by Dale Brown
"Oscar-Mike" challenge code--OM, or Old Man, was usually
reserved as a radio tribute to him. "Zero-One authenticates
Charlie."
"Loud and clear, Zero-One." They repeated the procedure
with the other UHF radio, with the secure UHF, and finally
with the satellite teletype terminal.
The next step: checking the weapons. With the weapons
monitoring system off, Roma checked each weapon station to
be sure each weapon and each weapon release circuit was in-
deed off. He then turned the system on and flipped through
4
FATAL TERRAIN 301
each weapon station again, watching for green sAm lights in-
dicating each weapon was safed and had passed its continuity
and connectivity self-tests with the B-IB's weapon computers.
Checklist complete, he shut down the weapons-monitoring
system.
Next he checked the PAL, or Permissive Action Link, the
computer that would allow him to prearin the weapons. He
entered a test code and received a good sAm and READY in-
dication. Once programmed with the correct prearming code
transmitted to the crew by the National Command Authority-
the President of the United States, along with the Secretary of
Defense-the PAL would allow the crew to prearm the nuclear
weapons. The PAL would allow only five incorrect prearming
attempts, then automatically safe the weapons permanently.
The PAL was mounted on the forward instrument panel be-
tween the OSO and DSO, and Roma got his DSO's attention
so he could visually double-check that the PAL was good.
"Paul, PAL check."
The DSO, Paul Wiegand, leaned over and checked the light
indications on the PAL. "SAFE and READY checks."
"Push to test," Roma said, hitting the MT button. All of
the lights on the panel illuminated, with the SAFE light flashing.
I 'Checks."
"PAL off," Roma said, shutting off the system. "Arming
switch lock lever safety wire."
Wiegand looked over and saw that the safety wire to the
mode switch lock lever was installed and secure. "Secure,"
he responded. Because the PAL was a nuclear weapon com-
ponent, protected just like a nuclear weapon itself, access to
the PAL was strictly two-person control-no fewer than two
persons had to be present whenever handling the PAL or any
nuclear weapon or component. Additional safety was added by
providing a single, physical, positive action to any attempt to
prearm any nuclear weapon, such as breaking the thin steel
safety wire off the lock lever before moving the lock lever
over so the anning switch could be moved from SAFE to ARM.
By this time, the navigation gyros had fully aligned, and he
set the mode switch to NAV. "Chris, I'm in NAv, ready for
engine start. "
"Defense is ready for engine start."
"Rog," the copilot replied. A few minutes later, the pilots
started all four engines, then began their electrical, hydraulic,
302 DALE BROWN
fuel, environmental, flight control, terrain-following computer,
and autopilot checks, swept the wings back and forward, and
cycled the bomb doors and rotary launcher. One of the flight-
control computers flunked a mode check, so the crew chiefs
were scrambling to find a spare computer to swap. It took an
hour and a half before a spare was found, and another half
hour to finish the checks and shut down the engines. The crew
then performed the "cocking" checklist, which configured all
switches and systems so the aircraft could be ready for taxi
and takeoff just minutes after hitting one button.
"Control, Sortie Zero-One, code one, cocked on alert," the
copilot reported after the crew finished their checklists.
- Zero-One, control copies, cocked on alert. Assume normal
alert, time two-one-zero-eight-zero-seven, authentication Os-
car. Control out."
Roma looked up the date-time group and checked the au-
thentication code; it was correct. "Authentication checks,
crew," Roma announced. The only response was the interior
lights switching off as the pilots turned off the battery switch,
and they were left in the dark. As the crew climbed out of the
big bomber, motored the entry hatch closed, and walked to-
ward the squadron headquarters building, Joe Roma thought
that he was being left in the dark in more ways than one.
It was after one-thirty in the morning, but Roma's day 'was
just beginning. The Wing's goal was to generate four of its
twenty B-IB Lancer bombers and six of its eighteen KC-135R
Stratotanker aerial refueling tankers for nuclear alert within the
first twelve hours, ten bombers within thirty-six hours, and
sixteen planes within forty-eight hours. Crews that had just
finished placing one plane on alert were immediately cycled
back to begin preflighting another plane while its crews were
being briefed. Roma was assigned the task of giving refresher
briefings to oncoming crews on nuclear weapon preflight and
handling procedures, and he also filled in giving route and
target study and inventorying the CMF, or Classified Mission
Folder, boxes for the crews placing aircraft on alert.
. At the twelve-hour point, nine A. local time, Roma was
in the Wing Battle Staff Room, attending the hourly battle staff
meeting and the first major progress briefing of the alert force
generation. The news was not good: Sortie Zero-Four was still
at least thirty minutes to an hour from being ready, and it
might even require an engine swap or a completely new air-
K
FATAL TER RAI N 303
plane. It was no secret that the morale of the B- I B community
was at an all-time low after flying hours were cut and after
learning that all of the B -Is would be going to the Air National
Guard or Air Force Reserves starting in October--crew mem-
bers, officers, and enlisted troops alike were spending more
time looking for new assignments or applying for Guard or
Reserve slots.
"Aircrew response has been marginal to good overall,"
Roma said when asked about how the aircrews were reacting
to the recall and late-night generation. "About thirty percent
response in the first hour, seventy percent in three hours-not
bad when you consider the average commute time is forty
minutes for the crew members that live off-base, which is
about two-thirds of the force."
"It's unacceptable," the group commander interjected an-
grily. "The crews were dogging it."
"I don't think anyone was dogging it, sir," Roma said. "It's
Friday night. We just finished a wing deployment exercise and
an Air Battle Force exercise. People were out of town for the
weekend, going to graduation parties, getting ready for sum-
mer vacation-this was a bolt-from- the-blue nuclear genera-
tion."
"All right, all right," the wing commander interrupted.
"The bottom line is we have more crews than planes right
now. What's the problem?"
"Tbe t
raining on the SIOP-required gear and availability of
spare parts for the numberbf planes required for alert, sir,"
the chief of logistics interjected, referring to the specialized
equipment needed to generate a plane for war under the Single
Integrated Operations Plan. "We're having to break into pre-
positioned deployment packs for spare parts and equipment.
Going from zero planes available for nuclear generation to
fifteen ready in just thirty-six more hours is eating up our
supplies and overloading the avionics shops."
"Besides, it's beenalmost a year since we've moved nukes
for real, sir," the munitions maintenance chief added. "We've
got a whole generation of troops that only have basic education
and virtually no experience in special weapons."
The strain was showing on the wing commander's face.
"No excuses, dammit," he said, rubbing a hand over his
weary face. "Our job around here is to generate planes and
get ready for combat operations, and I'll shit-can anyone who
304 DALE BROWN
doesn't understand that. How well we do on our generation
schedule depends on the leadership abilities of the men and
women in this room. I want us back on schedule before the
next battle staff meeting-I hold the senior staff officers and
group commanders responsible. Cancel the intelligence brief-
ing-we've got a job to do out on the ramp. Dismissed."
Things had been somewhat disorganized during the first sev
eral hours of a the full nighttime nuclear alert generation-
that was situation-normal in any unit Roma had ever been in-
but by midmorning things appeared to be humming along
pretty well. By the time Roma returned to his office in the
squadron building, his entire staff-including everyone re-
called from leave-was busy. Everyone had been assigned an
alert sortie. Most were not scheduled to start generating their
alert line for several hours, so they were busy running simu-
lator sessions, running mobility line duties, running errands for
the Wing staff, or helping the maintenance crews to bring a
plane up to preload status.
Roma's E-mail mailbox had more than two dozen new mes-
sages in it in just the last thirty minutes, so he turned on the
TV in his office to get the latest news and sat down to start
reading and returning messages. The news seemed to be a
jumble of confusion, very much like the situation at Ellsworth
Air Force Base as five thousand men and women were trying
to get twenty planes ready to fly off and unleash nuclear dev-
astation on the People's Republic of China.
Little else was known about the nuclear disaster in Japan
except what had been reported hours ago: the American air-
craft carrier USS Independence, all eighty thousand tons of it,
including approximately 5,200 officers and enlisted men and
women, had disappeared when what eyewitnesses called pt
small nuclear explosion erupted in the late-morning hours in
the Gulf of Sagami, about sixty miles south of Tokyo.
Roma couldn't believe what he was I hearing.
The disastrous news didn't stop there. Two escort frigates
and a 50,000-ton replenishment ship carrying 150,000 barrels
of fuel oil cruising near the carrier had capsized in the explo-
sion, and all hands were feared lost--460 more men and
women presumed dead. Two guided-missile cruiser escorts had
been substantially damaged in the explosion, with hundreds
more dead or injured. Several other vessels, civilian and com-
mercial, in the vicinity of the explosion had also been lost.
FATAL T ER R AI N 305
The force of the blast was estimated to be equivalent to 10,000
tons of TNT.
The Japanese prime minister, Kazumi Nagai, immediately
blamed the accident on the United States, saying that the In-
dependence had been carrying nuclear weapons and that one
of the warheads had gone off when a C-2 Greyhound cargo
aircraft made a crash landing. U. President Kevin Martindale
went on national radio and TV immediately, reporting the ac-
cident and denying that the Independence or any U. warships
near Japan were carrying nuclear weapons, but his denials
seemed to be falling on deaf ears throughout the world.
The Japanese Diet, under heavy pressure by Nagai, imme-
diately ordered all American military bases in Japan sealed and
all U. vessels, military or civilian military contract, to remain
in port until they could be inspected by Japanese nuclear of-
ficials and Japanese Self-Defense Force soldiers. Again, Japan
was the site of a nuclear explosion, and accusing eyes were
on America. South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia,
Australia, and New Zealand immediately followed Japan's pre-
cautionary move-no U. warships or civilian ships con-
tracted by the U. military could enter their territorial waters,
and they could not leave, until they were inspected and corti-
fied that they carried no nuclear weapons.
The People's Republic of China went one step further, re-
stricting all U. warships from coming within a hundred miles
of its shores or they would consider it an act of war. They
knew that the Independence had been bound for the Formosa
Strait, and they surmised that the United States was using the
attacks on the two frigates Duncan and James Daniel as a
pretext to launch a preemptive nuclear strike on China. All
U. warships already within the one-hundred-mile buffer zone
had twenty-four hours to get out, or they would be attacked
without warning. China then revealed the position and even
the identification of four U. submarines in the Formosa Strait
and South China Sea, including two ballistic missile attack
subs, and estimated that perhaps as many as ten more were in
the vicinity, ready to wage war on the People's Republic of
China.
In hours, virtually the entire Pacific Ocean was off-limits to
the U. Navy.
Joe Roma knew all of this was bullshit. First, he knew from
intelligence reports that all nuclear weapons had been removed
306 DALE BROWN
from all Navy warships except some ballistic missile subs, just
as they had been removed from American bombers, since
1991-and nothing that he had been briefed lately caused him
to believe that the recent incidents with China had altered that
policy. It was possible that the President had changed his mind
and rearmed hundreds of capital warships around the world in
less than a month, but Roma thought it very unlikely.
Second, nuclear warheads do not go off by themselves, no
matter how badly they are abused. Roma knew enough about
the inner workings of a modem-day nuclear warhead to know
that it would take much more than a crash landing to set it
off, even one that had been prearmed and was ready to be
released or launched-they had dozens of safety devices and
delivery parameters that had to be met before a full nuclear
yield could result. If one parameter or interlock was not sat-
>
isfied, or if there was the slightest bit of damage to a weapon,
it simply would not function. It was possible that an accident
or internal failure could cause a large non-nuclear explosion,
scattering radioactive debris, but a full yield from a damaged
weapon, even if it had been prearmed, was virtually impossi-
ble.
Bottom line: the nuclear device had to have been set. The
protests in Yokusuka Harbor before the Independence set sail
would have provided the perfect opportunity for a terrorist to
plant a device somewhere on the hull.
But for some reason no one was suggesting this might be
the work of a terrorist. There were plenty of so-called experts
on all of the networks, and almost all of them were blaming
the United States for sloppy handling of nuclear weapons dur-
ing a time of crisis caused by the United States flying stealth
bombers all over Asia. The United States government, and
President Kevin Martindale and his administration in particu-
lar, were being blamed for the deaths of nearly six thousand
American soldiers, the loss of fifteen billion dollars' worth of
military hardware, the astronomical environmental disaster that
was likely to occur in northeastern Japan and the northern
Pacific Ocean, and for threatening the world with thermonu-
clear war.
While Roma had a "compose new message" window open
on his computer answering other messages, he decided to drop
a line to his old teacher and mentor, Lieutenant General Terrill
Samson, commander of Eighth Air Force. No doubt Samson
FATAL TER RAI N 307
was at U. Strategic Command headquarters right now, in the
huge underground command center that had formerly been the
nucleus of the Strategic Air Command. It was a simple mes-
sage, not demanding a reply: "What's happening, boss?"
along with his phone number and E-mail address. He then
forged ahead with the pile of E-mail messages waiting for his
response.
Roma was halfway through his list of E-mail messages
when he was interrupted by a page. When he tried to return
it, he was notified by an electronic voice that he needed a
secure telephone to dial it. The only STU phone he knew of
