The Seventh Angel

by Jeff Edwards

  SUNDAY; 03 MARCH

  1001 hours (10:01 AM)

  TIME ZONE +11 ‘LIMA’

  The timing was precise. All six charges detonated at the same instant, and a circular stretch of the ice pack exploded into an expanding cloud of water vapor and ice fragments. When the rumble of the blast had faded to silence and the last of the scattered ejecta had fallen back to surface of the ice pack, a large opening—about thirty meters in diameter—remained in the ice. Between the displacement effect of the shockwave and the heat of the expanding gases, the hole was nearly clear of debris, leaving a sizeable circle of the Sea of Okhotsk open to the frigid Siberian sky.

  Left alone, the newly-formed pocket of open sea would have begun to skin-over with new ice almost immediately. But it was not to be left alone, because the detonation of the shaped charges was only the tiniest precursor of the energies about to be channeled through this particular section of frozen ocean.

  The water near the center of the opening began to foam, and the surrounding ice began to vibrate. An enormous bubble broke the surface of the water, followed a millisecond later by the blunt-nosed cylindrical shape of a Russian R-29R nuclear missile.

  Still riding the supercavitating gas bubble of its submerged launch system, the 35-ton missile had barely cleared the surface of the water when the liquid-fueled rocket engines of its first stage ignited. Nitrogen tetroxide merged with unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine to feed the missile’s fiery exhaust. With a roar like an insanely-massive blowtorch, the weapon leapt toward the sky on a silver-white column of smoke and flame.

  Accelerating rapidly, it was moving at 5 kilometers a second—roughly four times the speed of a high-powered rifle bullet—when it blew through the thin layer of cirrostratus clouds in the upper troposphere and shot into the stratosphere. Three seconds later and still accelerating, the first stage burned out and the missile passed through 25,000 meters, where the deepening blue of the sky gave way to the blackness of space.

  The engines of the second stage fired, blasting the upper third of the missile up and away from the burned out and empty hulk of the first stage. Relieved of its burden, the missile gained still more speed, climbing away on its own pillar of flame while the remains of the discarded first stage fell back to earth like a man-made meteor of scorched aluminum-magnesium alloy.

  The second stage burned out at an altitude of 200 kilometers, triggering timed electrical pulses to a ring of small explosive charges in the mating collar that joined the second stage of the missile to the warhead bus. The explosives detonated instantly, fracturing the aerodynamic collar along carefully-engineered structural stress points. The inertia imparted by the small explosion was enough to separate the warhead bus from the expended second stage.

  Referred to by missile engineers as mechanical separation, this final severance of the payload from its launch vehicle marked the end of the boost phase of the trajectory, and the beginning of the ascent phase. Moving at 7 kilometers per second, the bluntly-conical warhead bus no longer needed rocket engines to complete its journey. From this point forward, the earth’s gravitational pull and the physics of ballistic flight would do all the work.

  The trajectory of the weapon began to flatten now, nosing over into a curving arc toward the east, and that mass of land known to humans as North America.

  * * *

  21ST Space Operations Center (Sunnyvale, California):

  Technical Sergeant Diane Claxton watched the screen of her SAWS console and inhaled softly through clenched teeth. This couldn’t be right. This just couldn’t be right. Ignoring the pulsing red alert icon at the top of her display screen, she tapped a rapid series of commands into her console and called up an off-axis view from another early warning satellite. The second bird—another U.S. Air Force Eagle Eye series surveillance satellite—was at the extreme edge of its operational footprint, so the images it produced were grainy and poorly-focused. Despite the lack of optical clarity, the feed from the second satellite confirmed the findings of the first.

  Technical Sergeant Claxton adjusted her communications headset so that the microphone hung a few inches in front of her mouth. She keyed the mike. “Senior Watch Officer, this is Station Five. Eagle Eye is tracking a ballistic missile launch alert in sector green, grid reference twenty-eight alpha. The launch point appears to be south of Siberia and west of Kamchatka. Looks like the Sea of Okhotsk.” She tapped in another sequence of keystrokes. “I have off-axis confirmation from a second Eagle Eye bird. Missile trajectory is east, toward California.”

  A voice crackled in the sergeant’s left ear. “This is the Senior Watch Officer; I copy ballistic missile launch alert in sector green, grid reference twenty-eight alpha. Cross-check with PAVE PAWS for radar confirmation.”

  PAVE PAWS, short for Precision Acquisition Vehicle Entry Phased Array Warning System, was a long-range land-based radar network operated by the U.S. Air Force’s Space Command. Its primary mission was to detect and track ballistic missiles that might pose a threat to U.S. territory.

  It took less than a minute for the PAVE PAWS radar installation at Beale Air Force Base, California to corroborate the inbound missile. By that time, the installation at Clear Air Force Station, Alaska had locked on and was also tracking the missile. Both radars confirmed the findings of the Eagle Eye satellites: an unannounced missile launch, with a ballistic trajectory toward the United States.

  The Senior Watch Officer lifted the handset of a blue telephone. The phone had no buttons or dial; it was a direct connection to North American Aerospace Defense Command in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado. The Senior Watch Officer swallowed and then spoke the words he had trained for many times, but never expected to say. “This is Tripwire Command. I have emergency flash traffic for CINCNORAD… Code word PINNACLE.”

  * * *

  White House, Presidential Emergency Operations Center (Washington, DC):

  President Chandler was glad he was sitting, because his knees were so weak that he wasn’t sure he could stand. He glanced around the room at the military and civilian personnel who staffed the PEOC. To outward appearances, they were going about the details of their respective jobs as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. People studied video screens, worked at computer stations, spoke quietly into telephones and communications handsets, wrote on clipboards, and exchanged printouts and folders with the same intense but subdued efficiency they showed on any other day. How did they do that? How could they calmly go about their business when a nuclear missile was screaming toward the United States at twenty-five times the speed of sound?

  Was it their training, or some unnatural level of personal discipline? Was it possible that it was all a front? Could they all be faking it, putting on the outward signs of professional detachment when they were really quaking in their boots?

  This last idea made sense to him, because that’s exactly what he was doing at the moment. On the outside, he was the leader of the most powerful nation on earth, thoughtful, decisive, and utterly unruffled by the emergency unfolding around them. On the inside, he was one step short of peeing in his pants. He wanted to run around the room, shrieking at the top of his lungs—not that his shaky knees were up to such an energetic task at the moment.

  He jerked his gaze to the wall-sized geographic display screen. The image looked so harmless, just a thin red line curving from the Sea of Okhotsk to a point somewhere above the middle of the Pacific Ocean. As he watched, the arc disappeared from the screen for a fraction of a second, and then reappeared—redrawn slightly longer as the missile came closer to the West Coast of his country.

  For all of its graphic simplicity, that curving red line represented destruction and death on a scale almost beyond the scope of imagination. In all of history, only two nuclear weapons had been used against human targets. Between them, the bombs codenamed ‘Fat Man’ and ‘Little Boy’ had devastated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing over 150,000 people. Another half million people had died from nucle
ar radiation over the following five years. The combined yield of those first two atomic bombs had been 36 kilotons: the destructive equivalent of 36,000 tons of conventional explosives.

  The missile hurtling through the black reaches of near-earth space carried three warheads, each with a destructive yield of 200 kilotons. Combined, the destructive power of those warheads was more than fifteen times greater than the two most terrible weapons ever turned by man onto his fellow men.

  A door opened at the rear of the room and the president glanced over his shoulder to see National Security Advisor Gregory Brenthoven walk into the operations center, followed by a young Marine lieutenant. The lieutenant made a beeline toward the Deputy Watch Officer, and the national security advisor pulled out a chair and seated himself at the briefing table.

  The president turned back to the geographic display. The curving red line on the screen flashed again, and grew longer. The unfinished end of the arc continued to edge its way eastward, toward the coast of California.

  The carnage at Nagasaki and Hiroshima had been so dire that the leaders of the most powerful nations in the world had, for the first time in history, shied away from using one of the weapons in their collective arsenals. Nuclear bombs and missiles had been built, tested in remote areas, and stockpiled against some unthinkable future. But they’d never again been used against human beings. Not until now…

  The president felt a shudder coming on, and he clamped down on his muscles to suppress it. The Commander in Chief of the United States military could not get the shakes during a crisis.

  It wasn’t a personal fear thing. At least he could comfort himself with that knowledge. He’d been in life-threatening situations before, and he’d never reacted this way. He didn’t want to die, but he wasn’t terrified by the idea. He knew that it was in him to sacrifice his life, if the circumstances demanded.

  This wasn’t about self-preservation, or the safety of his family. That missile couldn’t get anywhere near Washington. From its estimated launch position in the Sea of Okhotsk, the R-29R missile could hit any American city west of Denver. That put Washington, DC about 1,500 miles outside the target zone.

  Personal safety wasn’t the issue here. The real danger was in what that missile could trigger.

  On the table in front of him lay a heavy ten-ring binder, with anodized aluminum covers and color-coded pages. Its official title was the Single Integrated Operational Plan, or SIOP. It was the strategic blueprint for nuclear war—America’s plan for employing the ultimate Weapons of Mass Destruction.

  The binder was open to Section Orange, the pages the color of children’s aspirin. Bold block letters at the top of every page identified this section as “RETALIATORY NUCLEAR STRIKE OPTIONS.”

  But the president wasn’t looking at the SIOP. His eyes remained fixed on the geographic display. That harmless looking line of red pixels on the video screen could turn out to be the opening stroke of Armageddon. He might be looking at the first shot of the last war mankind would ever fight. The one Einstein had spoken of as the end of the human species.

  The president took a breath and exhaled sharply. “Talk to me, general. Give me the latest.”

  General Horace Gilmore, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, looked up from a red and white striped folder of computer hardcopy. He paused for a second, as though marshalling his thoughts.

  “Sir, we’re getting the last of the readiness confirmations now. We are at DEFCON 1: full offensive and defensive nuclear readiness. All active missile squadrons are at full alert, and all Minuteman III silos are at launch-standby. The Navy has issued pre-launch warnings to all deployed Trident ballistic missile subs. The Air Force is scrambling B-2 bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base, and B-52s from Minot, and Barksdale.”

  The president held up a hand. “Wait a second … We’re already launching bombers?”

  The general nodded. “Yes, sir. It’s standard operating procedure.”

  The president frowned. “Strategic bombers? Carrying nuclear weapons?”

  General Gilmore nodded again. “Affirmative, Mr. President. Standard precautionary deployment.” He glanced down at the computer printouts in the red and white striped folder. “The Vice President and the Secretary of Defense are in route to…”

  The president cut him off. “Hold it. Just stop right there. I have not authorized the deployment of nuclear weapons. Who in the hell is launching bombers with nuclear payloads?”

  Gregory Brenthoven cleared his throat. “Ah … Mr. President, that’s a standard response. As soon as we confirmed the presence of an inbound nuclear missile, the Commander in Chief, North American Aerospace Defense Command declared an Air Defense Emergency. Precautionary deployment is within the scope of his authority, but that’s as far as he can go without presidential authorization. He can put bombers in the air, but he can’t order them to attack. Only you can do that, sir.”

  “That’s correct, sir,” the general said. He pointed to the open binder on the briefing table. “It’s all spelled out in the Single Integrated Operational Plan. CINCNORAD is just ensuring that our strategic bomber wings don’t get caught on the ground when that missile’s warheads start hitting their targets.”

  The president paused for a second, and loosened his necktie. “I interrupted your briefing, General. Please continue.”

  The general glanced down at the striped folder. “Vice President Wainright and the Secretary of Defense are in route to the Alternate National Military Command and Control Center at Site Romeo. Per your orders, Homeland Security is issuing civil defense warnings to all cities and towns west of Burlington, Colorado. After we know the impact zones for the warheads, Homeland Security will coordinate with FEMA and the National Weather Service to calculate fallout footprints. Then they’ll issue radiation warnings in the affected areas and initiate quarantine protocols if necessary.”

  President Chandler nodded, partly in response to what the general had not said. When news of the incoming warheads began to take hold, there would be panic in the western states—assuming that it hadn’t started already. The civil defense warning would advise people to stay off the roads and take shelter indoors, in their own homes where possible. But how many people would actually follow the guidelines? And how many would run to their cars and bolt for the nearest highway out of town?

  The interstates would be jammed, and a lot of people were going to get hurt in the mad rush to get away from the cities, even in areas far removed from the actual target sites. There would be looting, rioting, and crimes of opportunity.

  The loss of life due to ill-conceived panic reactions would probably exceed the casualty counts from the bombs, wherever they happened to strike. That made for a compelling argument against warning the civilian populace of an impending attack.

  But the citizenry had to trust its leaders in times of crisis. If the Russian warheads fell on civilian targets without warning, the country would come apart at the seams the instant the public realized that the government had known the truth and chosen to hide it. After that, no amount of good intent would be able to stop the slide into chaos.

  The problem was complicated by the fact that they didn’t yet know where the warheads were going to fall. If they could narrow down the list of potential targets, they could confine the emergency warnings to only the areas that were likely to be hit. That would presumably reduce the scope of the panic, which should help limit the resulting injuries. Fewer people stampeding away from target zones should translate into fewer traffic accidents, fewer heart attacks, fewer suicides … fewer instances of all the myriad ways that frightened humans could find to hurt themselves.

  But that was part of the terrible beauty of the MIRV design. The warheads would not be locked into their final trajectories until just minutes before they re-entered the atmosphere. By then, it would be too late to warn anyone.

  Despite the predictable consequences, there was no real choice. The people had to be told, even if the act of warning them sent som
e of them to their deaths.

  On the geographic display, the curving red line flashed again and grew longer.

  A Marine captain walked to General Gilmore’s side, stopped, and spoke softly.

  The general nodded, and turned to the president. “Sir, the hotline is up. We’ve got it patched through to your secure telephone, and President Turgenev is on the line.”

  The president reached for the phone. “Thank you.”

  In movies, the famed hotline between Washington and Moscow is usually depicted as a futuristic-looking red telephone, often decorated with flickering lights and strange mechanical reinforcements intended to convey the impression that the phone is somehow armored or bombproof. In at least one popular action film, the handset of the famous red phone was locked to the cradle by a formidable-looking steel clamp that could only be released by a key worn on a chain around the neck of the president.

  But the Secure Terminal Equipment phone sitting on the briefing table looked like any other black multi-line telephone—the kind you might find on a desk in any office building. Only the narrow horizontal slot in the front of the base suggested that the STE phone might be something out of the ordinary.

  The Marine captain leaned across the table and inserted a Fortezza-Hyper series encryption card into the slot. The phone beeped once softly, and the word ‘SECURE’ appeared in the rectangular LCD call display.

  The young officer slid the phone across the table top until it rested directly in front of the president. “Ready, sir.”

  President Chandler lifted the handset.

  His Russian counterpart, President Anatoliy Petrovitch Turgenev, spoke almost immediately.

  “Mr. President … Frank … Are you on the line?”

  The Russian president’s voice sounded hollow and metallic, a side-effect of digital compression, and the encryption/decryption process that scrambled and unscrambled the signal. His English was accented, but very fluent.

  “Yes, Anatoliy,” the president said. “I’m on the line.”