Blink of an Eye

by William S. Cohen

  “Glad you’re here, Sean,” the President said. Spencer stopped speaking. “It looks like a tsunami.”

  “I heard a little on the radio in the car,” Falcone said. “How much—”

  The satellite image froze on the briefer’s screen as the communications producers in the Watch Center put a new image on the other five screens: A man in a white shirt without a tie. BULLETIN appeared on the screen. A voiceover from the Watch Center said, “GNN correspondent. GNN headquarters, Atlanta. Two minutes ago.”

  The GNN man said, “A tsunami apparently has caused great damage in Savannah, Georgia. Governor Morrill, in Atlanta, reports a widespread electric blackout centered on Savannah. Much of the Southern power grid is down. No estimates yet of casualties or damage. President Oxley has been informed. So far, no word from the White House.”

  Oxley, speaking into a microphone in front of him, talked to the invisible technicians who were operating the audio and visual displays. “Keep taping GNN. But kill the transmissions until I tell you to resume. I want concentration in the room.”

  He looked around the table. “For the record, I spoke to Governor Morrill on my way from the dinner to here. He knows pretty much nothing more than what you just heard.” Oxley nodded toward Spencer. “What else is coming in, Captain?”

  “Many inquiries through military channels, Mr. President. We’ve got an overload of questions. But I don’t think we’ll have solid answers until dawn.”

  “Goddamn it,” Oxley said, half to himself. He turned to Quinlan. “Ray, get on to the networks and the cables. Tell them I want fifteen minutes”—he looked at his watch, which showed twenty-five minutes after ten—“at eleven. Tell them to announce it pronto. Oval Office and pool camera. Call in Stephanie. She’s hovering somewhere around the dinner, handling the social press. Tell her to call that guy on GNN and say the President will be speaking at eleven. I want that ‘no word from the White House’ stopped.”

  “I’ll get Barry on it right away,” Quinlan said. “He can—”

  “No. No written speech. There’s only time for me to wing it.”

  As Quinlan rose and hurried toward the door, Oxley turned to Spencer. “Captain, good job so far. Keep it up. I’ll want all you have by eleven, organized as best you can and printed out for me to refer to. And I want you standing by with it in the Oval Office.”

  As everyone in the White House knew, Oxley had an obsession about Katrina. He had read extensively about the federal government’s botched response. He kept a close eye on FEMA, and had warned Penny Walker that he would not tolerate anything less than a swift and efficient response to natural disasters.

  Oxley nodded toward Walker and said, “Well, Penny, it looks like you’re the point man … point person. What do you know? What are you doing?”

  Walker looked up from the doodles on the yellow pad in front of her. “We’re tracking down tsunami data. We had no warning. After the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, the U.S. laid out a lot of ocean-based pressure sensors, which were supposed to be the key to forecasting and warning about tsunamis. But forecasting is still tricky.

  “What we do know, Mr. President, is that we’ve almost certainly lost our best resources for response. There’s been no communication from the Coast Guard Air Station in Savannah. It had—or has—the biggest fleet of rescue helicopters on the Atlantic coast.”

  Spencer, still standing by the screen, raised his right hand and leaned forward, like an eager pupil wanting to be recognized.

  Oxley nodded toward him, and Penny Walker turned to glare at him.

  “Another resource seems to be lost also, Mr. President. The Coast Guard Air Station is located a few miles inland, at an air base with runways long enough for every type of aircraft we have. Silence there, too.”

  “I was about to point that out, Mr. President,” Walker said peevishly.

  “Anything else, Penny?”

  “No, sir. But I think we should make sure the FAA warns aircraft away from Savannah until we know the state of play there. And I suggest we begin implementing the DOD emergency plan for providing emergency electricity.”

  “George?” Oxley asked Kane.

  “The plan calls for sending the closest carrier, which then hooks up its electric power system to whatever civilian power grid is plausible,” Kane replied. “Civil authorities then ration out the electricity.”

  “Get that going,” Oxley said. He pointed toward Spencer and said, “And get the FAA warning out.”

  “That’s in the Department of Transportation,” Spencer said, summoning an aide and, lowering his voice, said, “Get in touch with the DOT duty officer. Tell him to find Secretary Laetner, and make it quick. Tell him he needs to order the FAA to ground or divert all the planes in the region.”

  Kane rose and walked a few steps to a clear plastic bubble that shielded a wall phone, enabling callers to make calls without disturbing a meeting.

  “We need to get FEMA on this immediately,” Oxley said, nodding toward Penny Walker. “What’s happening?”

  “There’s a basic response and recovery plan that we plug the disaster zone into,” she replied. “We’re getting ready to move food, water, medicine, and clothing. And we’ll be setting up emergency communication and medical care facilities. If we learn that Georgia’s first responders are not available, we’ll be bringing in their counterparts from South Carolina and Florida.”

  “Sean, any ideas?” Oxley asked.

  “We need to get something more than a satellite image, Mr. President,” Falcone said. “I’m sure the Air Force can get a plane up with infrared for night-vision reconnaissance.”

  “Good idea,” Oxley said. “Captain Spencer, get that going.”

  “Yes, sir,” Spencer said, signaling a Navy lieutenant from a seat against the wall.

  “Hand it off to Andrews,” Spencer told the lieutenant. “Tell them it’s on presidential authority. Tell them we may want to patch into the pilot from here.” The lieutenant headed for the Watch Center.

  “Also, Mr. President,” Falcone said, “we’re working from very little information. And first information is usually not the best information. I can’t understand how a tsunami can cause such an enormous blackout. Georgia’s not Indonesia. And there’s no report of an earthquake, as there was before the Japanese tsunami.”

  “It’s all we have, Sean,” Ray Quinlan said. “The President has to say something—fast. He has to go with tsunami.”

  27

  FEW PEOPLE outside the secret-ridden world of national security have ever heard about the Space Based Infrared Systems program. Extraordinarily expensive even by Pentagon standards, the program was usually referred to simply as SBIRS and pronounced sib-irs. A complex, highly secret enterprise, it was designed as a second-generation passive system to detect missile launches and track missiles. The SBIRS detection would then alert land-and sea-based defense systems designed to shoot down the missiles.

  SBIRS was finally operating after years of cost overruns and controversial test results. And when Lieutenant Tourtellot picked up the words huge wave and bright before his radio went out, SBIRS’s high-and low-orbiting satellites were functioning. One of them picked up what its managers called an anomaly.

  The anomaly that the SBIRS satellites detected was transmitted to the SBIRS Mission Control Station at Buckley Air Force Base, in Aurora, Colorado, a few miles east of Denver. Watch officers interpreted the data as an unknown “heat signature,” a nanosecond burst of very high temperature, in the Atlantic Ocean, apparently off the South Carolina coast.

  The commanding officer of the Mission Control Station at Buckley alerted the NMCC with a message sent on a secure phone line. The message said that analysts at Buckley could not attribute the high-heat signature to any natural phenomenon.

  The National Military Command Center is responsible for command and control of U.S. nuclear weapons and for detecting nuclear weapons aimed at the United States. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise
of terrorism, the possibility of a ballistic missile attack diminished while the possibility of a terrorist suitcase bomb or dirty bomb escalated. But SBIRS remained active and in constant touch with the NMCC.

  Air Force General Mike McHugh sat in a high-backed gray chair, behind a semicircular console that had four small monitors, arrays of buttons, and a telephone handset. Next to McHugh was an aide, Air Force Captain Sharon Leopold, who handled routine incoming and outgoing calls. Elsewhere in the large, two-tiered room were other NMCC staffers at other consoles. From this command center McHugh could instantly reach every U.S. military command in the world and spiral down, if necessary, to an Army patrol in Afghanistan or a U.S. Navy destroyer on pirate patrol off Somalia.

  When the anomaly report came in from Buckley, McHugh remembered a flap over a SBIRS nuclear-detection report that had turned out to be a jet aircraft’s exhaust. SBIRS had tightened its calibrations after that. But SBIRS had a reputation in the Air Force as a finicky system. There were frequent tests of its components, frequent unscheduled drills of Buckley-NMCC communications, and occasional highly realistic war gaming simulations involving nuclear-weapon detection.

  McHugh, particularly wary of SBIRS, asked for more information on the high-heat signal by requesting an immediate Vela analysis.

  “My God, what a night!” he said to Leopold. “Now we have another one of those goddamn SBIRS drills. I wonder if the whole thing tonight is some kind of Homeland Security caper.”

  “What’s a Vela analysis?” Leopold asked.

  “Back in the 1970s,” the general replied, “a satellite picked up a flash of light that the CIA interpreted as a possible nuclear explosion.” He went on to describe what he had read in a highly classified briefing book that had been prepared at the time.

  The flash had been seen near the Prince Edward Islands, two volcanic bits of land in the subarctic region of the Indian Ocean, about as close to Antarctica as to South Africa, which claimed the islands as part of its territory. The satellite that detected the flash was dedicated to the Vela program (“Vela” coming from the Spanish velar, which meant keeping a vigil). Vela satellites monitored Soviet adherence to a treaty that banned the testing of nuclear weapons.

  “A nuclear bomb blast produces a signature, a certain kind of flash,” McHugh went on. “According to the briefing on the Indian Ocean flash, we never did absolutely pin that one down. Most experts who looked over the image felt it was from a relatively small nuclear explosion. Probably a test set off by Israel or maybe South Africa, or both, acting in cahoots. But it remained an anomaly.”

  “So now you’re asking Buckley for an analysis that will ratchet up the drill,” Leopold said, smiling. “And Buckley won’t want to do it because it turns out that this is another drill.”

  “Right. As far as I know, we’ve never had a Vela analysis except in a drill. A real one would light up every damn light on this console, send alerts all over the government, all over the world.”

  A few minutes later, one light—SecDef—did flash on the console.

  “McHugh here, Mr. Secretary,” the general said, picking up the phone.

  “Evening, Mike,” Kane said. “I’m in the Sit Room. We need to get a carrier moving tonight out of Norfolk. Mission is to go to Savannah and render assistance for what seems to be a massive electrical blackout. Pass this as a POTUS directive to Navy Ops. Guys there have the cookbook recipes on how to do this.”

  “Yes, sir,” McHugh said. “What’s up?”

  “Looks like a tsunami hit Savannah and knocked out electricity. I’ll get comm here to send you the satellite image. It may be pretty bad, and we’d better get disaster-response operations ready for Savannah. I’ll be in as soon as the meeting here breaks up. And get somebody to try to find out what happened to the Coast Guard Air Station at Savannah. It’s off the air.”

  Leopold pointed to the console and mouthed “Buckley.” McHugh stuck up his left hand like a traffic cop.

  “Yes, sir. We’ll get right on it.”

  “Okay, Mike. Signing off.”

  When Kane hung up, McHugh swiveled toward Leopold.

  “What does Buckley say?”

  “It confirms your request for a Vela analysis. And it says this is no drill.”

  “Give me the printout,” McHugh said, reaching for the paper that Leopold had just read from. He read,

  It is belief here, on quick-time analysis, that the SBIRS detection has the characteristic double flash of a nuclear explosion. We confirm your request for Vela analysis. This is no drill.

  McHugh remembered reading that phrase This is no drill in a book about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. There had been drills there, too, before December 7. This is no drill was part of the Navy’s first report on the attack on Pearl Harbor. Now here it is again. This is no drill.

  “Jesus! Get me CIA ops,” McHugh told Leopold. “They’re supposed to have nuclear expertise on tap for the analysis. Then find the Secretary and tell him what’s going on.”

  The lights began flashing on. Leopold, unable to raise the Coast Guard Air Station, had requested information from the Third Division at Fort Stewart.

  “CIA ops. Rice here. What’s up?”

  “This is General McHugh, NMCC. We have a report of a possible nuclear explosion.”

  McHugh described the Buckley report, the Vela request, and then added. “This is no drill.”

  Rice searched through computer files for instructions about the Vela procedure and told McHugh how to relay the SBIRS data to a CIA nuclear analyst through the secure Intelink intelligence computer network.

  “Where did Buckley say the anomaly is?” Rice asked.

  “Off the South Carolina coast.”

  “And this is no drill?”

  “Right. I repeat,” McHugh said. “This is no drill.”

  “My God, General! If that’s territorial waters and this thing comes up positive, a lot of things have to start happening.”

  “How long will this take?” McHugh asked. He looked at his watch: 2255.

  “Highest possible priority, of course. I’m contacting the nuc guys now. But this is beyond my pay grade. I’m passing this on to the director.”

  The satellite image from the Situation Room began downloading on a monitor in front of McHugh.

  “Jesus!” McHugh exclaimed, leaning forward. He pointed to a monitor in front of Leopold. “Google Savannah.”

  Leopold brought up Google. A small map appeared at the top of the monitor. She enlarged it.

  “The Georgia-South Carolina border is the Savannah River,” McHugh said, leaning toward the monitor. “The SBIRS says the heat signature is off the South Carolina coast. We reported a tsunami off Savannah. Jesus! I think they’re talking about the same thing. Get me Secretary Kane. Sit Room.”

  Leopold punched a button on her console. “The Secretary is no longer in the Situation Room, sir,” she reported.

  “Well, for Christ’s sake, get him on his cell phone.”

  “Sorry, General. He’s not answering. The cell phone is out of service until he leaves—”

  “Right. We’ve got to wait until he clears the no-electronics zone. Jesus! What about Wilkinson?”

  “General Wilkinson is at the state dinner, sir, and is not answering. His duty officer is—”

  “Never mind the goddamn duty officer. Find the Secretary of Defense and get him on a secure line. Fast.”

  Next to the monitor showing the satellite image was another monitor that now split into three vertical strips: NBC, FOX, and GNN. A quick glance showed McHugh that all three had hastily assembled various experts on tsunamis and were showing clips of the horrendous Japanese tsunami that had swept away towns, carrying off houses, cars, boats, and thousands of people. NBC shifted to a Japanese refugee center, where clusters of families huddled, looking strangely calm. GNN switched to a Google Earth view of Savannah with red lines indicating the possible area of the flooding.

  McHugh selected GNN, whose bottom-of-the
-screen roll was saying PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 11 EST. The tsunami expert had been replaced by a GNN correspondent reporting that all landline and cell phones in the Savannah area were silent. An airliner, which was to have landed at Savannah Airport at 8:54, was missing.

  McHugh again looked at his watch: 2358. He turned to Leopold and said softly, “I think this will be our nine-eleven, Sharon. Get me Sean Falcone.”

  Falcone had left the Situation Room and was in his West Wing office when McHugh’s call came through.

  “Mike McHugh here, Senator.”

  “Mike. Good to hear from you.” Falcone’s phone console showed the call was coming from the NMCC. “Any news on the tsunami?”

  McHugh had been an up-and-coming junior officer in the military liaison office to the Senate when Falcone had been a senator. They had struck up a friendship based on mutual trust and a fanatic faith in the Boston Red Sox. McHugh, Falcone knew, was a by-the-book officer and, by calling Falcone, was stepping out of his chain of command.

  “Senator, you’ve got to stop the President from saying anything definite about a tsunami.”

  “What?”

  “There’s some other information, Senator.”

  McHugh knew that every word he said in the NMCC was almost certainly recorded. And for all he knew Falcone was recording him, too. Someday I’ll have to testify about this, McHugh suddenly thought. He paused.

  “Tell me, Mike.”

  “SBIRS. You know SBIRS?”

  “Sure. I was there for the creation. And it came up in the Senate quite often. Cost overruns, tests—”

  “To get to it, sir: SBIRS picked up a high-heat signature and suspects it’s nuclear.”

  “Where? Don’t tell me Iran.”

  “No, Sean. It’s off the East Coast, apparently on the Georgia–South Carolina border.”

  “Are you saying that what hit Savannah may be a nuclear bomb—and not a tsunami?”

  “Yes,” McHugh said softly.

  A moment later, on a small TV in Falcone’s office and in a monitor screen on McHugh’s console, the President appeared. He was seated behind his desk in the Oval Office. He had quickly changed out of his formal dress and was wearing the standard dark suit, white shirt, and pale-blue tie. He looked properly grim.