by Isaac Hooke
"Doesn't change the fact that we have an incoming ICBM," the Chairman said. "We have confirmation from multiple DSP satellites."
The President compressed his lips, hesitating. Finally he said: "I want the Global Strike forces on DEFCON-1. And conventional forces upgraded to DEFCON-2."
"Moving Global Strike forces to DEFCON-1, and conventional forces to DEFCON-2."
"Enact Operation Looking Glass," the President said.
"Enacting Operation Looking Glass."
That was the codename of an airborne command and control center situated aboard a fighter-escorted Boeing E-6B Mercury. If all ground-based command centers were taken out of action, the Looking Glass would assume control of the nuclear forces.
So this is what the end of the world feels like.
The President studied the trajectories of the four interceptor rockets from the West Coast. They were too far away. And even if they reached the target in time, he doubted any of them would succeed in disabling the ICBM. The President had been briefed multiple times, and he remembered the failings of the missile defense program quite well.
For all the billions spent, the GMD—Ground-based Midcourse Defense—had never actually been field tested against an actual intercontinental ballistic missile. Not once. It had been tried against a few intermediate-range ballistic missiles, with a measly fifty percent success rate.
Still, it was unfortunate the East Coast expansion was behind schedule. The President would've rather had a small chance, than none at all. Positioned for a surprise attack from North Korea, twenty-six interceptors were operational in Fort Greely, Alaska; the other four—currently in the air—had been at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.
The interceptors were designed for mid-course collision in space: they became useless after the ICBM passed apogee. When the incoming missile reached its descent phase, intermediate range options like THAAD interceptors and Patriots would be tried. Unfortunately, those latter options had a ninety-nine percent chance of failure, given that they had to hit supersonic targets that were a tiny two by six feet in size.
If they got lucky, and one of the THAADs made a hit, the nuclear warhead wouldn't detonate—the President wasn't a physicist, but he knew enough about nuclear bombs to understand that the core had to be compressed in a perfectly symmetrical pattern in order to reach critical mass. Toxic radioactive material from the non-nuclear explosion would spread across the lower atmosphere, of course. Not the best result, but definitely preferable to a nuclear detonation.
"Sir," one of the duty officers in the room interrupted the President's brooding. "Look."
The President glanced at the main screen. The third stage of the ICBM had broken away. But that wasn't what concerned the duty officer: three more missiles had appeared on the display, sourced from the same North Atlantic Ocean area. According to the trajectories, the calculated targets were within thirty kilometers of Washington D.C., New York City, and Chicago.
"Damn it," the President said. "Get more interceptors in the air."
"Sir," the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said. "We have no more GBI's"—ground-based interceptors—"in California."
"I know that," the President snapped.
"The launch site in Alaska is too far to make a difference," the Chairman explained.
"We have to try," the President said. "We spent all that goddamn money on them. So we're going to try. Launch them. If anything, at least they'll be in the air when the next wave of attacks come."
"Launching," the Chairman said.
A moment later several more blue dots appeared on the display—twelve interceptors in total, sourced from Alaska.
"Can we contact the Russians?" the President asked.
"MOLINK is up and running," the Chairman said. That stood for Moscow Link. "I already had one of your duty officers send an email asking the Russians if they fired a nuclear weapon at us. No response."
"Can we initiate a DVL?" Direct Voice Link.
"Lieutenant Colonel James Pichner is trying," the Chairman said. The President recognized the name of the senior presidential translator. "The Russian civilian on the other end says none of his contacts in the government are answering him. He says there has been an attack of some kind."
"What kind of attack?"
"He doesn't know. Or won't say."
"Shit. Keep trying."
"Attack, my ass." Brigadier General Nathan Jones, Assistant Commanding General of the Joint Special Operations Command, appeared on the video screen. He looked quite grim. "You ask me, the bastards don't want to answer. For good reason."
"What if it's the Chinese?" the Director of National Intelligence said over the conference line.
The President felt one of his eyebrows go up. "The Chinese?"
"The Chinese have submarines capable of launching intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear payloads."
"It's not the Chinese," the Secretary of State said dismissively. "They wouldn't dare risk annihilation. Besides, they've pledged no-first-use."
"Just because someone pledges something, doesn't mean they'll honor it," the Director of National Intelligence said.
A duty officer in the lower row said: "I'm getting news reports confirming an attack of some sort on the Kremlin. It looks like their Senate building was hit. Social media tracking is all over the place. Some users are saying a Learjet crashed into the building, others a delivery truck filled with fertilizer broke through the security gates and detonated."
"Maybe the Russians blame us," the intelligence analyst said. "And they're retaliating."
"So many what ifs and maybes," the President said.
On the monitors, the fourth stage of the initial ICBM broke off. Multiple launch vehicles appeared on the display. Most of them would be decoys—aluminized balloons, electronic noisemakers, chaff wires and the like, meant to throw off any interceptors.
"The launch vehicles are descending rapidly," the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs said. "They'll reach optimal detonation altitude in five minutes."
The President stared at the display. The four GMD interceptors from California were still several hundred kilometers away. Their window of usefulness had passed.
"Mr. President," the Chairman said over the teleconference line. His voice was urgent. "We have to launch a retaliatory strike against the Russians now. We won't be able to respond when that EMP pulse hits."
The President looked at Air Force Lieutenant Colonel James Nielson. The aide met his gaze and immediately stepped forward, placing the black briefcase on the tabletop.
So small, almost insignificant, that briefcase. And yet it would be responsible for starting World War III.
The President retrieved the plastic card containing the Gold Codes from his breast pocket.
"Chairman," the President said. "Prepare for nuclear launch authentication."
45
Hidden Base, Southern Region Suðurland, Iceland
FROM THE WINDOW of the second floor control room, Al Sifr watched the next pair of Iveco Trakkers tow their valuable cargo onto the bare rock.
His pilot had informed him of the imminent strike against the Kremlin not a moment too soon. The armed intruders had arrived at the early warning site only twenty minutes ago. Al Sifr had dispatched Ahmed and his Afghans to deal with them. That only two interlopers had come meant his real base remained undiscovered. Still, he had been fretting the whole time. He told Young Falcon and his team—all of whom had remained on the compound—to be ready for anything. At that point he had been ready to launch the attack with or without the pilot's involvement, but thankfully Ghazwan finally called, almost right on schedule. Al Sifr thanked him profusely, and promised him he would lounge in the hallowed halls of paradise that night. When Al Sifr hung up the sat-phone, he immediately gave the order to attack.
He felt immense relief now that four of the missiles were in the air. He could relax somewhat. The cogs of the great wheel he had set in motion were turning, and could not be
stopped. The launch of the remaining missiles would serve only to solidify the plan: missiles five to eight would target the Russians instead of the Americans.
It was an amazing feeling, watching the culmination of fifteen years of hard work unfold before him. When he had returned to Saudi Arabia after losing his family to the Americans all those years ago, he had taken up the sport of falconry. It helped distract him from the immense sense of loss. He sometimes spent days in the desert, watching his peregrine-saker hybrid, Qahir, hunt its prey.
Falcons were amazing animals. They could spot prey from several kilometers away. They flew at over one hundred kilometers an hour, and were able to approach speeds of almost four hundred kph during deep dives.
Rabbits, meanwhile, were crafty prey. Though Qahir flew at heights that placed the falcon out of sight, when the bird arched its wings and dove toward the hare, the slight keening of the dive often gave Qahir away. The prey would run, escaping under some desert rock or plant. But eventually, sometimes hours later, the rabbit would emerge and the process would repeat.
When Qahir finally captured and killed the hare, pure exhilaration would flow through Al Sifr. He was so proud of the falcon he had trained. Proud of the animal's patience, and his own.
That was precisely how Al Sifr felt in that moment. Instead of days, he had spent years hunting his own crafty, deceitful prey. Immense patience and fortitude had been required. And now, finally, he was about to kill that hateful animal. Or animals, rather.
He had originally wanted to launch the missiles closer to both the Russian and U.S. coastlines, from seafaring vessels, but the logistics proved prohibitively expensive. The cost of appropriate container ships alone exceeded eighty million dollars. His Iceland base cost a tenth of that.
He watched the semis tow missiles five and six into position. He hadn't been able to actually test the launch before that day—by doing so, he would have alerted the Americans and Russians, as well as the Republic of Iceland. But the simulations had run remarkably well. Data from the weather balloons helped.
Al Sifr glanced at the displays embedded in the wall to his right. The original four sounding rockets had already reached their peak, attaining apogee halfway between Iceland and North America. They were functioning perfectly. To the spy satellites in orbit, it would seem a Russian submarine had launched four ICBMs—the satellite cameras didn't have the granularity to distinguish between a four-stage sounding rocket and a four-stage ICBM.
And even if the Americans did have the technology to visually zoom in and identify the incredibly fast rockets, they would assume the Russians had somehow developed smaller warheads to fit the slimmer missile profiles. The payloads of Al Sifr's sounding rockets were simple noisemakers and aluminized balloons, of course, but the frightened Americans wouldn't know that—they would believe those devices merely decoys meant to mask the actual warheads. By the time they realized the truth, it would be too late.
Al Sifr glanced at the terminal operators behind him. None of them knew the real purpose of those rockets. He had told his scientists and engineers that the world governments were informed of the launch. Some of his employees wondered why the planned trajectories arced over American and Russian cities, and he explained that the launch was three parts scientific experimentation and one part early warning testing, initiated with the complete approval of both the U.S. and Russian governments.
His employees bought it, he thought. Most were from Saudi Arabia, men he had personally interviewed and hired years ago. A few were Muslims from Europe. While there was no love lost for the U.S. and Russia among them, they knew the payloads were harmless, so why would they object?
Some of the employees had questioned the need for the canopies, and the black and green paint applied to the hangars and main building, as well as the armed guards. But Al Sifr told them theft of intellectual property by international spies was on the rise, and that security measures were necessary to protect their work and keep them duly employed. Once the dark specter of unemployment was raised, the scientists shut up. Al Sifr paid them very handsomely, after all, at least compared to what they would have made back home.
He had one rule. They could not leave the compound during their tenure of employ. Via satellite Internet, they were allowed monitored communication with relatives. Any money they earned was sent directly to the bank accounts of these relatives. That said, wives and children were allowed to live with employees on base—two of the hangars served as living quarters.
Power came from solar arrays that blended into the black ash of the surrounding foothills, with diesel generators serving as a backup. Fresh food, water and other commodities were brought in from Reykjavík weekly. Garbage was buried; sewage piped to a nearby glacial outwash plain.
Though his scientists signed a five year contract, Al Sifr promised them they could quit whenever they wanted. However if someone actually tried, Al Sifr first attempted to persuade them to stay by increasing their salaries. If that didn't work, Al Sifr had Young Falcon quietly put them down, along with any dependents who lived on base with them. Al Sifr despised killing those who served him, even if they were underperformers, but he hated loose ends even more. The only one who had ever survived termination was Ahmed, mostly because of his long years of loyalty—and the Afghan had already returned to work for him again.
Al Sifr waited impatiently for the telltale trajectories of the American counterattack against Russia to appear on the screen. The attack would come shortly, Al Sifr knew. The U.S. would not wait. The President and his war-mongering generals would retaliate. With the pilot's attack on the Kremlin Senate, the Russian government would be in a state of panic and disarray, too far gone to respond to any communication attempts from the Americans. At that very moment some of Al Sifr's men in Moscow were posting photos and fictionalized reports under various aliases on VK.com—Russia's Facebook—to further thicken the fog of war: a fertilizer bomb had struck the Senate; no, it was a drone attack; no, a Learjet crash. Social media. A truly wondrous medium of mass confusion.
And if for some reason the U.S. exercised restraint, the next four missiles scheduled for launch would change that.
Al Sifr returned his attention to the black plain outside. The semi-trailers were almost in place. He couldn't help but smirk. If the Americans would not retaliate, the Russians certainly would. They were in the perfect state of mind to launch a counteroffensive. When ICBMs seemed to appear in their skies, apparently sourced from U.S. submarines, it would serve only as confirmation that the Americans had orchestrated the decapitating attack on their Kremlin. The intact Russian General Staff—the military entity actually responsible for launching a nuclear strike—would issue the order to ignite World War III.
46
Somewhere in Turkey
SAM WAS PERSONALLY SIFTING through the data recovered from the computers of Qawha Aerospace Company. It was her way of distracting herself.
One of her Russian assets had sent word that the Kremlin had been attacked by a bomb of some kind. The means weren't clear, but according to her contact all airports throughout the country had been shut down, and incoming aircraft were being diverted to other countries.
It was disturbingly similar to that fateful day all those years ago in New York, when the world had changed. She had a sinking feeling the attack was connected to Al Sifr in some way. She had forwarded news of the bombing to the Secretary of Defense and her other senior contacts by secure messenger, but so far none of them had answered—they had likely received the news from multiple sources. The Secretary would ordinarily be asleep at that hour, and whether or not he would arise to monitor the situation, or allow his subordinates to deal with it, Sam didn't know. If she was Secretary, she certainly would have rushed to the Pentagon, or at the very least conferenced in from home. But she wasn't.
Outside, the haunting voice of the muezzin echoed from the loudspeakers of a nearby mosque, issuing the call to prayer. That voice both reassured and grounded her. Since beg
inning her double life, she had heard a similar call every day for the past fourteen years. When she was in countries that lacked muezzins, she programmed her smartphone to play the call to prayer five times a day instead—without that emotional voice, it truly felt like something was missing from her life.
She finished prayers, then attacked the data with renewed purpose. She would find something. She swore she would. She trusted the analysts at the DIA and NSA completely, but another set of eyes wouldn't hurt anything.
She found a daily expense spreadsheet that contained a log of all purchases made by Qawha Aerospace and its subsidiaries, starting from five years ago. There were about twenty thousand rows. An intel mother lode? Or a useless time sink?
She began skimming through the list. Some of the purchase prices were obviously overinflated. Seventy thousand dollars for office supplies, twice a week?
Wait. There. That was interesting. Four years ago the Aurora Research subsidiary had expensed a modified Black Brant XXI purchased from Magellan, a Canadian aerospace company. According to Magellan's website, the XXI was a premier four-stage sounding rocket. She noted the purchase as an anomaly and continued through the records.
Again, six months later, another purchase of a Black Brant. Curious, she sorted and grouped the purchases by subsidiary, and discovered that six more rockets had been acquired by Aurora Research over the past five years, for a total of eight.
What possible use could a terrorist organization have for quietly stockpiling modified sounding rockets? The payload limits restricted the devices to peaceful scientific experimentation and analysis, and not much else.
Sounding rockets...
Her phone buzzed, indicating the receipt of a secure text via the Sunodos application. One of her Pentagon assets had forwarded her a message. It was rated Code Scarlet, highest level of urgency. In it, all senior staff were recalled to their posts immediately.
The phone buzzed again. Her asset had sent another message.
DEFCON-1 issued for Global Strike forces. Conventional forces moved to DEFCON-2.
