Plan of Attack pm-12 Page 29

  “Which is precisely what we should be doing, sir,” Kuzner interjected, “along with the aircraft in flyable storage. As soon as we convert them and train crews to man them, we should put them on alpha alert.”

  “I have no intention of putting nuclear-loaded bombers back on alert, General,” President Thorn said. “Those days are over.”

  “With all due respect, Mr. President, it looks to me like those days are back again,” Kuzner said bitterly. “Without the ICBMs we have no choice but to put every aircraft we can back on nuclear alert — not just the bombers but every tactical jet capable of carrying a thermonuclear weapon.”

  “General Kuzner…”

  “Mr. President, we can’t waste any time on this. It’ll take four to eight weeks to recertify a new B-1 aircraft with positive-control switches and devices for nuclear weapons, plus twenty to thirty weeks to train a new aircrew and forty to sixty weeks to train a new maintenance technician. We need to—”

  “That’s enough, General,” Thorn said sternly. “We’ll discuss this when the time comes.”

  “Will we? Or are you just going to let another six thousand airmen on one of my bases die?”

  “I said that’s enough, General,” Thorn snapped. He noticed that neither Vice President Busick, Secretary of State Goff, or Joint Chiefs chairman General Venti attempted to shut Kuzner down — they wanted him to go off, and they wanted to see how Thorn would handle it. “I assure you, when the time comes, we’ll plan an appropriate response and use every weapon in our arsenal to implement the plan. In the meantime I want to hear what we’ve lost and what we might have left before I start loading nuclear weapons on bombers again. Is that clear, General?” Kuzner said nothing and responded with the faintest of nods. Thorn noticed this and gave Kuzner a stern glare but decided not to argue further. “General Venti, continue your report.”

  “Yes, sir. Next was Francis E. Warren Air Force Base, adjacent to the city of Cheyenne, Wyoming. F. E. Warren is Twentieth Air Force headquarters, responsible for all of America’s land-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles, and is also the home of the Ninetieth Space Wing, which controls one hundred and fifty Minuteman ICBMs. One cruise missile hit on the base itself — we don’t know exactly where yet. Most of the other missiles were targeted on the fifteen launch-control centers spread out over almost thirteen thousand square miles of Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska.

  “The next target was Whiteman Air Force Base, located in a relatively rural area of western Missouri, about forty-five miles east of Kansas City. Whiteman is the home of the Five-oh-ninth Bomb Wing, with nineteen B-2A Spirit stealth bombers and fourteen KC-135R tankers, plus an OA-10 Thunderbolt II close-air-support fighter wing. Two Russian warheads hit the base itself. Again, approximately four to five thousand personnel were stationed at Whiteman.

  “The last target was Offutt Air Force Base, eight miles south of Omaha, Nebraska. Offutt has the Fifty-fifth Wing, which controls all of the nation’s strategic electronic reconnaissance and electronic command-and-control aircraft, and of course it is the headquarters of U.S. Strategic Command, the Joint Intelligence Center, the Air Force Weather Agency, and the Pentagon’s National Airborne Operations Center — all important military agencies necessary in planning and executing strategic combat missions, such as what we would employ if we fought a nuclear conflict with Russia. The base was hit by at least four warheads.”

  “Military contingent at Offutt?” the president asked woodenly.

  Venti hesitated, swallowed, then responded, “Over eight thousand, sir.” “Jee-zus,” Vice President Busick exclaimed.

  “There was one clean miss, sir — unfortunately, it could be the greatest disaster of the attack,” Venti said. “Two warheads from one missile were apparently targeted for the weapon-storage facility at Fairchild Air Force Base near Spokane, Washington, which stores approximately five hundred nuclear gravity bombs, and warheads for cruise missiles, naval missiles, and torpedoes. The missile fell short and hit outside the city. No specific casualty reports yet, but damage is extensive.

  “DSP reports a total of sixty-three explosions in the United States,” Venti summarized. “Thirty-one warheads targeted against Minuteman III launch-control centers, obviously intended to prevent the missiles from being launched; sixteen against ballistic-missile defense installations; ten warheads targeted against nuclear-capable bomber bases and weapon-storage facilities; and six against strategic command-and-control bases, mostly involving nuclear warfighting. The Air Warning Center tracked over fifty missiles inbound on the attack against the CONUS, so perhaps as many as ten Russian cruise missiles malfunctioned and failed to detonate; one missile malfunctioned but its warheads did detonate, with disastrous results.”

  “Still no contact with anyone at STRATCOM?” the president asked.

  “No, sir — it looks like Offutt took a direct hit with three warheads,” General Venti said. “The airfield took one, and two hit the underground command center. No word yet if anyone survived. One warhead exploded north of the city of Bellevue — damage and casualty estimates are not in yet. All of the warheads used in these attacks were very small, perhaps one or two kilotons — less than a tenth the size of the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.”

  “What are the chances anyone survived at STRATCOM?”

  “The command center was designed to take the shock and overpressure from a one-megaton warhead,” Venti responded. “Many of the warheads used on this attack were designed to explode deep underground. It’s very possible anyone inside the underground facility could have survived, if the complex was sealed up and fully disconnected from all external power and air in time. Same with the Minuteman-missile launch facilities. They are built on shock absorbers that are designed to survive tremendous overpressure. But they can’t survive inside the fireball. If the earth and the facility shielding couldn’t stop the fireball from forming underground, they couldn’t make it.”

  “Just one aircraft made it away from Offutt?”

  “One E-4B Airborne Operations Center, which was on alert at the time. They have checked in and are fully functional, although they do not have a complete battle staff. Rear Admiral Jerrod Richland is the battle-staff director. Although it does not have a complete crew, it can do all the command-and-control functions of the STRATCOM command center. No other aircraft made it off in time.”

  “So I can still talk to our subs and military headquarters?” the president asked. “I still have control of the nuclear warheads?”

  “The E-4 is a global communications platform, able to communicate directly with any civilian or military person on planet Earth with a radio receiver or computer — it took over for the old Strategic Air Command EC-135 ‘Looking Glass’ aircraft, which were designed to ‘mirror’ operations in SAC’s underground command center,” Venti responded. “The E-6B is a communications aircraft, designed to communicate with military units and ballistic-missile submarines deep under the ocean, but the difference is that the B-model can format and send execution messages to nuclear forces and can also monitor and launch land-based ballistic missiles.”

  “Can’t I do all that from Air Force One?” the president asked. “You can communicate easily with the E-4 and E-6 aircraft and issue orders to them and to any military command centers and government operations centers; you can also break in on civil television and radio frequencies to speak with the American people,” Venti explained, “but Air Force One was not designed as an airborne military command post, only as an airborne White House. You cannot actually launch a nuclear strike yourself.”

  “So do I have control of our nuclear forces or not?” the president asked, struggling to keep his head clear through the enormous jumble of information he was absorbing. “Exactly what am I left with here?”

  “You can issue orders to the ballistic nuclear submarine force at any time through coded messages to the E-6A TACAMO aircraft that are airborne over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans,” chimed in Admiral Charles
Andover, Chief of Naval Operations, who was back in the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon. “The E-6A’s job is to talk with the boomers while submerged with extremely low-frequency transmitters, and that network is still in place and operational.”

  “We issued a change in posture and DEFCON—”

  “So the boomers know that tensions are high,” Andover said. “Under DEFCON One and a Posture Red, the boomers will proceed to their launch positions and wait. After several days, if they don’t receive a ‘withhold’ or ‘termination’ message, they’ll launch.” Andover saw the concern in President Thorn’s face and added quickly, “That is the procedure under these circumstances, sir. In case an attack completely wipes out the leadership, under DEFCON One the subs are authorized to launch if they don’t hear from us again. It ensures maximum stealth and maximum deterrent effect — the subs don’t have to expose themselves to enemy forces just to receive another execution message, and the Russians know they can’t completely destroy our most survivable nuclear forces just by killing the president.”

  “What else do we have left?”

  “We don’t know how many land-based ICBMs we have left yet,” General Venti responded. “With STRATCOM and Twentieth Air Force headquarters destroyed, the U.S. Space Command will need to hook into alternate communications lines to assess the status of the individual Minuteman launch-control centers and the weapons themselves. That should be done shortly.”

  “If any survived, can we control those missiles?”

  “The B-model Mercury aircraft should be able to take control of the ICBMs, sir,” Venti said. “Stand by one, sir.” He studied his status-of-forces report for a moment, then said, “The E-6Bs are based at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City. Normally, they embark a battle staff at Offutt and then disperse to various locations around the United States. The relief aircraft was destroyed at Offutt, but the alert E-6B was dispersed to ground alert at Naval Air Station Dallas, and it launched as soon as the air-defense alert was sounded. They’ll fly to their monitoring-and-control orbit over Wyoming and try to make contact with the launch-control centers to find out how many of our land-based missiles made it.”

  Venti nodded to an off-camera screen. “As far as the bomber fleet goes: If you’ll look at the DSP satellite readouts, sir, you’ll see that three very critical bases were destroyed: Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, and Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri,” he went on. “We don’t know how many bombers based at those locations survived. This leaves just one B-52 wing at Barksdale, near Shreveport, Louisiana, capable of executing a nuclear strike.”

  “How many bombers are based there?”

  “Eighteen, sir.”

  “That’s it? That’s all the heavy bombers we have left?”

  “Those are all the nuclear-capable bombers we have left, sir,” Venti said. “There may be other surviving bombers that were airborne at the time of the attack. General Kuzner, what other forces do we have available?”

  “We have just one base with B-1B Lancer long-range bombers left — Dyess Air Force Base just outside Abilene, Texas,” Kuzner responded. “It has about twenty aircraft, plus their air-refueling tankers. However, we deployed four of Ellsworth’s B-1 bombers to Andersen Air Force Base on Guam and six to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean as part of a contingency fast-strike and naval surface action group air support force for the Middle East and Asia. So it appears we have a total of about thirty B-1 bombers left. We also have another twenty to thirty B-1 bombers in flyable storage, which is the most ridiculous oxymoron ever invented — most of those planes would take months to make flyable, and some will never fly again.

  “Keep in mind, sir, that B-1s cannot carry nuclear weapons without significant and lengthy work. However, they can now carry cruise missiles — they have always had the capability of carrying cruise missiles but were prevented from doing so by the START treaty. I think it’s safe to say that all treaties with the Russians are null and void at this point.”

  “I will inform you about which treaties are in force and which are null and void, General Kuzner,” President Thorn snapped.

  “Of course,” Kuzner went on angrily, ignoring the president’s remark, “we’ve converted so many nuclear cruise missiles to conventional-warheads-only that there aren’t enough for the B-1s to carry. Barksdale lost all of their ALCMs and has only enough advanced cruise missiles to equip its own fleet of B-52s—”

  “General Kuzner, go get yourself a cup of coffee,” General Venti said, and he reached over and punched a button that deactivated Kuzner’s video-teleconference camera. He turned back to his own camera. “I apologize, Mr. President. He’s a little upset. General Kuzner’s family is from Cheyenne.”

  “We’re all a little upset, General,” Thorn said. “Have him resume his duties as soon as he can think and speak clearly. Understood?”

  “Perfectly, sir.”

  “So what do we have left to retaliate against the Russians with, General?” Vice President Busick asked.

  Venti added up the numbers. “At the present time, sir, we have six Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarines on patrol, three each in the Pacific and Atlantic, each loaded with twenty-four D-5 Trident II sea-launched ballistic missiles — SLBMs — each of which has five independently targeted nuclear warheads,” he said. “We have another four subs that can be deployed in a short amount of time.”

  “Where are the other subs?”

  “Undergoing extensive overhauls, sir. Each overhaul takes about a year.”

  “What sort of targets?”

  “On day-to-day patrol, each SLBM has target coordinates only for ice packs,” Andover responded. “That’s a safety measure set in case of accidental or terrorist launch. But when we changed the DEFCON level, the crews would have changed to normal SIOP targets — military bases, command-and-control facilities, and major lines of communications.”

  “You mean cities?”

  “Yes, sir — telephone and data-switching stations, power plants, gas and oil pipelines and distribution systems, highways, railroads, ports — any civilian infrastructure that could support sustained military operations,” Andover said. “The goal is to eliminate Russia’s ability to fight an intercontinental war.”

  “Even though it obviously means greater civilian casualties?”

  “We don’t specifically target civilians. We don’t attack cities or towns indiscriminately,” Venti said.

  “What other nuclear forces do we have left that we know about?” the president asked.

  “We have fifteen heavy bombers that can be generated for nuclear strike missions, plus two more undergoing depot-level maintenance and one in extended local-level maintenance status — meaning it’s the ‘hangar queen,’ being used for spare parts until more come in.

  “Fifteen bombers? That’s it?” the president exclaimed. “My God!”

  “And the thirty surviving B-1s are not nuclear capable,” Venti reminded him. “The only long-range nuclear air-attack forces left are the eighteen B-52s left at Barksdale, plus any other bombers that were airborne or deployed during the attack. We think only two B-2 stealth bombers survived. That could leave us with about twenty nuclear-capable long-range bombers.

  “We do have other forces capable of delivering nuclear weapons, but it will take time to generate those forces, and they’re not as survivable as the heavies,” Venti went on. “As I mentioned, there are about thirty B-1B bombers that can be converted back to carrying nuclear weapons. The Air Force also has about one hundred and seventy-five F-15E Strike Eagle tactical fighter-bombers that are capable of delivering nuclear weapons, based at six locations in the continental U.S. and Alaska — unfortunately, we closed the F-15E base at RAF Lakenheath in England and brought all of the nuclear weapons stored in Europe back to the U.S. Although no warships except the ballistic-missile subs carry nuclear weapons, ships can be quickly supplied with nuclear cruise missiles and gravity bombs — the F/A-1
8 Hornet carrier-based fighter can deliver nuclear weapons.”

  “I think it would be wise to disperse those bombers and any other bombers that survived around the country,” Secretary of Defense Goff said, “to make it harder for the Russians to attack them. If they want to go after bomber bases, they’ll be next.”

  “I sent a message to Air Combat Command to suggest exactly that,” Venti said. “We can phone or instant-message all the commanders from the NAOC, just as you can from your phones and computers aboard Air Force One. General Muskoka of ACC is on his way back to Langley. He was en route to Offutt Air Force Base for a meeting with STRATCOM, NORAD, Space Command, First Air Force, and Eighth Air Force commanders to discuss reestablishing a tighter air-defense network in the continental U.S. and perhaps putting the bomber force back on twenty-four/seven alert.” He paused, swallowed, then added, “I’ve received no response from General Samson of Eighth Air Force, who is the commander of the bomber forces. His staff thinks he had just arrived at Offutt when the attack took place. Air Force has also not heard from General Shepard of NORAD, General Wollensky of Space Command, General Craig of First Air Force, and General Houser of Air Intelligence Agency. They may have been at Offutt as well.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Goff breathed. “That’s most of the Air Force’s senior commanders.”

  “We need replacements for the dead and missing generals, and we need them fast,” the president said. “Then I need to talk to them right away. I can’t even begin to try to plan a response to this attack before I know what we have and what they have.”

  “My staff is working on all that as we speak, Mr. President,” General Venti said. “I’ve already been in contact with the deputy commander of the Nine-sixty-sixth Information Warfare Wing, Colonel Trevor Griffin. He’s taking a military jet from San Antonio and will be at the Pentagon in a few hours. The STRATCOM ops detachment here at the Pentagon can brief us on the status of strategic forces anytime you’re ready.”