The War Cloud

13

The deer raised her head from the fresh powder of snow and stood deathly still while the pine trees, dripping white, trembled ever so slightly. Then she scrambled away over a slope past the “Danger! Restricted Area” sign and out of view of the security c

Hundreds of feet beneath the earth, behind a giant vault-like door of titanium cut out of the mountain, it was snowing inside too, on the monitors of the command center of the U.S. Northern Command.

USAF Maj. Gen. Norman Block, squat and brash, stared at two giant screens where his bosses used to be. “What the hell happened?”

“IONDS sensors detect a nuclear detonation within the U.S., sir,” his senior controller reported. “It’s Washington.”

Block looked at the reconfiguring screens. The left screen displayed TOT MISL 1 — total number of missiles launched. The right screen displayed TTG +00.00.35 — time to go before detonation. It was the plus sign that made Block’s blood jump.

“God Almighty,” he said.

What happened next went strictly according to plan as America’s so-called Post Attack Command Control System swung into action.

Block picked up the gold phone of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Alerting Network (JSCAN) from the console in front of him.

“Put me through to General Carver at SAC.”