“This is the President,” Fowler said in a gruff, suddenly frightened voice.
“Mr. President, this is Major General Joe Borstein. I am the senior NORAD watch officer. Sir, we have just registered a nuclear detonation in the Central United States.”
“What?” the President said after two or three seconds’ pause.
“Sir, there’s been a nuclear explosion. We’re checking the exact location now, but it appears to have been in the Denver area.”
“Are you sure?” the President asked, fighting to keep calm.
“We’re rechecking our instruments now, sir, but, yes, we’re pretty sure. Sir, we don’t know what happened or how it got there, but there was a nuclear explosion. I urge you to get to a place of safety at once while we try and figure out what’s going on.”
Fowler looked up. Neither TV picture had changed and now alarm Klaxons were erupting all over the presidential compound.
Offutt Air Force Base, just outside Omaha, Nebraska, was once known as Fort Crook. The former cavalry post had a splendid if somewhat anachronistic collection of red brick dwellings for its most senior officers, in the rear of which was stabling for the horses they no longer needed, and in front of which was a flat parade ground of sufficient size to exercise a regiment of cavalry. About a mile from that was the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command, a much more modern building with its own antique, a B-17 Flying Fortress of World War II, sitting outside. Also outside the building but below ground was the new command post, completed in 1989. A capacious room, local wags joked that it had been built because Hollywood’s rendition of such rooms was better than the one SAC had originally built for itself, and the Air Force had decided to alter its reality to fit a fictional image.
Major General Chuck Timmons, Deputy Chief of Staff (Operations), had availed himself of the opportunity to stand his watch here instead of in his upstairs office, and had in fact been watching the Super Bowl out of one eye on one of the eight large-screen TVs, but on two of the others had been real-time imagery from the Defense Support Program Satellites, called the DSPS birds, and he had caught the double-flash at Denver just as fast as everyone else. Timmons dropped the pencil he’d been working with. Behind his battle-staff seat were several glassed-in rooms—there were two levels of such rooms—which contained the fifty or so support personnel who kept SAC operating around the clock. Timmons lifted his phone and punched the button for the senior intelligence officer.
“I see it, sir.”
“Possible mistake?”
“Negative, sir, test circuitry says the bird’s working just fine.”
“Keep me posted.” Timmons turned to his deputy. “Get the boss in here. Beep everybody, I want a full emergency-action team and a full battle-staff-and I want it now!” To his operations officer: “Get Looking Glass up now! I want the alert wings postured for takeoff, and I want an immediate alert flashed to everybody.”
In the glassed-in room behind the General and to his left, a sergeant pushed a few buttons. Though SAC had long since ceased keeping aircraft in the air around the clock, thirty percent of SAC’s aircraft were typically kept on alert status at any time. The order out to the alert wings was sent by landline and used a computer-generated voice because it had been decided that a human might get excited and slur his words. The orders took perhaps twenty seconds to be transmitted, and the operations officers at the alert wings were galvanized to action.
At the moment, that meant two wings, the 416th Bomb Wing at Griffiss Air Force Base, Rome, New York, which flew the B-52, and the 384th, which flew the B-1B out of nearby McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas. At the latter, crewmen in their ready rooms, nearly all of whom had also been watching the Super Bowl, raced out the door to waiting vehicles which took them to their guarded aircraft. The first man from each crew of four slapped the emergency-startup button that was part of the nosewheel assembly, then ran farther aft to sprint up the ladder into the aircraft. Even before the crews were strapped in, the engines were starting up. The ground crews yanked off the red-flagged safety pins. Rifle-armed sentries got out of the way of the aircraft, training their weapons outward to engage any possible threat. To this point, no one knew that this was anything more than a particularly ill-timed drill.
At McConnell, the first aircraft to move was the wing commander’s personal B-1B. An athletic forty-five, the Colonel also had the advantage of having his aircraft parked closest to the alert shack. As soon as all four of his engines were turning and the way cleared, he tripped his brakes and began to taxi his aircraft toward the end of the runway. That took two minutes, and on reaching the spot, he was told to wait.
At Offutt, the alert KC-135 was under no such restrictions. Called “Looking Glass,” the converted—and twenty-five-year-old-Boeing 707 had aboard a general officer and a complete if downsized battle-staff. It was just lifting off into the falling darkness. Onboard radios and command links were just coming on line, and the officer aboard hadn’t yet learned what all the hubbub was about. Behind him on the ground, three more additional and identical aircraft were being prepped for departure.
“What gives, Chuck?” CINC-SAC said as he came in. He was wearing casual clothes, and his shoes were not tied yet.
“Nuclear detonation at Denver, also some trouble on satellite communications links that we just found out about. I’ve postured the alert aircraft. Looking Glass just lifted off. Still don’t know what the hell’s going on, but Denver just blew up.”
“Get’em off,” the Commander-in-Chief Strategic Air Commander ordered. Timmons gestured to a communications officer, who relayed the order. Twenty seconds later, the first B-1B roared down the runway at McConnell.
It was not a time for niceties. A Marine captain pushed open the door into the President’s cabin and tossed two white parkas at Fowler and Elliot even before the first Secret Service agent showed up.
“Right now, sir!” he urged. “Chopper’s still broke, sir.”
“Where to?” Pete Connor arrived with his overcoat unbuttoned, just in time to hear what the Marine had said.
“Command post, ’less you say different. Chopper’s broke,” the captain said yet again. “Come on, sir!” he nearly screamed at the President.
“Bob!” Elliot said in some alarm. She didn’t know what the President had heard over the phone, merely that he looked pale and sick. Both donned their parkas and came outside. They saw that a full squad of Marines lay in the snow, their loaded rifles pointed outward. Six more stood around the Hummer, whose engine was screaming in neutral.
At Anacostia Naval Air Station in Washington, the crew of Marine Two—it wouldn’t be Marine One until the President got aboard—was just lifting off amid a worrisome cloud of snow, but in a few seconds they were above the ground effect and able to see fairly well. The pilot, a major, turned his aircraft northwest, wondering what the hell was happening. The only people who knew anything knew merely that they didn’t know very much. For a few minutes this would not matter. As with any organization, responses to a sudden emergency were planned beforehand and had been thoroughly rehearsed both to get things done and to attenuate the panic that might come from indecision mixed with danger.
“What the hell is going on in Denver that I need to know about?” General Kuropatkin asked in his hole outside Moscow.
“Nothing I know of,” his intelligence officer replied honestly.
That’s a big help, the General thought. He lifted the phone to the Soviet military intelligence agency, the GRU.
“Operations/Watch Center,” a voice answered.
“This is General Kuropatkin at PVO Moscow.”
“I know the reason for your call,” the GRU Colonel assured him.
“What is happening at Denver? Is there a nuclear-weapons storage facility, anything like that?”
“No, General. Rocky Mountain Arsenal is near there. That is a storage center for chemical weapons, in the process of being deactivated. It’s turning into a depot for the American
reserve army—they call it the National Guard—tanks and mechanized equipment. Outside Denver is Rocky Flats. They used to fabricate weapons components there, but—”
“Where exactly?” Kuropatkin asked.
“Northwest of the city. I believe the explosion is in the southern part of Denver, General.”
“Correct. Go on.”
“Rocky Flats is also in the process of deactivation. To the best of our knowledge, there are no more weapons components to be found there.”
“Do they transport weapons through there? I must know something!” The General was finally getting excited.
“I have nothing more to tell you. We’re as much in the dark as you. Perhaps KGB has more, but we do not.”
You couldn’t shoot a man for honesty, Kuropatkin knew. He switched lines again. Like most professional soldiers, he had little use for spies, but the next call was a necessity.
“State Security, command center,” a male voice said.
“American department, the duty watch officer.”
“Stand by.” There was the usual chirping and clicking, and a female voice answered next. “American desk.”
“This is Lieutenant General Kuropatkin at PVO Moscow Center,” the man said yet again. “I need to know what, if anything, is happening in the Central United States, the city of Denver.”
“Very little, I would imagine. Denver is a major city, and a large administrative center for the American government, the second-largest after Washington, in fact. It is a Sunday evening there, and very little should be happening at the moment.” Kuropatkin heard pages riffling. “Oh, yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“The final game in the championship-elimination series of American-rules football. It is being played in the new Denver city stadium which, I believe, is an enclosed structure.”
Kuropatkin managed not to curse the woman for that irrelevancy. “I don’t need that. Is there any civil unrest, any sort of disturbance or ongoing problem? A weapons-storage facility, a secret base of some sort that I don’t know about?”
“General, everything we have on such subjects is available to you. What is the nature of your inquiry?”
“Woman, there has been a nuclear explosion there.”
“In Denver?”
“Yes!”
“Where, exactly?” she asked, cooler than the General was.
“Stand by.” Kuropatkin turned. “I need coordinates on the explosion and I need them now!”
“Thirty-nine degrees forty minutes north latitude, one hundred five degrees six minutes west longitude. Those numbers are approximate,” the Lieutenant on the satellite desk added. “Our resolution isn’t very good in the infrared spectrum, General.” Kuropatkin relayed the numbers.
“Wait,” the woman’s voice said. “I need to fetch a map.”
Andrey Il’ych Narmonov was asleep. It was now 3:10 in the morning in Moscow. The phone woke him, and an instant later his bedroom door opened. Narmonov nearly panicked at the second event. No one ever entered his bedroom without permission. It was KGB Major Pavel Khrulev, the assistant chief of the President’s personal security detail.
“My President, there is an emergency. You must come with me at once.”
“What is the matter, Pasha?”
“There has been a nuclear explosion in America.”
“What—who?”
“That is all I know. We must go at once to the command bunker. The car is waiting. Don’t bother getting dressed.” Khrulev tossed him a robe.
Ryan stubbed out his cigarette, still annoyed at the “Technical Difficulty—Please Stand By” sign that was keeping him from watching the game. Goodley came in with a couple cans of Coke. Dinner was already ordered.
“What gives?” Goodley asked.
“Picture went out.” Ryan took his Coke and popped it open.
At SAC Headquarters, a lieutenant colonel at the far left side of the third row of battle-staff seats consulted the TV-CONTROLLER card. The room had eight TV displays, arranged in two horizontal rows of four. One could call up more than fifty individual displays, and the woman was an intelligence officer whose first instinct was to check the new channels. A quick manipulation of her controller showed that both CNN and its subsidiary CNN Headline News were off the air. She knew that they used different satellite circuits, and that piqued her curiosity, perhaps the most important aspect of intelligence work. The system also allowed access to other cable channels, and she started going through them. HBO was off the air. Showtime was off the air. ESPN was off the air. She checked her directory and concluded that at least four satellites were not functioning. At that point the Colonel got up and walked over to CINC-SAC.
“Sir, there’s something very odd here,” she said.
“What’s that?” CINC-SAC said without turning.
“At least four commercial satellites appear to be down. That includes a Telstar, an Intelsat, and a Hughes bird. They’re all down, sir.”
That notification caused CINC-SAC to turn. “What else can you tell me?”
“Sir, NORAD reports that the explosion was in the Denver metropolitan area, very close to the Skydome, where they were playing the Super Bowl. SecState and SecDef were both at the game, sir.”
“Christ, you’re right,” CINC-SAC realized instantly.
At Andrews Air Force Base, the National Emergency Airborne Command Post—NEACP, pronounced “Kneecap”—was positioned on the ramp with two of its four engines turning, waiting for someone to arrive so that the crew could take off.
Captain Jim Rosselli had barely been on duty for an hour when this nightmare arrived. He sat in the NMCC Crisis Management Room, wishing a flag officer were here. That was not to be. While there had once been a general or admiral in the National Military Command Center at all times, the thaw between East and West and the downsizing of the Pentagon now meant that a senior officer was always on call, but the day-to-day administrative work was handled by captains and colonels. It could have been worse, Rosselli thought. At least he knew what it was to have lots of nuclear weapons at his disposal.
“What the fuck is going on?” Lieutenant Colonel Richard Barnes asked the wall. He knew that Rosselli didn’t know.
“Rocky, can we save that for another time?” Rosselli asked calmly. His voice was dead-level. One might never have known from looking at or listening to the Captain that he was excited, but the former submarine commander’s hands were so moist that by rubbing them on his trousers he’d already created a damp spot that their navy-blue color made invisible.
“You got it, Jim.”
“Call General Wilkes, let’s get him in here.”
“Right.” Barnes punched a button on the secure phone, calling Brigadier General Paul Wilkes, a former bomber pilot who lived in official housing on Boiling Air Force Base, just across the Potomac from National Airport.
“Yeah,” Wilkes said gruffly.
“Barnes here, sir. We need you in the NMCC immediately.” That was all the Colonel had to say. “Immediately” is a word that has special meaning for an aviator.
“On the way.” Wilkes hung up and muttered further: “Thank God for four-wheel-drive.” He struggled into an olive-drab winter parka and headed out the door without bothering with boots. His personal car was a Toyota Land Cruiser that he liked for driving the back country. It started at once, and he backed out, struggling across roads not yet plowed.
The Presidential Crisis Room at Camp David was an anachronistic leftover from the bad old days, or so Bob Fowler had thought on first seeing it over a year before. Constructed during the Eisenhower Administration, it had been designed to resist nuclear attack in an age when the accuracy of a missile was measured in miles rather than yards. Blasted into the living granite rock of the Catoctin Mountains of western Maryland, it had a solid sixty feet of overhead protection, and until 1975 or so had been a highly secure and survivable shelter. About thirty feet wide and forty deep, with a ten-foot ceiling, it contained a staff of twelve
, mostly Navy communications types, of whom six were enlisted men. The equipment was not quite as modern as that on NEACP or certain other facilities that the President might use. He sat at a console that looked like 1960s NASA in configuration. There was even an ashtray built into the desk top. In front of him was a bank of television sets. The chair was a comfortable one, even if the situation decidedly was not. Elizabeth Elliot took the one next to his.
“Okay,” President J. Robert Fowler said, “what the hell is going on?”
The senior briefing officer, he saw, was a Navy lieutenant commander. That was not very promising.
“Sir, your helicopter is down with a mechanical problem. A second Marine helo is on its way here now to get you to Kneecap. We have CINC-SAC and CINC-NORAD on line. These buttons here give you direct lines to all the other CINCs.” By this, the naval officer meant the Commanders-in-Chief of major joint-service commands: CINCLANT was Commander-in-Chief Atlantic, Admiral Joshua Painter, USN; there was a corresponding CINC-PAC in charge of Pacific area forces, and both were traditionally Navy posts. CINC-SOUTH was in Panama, CINC-CENT in Bahrain, CINC-FOR—HEADING Forces Command—was at Fort McPherson in Atlanta, Georgia, all three of which were traditionally Army posts. There were others as well, including SACEUR, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, the chief NATO military officer, who at the moment was an Air Force four-star general. Under the existing command system, the service chiefs actually had no command authority. Instead, they advised the Secretary of Defense, who in turn advised the President. Presidential orders were issued from the President through the SecDef directly to the CINCs.