by Dale Brown
cr~zzibJizig to their ~~ats azid chcc&zg ~~ “FOREST GREEN shows three units with amphtu~e pu’Ise threshold readings. System reports confirmation of readouts, repeat, system reports readout confirmation, event confidence is high.” Technicians at Cheyenne Mountain seldom used words like “nuclear detonation” or “explosion”-these were collectively called “events” and “readouts.” emotional detachment prevalent inside the Mountain, as if they could somehow block the horrors they saw by naming them something harmless. It was a relatively low-tech device that issued a warning on that Wednesday afternoon, a device that had gone all but unused for years. In an effort to increase the number of nuclear detection devices in orbit without increasing the actual number of satellites, in the late 1 970s and early 1 980s a secret program code-named FOREST GREEN was implemented. NAVSTAR Global Positioning System navigation satellites were fitted with electromagnetic pulse sensors and devices called (quite appropriately for nuclear detonation detection) Bhangmeters, which were sensitive optical flash detectors that could determine the explosive yield of a nuclear explosion by the brightness of the flash. Unlike AMWS, which were used only on specific (albeit very wide) areas of the Earth, FOREST GREEN had global coverage because the eighteen-satellite NAVSTAR constellation had at least three satellites looking at every piece of the Earth at every moment. A nuclear explosion has a definite pattern of two pulses-the first less intense than the second-caused first by the detonation of the triggering device, followed exactly one-third of a second later by the main explosion; this was the reason Bhangmeters were mounted in pairs, with one more sensitive than the other. The EMP detectors on the three FOREST GREEN satellites also registered the disruption of the ionosphere before communication between the satellites and their receivers on Earth were abruptly cut off. The senior controller in the Operations Center, an Air Force colonel named Randolph, immediately put the staff sergeant’s console display up on the “big board, ” a rectangle of six 2-by-3foot screens in the front of the Operations Center. The display was relatively uninformative at this point-three lines out of eighteen on the display were flashing, with a string of numbers showing the system readings and the threshold levels preprogrammed into the system. “All stations, this is Randolph. I confirm a FOREST GREEN event detection and classification, I need a status check and report in thirty seconds, all stations stand by.” The problem with the FOREST GREEN sensors was that they were not highly directional-the sensors could accurately record a nuclear detonation but not precisely pinpoint the explosion’s location; when the Bhangmeters were installed on older Vela nuclear-detection satellites, the device’s telescopic eye could pinpoint the location of the detonation, but on NAVSTAR satellites the sensors were relegated to area reports only. In a few moments Amy Hector had replaced the cryptic lines of data with a graphic pictorial of the information: a chart of the Earth that was within line-of-sight reach of the three NAVSTAR satellites that had suddenly gone off the air. Somewhere within the three overlapping shaded spheres, the first aboveground nuclear device in thirty years had detonated. Unfortunately, the display showed the explosion could have occurred anywhere from Hawaii to Thailand and from Japan to Australia. “I need better information than that, ” Colonel Randolph said. “Find out why no DSP systems issued an alert.” DSP was a constellation of satellites so sensitive that they could detect brush fires, structure fires, or even high-performance aircraft using afterburners-all from twenty-two thousand miles in space. “Sir, this is Staff Sergeant Hector on FOREST GREEN, ” Hector interjected. “I think I can come up with a rough triangulation.”
“Let’s have it, Sergeant.” “I’ve got the exact time when all three of the NAVSTAR satellites shut down, ” Hector explained, “and I’ve got the time down to one-one-hundredth of a second. I can Randolph looked at her. “I get the picture, Sergeant Hector. Speed of gamma particle versus time. Are the off-air times that different?”
“Stand by, sir.” There was a slight pause, then Hector replied: “Two times are the same; the other is different. I can poll the sensor threshold-release circuits and get a more exact time; I can also try a laser orbital velocity measurement to see if the event changed the orbits-“
“Just do it, Amy.” This was the first time he had ever recalled calling Hector by her first name, but it seemed oddly appropriate now. “But first, I need an acknowledgment of a suspected FOREST GREEN event from CINCSPACECOM right awayalso get SAC and JCS on the line.”
“Yes, sir. “NORAD hasn’t issued an alert yet, ” Randolph muttered half-aloud. “Why the hell haven’t they said anything? Something big enough to knock out three satellites is not good news. ABOARD SKY MASTERS DC-10, OVER CALIFORNIA SAME TIME Jon Masters had his feet up on the bulkhead, was on his third plastic squeeze bottle of Pepsi and halfway through a bologna and cheese sandwich when the toneless, emotionless voice of the Air Force mission control tracking officer on the radio said, “Masters One, College, contact lost with Jackson One.” Masters sat upright, put down the Pepsi, and quickly checked his readouts. “College, this is Masters One, I-” He did a double-take. Seconds ago he’d been getting a stream of position and velocity readouts from the NIRTSat in its orbit. Now the readouts were zero. Masters sighed. “Confirmed on this end. Stand by. I’ll try to re-establish communications.” On the interphone to his crew, he said, “Give me a turn westbound and a climb to best altitude. We’ve got a problem with the satellite.” Helen Kaddiri entered the flight deck. “What is it, Jon?”
“We lost contact with the satellite.” She looked at him as if to say, I’m not surprised. Instead, she said, “Same problem we had before?”
“That was a loose plug, Helen, this”-he scratched his head in an uncharacteristic moment of confusion-“has got to be something else. But what, I don’t know.” ABOARD WHISPER ONE-SEVEN, OVER POWDER RIVER MOA, MONTANA SAME TIME McLanahan began programming the final launch instructions on his Super Multi Function Display so they could take out the last few sortie targets in General Jarrel’s setup and then head home. The display shimmered and abruptly changed. “What the-” McLanahan muttered. Instead of the gently rolling hills and dry gullies of southeastern Montana, the SMFD showed a confusing pattern of light spots in a blank, featureless background. It did have one very prominent terrain feature-a mountain nearly twenty thousand feet high and sixty miles wide. It was as if Mount Everest had just been transplanted into the middle of the Great Plains. “I don’t believe this . . .” McLanahan said, staring at the SMFD. “What is it?” Ormack asked. “That doesn’t look like the target area.”
“The computer must be decoding the signal wrong, McLanahan guessed. Amazingly, the computer began plotting a recommended course on the erroneous computer display, with sharp changes in heading away from the larger moving spots but fairly close to the smaller, non-moving ones. The computer even made weapon selections, although with only two weapons on board the choice was relatively simple-the longer-range SLAM missile for the large moving spots that were to be circumnavigated, and the STRIKER glide-bomb for the smaller, stationary ones. The strike computer began the arming and countdown procedures to attack these “targets, ” and that’s when McLanahan got tired of this. “There’s some glitch in the system and it’s not 1 clearing. I’ll reset the system and go manually until I get a usable display back.” But he did not simply reset the computers-he used the on-board computer memory to save the last few seconds of images first before clearing the bogus display. “What do you think is the problem?” Ormack asked. “I don’t know, ” McLanahan replied. “I’ll check switchesthe system will report on any switches out of position in the post-mission computer dump. Maybe there was a glitch in the satellite. Who knows?” He bent toward the screen and began identifying radar aimpoints, getting ready for the “bomb” releases. “Probably something minor. . But that new satellite image did not look like something minor, McLanahan thought uneasily. It was more than a glitch. The computer was processing the data it received from NIRTSat as if it were real, uncorrupted data, and he knew enou
gh about the NIRTSat system to know that the computer would reject false data. No, whatever that twentythousandfoot~high “mountain” was, McLanahan thought, it was real. Something very serious had just happened somewhere in the world. HIGH TECHNOLOGY AEROSPACE WEAPONS CENTER “What the hell happened?” Colonel Wyatt exclaimed. They were looking in stunned amazement at the high-definition TV monitor, and at the monstrosity that the computer was showing them: a mountain thousands and thousands of feet high and dozens of miles wide, engulfing ships in its path with devastating power. “Must be a sensor glitch. .. a solar flare or a power spike, ” Major Kelvin Carter tried. He spoke with the technicians, but none of those present could understand the display. “Whatever it is, it killed the satellite, ” Carter said. “This is the last image received; the satellite is off the air.”
“Too bad, ” Wyatt said. “McLanahan’s run was looking real good, too.” Captain Ken James’ attention was riveted on the display frozen on the screen. “It’s a weird picture, but the computer is displaying valid data on it, ” he said. “Look: height, width, speed, density, course-the thing is moving and growing all at once. “But it’s showing it as terrain, Ken, ” Carter said. “That can’t be right. We were looking at the Philippines first, then at Montana. There’s no mountain in either place.” Wyatt shrugged, then began packing up his notebook. “It was still a spectacular display, gents, ” he said, “but I-“
“Sir, phone call for you, ” one of the technicians said. “Urgent from NMCC.” As Wyatt trotted to the phone, James turned to Carter and asked, “Nimic? What’s that?”
“National Military Command Center, ” Carter replied. “The War Room at the Pentagon.” James nodded, making a mental note. STRATEGIC AIR COMMAND HEADQUARTERS OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, NEAR OMAHA, NEBRASKA WEDNESDAY, 21 SEPTEMBER 1994, 1425 HOURS LOCAL neral Larry T. Tyler, commander in chief of the Strategic Air Command, was getting ready to make his first serve of the tennis match between members of the headquarters staff when the beeper on his portable radio went off. But, like a baseball pitcher halfway into his windup, he completed the serve and managed to hit his Reserve Forces Advisor, Colonel Hartmann, in the left leg. Hartmann was distracted and didn’t expect his boss to finish his serve. “Cheap shot, General, ” Hartmann shouted. Tyler raised his racket to offer an apology to Hartmann, who politely waved it off, then trotted over to the bench, where his radio was sitting. Tyler’s driver, a young buck sergeant named Meers, heard the beeper and immediately started up the General’s staff car, which was waiting just a few dozen yards away. In Tyler’s footsteps was his doubles partner, the former commander of Pacific Air Force’s Philippine-based Thirteenth Air Force, Major General Richard “Rat Killer” Stone, who was to become Tyler’s Deputy Chief of Staff of Pacific Operations in a few weeks. It had been said that CINCSAC-the Commander in Chief of the Strategic Air Command-was a prisoner of his job, and to a certain extent it was true-the radio, the car, and the driver were his constant companions. But the fifty-six-year-old ex-Notre Dame football quarterback was determined not to let the awesome responsibility of his position disrupt his lifeand that responsibility was truly awesome. Tyler was in charge of the United States’ smaller but still potent nuclear combat force of ninety B- lB Excalibur bombers, two hundred B-52G and H-model Stratofortress bombers, ten B-2A Black Knight stealth bombers, six hundred Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, one hundred railgarrison Peacekeeper ICMBs, fifty MGM-134A Mustang road-mobile ICBMs, eight hundred AGM-129A advanced cruise missiles, and one thousand AGM-131A Short-Range Attack Missiles. In addition he commanded several hundred aerial refueling tankers, strategic reconnaissance aircraft, airborne command posts, and communications aircraft, and a total of about eighty thousand men and women, civilians as well as military, all around the globe-and his job was to stay within momentsnotice contact with each and every one of his sixty active and reserve units at all times. Although he was at the very pinnacle of his Air Force career, he was determined not to get jabbed in the ass by its sharp point. As Tyler made his way to the bench where his radio sat, he noticed the amber rotating lights at the street intersection nearby-the SAC command post was recalling the alert crews, and the amber warning lights told other drivers to be aware of alert crews heading toward the flight line. Offutt Air Force Base had an alert force of four KC-135 aerial refueling tankers that would prepare for takeoff to support airborne command post aircraft at Offutt, as well as other strike and communications aircraft. The alert crews were tested regularly to make sure their response time was always within limits. But Tyler knew the schedule of all alert crew exercises, especially for the E-4 and EC- 135 aircraft-if enemy warheads were inbound, Tyler himself would transfer his flag of command and take an EC 135 airborne-and this wasn’t a scheduled exercise. His pace quickened as he grabbed for the radio; his tennis partners sensed his sudden anxiety, saw the rotating lights, and immediately made their way to their staff cars as well. With Stone standing a discreet distance away-he had a Top Secret security clearance but was not yet recertified for the 510P, or Strategic Integrated Operations Plan, after losing his command in the PhilippinesTyler keyed the mike to turn off the beeper and spoke: “Alpha, go ahead.”
“Colonel Dunigan, Command Center, sir, ” came the voice of his command center’s duty senior controller, Colonel Audrey Dunigan. Dunigan was the first woman senior controller, rising through the ranks from KC-135 tanker pilot all the way to a Headquarters senior-controller slot. Dunigan was now the senior controller of the busiest shift in the Command Center, in direct communication with the Pentagon and all the SAC’s military forces around the globe, and she seemed to take charge of the place like no one else before her. “Zero-Tango in ten minutes. Command Center out.”
“Alpha copies. Out, ” Tyler replied. Turning to Stone, he said, “Let’s go, Rat Killer. In my car. We’ll have a little impromptu on-the-job training.” He dropped his racket on the bench and loped toward his waiting sedan, not even bothering to make apologies to his staff-whom he knew would be right behind him anyway. Stone piled into the front seat beside Tyler’s driver and they roared off. “We got a Zero-Tango notification, ” Tyler told Stone. “You should be familiar with that: notification by NCA or Space Command directly, teleconference of the NCA, JCS, specified and unified commanders, all that stuff.”
“I’ve only been in one, ” Stone replied, “and I was the one who called it. Just before the Philippine elections last year, Manila was a war zone. I thought Clark was going to be overrun. I had to kick General Collier at PACAF in the butt to do something. I raised a ruckus that obviously went right to CINCPAC, but he finally made the call and we got the support we needed.”
“I remember that, ” Tyler said. “From what I read in the messages, Rat, Clark could have looked like the American em bassy in Tehran in ‘79. Landing that Marine Expeditionary Unit on Luzon may have seemed like overkill to most of the Pentagon and the press, but it defused the situation perfectly.” “Sure it did, ” Stone added dryly. “And I got shit-canned for even suggesting it.”
“Best thing that could have happened to you was getting bumped out of Pacific Air Forces and coming to work at SAC, Rat, ” Tyler said. “You know as well as I do that everyone will remember the last commander of Clark Air Force Base. Wherever you went in PACAF, that stigma would have followed you. It would have hurt your chances for promotion-I know it sounds shitty, but shit happens. Here at SAC, I get a topnotch expert in the Pacific Theater and maritime warfare, and you get a fair shot at your third star.” A coded message was being read over the radio, and Tyler squelched it out. Stone said, “You’re not going to monitor the alert network?”
“The messages are for the crews, not for me, ” Tyler replied. “When I try to second-guess those messages, I give myself ulcers. Now I try to relax, think about what I need to do, and think about what I should be hearing when I get to the Battle Staff area. “And the whole staff gets notified and called in?”
“Yep, ” Tyler replied, hanging on to
the seat back as Meers negotiated a tight turn, switching on the siren to clear some traffic out of an intersection. “At this time of day it’s no problem. When we get one at two in the morning, it can get real hairy.”
“How often do you get these notifications?”
“Not very often lately, ” Tyler admitted. “A lot of the notifications can be expected-the riots in Lithuania just before their independence, the SCUD missile attacks during DESERT STORM, the assassination in Iraq, shit like that. You can read the evening paper and pretty much anticipate that a Zero-Tango was going to be called. But things just aren’t all that critical in the real world these days.” They were approaching SAC Headquarters, a low, generally unimpressive building in the center of the base. The building was unimpressive because only three stories were above ground-there were five more stories underneath. Stone could see the Minuteman I missile out in front of the building, a lone dedication to the thousands of SAC crew members who spent as much as a third of their careers on twenty-four-hour alert, sitting near their planes, in underground missile-launch complexes, or in windowless command posts, ready to respond in case deterrence failed-in case they were called on to fight World War III. He also saw the weeping willow on the lawn in front of the headquarters building, and the sight struck Richard Stone as oddly ironic. Fifty feet under that lone weeping willow, men and women were ready, at the direction of the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, and the man in the car with him, to unleash thousands of megatons of explosive power all across the planet with uncanny precision. The location of the willow, Stone realized, was even a little absurd-several nations probably had their thermonuclear weapons aimed at that precise spot, ready to knock out the two-thirds of America’s nuclear forces controlled from this one location. No wonder Tyler turned off his radio, Stone thought. Even in these days of relative stability and peace, the thought of being flattened and vaporized by the first incoming warheads was enough to drive a guy crazy. “In ten, Sergeant Meers, ” Tyler told his driver. “Got it, sir.” “Keep your badge in sight and follow me in, Rat, ” Tyler told Stone. “We might have to put you in the ‘press box, ‘ but you’re certainly cleared inside the Command Post. It should be fun, whatever we got going here.” Stone blinked at the four-star general. “General, you mean you don’t know what’s happening?” A grim-faced expression from Tyler gave Stone his answer. At the outer gate to the parking lot / security perimeter around SAC Headquarters, a security guard had his M-16 rifle in one hand, and with the other hand he held up four fingers. Meers flashed the guard five fingers, then one finger, and the guard let him through. If Meers had added wrong and flashed the wrong number-he had to add the right amount of fingers to the guard’s fingers to equal ten, the security number that Dunigan had relayed to Tyler in the notification message and the one that she would have relayed to the gate guardsthey would probably have had their tires shot out by two or three well-trained guards, and their noses would be pinned to the pavement a few seconds later. They had to pass through a second gate before reaching the building, and this time the guard was kind enough to flash eight fingers so Meers had to raise only two fingers in response. Meers stopped the car just outside an enclosed doorway, guarded by a single security policeman. Tyler and Stone ran past him, not bothering to return his salute, and Tyler punched in the code to the Cypher-Lock beside the steel door. The door buzzed, and Tyler yanked the heavy steel door open, ran inside, flashed his security access badge to a guard in a bulletproof booth, and trotted to the private elevator that would take him four floors down, directly to the underground Command Center. The guards, Tyler noticed, all wore subdued smiles as he dashed by-it must be fun for them, he thought, to see a two- and four-star general in warmup suits running around the place. One more guard in a bulletproof booth checking ID badges, through a metal-detector device, another guard, two blast doors, past the Command Center weather station, and they were in the SAC Command Center itself. The Command Center consisted of three areas, separated by thick soundproof glass and remote-controlled privacy shutters-the Battle Staff area on the main auditorium floor area, the Essential Elements area behind the main auditorium, and the Support Staff area in a balcony over the auditorium. All three areas could see the “big board, ” the eight 5-by-6-foot computer screens in the front of the Command Center, but depending on the security classification of the activity and the occupants, the senior controller could seal off either area to prevent eavesdropping-an unclassified briefing could be going on in the Support Staff area while a Top Secret briefing could be given in the Battle Staff area, with complete security. Tyler glanced up at the Command Post status board just inside the entrance and found red lights flashing near the signs that read “Battle Staff” and “Essential Elements”-the rooms were both classified Top Secret. Tyler pointed to a doorway to their right. “Take those stairs up to the Support Staff room, Rat, ” he said. “They’ll direct you from there.” Stone did not argue or hesitate, but went through the door, which locked behind him. A set of stairs took him up to the glassed-in observation area overlooking the Battle Staff area, where a technician had him put on a pair of headphones as he sat down to watch. The shutters remained open, which meant he could watch the big board but not hear any of the conversation going on below. The Battle Staff area below him resembled a small theater, with forty seats of three semicircular levels facing the big board in the front of the Command Center. Tyler took his seat in front row center, behind a director’s computer console with two phones, a keyboard, and four 19-inch color monitors. The seat beside him was already occupied by the Vice Commander in Chief of the Strategic Air Command, Lieutenant General Michael Stanczek. Around them were arranged the various deputy chiefs of staff of the Command, most of whom were already in place by the time Tyler had arrived from the tennis court. Each staff position had two flip-up color computer monitors, a small keyboard, a telephone, and a microphone. The first thing Tyler did after taking his seat in the Command Center was check the rows of digital clocks above the computer monitors. The first row of clocks had times in various places in the world-Washington, Omaha, Honolulu, Guam, Tokyo, Moscow, and London. London was labeled “Zulu, ” the time along the zero-degree-longitude Greenwich meridian used by SAC as a common time-reference point. Below that were three event timers, and one was already activated-it read 00:15:23. The third row of timers and clocks were thankfully still reading zero-those were the clocks that set reference times used by American strategic nuclear forces to execute their nuclear strike missions. Two of those timers, the L-hour and A-hour, were set by Tyler himself, but the other one, the ERT, or Emergency Reference Time, could be set by the National Command Authority if the President himself ordered a nuclear strike. Tyler hit the mike button on his console: “Alpha in position. Log me in, please, and let’s get started.” A voice on the auditorium’s loudspeaker immediately chimed in: “Major Hallerton, with an Event One situation briefing.” Hallerton was the shift’s ADI, or Assistant Chief of Intelligence. “Approximately fifteen minutes ago, Space Command was alerted by a FOREST GREEN nuclear-detonationwarning sensor on three different NAVSTAR satellites. The event remained unclassified by NORAD and DIA for several minutes until verification could be made by DSP resources, and they have not made a conclusive evaluation yet. However, by authority of CINCSPACECOM, an Event One warning was issued to us and to JCS and Zero-Tango conference initiated. SPACECOM is currently reporting a high probability of a small-yield nuclear explosion in the South China Seas region near the Philippines. Tyler felt his jaw drop. “Ho-ly skit.” Stanczek just sat there, a blank expression on his face. Tyler asked, “Just one explosion?”
