The War Cloud

46

Now that Strategic Command was gone, General Block at Northern Command was suddenly having trouble communicating with America’s three main Minuteman III forces: the 90^th Missile Wing at F.E. Warren AFB in Wyoming, the 341^st Missile Wing at Malmstrom AFB in Montana, and the 91^st Missile Wing at Minot AFB in North Dakota. Together they controlled 450 ICBMs, and Block had to ensure transfer of launch authority from Carver at Strategic Command to Marshall aboard Looking Glass.

He worried this was a War Cloud effect. A similar, inexplicable loss of communication between the control center at Warren AFB and 50 of its missiles had occurred months ago. Block had issued a statement at the time saying that the power failure was not malicious and that the Air Force never lost the ability to launch the missiles.

Which wasn’t true.

“I hope you’ve got Marshall on for me,” he said when his grim senior controller walked up.

“General, sir, we’ve lost Air Force One.”

“Damn,” Block said. “We’ve run out of presidents.”

However much he disagreed with Sachs, he admired her pluck.

“Well, there’s no choice now. Tell Marshall he can authorize our B-2s to deliver the Maverick strike on the Chinese high command. Maybe the destruction of their host supercomputers will cut off the War Cloud and release our missiles.”