Cyber Warfare and the New World Order

Information Overload

Mike Rogers, the National Security Advisor, was receiving intelligence reports from across the country of attacks taking place by Chinese or Japanese Special Forces and complete chaos out on the West Coast. He was still trying to determine what the reports he was receiving about the Japanese all meant; they were still getting distress messages from the Japanese fleet, so the reality of the situation on the ground remained murky. The Japanese Ambassador to the United States was supposed to meet with the President shortly; hopefully, he would get some clarity after the meeting. Right now, it looked like there might be a split within the Japanese military, with some supporting the Chinese and others still supporting the Americans.

A Secret Service Agent walked up to Mr. Rogers and said, “Sir, the President would like to speak with you immediately in the Oval Office. Please come with me.” Not sure what to make of this, Mike followed the agent out of the Situation Room.

He walked in the Oval Office just as the Japanese Ambassador was being rather forcefully ushered out the door by several agents. As he turned to watch him leave, he almost ran into another group of agents that were ushering out the Indian Ambassador. Mike was confused — it just didn’t make sense for both of them to see the President at the same time.

As Mike entered the room, he looked quizzically at President Stein; he saw in his eyes the fire of burning anger and rage. Then a change came over his countenance; he took a couple of deep breaths and then he transformed into a look of intense sadness. He noticed that Henry’s hair had noticeably turned more gray, even within the last few weeks. The weight of the presidency was sitting heavily on him now.

“What’s going on, Mr. President?” asked Mike, genuinely concerned.

The President sighed deeply and then walking over to the chair behind his desk, plopping down like a man who had expended every last ounce of his energy. He closed his eyes briefly, ignoring Mike’s question for just a moment. He thought to himself, “The enemies are truly at the gate. I am not sure we can overcome them this time. We need to find a way to turn this war around. I will not be the last American President; I don’t want to be the man in charge when the country finally collapses.”

Looking up at Mike, the President signaled for him to take a seat at one of the chairs in front of his desk. “No matter how bad things have gotten before, I have still maintained some hope for the future…but I just don’t know if there is a way past it all this time,” he confided.

“Sir, what just happened?” Mike probed.

The President reached in front of him to grab a couple of documents, and then passed them over to Mike for review. “This just happened,” he responded.

As he read both papers in front of him, Mike’s eyes grew wide with terror. “Sir, can this really be true? India and Japan are making a formal Declaration of War against us?”

“Those are real. It’s true,” replied President Stein solemnly.

“Sir, we need to assemble everyone right now. The Directors of the FBI, NSA, CIA and Homeland Security, the heads of the armed forces…we need to meet them at the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) as quickly as they can arrive.” The PEOC had been reinforced heavily at the start of the Stein Administration and now included an underground tram system that linked it to the Pentagon and another undisclosed location in case the President and his advisors needed to leave the city in secret.

The President nodded, exhausted. He signaled to one of his agents to notify the appropriate people. Then he summoned his last remaining strength to stand up and walk out the door, headed for the upcoming meeting.

A few minutes later, General Branson walked into the room to see Mike Rogers sipping a cup of coffee and the President milking a 20 ounce half frozen Red Bull, deep in thought. When Stein signaled for him to come and sit down, the general knew this was going to be a long one, so he signaled one of the aides to bring him a coffee with two sugars.

President Stein didn’t waste any time while waiting for everyone else to get there. Once the general had sat down, he began to issue orders right away, “General Branson, I do not feel Washington is as safe as it should be in light of the information I have just received. I want you to double the number of soldiers guarding the Capital.”

The general sat up even more straightly than he normally did, soaking in each word. The President continued, “I want checkpoints coming and going from the city. I also want you to issue an immediate alert across the country for our military bases to provide military protection to our key critical infrastructure points: railways, bridges, airports, power plants, dams etc. I want this ordered immediately. Please take the time right now to make the calls and make it happen. I will explain more when the others arrive,” the President said indicating he wanted these orders issued immediately.

General Branson pushed aside the coffee cup that was being brought to him as he pulled out his smart phone and began to issue the alerts and orders to the Pentagon Operation’s Room. As he did, he thought to himself, “Well, the secure network may still be down, but at least the civilian communication systems are working. I should still be able to get this up and running quickly.”

The President began to pace as they waited for everyone else to arrive. Then he stopped suddenly, and signaled to the head of his Secret Service detail. “George, how many agents do we have on duty at any given time?” asked the President.

“Sir, we have 105 agents on duty along with 85 Marines. There are also another 60 police officers outside the perimeter. Is there something I should be aware of?” asked his detail chief, with a bit of concern in his voice.

“George, I was just made aware of a new and immediate threat to our nation. I do not have credible information of a direct attack against the White House or the Capital, but I am not taking any chances. I want you to issue Threat Condition Viking and prepare the White House to repel a possible attack — not an immediate attack, but one that could happen at any possible time. Tell the Marines they are to bring in some heavily-armored vehicles; I want their presence tripled, and they should be equipped in full combat gear. Until the situation stabilizes over the next couple of weeks, I want you to be ready to repel a concerted attack.” The President was so stoic while he spoke that his face seemed to be made of stone.

A bit alarmed, his detail chief said, “Sir, I will issue the order immediately. If you feel it is this bad, perhaps we should move you to the HIVE and have you work out of there, where we know we can more easily secure your operations as well as the surrounding area.”

“If we gain more credible information, we will move. Let’s make sure we have some Razorbacks on standby. In the meantime, I do not want to go into hiding unless I absolutely have to.” the President replied.

With that, the Secret Service agent nodded, lifted his left arm to his mouth and spoke into the microphone in his sleeve. A flurry of activity began to take place all throughout the White House property.

Twenty minutes later, the Director of the FBI, Janet Smart, walked into the PEOC. Soon afterwards, the Director of Homeland Security, Jorge Perez, and Director Patrick Rubio from the CIA arrived at the same time. They were followed shortly by Attorney General Roberts. The heads of the military branches all came in as a gaggle (there was General Marcy Lynch from the Marines, General Adrian Rice of the Air Force and Admiral Juliano from the Navy — the heads of the Army and the Coast Guard would be joining the group via telecon). The last one to the party was Admiral John Casey, the new Director for the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command.

They all noticed the increased security at the White House; it would have been hard not to observe that the Marine guards were all now wearing full combat armor, and the Wolverines scattered around the grounds were rather conspicuous. Clearly, the President had increased security. The NSA Director was the one with the best inside knowledge of why the precautions were most likely being made; they had picked up some intel about the Japanese and Indian Ambassadors, and he had a reasonable theory regarding the purpose of their visit earlier.

As the group of senior advisors arrived in the PEOC briefing room, they all took their seats at the pyramid-shaped table. The President, already seated at the head, surveyed the group briefly before he began the meeting.

“Thank you everyone for rushing here to the White House. As you all can guess, something major has just happened that, once again, is going to make the war a lot more difficult to win. I have increased security at the White House, within the capital, and at major infrastructural nodes across the country, until we gain a better understanding of the new threat. I want to bring you up to speed on what has transpired these last five hours. An hour ago, I had a meeting with the Ambassadors of Japan and India, who arrived together. They each handed me an official Declaration of War against the United States. Their reasoning for why they declared war at this point is not going to change the fact that they have already taken hostile actions against our forces and our country.”

The President saw some people were surprised, others just nodded, knowing this was a possibility. “After consultation with Admiral Casey, and General Gardner out on the West Coast, we have determined that the cyber-attack that temporarily crippled our defense communications system was launched by the Chinese and Japanese cyber warfare groups via our shared communications network with the Japanese Defense Force. The JDF had worked an elaborate rouse to lure our forces into an attack on the Chinese naval forces near Hawaii. This ruse was developed over many months and we fell for it, completely.”

President Stein locked eyes with Admiral Juliano, then nodded his head, asking him to continue briefing on this point without saying anything. The admiral nodded in acknowledgement. “It appears the Chinese, with the help of our former allies, sunk four of our five Swordfish underwater drones. Then the Japanese and Chinese fleets sank nine of our ten warships, and managed to shoot down four of our six F41 Arch Angel fighters.”

The room was so silent that the sound of each person breathing suddenly seemed loud.

Turning to Director Perez from DHS, the President asked, “Jorge, would you please bring everyone up to speed on what has transpired at several of our airports?”

Director Perez began to lay out the situation. “Gentlemen, Ladies, just before the communications blackout, several dozen commercial aircraft originating from Japan had either landed or were in the final approaches to their landing at some of our busiest international airports. Our best reports of what happened have come out of Chicago’s O’Hare Airport and Hartsford-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. The plane that landed in Chicago was the first one to arrive and dock at a terminal. Once there, a group of heavily armed Asian men wearing DHS uniforms emerged from the aircraft and made their way through the terminal to the parking garages, where vans were waiting for them to rush them off to what we assume are safe houses.”

Janet Smart queried, “So, to confirm, these were definitely Japanese Special Forces?”

“Yes, absolutely,” replied Jorge, pulling up a picture of a dead body next to a Japanese SFGp unit patch.

He continued, “While making their way out of the terminal, they encountered several of our airport security teams and a massive shootout followed. The police and TSA anti-terrorism groups engaged the enemy soldiers and killed several of their members, but not before taking heavy casualties themselves. Surveillance cameras and eye witness reports lead us to believe that close to 70 of the attackers did manage to escape the airport and make it to vans that were waiting for them in the parking garage. Police forces were able to intercept two of those vans before they left the property of the airport, which resulted in another shootout. They managed to keep those soldiers contained until help was able to arrive and then they finished them off.”

Mike Rogers asked, “So how many of them were killed in that shootout? I mean, I just want to know how many armed JDF guys are loose near the city of Chicago.”

“There were about a dozen soldiers in the vans that we took down, so I guess that leaves about 58 of these men still out there,” Jorge replied. He took a swig of water from the bottle in front of him, and then continued with the briefing, “After the extraordinary events that took place, the TSA agent in charge of O’Hare made a call to alert all U.S. airports and advise them to either deny the landing of all flights from Japan, or delay their arrivals to the terminals so that additional security forces could get in place. Additional quick reaction forces and police units were immediately rushed to the airports as well.”

Jorge gestured towards Admiral Rice, “We have the Air Force to thank for a huge win here.”

Rice nodded, “Yes indeed. Our fighter jets were able to intercept six commercial aircraft attempting to land in New York, New Jersey, Detroit, Seattle, San Diego and Houston. They shot them down. The planes crashed near the airports, causing some damage resulting in some civilian casualties, but we are certain that those planes held additional Japanese Special Forces.”

Director Perez picked the briefing back up, putting a map on the holographic screen. “Nine other commercial aircraft were able to land and dock at other airport terminals. In four of the locations that they landed (Philadelphia, Miami, St. Louis, and Phoenix), a large percentage of the JDF forces were able to make it through the airports after fighting their way through the security forces. We estimate between 40–50 SFGp survivors at each location. The other five groups were thoroughly pinned down at the airports of Boston, Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis and San Francisco and are currently being engaged. We believe that they will shortly be completely wiped out.”

Jorge changed the map and then continued, “We were tracking additional aircraft heading to other major metropolitan airports, but it appears that four of the Japanese pilots caught wind of the situation on the ground and rerouted to smaller municipal airports. As you can see on the maps, we had airplanes land at Gary, Indiana, Prescott in Arizona, Richmond, Virginia, and Victoria, Texas. Unfortunately, security at those sites had not been reinforced, and the SFGp was able to unload their troops there, almost without incident. Since these were not planned landing sites, there were no vehicles waiting to help them escape, so they stole maintenance vans to transport themselves away from the airports there. And Admiral Casey, before you ask — yes, we do have BOLOs out on those vans.”

The image switched again and Admiral Rice picked back up. “Two other aircraft were identified by our air defense systems and shot down while they were headed to other municipal fields. Those locations were more remote, and the airplane wreckage did not cause any casualties or major property damage based on our most recent assessments.”

Janet Smart stepped in, “All of the pertinent FBI offices have been alerted of hostiles in their area, and have begun to dispatch military units to all of the areas with orders to capture or kill these enemy forces.”

While most of them had already gained some knowledge of these events, they all had been missing pieces of the puzzle. Everyone just sat there stunned for a moment before people broke out into conversation, slowly raising their volume until they were trying to speak over each other to be heard. The President held a hand up for Monty, his Chief of Staff, to not interrupt their chatter and whispered, “Let them get it out of their systems for a minute, then we’ll bring everyone back to the task at hand.”

After a few minutes of controlled chaos, the President stood up and smacked his right hand down on the table with a loud crack to get everyone’s attention. “Enough. Everyone please be quiet while we sort through the information and formulize our plans on how we are going to respond. Thank goodness, at least the battle lines in Alaska have stabilized and the Russians have halted their operations in Europe after being pushed out of Germany…but any actions that don’t require boots on the ground would obviously be highly preferred.”

Director Smart from the FBI was the first to speak, “Mr. President, I believe the first thing we need to do is change the parameters of the Trinity program to now include all known Japanese government workers and as much of their defense forces as we have files on.”

Attorney General Roberts barely contemplated before he responded, “Agreed. I would recommend that we implement this strategy immediately.”

The President nodded, then pronounced, “Let’s make it happen.”

General Branson piped up, “We can provide all of the biometric dossiers of the Japanese military members that have trained with the American forces over the last forty years.”

Admiral Juliano quipped, “That decision to covertly collect biometric data whenever we conduct a training exercise with a foreign national partner is looking better and better.”

Admiral John Casey agreed, “The NSA will be very glad to have any additional information to help track these guys. We will add whatever you give us in terms of photographs or other data; it should increase our ability to find them quickly. It shouldn’t be too long before their faces show up on one of the CCTVs or security cameras across the country, and now that we are going to flag them as enemy combatants, they won’t be able to buy any new supplies here, as they won’t have functioning national identity cards. If someone does try to use a card that they previously obtained, we will pick that up right away.”

FBI Director Janet Smart spoke in the manner of a fan meeting a celebrity. “This Trinity program really is amazing. It has done such a great job of identifying foreign terrorists operating in America since the outset of the war. I’m really amazed by its ability to predict those who are going to become Russian or Chinese collaborators before they do any real damage.”

The President was happy with this course of action, but there was so much more ground to cover. He turned to Admiral Casey and Director Rubio and asked, “Two questions — 1) how soon will we have our government communications systems back in operation, and 2) what can the CIA and NSA do inside of Japan and India immediately, now that they have chosen sides?”

Admiral Casey jumped in first, saying, “Mr. President, the Japanese and Chinese hit us with several types of cyber-attacks. The first was a quick denial of service (DDoS) attack, overwhelming the system with a bunch of useless data until the network came crawling to its knees. This attack was quickly followed up with a nasty malware virus that began to propagate quickly from one directory to the next, erasing everything. Then several key nodes were locked out using a new type of crypto-locker we have not seen before. Couple that with several power transformer nodes being taken offline and it caused a lot of chaos for us. That said, we have already managed to resolve most of the major issues on the East Coast and throughout Midwest.”

He took a deep breath, then continued, “Where we are still having some problems is on the West Coast and with our satellites. We have been planning for this type of attack for a while now, so at least we had the UHF radios up and running. We anticipate having the West Coast cell network and our satellites to be operational within the next four or five hours. We need to restart several servers and install a lot of backup information. Nothing that can’t be fixed…at least we won’t be offline for days like we were at the outset of the war,” the Admiral pronounced confidently. He had explained just enough of the technical details to ensure that everyone in the room understood what the NSA was doing and how.

The Director of the CIA spoke up next, “Mr. President, we have several black ops teams operating inside of both countries. In the case of India, I remember we looked for ways to go after their physical infrastructure. They have several key dams and dike systems; if destroyed, these would cause considerable economic and property damage. We can assume they are going to go after our infrastructure, so we should make it clear we can hurt them far worse than they can hurt us.”

The President objected. “While I’m OK with disrupting flow of travel and distribution channels that the country may have, I do not want a humanitarian crisis on our hands because millions of people are killed by a faulty dam or suddenly lack clean drinking water. I want you to hit whatever economic nodes that you can while reducing loss of life, understood?”

“Yes, Mr. President,” replied Director Rubio. “In the case of Japan, I also recommend we carry out some similar attacks; however, in Japan, I believe there are other opportunities. The population is not going to be fully on board with turning their backs on us and joining with the Chinese. I believe we can work with their opposition groups to help form partisan groups that can carry out attacks against the government.”

Admiral Casey smiled. “Those are good starters, but I think the NSA can do better,” he said. “We have a contingency plan for almost every nation as far as points of attack…” He briefly rummaged through the files on his tablet until he found what he wanted. “Some of our mission planners thought there was a chance that either India or Japan could turn on America and join the Chinese, so they inserted some nasty malware into several areas of their economy. When you give us the order, we can bring those countries down to their knees,” the Admiral said with a wicked grin. Casey clearly liked inflicting apocalyptic scenarios on America’s enemies.

“Tell us more about what that would entail” directed the President.

“Sir, India is a softer target, so I will talk about them first. Our first step would be to collapse their banking system. We are going to do that by creating an artificial run at the bank by spreading some stories through social media campaigns about the banks not having enough money to cover everyone’s accounts. The story would also explain that the government needed to collect additional funds in order to pay for the war, so they would create a bank tax of 25 % to fund India’s efforts, and collect the money by seizing people’s assets like Cypress did back in the 2010s. This would obviously cause a run on the banks. Of course, all of this will be fake news, made up to generate chaos.”

Admiral Casey was smiling at this point and clearly thoroughly enjoying the discussion. He continued, “As the run on the banks begins, our first malware attack will start. The ATMs throughout the country will immediately begin to dispense all their money until they are empty. In addition to the mass chaos this would cause at the scene of each of the machines, with the ATMs across the country suddenly empty, it would be much more difficult for anyone to be able to get any other money. Following that attack, the malware would move through the banking network, hitting each of the banks with a massive denial of service (DDoS) attack. Anything that is hooked up to a network, from printers to building thermostats, computers to fax machines, even some of the administrators’ cars, all of the “internet of things” (IoT) items will be DDoS’ed into oblivion, unable to function under the large amounts of data we will use to flood the streams. Finally, within our roster is a worm that will burn through all the personal checking and savings accounts’ electronic balances. The only way they will be able to restore people’s accounts will be through their off-site backup systems. At that point, it won’t really matter if they can restore the accounts or not. The chaos that will ensue will be sheer madness.”

Admiral Casey made a swirling motion with his hands that seemed to announce that he was wrapping up this portion of his talk. “Within a week of the financial attacks, we could turn the lights off on several of their manufacturing provinces. Not the entire country (though we could), but as you say we want to shut down their ability to support the war, not destroy the country and kill the population,”

The President raised his hand to interrupt the Admiral and ask a question, “Admiral, thus far, I agree with your plan to cripple their financial system. I authorize you to move forward. However, I do not want you to turn the lights off to the manufacturing districts. Too many people would be killed in a grid collapse like that. What I want your hackers to do is find a way to cripple the Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems in those factories — that would disrupt the flow of electricity in a very pinpointed fashion. You may take down the power in those provinces just long enough for your hackers to cause serious physical and electronic damage to the factories.” Before the Admiral could launch a protest the President added, “This war is against their government and military, we are not going to go after their population unless they go after ours. Is that understood?” asked the President.

Nodding in agreement, the Admiral continued, “For Japan, we have a different surprise in store for them. As you know, we have made remarkable strides in cyber warfare the last twelve months. We’ve worked with the tech companies and have developed some nasty surprises. First, I will address the Japanese navy as they pose the most pressing threat to our country and forces. We were able to insert a couple of zero-day malware systems inside the propulsion systems of their carriers. When activated, the malware will cause their turbines to burn out and disable the ships’ propulsion and power systems. We also have the same virus in their railgun systems on their battleships. We may have given them the railgun technology (which I am sure they have now given to the Chinese), but not before we laced it with malware that would make it impossible to use once we activate it.”

The President interrupted, “So essentially, you can turn most of their fleet off at the flick of a switch?”

“Basically, yes. That is, once we regain our defense communications system. That should happen within the next hour or so. We’ve isolated the malware they introduced and are currently rebooting the various systems to get our communications up and running again.”

The President nodded, then motioned for him to continue along his original train of thought. “Mr. President, moving on to the economic aspect of Japan. Like India, we have gained access to their banking system as well as their communications system and their entire country’s electrical grid. The Japanese have made heavy use of the Internet of Things (IoT) over the past three decades, integrating everything from their cars, homes and every aspect of their daily lives into the digital world. We plan on turning it off. Not everything, just parts of the economy that will make life hard on the average citizen, with the promise to turn it back on once their government surrenders.” Admiral Casey had a smug look on his face. He sat back, satisfied with the plans he had presented.

Casey had only been the Commander of NSA and US Cyber Command for six months. Prior to that he had worked in various cyber warfare areas within the US Navy and had also worked with several Silicon Valley tech companies for several years, honing his skills in cyber-warfare and writing multiple military manuals and white papers on the subject. He was an obvious choice to become the NSA Commander after the previous commander died from a heart attack. Though he was very young for his position, he was smart, and more importantly, he was cunning and ruthless in defeating America’s enemies. He had turned a small cadre of US hackers at the NSA into a powerful group of individuals with access to nearly unlimited resources, totally dedicated to the electronic destruction of America’s enemies. The only thing restraining them was President Stein, who wanted to keep the war confined to combatants and the government, and not the civilian populous.

“Admiral Casey, I want you to move forward with the financial attack in India and Japan. I want you to hold off on attacking the Japanese navy until we can coordinate an attack with the navy. I want our guys to hit them when they are most vulnerable,” the President directed.

“Yes, Mr. President,” replied Admiral Casey. He would have to be satisfied with what had been approved, at least for now.

The President looked at his military service chiefs and General Branson and asked, “What is the situation on the West Coast? Let’s start with the Air Force.”

General Adrian Rice, the Air Force Chief of Staff brought up some information on his notepad and paired it to the holographic display in the center of the table. “Mr. President, as you know, we lost four of our six F41s that were sent to aid our former allies near Hawaii. We still have one other flight of F41s that is currently providing fighter support to Alaska. It is imperative that we keep them on that mission; our situation in the Northwest is precarious, to say the least. Right now, the two F41s we have left on the West Coast are going to be used in a reconnaissance role, providing us with real-time visual intelligence once the satellites are back up and running.”

General Rice brought up another slide on the presentation. “We are short aircraft everywhere. We just completed refurbishing 70 F15s and 68 F16s from the boneyard. We had planned on moving them to support our forces in Alaska, but I am now having them rerouted to our air bases in California to bolster our forces there. If the NSA can cripple the Japanese carriers, then our air assets in California should be able to eliminate any air defenses that the JDF and Chinese manage to establish and hammer the invasion force.” General Rice spoke confidently as he showed several quickly drawn-up scenarios.

“Thank you, General Rice. I look forward to reading your full weekly update in a couple of days. Let’s move to the Marines next,” the President said as he turned towards the Commandant of the Marine Corps.

General Marcy Lynch was the first woman to make four-star general in the Marines and now was the first female commandant of the Marine Corps. She had been a protégé of General Tyler Black (the previous commandant) before he was asked to take command of the First Army just prior to the Chinese/Russian invasion of Alaska. General Lynch was a dynamic leader with a warrior’s heart and intellect to match. Thus far, she had been doing a remarkable job increasing the training capacity of the Marines and integrating that force with the latest in military technology.

Looking at the President, General Lynch brought up several disturbing images on the screen and began to explain what they were looking at. “Mr. President, I just received these images and a SPOT report of what happened to my Marines while Admiral Casey was providing us his brief. The reports of the Chinese airborne force that were heading to San Diego have now been proven to be false. As you know, we had ordered the base commander at Camp Pendleton to dispatch as many Marines as he could to the landing zones. He sent a force of nine thousand Marines with a second force of eight thousand more Marines two hours later to San Diego and our naval facilities in the area. Within thirty minutes of arriving at the various locations and beginning preparations to defend the area, they were hit by hundreds of cruise missiles. The missiles appear to have originated from both the Chinese and Japanese fleets that are currently heading towards the West Coast.”

An audible gasp was heard by several people in the room and the sudden realization of what this meant. General Lynch continued, with a slight tremble in her voice, “Our local radar systems identified the Chinese cruise missiles, and the laser and railgun systems immediately began to engage them. They destroyed nearly 96 % of the 540 cruise missiles the Chinese launched. What the radar systems did not detect was the 560 missiles that the Japanese fired — at least not until it was too late. They did manage to shoot down about 230 of the cruise missiles, but the rest got through—”

Admiral Juliano interrupted to add, “—I’ve just gotten another update while General Lynch was speaking. They’ve hit us hard, Mr. President. I have a partial report that says our facilities on Coronado were heavily hit. The Fleet headquarters on Naval Base San Diego has been pretty much wiped out. So was our naval air station on North Island. Fourteen of our ships in port have also been heavily damaged.” He sighed then blurted out, “They nearly wiped out our West Coast naval capability, Mr. President.”

General Lynch interjected to finish talking. “—Mr. President, before you respond, I do not have casualty figures just yet, but they are going to be high. My Marines were out in the open when the attack happened. They appear to have also hit Camp Pendleton pretty hard, but I have not received a full report of how bad it was.”

The President just sat back in his chair for a minute digesting what he heard. The rest of the room began to come alive with chatter as people began to check their tablets for additional updates and any other information being sent to them. Monty, the President’s Chief of Staff and personal friend, leaned in to be closer to the President asking him, “Sir, are you all right?”

His thoughts were swirling, “This is just too much information all at once. Crud, my migraine is starting to come back — I don’t have time to deal with a migraine. I need to take a break and lay down for a few minutes.”

The President stood up, which got the attention of everyone in the room. “OK here is what we are going to do. The situation right now is too fluid and changing too fast for us to formulate a strategy and respond to this new situation. Right now, we are just reacting, and we need to start anticipating what they are going to do next and make them react to us. Clearly, we need more information to start making good decisions here.”

The President continued, “I don’t really see that I will be of use to you until we have some more information about what the situation is on the ground, so I am going to take a break from the meeting to go eat dinner with my wife while you sort some things out. In the meantime, I will have dinner brought down here while you continue to work and consolidate the information coming in.”

“I am going to come back down here in two hours, and I would like the following information to be ready. 1) I want confirmation that our cyber-attacks have been initiated and are underway. 2) I want the best possible damage assessment of this recent cruise missile attack. 3) I want to know where and what the Chinese and Japanese fleets are doing and what we can do to counter them. 4) I want a full report of what is going on in Oakland and LA… Please coordinate with whomever you need to and have this information ready when I return.” With his instructions issued, the President proceeded to leave the PEOC and let his senior military leaders and cabinet members to do their jobs.

Monty began to follow the President out of the room when the President turned and said, “Monty, I need to spend some time alone with my wife and rest for a short bit. I’m getting another migraine, which I absolutely cannot afford to have right now. I want you to stay down here and manage the information and workflow. Guide them if need be, but we need to right our ship quickly.” Henry spoke with confidence, knowing that Monty could fill in for him for the next couple of hours.

Monty was becoming concerned for his lifelong friend as these migraines appeared to be happening more often. “Yes Sir. Perhaps you should call for the doctor. We cannot afford to lose you even for a couple of days if something more serious is going on.”

“I appreciate your concern; I will set aside some time to talk with the doctor tomorrow and see what he has to say.” With that, the President left the PEOC to return to the residence and have a quiet dinner with his wife.

The information pouring in to the PEOC over the following two hours was nothing short of disastrous. The Marines had suffered some horrific casualties as they were mostly caught out in the open during the attack. Thousands of civilians had been killed by the cruise missiles as well. The Coronado bridge had also been destroyed, along with the police headquarters. The City of San Diego was a mess. Camp Pendleton had been hit extremely hard, killing thousands of Marine recruits and severely damaging the base facilities. In LA, two battalions of the Third Marines had been nearly wiped out by several cruise missiles and several buildings and the airstrip at Twenty-Nine Palms had been hit as well, killing several hundred additional Marines and soldiers and destroying dozens of Razorback attack helicopters and other aircraft.

When the President returned to the PEOC two hours later, he was feeling much better; although he was not one to take medication for a headache normally, his wife had convinced him that the state of the free world was at stake, and he had acquiesced. He was quickly brought up to speed and new orders were issued for the navy to dispatch the newly created Carrier Strike Group 12 (CSG-12 which was a consolidation of CSG-10 and CSG-11) to cross the Panama Canal and destroy the Japanese and Chinese carrier fleets.

This new strike group consisted of three Supercarriers: two of the newly designed Reagan class carriers and one of the older Nimitz class that had been reactivated from the Ghost Fleet along with a lot of other mothballed ships. The Reagan class carriers were enormous. At 1,350 feet in length with a flight deck width of 376 feet and 290 feet in height, the carriers displaced 140,000 tons, making them the largest warship in the world. The strike group also had twenty escort ships, including two of America’s newest battleships, the USS Iowa and the USS Wisconsin, named after the two famous World War II battleships. The President was not playing around.