definitely-not-General Gray-at-that-moment had whispered before slipping out of the car.

  He knew. But after last night’s dinner and kiss, he felt like one.

  Not teenagers anymore. If he’d been thinking faster, he’d have taken it as an invitation to tell Lamont to just keep driving until they reached his silent home. With the kids grown and gone and his wife buried five years ago, the house was echoingly empty…

  The image on the Situation Room screen stabilized.

  “Is this the crash site?” Drake squinted at the screen, but didn’t see the normal scorched marks of a crash.

  “It’s their last reported radar position. I’m now scrolling backwards in time.”

  She didn’t have to go far.

  The image was unchanging as she manipulated the controls with the ease of the image analyst she had once been.

  Back until…

  The bright flash was unmistakable—a massive fireball on the satellite image.

  Li—General Gray hit pause, then rolled forward slowly.

  By the time the explosive cloud disappeared there was no sign of debris or… “No parachutes.”

  The President cursed.

  General Gray headed back in time.

  The fireball compressed moment by moment until it finally resolved into four planes.

  “You said missiles. Where are the missiles?” President Cole was still straining forward.

  “If they’re what we think they were, they were traveling in excess of Mach 3.0,” and Drake prayed he was wrong. Even knowing he wasn’t.

  “Mach 5.0. A mile a second,” Gray confirmed. “Our satellites are not movie cameras; they form an image every sixth of a second. So, within eight hundred feet…” She was zooming out.

  The jets shrank at the center of the image until they were barely the length of his finger.

  “There,” he and Gray said in the same breath.

  Four sparks of light appeared from the top edge of the screen.

  She zoomed in.

  They were blurred, but there was no mistaking their direction of travel—straight at the jets.

  “Why would the North Koreans be shooting down our planes on a standard patrol? An attack over South Korean soil is asking for war. I need to speak to that bastard Kim Jong-Un right now.” The President called the last out to the room which was constantly monitored by the Situation Room staff.

  “Uh, Mr. President, you may wish to hold off on that call,” Gray spoke softly.

  “Hold that,” he called out to the room. “Say it like you mean it, General. That’s why we gave you the job. You’re the Director of the NRO now.”

  “Yes sir, Mr. President.” And General Elizabeth Gray was the only one in her chair—Lizzy was suddenly nowhere to be seen.

  “There’s something you need to know first.” She dropped a red circle around the jets and then kept zooming back.

  And back.

  And back…until their final position was indistinguishable except for the marker.

  Then another red line came into view at the edge of the screen and began moving onto it from the lower right edge.

  “Is that—” Drake’s throat closed on him and he couldn’t speak.

  President Cole collapsed back into his chair.

  “That, Mr. President,” General Gray announced, “is the Korean Demilitarized Zone. The northern edge of it. Our aircraft were almost ten kilometers into North Korea.”

  50

  “The Japanese,” Drake listened with one ear to his vice chairman as Bart fed him fresh updates from the Pentagon, “threw the switch to an offensive war footing at 19:43 our time.”

  It was well known that the Japanese were eminently prepared for the moment, if they felt that was necessary. Or rather when.

  And nuclear weapons?

  Everyone said a year, but he’d bet they had everything worked out to make it happen within twenty-four hours—assuming they didn’t already have a couple sequestered away.

  “Why the hell did they do that?” President Cole was not happy.

  “A North Korean missile impacted Iki Island. At the moment the fatalities appear to be—”

  His surprise stopped him from echoing Bart’s words into the room.

  “It what?”

  The President and General Gray were both watching him closely.

  Bart repeated himself, though Drake still couldn’t quite believe it as he repeated the words, “A herd of cows.”

  The President shook his head. “For the first time since 1945, in direct contravention of Article 9 of their constitution—”

  “Which we wrote for them in 1947,” Drake couldn’t help putting in.

  “—which we wrote for them in 1947,” President Cole conceded, “Japan is on a war footing over a herd of cows?”

  Gray had been tapping at her keyboard while they’d been speaking.

  “Here’s the real reason why,” she spoke softly.

  On the screen, Gray—no goddamn it, she could be Lizzy in his thoughts, a Eurasian named for Elizabeth Bennet out of some romance novel that he really should read—had set her software to track the missiles rather than the jets.

  The flight of missiles swept rapidly up to the jets and the white-out fireball happened. Bu
t the view kept tracking and the explosion slipped off the screen.

  Now a single missile was highlighted on the display.

  She zoomed in on it. It was a nasty piece of work, at least seven meters of flying death, still burning rocket fuel at a prodigious rate. It was their first clear view of the KN-06 and it wasn’t going to make anyone in the West happy. Launching four of those monsters against a flight of A-10s was definitely swatting flies with a howitzer.

  The background switched from mountains to the dark blue of ocean.

  “It’s a runaway,” Lizzy stated.

  “But they didn’t destroy it.”

  “Maybe they’re so clumsy that they don’t know it survived.”

  Drake hoped that Lizzy was wrong.

  A scary thought to have a nuclear power that was also incompetent.

  “Maybe it just broke,” Drake liked that idea better.

  “Maybe they used our planes as an excuse so that they could test Japan’s reactions,” President Cole offered a thoroughly depressing suggestion.

  Whatever the reason, the missile continued flying over the sea. Finally, the engine cut out.

  “It’s in ballistic fall now. An unpowered, unguided supersonic descent.”

  They all watched in silence.

  At the very last moment, ocean blue background became land green, and then the missile landed.

  Lizzy scrolled back to the final image before impact and, sure enough, it would land at the center of a herd of black-and-white cattle.

  “Two seconds more, or less, flight time and all it would have killed was some fish underwater. Instead, a North Korean missile impacted on Japan’s terra firma.” Drake put his phone back to his ear and spoke to Bart, “Why didn’t our Patriot missile interceptors fire?”

  “With no launch notice, they were too slow to react. The KN-06—which we’ve now confirmed—was also faster than expected. By the time they tracked the lone missile, it was out of range of our batteries. Our Patriots are lined up at the border, not anywhere south.”

  “Make a note to get on with US Forces Korea and the South Koreans to rethink that…assuming we all survive whatever happens next.”

  The President picked up another phone.

  Drake eavesdropped.

  “Mr. Prime Minister Kagawa? Yes, this is President Roy Cole… Yes sir…I know about that, sir. I’m going to ask you to stand down until we know more… Yes sir. I know about the cows, sir.”

  Drake knew from experience that Roy Cole appeared affable when it suited him, but could use anger with equal facility.

  “I’ll pay for the goddamn cows myself, Mr. Prime Minister, if you stand down immediately… They were Wagyu beef?”

  Drake couldn’t help smiling.

  “Worth how much?”

  He could see Lizzy covering her mouth to hide her smile.

  The President rolled his eyes at them. “We’ll talk about the damned beef later, Mr. Prime Minister. Just get back off war footing before North Korea really does launch… No, he wasn’t shooting at you. He was shooting at us and he missed. Let me deal with him… Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister… Yes, I’m sorry about the cows, too… Uh… I understand.”

  He hung up the phone and slumped back in his chair.

  “They’ve been experimenting with the flavor effects of Wagyu cattle raised outside of the Kobe region, including a small test herd on Iki Island. It seems that the US government is going to own a great deal of flash-seared beef. Either of you want to come to the picnic? Maybe you can both bring a date.”

  Drake knew it was a mistake even as he was glancing over at Lizzy, who blushed instantly.

  President Cole looked back and forth between them, then sighed. “Please, no more bad news today. Just keep it to yourselves.”

  “Yes sir.” Drake kept his voice as serious as he could.

  Lizzy’s blush had colored her lustrous skin and he could see her struggle to regroup herself. She was doing a better job of it than he was.

  51

  Miranda rolled to a stop at Eglin Air Force Base by the designated hangar.

  Night had descended while she’d been en route. San Antonio, Houston, New Orleans, and Mobile had lit her way to western Florida.

  “We have a briefing room set aside for you, Ms. Chase,” an Air Force Captain Bell greeted her at the hangar as she deplaned.

  The ladder was a stepladder, not the proper Sabrejet service ladder like the one that Colonel Campos had arranged for her. This time she left her helmet in the cockpit before climbing down because she needed both hands to steady herself.

  “The rest of your crew is less than thirty minutes behind you.”

  Miranda blinked in confusion. Again, they were arriving impossibly quickly. She looked around to make sure they hadn’t already arrived and the captain simply hadn’t noticed.

  But she didn’t see them anywhere.

  The Mooney was fast, but should be three hours behind her.

  “Who arranged for the briefing room?” She hadn’t asked Colonel Campos to arrange anything more than flight clearance.

  “General Drake Nason, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” the captain spoke with a certain awe. “We’re supposed to call him as soon as your crew is fully assembled.”

  “Okay. Can I get something to eat while we wait?”

  The captain looked at her as if she was supposed to have said something else, though she couldn’t imagine what.

  Some food and a quiet place to make the world stop. She’d been on the go since seven a.m. Pacific Time, flying from one corner of the country to the other.

  Technically, that wasn’t correct. Cape Flattery, the northwestern most point of the continental US, lay a hundred miles west of her island, and Key West lay six hundred miles to the southeast of Eglin. Not corner-to-corner, but more than she wanted to ever again fly in a single day. Her Sabrejet had covered the distance in under four hours, but it was a jet meant for sorties, not crossing countries.

  Miranda did pause at the hatchway, through which the Sabrejet’s six .50 cal Browning machine guns used to be reloaded, to extract her NTSB vest. She felt better when it was on and she’d checked that everything was in place.

  “You’re with the NTSB?” Captain Bell looked confused as he led her to a waiting Chevy Suburban.

  She felt that the six-inch-high, fluorescent-yellow letters across her back would confirm that sufficiently, but apparently they didn’t, so she answered in the affirmative.

  She never liked the Suburban. It was easier to climb into her airplane than into the high ground clearance vehicle. There were never pitons or climbing ropes around when she needed them and the Suburban always made her feel as if she did.

  “The NTSB is not what I was expecting.” Being six feet tall, he stepped into the vehicle easily and sat behind the wheel.

  “And what were you expecting?”

  “At least a major general by the way General Nason issued the order. Picking up NTSB agents isn’t exactly a typical job for a captain.”

  “I spent the entire morning being escorted around Davis-Monthan by a colonel. It didn’t seem that unusual to me.”

  As he pulled away from the hangar, two Security Forces cars that had been parked nearby fell in with them—one leading, one behind. Did they think she was a terrorist of some sort? Or were the eight thousand military personnel of Eglin Air Force Base on high alert because they thought they were being attacked by a Korean War-era jet?

  Maybe they were just going her way.

  In a little three-vehicle convoy, they drove toward a brightly lit building. Through the windows she could see a crowded area of personnel facing each other across tray-laden tables.

  Yes, food would be good. Holly would approve.

  “Please have my team brought here as well.”

  “But the general—”

  “They haven’t eaten in just as long as I haven’t eaten. Our last meal was interrupted by two rather significant explosions—one in alarming proxi
mity—and a cross-country flight. Is that somehow unclear, captain?”

  He harrumphed as he pulled up to the door of the DFAC and she prepared to climb down. “Not unclear. No. Just…unusual.”

  “How is it unusual to want to eat?”

  “No ma’am. It isn’t, ma’am. It’s unusual to ignore the CJCS. And the order itself that he gave, ma’am, very unusual.”

  “Which was?” At this rate they’d still be here talking by the time her team arrived.

  “He made it sound as if I’d be court-martialed if anything untoward happened to you, ma’am. That’s why we have the SECFOR escort.” Indeed the two Chevy Tahoes had pulled to a stop.

  Confirming his statement, two airmen with heavy arms stepped from the forward vehicle and began scanning the area rather than watching her. She looked in the side mirror in time to see a handler release a military war dog from the trailing vehicle, then they both stood ready. Also waiting for her to step out.

  “Do you think they’re hungry too?”

  “Who?”

  “Your policeman and the dog.”

  “Why?”

  “If they feel such a need to protect me on your own military base, it would seem to make sense if we all ate together. Or do they need to go and escort the others from my team?”

  “They have their own escort, ma’am.”

  Miranda was out of the vehicle and halfway to the door, at the center of her towering escorts and the dog ranging along ahead of them sniffing the air, when the oddity began to make sense.

  “You say that Drake asked for this level of security for me?”

  Captain Bell turned to her so abruptly that he stumbled. “You call the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by his first name?”

  “He asked me to. Is there a problem?”

  “Ma’am. No ma’am. I’ve never even seen the CJCS.”

  “He’s a good man. He gets very upset when bad things happen to his pilots.”

  “Even though he was an Army Ranger?”

  “He was?” She hadn’t known that about him. “And he has a thing for Krispy Kreme donuts. I saw a large empty box on his desk one night.”