Dead Heat

by Joel C. Rosenberg

Base in Colorado Springs for nearly three and a half years. No one on active duty had more experience in defending the American homeland than Charlie Briggs. But even as he heard the sirens go off in the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center, all he could think was, Why had some knucklehead scheduled an exercise and not informed him?

  Then came the words over the loudspeaker that stunned Briggs to his core.

  "Launch detection," the senior watch officer yelled. "I have a launch detection just off the coast of Baltimore. This is not a drill. I repeat—this is not a drill."

  Briggs jumped to his feet, bolted from his office, and reached the side of the watch

  officer just as the lieutenant colonel yelled, "Strike that—I have two launch detections. I repeat, two launch detections—no, make that three—two off the coast of Baltimore,

  another off the coast of Vancouver, Canada."

  All eyes were now fixed on the large-screen video monitors in front of them, showing the high-speed radar track of three unknown projectiles.

  Briggs let out a string of expletives and then asked, "Are those from subs?"

  "They can't be," the watch officer replied. "SUBLANT hasn't reported anything that close to the East Coast, and SUBPAC has been quiet for days," he noted, referring to the navy's submarine tracking systems in the Atlantic and Pacific, respectively.

  "Then what the—?"

  Briggs's naval liaison suddenly burst into the CMOC from a side room. "Container ships,"

  he said breathlessly. "Someone's firing missiles—probably Scuds—off the back of

  commercial container ships."

  "You're absolutely sure these aren't sub-launched?" Briggs pressed.

  "Positive, sir," Briggs's deputy confirmed. "The speed, the trajectories—they're all wrong for a sub launch, sir. Those appear to be Scud C ballistic missiles, and I agree, sir—

  they do seem to be coming off the back of commercial container ships or frigates, sir."

  It seemed impossible, Briggs thought, but unfortunately it wasn't. As far back as the Rumsfeld Commission report to Congress in the 1990s on the emerging ballistic missile

  threat to the United States, the possibility of an attack like this had been growing. Years before, Iran had tested firing high-speed, short-range, single-stage, tactical ballistic missiles off of ships. So had the North Koreans. But after the Day of Devastation, the

  prospect of such an attack seemed so implausible that Briggs could barely believe what his top advisors—and his own eyes—were telling him.

  "Look there," his deputy insisted, pointing to the latest telemetry pouring into his computer monitor. "No question—those are Scuds."

  "Range?" Briggs demanded.

  "About six hundred kilometers, sir," the senior watch officer replied. "Probable targets?"

  "The computers are saying D.C. and Seattle, sir."

  "How long until impact?" Briggs asked, realizing how long it had been since the first Gulf War, the last time he'd been Scud hunting. "Five, six minutes?"

  "No, sir," said the watch officer, twenty years his junior. "Scud Cs only carry enough fuel for an eighty- to ninety-second burn. They're going to hit in less than two minutes.

  Guaranteed."

  Briggs cursed again. This could not be happening. Not on his watch.

  It had been a while since he had brushed up on the specifications of a Scud C ballistic missile. But one thing he knew for sure: they could carry quite a payload. So what were these two carrying—conventional high explosives or eighty-kiloton nuclear warheads?

  They were about to find out, and fast.

  He immediately ordered his staff to alert the Pentagon, Homeland Security, and the

  Coast Guard and to get him an open line with the Secret Service. They were going to DefCon One. They were going to war, but with whom? He had no idea.

  And then it happened again.

  "Sir, we have another launch detection," the watch officer shouted. "Where?"

  "Just off the Port of Newark, sir"

  "Probable target?"

  "Manhattan."

  "Time to impact?"

  "Sixty seconds, if that."

  Briggs and his team were in a state of shock. All of them knew the terrible truth, but none of them dared say it aloud. They could alert anyone and everyone, as many as they had

  time for. But that was all they could do. They had no ability to stop the missiles. The U.S.

  had no defenses against short-range ballistic missiles fired so close to her coastlines. They certainly didn't have the capacity to evacuate Washington, New York, or Seattle, even if they'd had days, not seconds. These missiles were going to strike. Millions were going to die. And all they could do was watch.

  "We have another launch detection," the senior watch officer yelled. "I repeat, we have a fifth missile launch."

  Not again, Briggs thought. How was it possible? How many more were coming?

  And who was launching them in the first place?

  "Where's this one coming from?" Briggs demanded.

  "About a hundred kilometers west-southwest of Long Beach, sir" "Probable target?"

  "Everything in Southern California is probably in range, sir," the officer replied.

  It was a true statement, as far as it went. But Briggs knew instantly what NORAD's

  supercomputers were going to tell him in another few seconds. The point of impact was

  going to be Staples Center. The Republican National Convention. Someone was gunning for the president of the United States.

  And then Briggs noticed that the flight path of this fifth missile was radically different from the others. Rather than gaining altitude over Los Angeles in a classic ballistic arc, the missile was rapidly descending toward the water.

  "That's not a Scud," he said as the missile leveled off.

  As he stared, mesmerized, at the radar track, he could see the incoming projectile

  skimming the water, just eight to ten feet off the ocean's surface and racing inland at twice the speed of sound.

  "Then what is it?" the senior watch officer asked, looking on in horror.

  "A death sentence," Briggs said quietly.

  The cold, hard truth was becoming clearer with each passing second. They were

  watching a highly coordinated decapitation strike, aimed at taking out the entire

  American government in a matter of minutes.

  Sure enough, an instant later, the computers had it pegged. They were tracking a

  land attack cruise missile, most likely a Chinese- or North Korean—built model known as the

  "Sunburn." The most lethal cruise missile in the world, the Sunburn was capable of carrying a two-hundred kiloton nuclear warhead. And it was accurate to within ten feet.

  Now there was no doubt for anyone in the room. Someone was targeting the president

  of the United States. And they didn't just want to kill him. They wanted to annihilate him and his government.

  9:10 P.M. EST-U.S. COAST GUARD COMMAND CENTER, CURTIS BAY, MARYLAND

  "Mayday, Mayday. Vessel in distress. Over"

  Telecommunications Specialist of the Watch Carrie Sanders had been having a very

  quiet night. She was in her third year with the U.S. Coast Guard, serving in the tradition of her father and grandfather. It was her job to listen for distress calls and issue safety bulletins to boaters over the VHF radios from the Communications Center in the Guard's

  mid- Atlantic regional headquarters. But it had been business as usual all evening, and she certainly hadn't heard anything about what was transpiring at NORAD. In fact, she'd been so bored up to that moment, she had her feet up, was sipping her umpteenth Diet Coke of the night, was reading The Hunt for Red October yet again, and had been counting the hours until her shift was over and she could see her boyfriend, Tomas.

  But now Sanders sat bolt upright at her console and pressed her headphones tightly

  against her ears to get all of the incoming transmission.
r />   "Vessel in distress, this is the U.S. Coast Guard Sector Baltimore, channel one-six,"

  Sanders said calmly and professionally into her radio, though her heart was racing. "Vessel in distress, I repeat, this is Coast Guard Sector Baltimore, channel one-six. What is your position and nature of distress?"

  "U.S. Coast Guard, this is the captain of the Panamanian container ship Double Dolphin. . . . GPS system not working . . . other electronics have failed. . . . Last known position was twenty-three miles east-southeast of Port Baltimore . . . inbound for Seagirt Marine Terminal. . . . Over."

  "Vessel in distress. Coast Guard Sector Baltimore. Roger that, Captain. Understand you are twenty-three miles east-southeast of Port Baltimore, on approach to SMT. Over."

  "Affirm, that's affirmative, Coast Guard. . . . We've got . . . strange .. . here. Over."

  "Request you say again your last, Captain. What is the nature of your distress? Over."

  The next transmission from the Panamanian freighter was even more garbled and

  virtually indecipherable. Sanders ran a diagnostics check of her equipment, but all her systems were working well.

  "Vessel in distress, this is Coast Guard Sector Baltimore. You are broken and

  unreadable. Need you to speak more clearly. Over."

  But again the transmission was clouded by static.

  "Vessel in distress, this is Coast Guard Sector Baltimore on channel one-six—please repeat last transmission."

  "Roger that, Coast Guard. . . . I repeat, this is the captain of the Double Dolphin. We've got something really strange going on out here."

  "Roger that, Captain," Sanders said. "Please explain."

  "Yeah, well, Coast Guard . . . I'm not sure. . . . The thing is . ." Sanders took a deep breath. She couldn't let herself sound flustered. But she needed more information

  and she needed it quickly.

  "What is the nature of your distress, Captain?" she asked again.

  "I'm looking at a Liberian-flagged container ship. . . . Its about a half mile off my port side, and I think . . ."

  "You think what, Captain?"

  "I think some kind of rocket just fired off its bow—and not just one, but two—one

  after the other."

  Sanders was speechless. Had she heard the man right? How could she have?

  "Double Dolphin, this is Coast Guard Sector Baltimore; come again?"

  "I'm telling you, Coast Guard, I think these guys have just fired some kind of rocket. . .

  . My crew and I saw a flash of light—like an explosion—on the bow. . . . Then we saw

  something explode off the deck and shoot up into the sky. It had a long flame beneath it, like when you see the space shuttle take off, but not that big. . . . I can still see the contrail—we all can. A few minutes later, it happened again. What's going on?" Sanders had no idea.

  "Double Dolphin, this is Coast Guard Sector Baltimore, can you describe the ship in question?"

  As the captain replied, Sanders scribbled notes as fast as she could. It was a commercial container ship, at least a thousand feet long, with Liberian registration, a black hull, and massive white letters LSC painted on the side. For the last twenty minutes or so, it had been dead in the water, the captain said. That's how the Double Dolphin had come upon it out of nowhere. But now the freighter was reengaging its engines and seemed to be

  preparing to head back out to sea.

  "What do you want me to do?" the captain asked, his voice betraying his fear.

  "Nothing; just sit tight, shut down your engines, and stay close to your radio," Sanders instructed. "I'll be right back to you. Over."

  Sanders quickly reviewed her notes and tried to process what she was hearing. She

  hadn't been alerted of any rocket or missile tests in the area. To her knowledge, there had never been any rocket or missile test in the area. And even if some secret test had been planned—a missile defense test, for example—how could it possibly involve a container ship flagged from Liberia? It made no sense, and that's what worried her. All she knew for

  certain was that she had to pass this up the chain of command immediately.

  She picked up the red phone on her console and speed-dialed the command duty

  officer at the operations center on the other side of the building. The CDO also served as the search-and-rescue mission controller for the area. He could not only dispatch Coast Guard choppers and cutters but pull in resources from the Patuxent Naval Air Station and the

  Maryland State Police if need be.

  The CDO picked up the call on the first ring.

  "Ops, this is the Comm Center," Sanders said, trying desperately to keep her voice steady and her facts in order. "I just got a distress call you need to hear."

  But it was already too late.

  9:12 P.M.-GROUND ZERO, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Without warning, the capital of the United States was obliterated.

  At precisely 9:12 p.m. Eastern, in a millisecond of time, in a blinding flash of light, the White House simply ceased to exist, as did everything and everyone else for miles in

  every direction.

  No sooner had the first missile detonated in Lafayette Park than temperatures soared into the millions of degrees. The firestorm and blast wave that followed consumed everything in its path. Gone was the Treasury building, and with it the headquarters of the United States Secret Service. Gone was the FBI building, and the National Archives, and the

  Supreme Court, and the U.S. Capitol and all of its surrounding buildings. Wiped away was every monument, every museum, every restaurant, every hotel, every hospital, every library and landmark of any kind, every sign of civilization. Every building was just gone, and every soul as well.

  Across the Potomac River, the Pentagon shuddered violently from the blast wave and

  then began to partially collapse. What remained standing was utterly ablaze, as was every structure not flattened for as far as the eye could see.

  Howling, scorching winds soon began sweeping lethal radioactivity through the city's

  northeast quadrant and into Maryland, surging through Prince George's County and Anne

  Arundel County, as if they were following 295 to the north and Routes 50 and 214 to the east, through Capitol Heights and Lanham and Bowie toward Crofton and Annapolis.

  Soon more than five thousand square miles of Virginia, Maryland, and the District of

  Columbia were contaminated with deadly levels of radioactivity And the nightmare had

  only just begun.

  Moments after the first missile hit D.C., a second missile struck the CIA building at

  Langley directly, its superheated fireball and cataclysmic blast wave obliterating the

  nation's premier intelligence headquarters in the tree-lined suburbs of northern Virginia and vaporizing every home and office building, every church and mall for mile after mile in every direction. Those poor, unfortunate souls who didn't die instantly suddenly found themselves blinded and burning and unable to move. Some would hang on for hours. Some

  would endure for days or even weeks. But there was no hope of survival. Nor was there any hope of rescue or evacuation.

  The vast majority of those who didn't die immediately sustained third- degree burns over most if not all of their bodies. People's eardrums were blown out. Their hands and feet were

  blistered and bleeding. And they would continue to suffer horribly, until they eventually succumbed to the most excruciatingly painful deaths imaginable; there was absolutely nothing they or anyone else could do about it.

  Manhattan took the next hit.

  The Scud C hit the heart of Times Square, and it, too, carried a nuclear warhead. The

  effect was as ghastly as it was instantaneous. The detonation eradicated every life-form in a half-mile radius within a fraction of a second. Every building from the theater district and the New York Times Building to Grand Central station and beyond was vaporized in the

&
nbsp; blink of an eye, just as experts had long predicted and military commanders had long feared.

  Even buildings miles away from the epicenter were flattened by the blast wave. The

  firestorm ignited by the detonation spread at speeds upwards of six hundred miles an hour, and every borough was suddenly a raging, radioactive inferno that would blaze for weeks, if not months.

  Apartments and office buildings began collapsing from the shock waves and the

  intense heat. All but one hospital was incinerated or destroyed beyond recognition. And then the Lincoln Tunnel imploded. A billion gallons of the Hudson River—now

  superheated by the thermo nuclear blast—surged into Chelsea, annihilated Penn Station, and boiled everything and everyone south of Broadway.

  Seattle was next in line, mere seconds after Manhattan.

  The missile seemed to emerge out of nowhere. Launched from a ship several hundred

  miles off the Canadian coastline, it quickly arced over Victoria, over Port Angeles and Olympic National Park, on a direct trajectory into the center of the city.

  Ground zero was Pike Place Market, and when the fifty-kiloton nuclear warhead

  detonated, it instantly and completely vaporized anything and everything for miles in all directions. The Space Needle. The aquarium and the science center. Amazon.com's

  headquarters. Safeco Field. And every Starbucks in between. All of it was gone in the

  snap of a finger.

  None of the city's twenty-one state-of-the-art air raid sirens went off. They had

  originally been installed in the early 1950s during the Cold War. They'd been

  cosmetically upgraded in 2006 at a cost of $91,000. But they'd been useless. No one in the mayor's office or the police department or the fire department knew the missile was

  coming. No one knew the threat that was inbound. Thus no one had activated the sirens.

  But even if someone had, would anyone in Seattle have known what to do or where to go?

  Would there have been any time to seek shelter? No one was left to ask the questions, for now the air raid sirens and the city they were designed to protect were gone entirely.

  Untold thousands lay dead and dying. More would join them soon. Indeed, the death toll