Painkiller

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Of the fourteen Tridents that were able to clear the Mango Cay vicinity, only missiles 3 and 13 penetrated the NORAD-guided strategic defense weaponry to reach their targets within the borders of the United States. Missile 13 was a replica created by Deng’s team of scientists and turned out to be a dud; failing to release its MIRVs, it crashed uselessly into the tarmac on the longest runway of one of its four intended targets, Ohio’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Missile 3, an original, delivered fifty percent of its payload. Due to advancing age, poor maintenance, and the physical abuse wrought upon them by the sinking of the USS Chameleon, two of the missile’s MIRVs nose-dived past the altitude-trigger height assigned their warheads and disintegrated on impact well off target near Mount Shasta, in northern California; MIRVs 3 and 4 delivered their warheads between ten and fifteen miles off course, at an elevation of approximately two thousand feet above, though well east, of the additional California-based targets of Edwards Air Force Base and Camp Pendleton.

With this limited list of strikes, Operation Blunt Fist failed to deliver the punishing blow Deng had sought. The planned invasions by the member nations of the so-called revolutionary brotherhood, already on hold following the demise of its leaders, were hastily aborted. The dual thermonuclear explosions nonetheless caused the deaths of 4,784 American citizens, in addition to 673 foreign visitors, within twenty seconds of their detonations. Authorities estimated another three to four thousand casualties would result from extreme radiation exposure outside of the core blast zone.

Once certain intelligence came to light-including photographs retrieved from a severely damaged digital camera strapped to the back of a Caribbean-based CIA operative-the United States implemented a series of military actions referred to by the president as “global peace-keeping efforts.” Amassing significant naval power in the South China Sea to deter China from responding, the American military effected an occupation of Taiwan to ensure the republic’s independence; peace-keeping or defensive occupations followed in Yemen, South Korea, and eight other nations around the globe.

The president used the catastrophe to his advantage in two additional ways: first, in a series of diplomatic summits with China’s newly appointed premier, he gained sweeping free-trade concessions hugely favorable to American corporations; second, his stratospheric popularity ratings discouraged Senator Alan Kircher from seeking the Republican presidential nomination, virtually assuring the president’s re-election.