The Sum of All Fears

36 WEAPONS EFFECTS

Sergeant Ed Yankevich should have been the first to notice what was happening. His eyes were on the van, and he was walking in that direction, scarcely forty feet away, but the human nervous system works in milliseconds and no faster.

The fizzle had just ended when the first radiation reached the police officer. These were gamma rays, which are actually photons, the same stuff that light waves are made of, but far more energetic. They were already attacking the body of the truck as well, causing the sheet steel to fluoresce like neon. Immediately behind the gammas were X-rays, also composed of photons but less energetic. The difference was lost on Yankevich, who would be the first to die. The intense radiation was most readily absorbed by his bones, which rapidly heated to incandescence, while at the same time the neurons of his brain were simultaneously excited as though each had become a flashbulb. In fact, Sergeant Yankevich was unable to notice a thing. He literally disintegrated, exploded from within by the tiny fraction of energy his body was able to absorb as the rest raced through him. But the gammas and X-rays were heading in all possible directions at the speed of light, and their next effect was one no one had anticipated.

Adjacent to the van, whose body was now being reduced to molecular bits of metal, was ABC's “A” satellite unit. Inside were several people who would have no more time to sense their fate than Sergeant Yankevich. The same was true of the elaborate and expensive electrical equipment in the van. But at the rear of this vehicle, pointing south and upward was a large parabolic-dish antenna, not unlike the kind used for radar. In the center of this, like the stamen of a flower, was the wave guide, essentially a metal tube with a square cross-section, whose inside dimensions roughly approximated the wavelength of the signal it was now broadcasting to a satellite 22,600 miles over the equator.

The wave guide of the A unit, and soon thereafter each of the eleven trucks lined up west of it, was struck by the gammas and X-rays. In the process, electrons were blasted off the atoms of the metal — in some cases the guides were lined with gold plate, which accentuated the process — which gave up their energy at once in the form of photons. These photons formed waves whose frequency was roughly that of the satellite uplink transmitters. There was one difference: the uplink trucks were in no case transmitting as much as one thousand watts of radio-frequency — RF — energy, and in most cases far less than that. The energy transfer from the A unit's wave guide, however, released nearly a million watts of energy in one brief, orgasmic pulse that ended in less than a microsecond as the antenna and the associated truck were also vaporized by the searing energy front. Next to go was the ABC “B” unit, then TWI. NHK, which was sending the Superbowl to Japan, was the fourth van in the line. There were eight more. All were destroyed. This process took approximately fifteen “shakes.” The satellites to which they transmitted were a long distance away. It would take the energy roughly an eighth of a second to span the distance, a relative eternity.

Next to emerge from the explosion — the truck was now part of it — was light and heat energy. The first blast of light escaped just before the expanding fireball blocked it. The second installment escaped soon thereafter, radiating in all directions. This generated the two-phase pulse which is characteristic of nuclear detonations.

The next energy effect was blast. This was actually a secondary effect. The air absorbed much of the soft X-rays and was burned into an opaque mass which stopped further electromagnetic radiation, transforming it into mechanical energy that expanded at several times the speed of sound, but before that energy had a chance to damage anything, more distant events were already under way.

The primary ABC video link was actually by fiberoptic cable — a high-quality landline — but the cable ran through the A van and was cut even before the stadium itself was damaged. The backup link was through the Telstar 301 satellite, and the Pacific Coast was serviced by Telstar 302. ABC used the Net-1 and Net-2 primary links on each bird. Also using Telstar 301 was Trans World International, which represented the NFL's worldwide rights and distributed the game to most of Europe, plus Israel and Egypt. TWI sent the same video signal to all its European clients, and also provided facilities for separate audio uplinks in the various European languages, which usually meant more than one audio link per country. Spain, for example, accounted for five dialects, each of which had its own audio sideband-channel. NHK, broadcasting to Japan, used both the JISO-F2R satellite and its regular full-time link, Westar 4, which was owned and operated by Hughes Aerospace. Italian TV used Major Path 1 of the Teleglobe satellite (owned by the Intelsat conglomerate) to feed its own viewers, plus those in Dubai and whatever Israelis didn't like the play-by-play through TWI and Telstar. Teleglobe's Major Path 2 was delegated to serve most of South America. Also present, either right at the stadium or a short distance away, were CNN, ABC's own news division, CBS Newsnet, and ESPN. Local Denver stations had their own satellite trucks on the scene, their uses mainly rented to outsiders.

There was a total of 37 active satellite uplink trucks using either microwave or Ku-band transmitters to generate a total of 48 active video, and 168 active audio signals, all feeding over a billion sports fans in seventy-one countries when the gamma and X-ray flux struck. In most cases, the impact generated a signal in the wave guides, but in six trucks, the traveling-wave tubes themselves were illuminated first and put out a gigantic pulse on exactly the proper frequencies. Even that was beside the point, however. Resonances and otherwise inconsequential irregularities within the wave guides meant that wide segments of the satellites orbiting over the Western Hemisphere were being worked by the TV crews at Denver. What happened to them is expressed simply. Their sensitive antennas were designed to receive billionths of watts. Instead, they were suddenly bombarded with between one and ten thousand times that on many separate channels. That surge overloaded an equal number of the front-end amplifiers inside the satellites. The computer software running the satellites took note of this and began to activate isolation switches to protect the sensitive equipment from the spike. Had the incident affected merely one such receiver, service would have been restored at once and nothing further would have happened, but commercial communications satellites are immensely expensive artifacts, costing hundreds of millions of dollars to build, and hundreds of millions more to launch into orbit. When more than five amplifiers recorded spikes, the software automatically began shutting circuits down, lest possibly serious damage to the entire satellite result. When twenty or more were affected, the software took the further step of deactivating all onboard circuits, and next firing off an emergency signal to its command ground station to say that something very serious had just happened. The safety software on the satellites were all customized variations of a single, very conservative program designed to safeguard billions of dollars' worth of nearly irreplaceable assets. In a brief flicker of time, a sizable fraction of the world's satellite communications dropped out of existence. Cable television and telecommunications systems all ceased, even before the technicians who managed their operations knew that something had gone disastrously wrong.

Pete Dawkins was resting for a moment. He thought of it as protecting the armored truck. The Wells Fargo guard was off delivering another few hundred pounds of quarters, and the police officer was sitting, his back against the shelves full of coin bags, listening to his radio. The Chargers were coming up to the line for a third-and-five at the Vikings' forty-seven. At that moment, the darkening sky outside turned incandescent yellow, then red — not the friendly, gentle red of a sunset, but a searing violet that was far brighter than that color could possibly have been. His mind barely had time to register that fact when it was assaulted by a million other things at once. The earth rose beneath him. The armored car was tossed up and sideways like a toy kicked by a child. The open rear door was slammed shut as if struck by a cannon. The body of the truck sheltered him from the shockwave — as did the body of the stadium, though Dawkins had not the time to realize it. Even so, he was nearly blinded by the flash that did reach him, and deafened by the overpressure wave that swept across him like the crushing hand of a giant. Had Dawkins been less disoriented, he might have thought earthquake, but even that idea did not occur to him. Survival did. The noise had not stopped, nor had the shaking, when he realized that he was trapped inside a vehicle whose fuel tank contained perhaps as much as fifty gallons of gasoline. He blinked his eyes clear and started crawling out the shattered windshield towards the brightest spot he could see. He did not notice that the backs of his hands looked worse than any sunburn he'd ever had. He did not realize that he could not hear a thing. All he cared about was getting to the light.

Outside Moscow, in a bunker under sixty meters of concrete, is the national headquarters of Voyska PVO, the Soviet air-defense service. A new facility, it was designed much like its Western counterparts in the form of a theater, since this configuration allowed the maximum number of people to see the data displayed on the large wall that was required for the map displays which were needed for their duties. It was 03:oo: 13 local time, according to the digital clock over the display, 00:00:13 Zulu (Greenwich Mean) Time, 19:00:13 in Washington, D.C.

On duty was Lieutenant General Ivan Grigoriyevich Kuropatkin, a former — he would have said “current”—fighter pilot, now fifty-one years of age. The third-ranking man at this post, he was taking his place in the normal duty rotation. Though as a very senior officer he could have opted for more convenient hours, the new Soviet military was to be founded on professionalism, and professional officers, he thought, led by example. Arrayed around him were his usual battle staff, composed of colonels, majors, plus a leavening of captains and lieutenants for menial work.

The job of Voyska PVO was to defend the Soviet Union against attack. In the missile age and in the absence of an effective defense against ballistic missiles — both sides were still working on that — his duties were more to warn than defend. Kuropatkin didn't like that, but neither could he change it. In geo-synchronous orbit over the coast of Peru was a pair of satellites, called Eagle-I and — II, whose task it was to watch the United States and spot a missile launch just as soon as the missiles left their silos. The same satellites could also spot an SLBM launch from the Gulf of Alaska, though their coverage that far north was somewhat dependent on weather which, at the moment, was vile. The display from the orbiting Eagles was in the infra-red spectrum, which mainly measured heat. The display was presented as the camera perceived it, without border lines or other computer-generated data which, the Russian designers thought, simply cluttered the display unnecessarily. Kuropatkin was not looking up, but rather at a junior officer who seemed to be doing a calculation of some sort, when something caught his eye. His gaze shifted automatically, entirely without conscious thought, and it took fully a second for him to realize why.

There was a white dot in the center of the display.

“Nichevo…” He shook that off at once. “Isolate and zoom in!” he ordered loudly. The colonel working the controls was sitting right next to him, and was already doing just that.

“ Central United States, General. Double-flash thermal signature, that is a probable nuclear detonation,” the Colonel said mechanically, his professional judgment overpowering his intellectual denial.

“Coordinates.”

“Working, General.” The distance from the Center to the satellite ensured a delay in getting things to happen. By the time the satellite's telescopic lens started moving in, the thermal signature from the fireball was expanding rapidly. Kuropatkin's immediate impression was that this could not possibly be a mistake, and as hot as that image was, what materialized in the pit of his stomach was a fist of ice.

“ Central U.S., looks like the city of Densva.”

“ Denver, what the hell's in Denver?” Kuropatkin demanded. “Find out.”

“Yes, General.”

Kuropatkin was already reaching for a telephone. This line was a direct link to the Ministry of Defense and also the residence of the Soviet President. He spoke quickly but clearly.

“Attention: This is Lieutenant General Kuropatkin at PVO Moscow Center. We have just registered a nuclear detonation in the United States. I repeat: we have just registered a nuclear detonation in the United States.”

One voice on the line swore. That would be President Narmonov's watch staff.

The other voice, that of the Defense Ministry's senior watch officer, was more reasoned. “How sure are you of this?”

“Double-flash signature,” Kuropatkin replied, astounded at his own coolness. “I'm watching the fireball expansion now. This is a nuclear event. I will call in more data as soon as I have it — what?” he asked a junior officer.

“General, Eagle-II just took one hell of an energy spike, four of the SHF links just shut down momentarily, and another is gone completely,” a major said, leaning over the General's desk.

“What happened, what was it?”

“I don't know.”

“Find out.”

The picture went blank just as San Diego were coming up for their third-and-five at the forty-seven. Fowler finished off his fourth beer of the afternoon and set the glass down in annoyance. Damned TV people. Someone probably tripped over a plug, and he'd miss a play or two in what looked like one hell of a game. He ought to have gone to this one, despite the advice of the Secret Service. He glanced over to see what Elizabeth was watching, but her screen had suddenly gone blank as well. Had one of the Marines driven over the cable with a snow-plow? Good help certainly was hard to come by, the President grumped. But no, that wasn't right. The ABC affiliate— Baltimore 's Channel 13, WJZ — put up its “Network Difficulty — Please Stand By” graphic, whereas Elizabeth 's channel was just random noise now. How very odd. Like any male TV viewer, Fowler picked up the TV controller and changed channels. CNN was off the air, too, but the local Baltimore and Washington stations were not. He'd just started wondering what that meant when a phone started ringing. It had an unusually atonal, strident sound, and was one of the four kept on the lower shelf of the coffee table that sat right in front of his couch. He reached down for it before he realized which one it was, and that delayed understanding caused his skin to go cold. It was the red phone, the one from North American Aerospace Defense Command at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado.

“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 re-checking 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 Superbowl 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 land-line 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 Superbowl, 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 further 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 towards 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 Command 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 infra-red 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 Superbowl. 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 was 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 desktop. 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 C IN C-NORAD on line. These buttons here give you direct lines to all the other C IN Cs.” 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 C IN C-P AC in charge of Pacific area forces, and both were traditionally Navy posts. C IN C-S OUTH was in Panama, C IN C–C ENT in Bahrain, C IN C-F OR — 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 C IN Cs.

But the SecDef…

Fowler looked for the button labeled NORAD and pushed it.

“This is the President. I am in my Camp David communications room.”

“Mr. President, this is still Major General Borstein. C IN C-NORAD is not here, sir. He was in Denver for the Superbowl. Mr. President, it is my duty to advise you that our instruments put the detonation either at or very near the Skydome stadium in Denver. It would appear very likely that Secretaries Bunker and Talbot are both dead, along with C IN C-NORAD.”

“Yes,” Fowler said. There was no emotion in his voice. He'd already reached that conclusion.

“The Vice-C IN C is traveling at the moment. I will be the senior NORAD officer for the next few hours until someone more senior manages to get back.”

“Very well. Now: what the hell is going on?”

“Sir, we do not know. The detonation was not preceded by anything unusual. There was not — I repeat, sir, not — a ballistic inbound track prior to the explosion. We are trying to contact the air controllers at Stapleton International Airport to have them check their radar tapes for a possible airborne delivery vehicle. We didn't see anything coming in on any of our scopes.”

“Would you have seen an inbound aircraft?”

“Not necessarily, sir,” General Borstein replied. “It's a good system, but there are ways to beat it, especially if you use a single aircraft. In any case, Mr. President, there are some things we need to do at once. Can we talk about that for a moment?”

“Yes.”

“Sir, on my own command authority as acting-C IN C-NORAD, I have placed my command on DEFCON-ONE alert. As you know, NORAD has that authority, and also nuclear-release authority for defensive purposes only.”

“You will not release any nuclear weapons without my authorization,” Fowler said forcefully.

“Sir, the only nukes we have in our inventory are in storage,” Borstein said. His voice was admirably mechanical, the other uniformed people thought. “I propose that we next initiate a conference call with CINC-SAC.”

“Do it,” Fowler ordered. It happened instantly.

“Mr. President, this is CINC-SAC,” General Peter Fremont, USAF announced. His voice was all business.

“What the hell is going on?”

“Sir, we do not know that, but there are some things we should do immediately.”

“Go on.”

“Sir, I recommend that we immediately place all of our strategic forces on a higher alert level. I recommend DEFCON-TWO. If we are dealing with a nuclear attack, we should posture our forces to maximum readiness. That will enable us to respond to an attack with the greatest possible effect. It could also have the effect of deterring whoever got this thing underway, in the event that he might have — or we could give him — second thoughts.”

“If I can add to that, sir, we should also increase our readiness across the board. If for no other reason, the availability of military units to provide assistance and to reduce possible civilian panic might be very useful. I recommend DEFCON-THREE for conventional forces.”

“Better to do that selectively, Robert,” Liz Elliot said.

“I heard that — who is it?” Borstein asked.

“This is the National Security Advisor,” Liz said, a touch too loudly. She was as pale as her white silk blouse. Fowler was still under control. Elliot was struggling to do the same.

“We have not met, Dr. Elliot. Unfortunately, our command-and-control systems do not allow us to do that selectively — at least not very fast. By sending out the alert now, however, we can activate all the units we need, then select the units we need to do things while they come on line. That will save us at least an hour. That is my recommendation.”

“I concur in that,” General Fremont added at once.

“Very well, do it,” Fowler said. It sounded reasonable enough.

The communications were handled through separate channels. CINC-SAC handled the strategic forces. The first Emergency Action Message used the same robotic voice that had already scrambled the alerted SAC wings. While the SAC bomber bases already knew that they were being alerted, the DEFCON-TWO notice made it official and far more ominous. Fiber-optic land-lines carried a similar notice to the Navy's Extremely Low Frequency radio system located in Michigan 's Upper Peninsula region. This signal had to be sent out by mechanical Morse. The nature of this radio system was such that it could only send out its characters very slowly, rather like the speed of a novice typist, and it acted as a cueing system, telling submarines to come to the surface for a more detailed message to be delivered by satellite radios.

At King's Bay, Georgia, Charleston, South Carolina, and Groton, Connecticut, and at three other locations in the Pacific, signals by land-line and satellite link were received by the duty staffs of the missile submarine squadrons, most of them aboard submarine tenders. Of America 's thirty-six missile submarines in service at the moment, nineteen were at sea, on “deterrence patrol,” as it was called. Two were in yard-overhaul status, and were totally unavailable for duty. The rest were tied up alongside tenders, except for USS Ohio, which was in the boat shed at Bangor. All had reduced crews aboard, though not one had her CO aboard this Sunday evening. That didn't really matter. The “boomers” all had two crews, and in every case one of the two commanding officers assigned to each boat was within thirty minutes of his command. All carried beepers, which went off almost simultaneously. The duty crews aboard each submarine began preparations for immediate sortie. The Command Duty Officer on each boomer was an officer who had passed the stringent test required before a submariner could be “qualified for command.” Their operational orders were clear: when this sort of alert came, they had to get to sea just as fast as possible. Most thought it a drill, but drills for strategic forces were a serious business. Already, tugboats were lighting up their diesels to help the slate-gray hulls away from the tenders. Deck crews were removing safety lines and stanchions, as men who'd been aboard the tenders scrambled down the ladders to their various ships. Aboard, division officers and assistants checked their rosters to see who was aboard and who was not. The fact of the matter was that these warships, like all warships, were overmanned. They could easily sail and operate with half a crew if they had to. DEFCON-TWO meant that they had to.

Captain Rosselli and the NMCC staff handled the conventional forces. Pre-set recordings went directly to the individual units. In the Army, that meant division level. In the Air Force, it was at the wing level, and in the Navy, it was at the squadron level. The conventional forces were going to DEFCON-THREE. Captain Rosselli and Colonel Barnes handled voice lines to higher command levels. Even when talking to three-star officers with no less than twenty-five years of service each, it was necessary to tell every single one that: No, sir, this is not repeat not a drill.

American military units all over the world went instantly on alert. As was to be expected, those units which ordinarily maintained high alert levels responded the most quickly. One of these was the Berlin Brigade.