Blood Covenent, page 27
CHAPTER 28
East Glastonbury, Connecticut
Friday, July 16, 1999
5:00 P.M. EDT
The freight truck was white with big red letters advertising the company, and its pickup and delivery service. It carried two stoves, a washer and dryer set, one gun safe, a number of crates, a trunk labeled BOOKS and several bonded boxes. Everything that was either too big or too heavy for the major courier services to carry ended up getting sent as light freight. Most things were bound to wooden pallets by steel bands. A battered yellow forklift sat strapped against the wall towards the door and next to the hydraulic ramp.
Craig Syms drove the truck down I-2. I-2 runs out of Hartford, which rests in the middle of Connecticut, towards Norwich and ends close to the border with Rhode Island. It winds from Marlborough to Colchester to Fitchville. Gas stations, small farms, parkland, and forests embrace the road. Craig shared the road with early weekend vacationers, late Friday afternoon commuters, and the normal over-the-road truckers embarking on their weekend runs for Monday deliveries.
Riding behind Craig between one of the stoves and the gun safe was the trunk labeled BOOKS. It was strapped against the side of the back of the truck’s box. Inside the trunk, the old electronic brain clicked awake. Its internal clock flipped from 99 to 00 and the program loop it had been sitting in for nineteen years ended. This caused the microprocessor’s random seed generator to choose a number between 1 and 32767. The old program grappled for a few seconds before the silicon brain decided six hundred twenty-three was the chosen number. The trunk’s darkness was broken as the red LED display illuminated with 00:10:23 and began its final countdown towards zero.
Ten minutes.
Craig Syms flipped his signal blinker on and eased the truck towards the off ramp. He started down the exit towards Highway 149. He stuck his elbow out the window letting the hot air blow through his hair. The clipboard on the passenger seat indicated his next stop was at a church parsonage in Westchester. Westchester was about two miles south of the interstate. According to the instructions, he was supposed to turn on Church Street, but if he missed his road, he could go down to Highway 16 and loop back on Cemetery Road. Behind Craig, death impatiently ticked down the seconds. The LED display glowed inside its padded case. The imperfect internal clock raced ahead counting sixty-one seconds for every sixty.
Seven minutes.
Craig missed Church Street and rolled past Cemetery Road. He stopped the truck at the intersection of Highways 149 and 16. Roads were known more by lore than by signs in this part of Connecticut. Craig checked the traffic and turned left. He shifted through the gears. Loomis Road ran along to Craig’s right and a sign came up announcing he was approaching Babcock Pond. Craig could see some kids in a rowboat fishing on the pond’s crystal blue water.
Three minutes.
A pair of cyclists pedaled down the left-hand side of the road moving the direction opposite of Craig. They were on their way to Pickerel Lake. A picnic dinner rested in their saddlebags. Both wore yellow shirts identifying them as belonging to something called Randy’s Rough Riders. It looked like they were having fun.
Ninety seconds.
Craig found the other end of Cemetery Road and flipped on the signal blinker. The truck’s air brakes squealed as he brought the vehicle to a halt and waited for the oncoming cars to pass. He checked his mirrors. A red Volvo was coming up fast on his rear bumper. Craig pulled on the wheel and heard the Cemetery Road’s gravel crunch under his tires.
Seventy-five seconds.
The truck produced a gray brown cloud of dust as it rolled down Cemetery Road. One of the stoves in the backend was for the parsonage. He could see the white church steeple ahead, and next to it was a smartly appointed home with a rose garden in front and some stately oaks along the eastern edge of the property. Craig pulled even with the driveway, and spun the wheel to back the truck up the driveway. The backup lights lit up and the alarm beeped as he drove backwards.
Thirty seconds.
Craig grabbed the clipboard and swung out of the cab. He shook off the stiffness in his legs. He ambled towards the side door reading the name off the bill of lading. He stepped through the gate. “I’ve got a stove for you,” he said smiling to a thirty-something woman.
Twenty seconds.
“Oh good, you’re here. It’s the stove—right?” she exclaimed.
Craig nodded.
She gave him a big smile. “My husband is over at the church.” She stepped back into the kitchen and pointed at the empty spot on the wall. The house was probably one-hundred-fifty-years old. It was not going to get much older. “We’d like to put in here. Let me give him a call.”
Ten seconds.
Craig nodded. “No problem. I’ll just go get it down off the lift.” Craig replied. He turned back to his truck.
Five seconds.
He swung the clipboard along his side. It was a beautiful afternoon. After he was done with the stove, he decided he would find some take-out place and make dinner a picnic.
One second.
He reached for the handle to the truck’s rear door. The countdown clock reached zero. The program exited the loop. The process control section of the program took over and executed the final steps in its programming. The capacitors drained their electricity into the printed circuit board. The charge raced through the circuitry to the mercury detonators. The carefully crafted explosive trigger ignited the thirty-two pie-shaped slices connected on precise sixty-degree angles. The soccer ball-shaped warhead came together like a collapsing balloon. The plutonium ball’s heart of beryllium and polonium compressed within a ten millionth of second, forming a star’s essence.
Craig Syms never heard or felt the blast. He vaporized along with the truck, the parsonage, and church. The lovely summer afternoon erupted into a spiraling fireball reaching upwards and outwards. It raced faster than the speed of sound across the pleasant fields and ponds. With Westchester at its epicenter, the fireball ripped across Babcock Pond and down towards Pickerel Lake. The intersection of Highways 16 and 149 melted, warped, then vanished. Steam bubbled off Babcock Pond and the rowboat erupted into flame. The fish were flash cooked in water instantly converted to steam. Death snaked up 149 towards North Westchester. The red Volvo lifted under the twisting winds and cartwheeled until it came to a sudden stop, resembling an accordion.
The two cyclists were lifted from their bikes and hurtled across a field. Their clothes turned to ash before fluttering away from their bodies. They suffered third degree burns over ninety percent of their bodies. The two-hundred-mile-per-hour winds slammed them back to the ground. Their bones snapped like twigs. A stand of trees exploded as the sap and water cooked off in seconds—chunks of wood shot through the air as deadly as any fragmentation bomb. The blinding light subsided after several seconds, but the thunderous roar broke windows and knocked trees down as far away as Colchester and Scoville Landing some five miles distant. An angry cloud filled with rocks and grit moved behind the light and thunder, denuding any trees still standing and sandblasting everything in its path.
Defense Support Program Satellite Number Seven (DSP-7) floated above the maelstrom below in the harsh environment of space at a geosynchronous orbit of twenty-two thousand statute miles. It was a satellite measuring thirty-two feet long and twenty-two feet wide when its wide solar panels were unfurled to convert the sun’s rays to electricity. DSP-7 generated 1,485 watts to power the 6,000 sensors waiting for the end of the world. DSP-7 was one of twenty-three satellites launched by the Air Force, although one had had to be destroyed during a failed launch.
DSP-7 was one part of America’s space-based warning system. The satellite network and its infrastructure of ground-based stations had been instrumental in providing early warning to Israel and coalition forces during the Gulf War whenever Saddam decided to launch another SCUD. The sensor array was tuned to watch for rocket motor flares and the peculiar particle spectrum revealed during nuclear detonations. They hung like a necklace around the world and the more advanced systems were deployed over China, North Korea, India, Pakistan, and Iran. The sensor array was sensitive enough to distinguish between different types of nuclear weapons and to identify the country of origin.
The sensors reached down to the North American continent. The spectrum analysis sensor array registered the flash centered in Westchester, Connecticut. The electronic brain compared the spectra components to those recently uploaded by ALERT—Attack and Launch Early Reporting to Theater system. It determined the flash was Soviet in origin and noted with a computer’s tedium, the flash was located on the North American continent.
A second microprocessor encrypted the data and formed it into a data packet. The packet was bounced across the hard vacuum to DSCS-1—Defense Satellite Communications System-1. This was the first of a five-spacecraft constellation providing hardened communication links including voice, data, digital, and television transmissions between major military commands and the National Command Authority. By 2003, all five were scheduled to be in orbit. The data packet from DSP-7 was routed to a single destination. The designers wanted to forestall any panic from false reports. The packet rippled through the atmosphere to Cheyenne Mountain outside Colorado Springs, Colorado.
The message was received by the Space Control Center. In the terminology unique to the US Military, a NUDET—Nuclear Detonation—warning overrode all other systems. The North American Aerospace Defense—NORAD—and US Space Commands were tasked to prevent, or at least provide imminent warning for, what DSP-7 had just reported. A nuclear detonation on the continental United States without missile, air, or submarine warning was either the result of a major systems failure or the beginning of a nightmare—orboth .
The Space Control Center systems did two things immediately. It sent an encrypted packet back to DSP-7 to check for any sensor, processor, or overall systems failure. A computer having a bad day was much preferable to reporting that World War III had just started. The second operation was to alert NORAD’s Command Center. No matter where General Jeremy Westler—Commander in Chief for NORAD (CINCNORAD)—might be, his staff was notified of the flash in Connecticut. NORAD is staffed twenty-four hours a day. Vigilance never takes a vacation.
It took longer to send data across the digital network than it did for the microprocessors to execute the preset array of instructions. The cloud was still expanding across Westchester, Babcock Pond, and Day Meadow Brook. Death shook its bloody fist to the silent monitors above, and the microprocessors checked to ensure the hardened circuitry had not failed. The secondary confirmation was accomplished within five seconds. The watch officer monitoring his computer display was still reading the initial message when the system confirmation message flashed across the screen.
The laser printer automatically printed a one-page summary. The watch officer snatched the page from the printer tray and marched straight towards General Westler’s office. Other people in the Command Center were beginning to realize something had happened. The watch officer knocked once and walked into Westler’s office. He handed the General the printout and stood back.
Westler propped a pair of glasses on his nose. The four stars resting on his shoulders suddenly seemed very heavy. He examined the map image. His plans to take his grandchildren to Six Flags amusement park in Denver were suddenly cancelled. Situated at the corner of his desk was a special phone connected to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), the White House, his Canadian counterpart, the Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) and the United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM). He wondered idly about USSTRATCOM’s readiness. The days of hot bombers on runways had ended under George Bush.
“Forward this to the JCS and CINCSTRAT.”
The watch officer saluted smartly and hurried off to his duties. Westler’s door closed and he felt like he was sealed inside a tomb. He reached for the phone on his desk and punched the button label SECDEF. Westler stared at the printout. No launch warnings, missile tracks, or hostile aircraft recorded. “Where did you come from?” he whispered. The spectrum analysis said it was a Russian weapon. He glared at the world map on his wall. He picked up the phone on his desk and pressed the button labeled SECDEF. “Mister Secretary, there has been a hostile nuclear detonation inside the North American continent,” he heard himself saying.
The United States Strategic Command used to be called the Strategic Air Command, but the command facility continued to operate at Offutt Air Force Base. General Andrew Collins— Commander in Chief Strategic Command (CINCSTRAT)—examined the message in his hands. He closed his eyes for a brief moment and wondered if they were about to pay for the folly of the last seven years. He glanced from DSP-7’s report to his watch officer.
“You read this?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the air force captain.
Collins nodded tiredly. “All right, get everybody in here. Two minutes.” He swung around in his office chair and picked up his own phone. He punched the button for CINCNORAD.
“Westler,” came the quick reply.
“Jeremy, Andy Collins here.” He tried to smile, but Jeremy was locked inside his mountain and Collins would shortly descend intothe hole .The hole is a fourteen-thousand-square-foot, multiple level, underground command bunker designed to manage conventional and non-conventional US forces worldwide. It is totally self-contained and sealed off from the rest the world during wartime. It is also a primary target for Russian missiles tasked with command and control targets.
“Yes.”
“We sure about this?”
“Andy, the report is six minutes old right now. I do not have visual confirmation, but the DSP bird passed all its system checks. We believe it’s real.”
Collins pursed his lips. “You’ve called SECDEF.”
“Yes.”
One less idiot he had to deal with. “I’ll be insidethe hole within five minutes. If you see anything else, let me know.”
“Yes, sir.” Jeremy paused, then added, “Good Luck, Andy.”
“Good luck to us all, Jeremy.” He closed the connection and looked at the five staff officers standing before him.
“All right, gentlemen, we have an offensive nuclear event located outside of Hartford, Connecticut.” He paused letting the reality sink in. “I am ordering all nuclear forces to their failsafe points for offensive operations against Russia. We leave forthe hole now. Gentlemen, this is not a drill.”
Ten minutes later, harried crews got the first B-52s to lift off from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, and Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. The B-2s struggled into the humid air over Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. Orders flew over the hardened digital networks canceling all leaves, and automated phone systems began recalling service personnel currently on leave.
The ELF (Extremely Low Frequency) system located beneath the Wisconsin forests sent encrypted orders to the ballistic submarine missile force prowling silently through the Pacific and Atlantic waters. ELF transmits signals into the earth and ultimately through the oceans to the submerged ballistic missile submarine force. Other orders were cut and emergency readiness preparations made for those boats still in dock at Kings Bay, Georgia, and Bangor, Washington. The second leg of America’s nuclear triad became aware. Additional orders were sent to the 688 boats to seek out and target the few Russian boomers at sea.
The Minuteman crews scrambled down into their subterranean vaults at F.E. Warren AFB, Malmstrom AFB, and Minot AFB in Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota. Operation manuals thought to be obsolete since the Soviet Union’s demise, were opened and encrypted day codes were checked. The drills they usually worked were replaced with ominous warnings ringing across those air force bases. “This is not a drill.”
Military police in full battle dress appeared at all base entrance gates. Access to the bases vanished like a closing curtain coming down at the end of a play. Machine guns were positioned inside sandbag emplacements and armored fighting vehicles moved to preset firing points as the summer day’s blue sky continued to blanket the country.
Andy Collins and his senior staff took up their stations in the battle management level at the bottom ofthe hole . The heavy blast doors closed behind them, the emergency power system switched on, and the Strategic Command Center became a self-contained system. Everyone realized the painful truth that they were bunkered in a primary target for any Russian missile tasked to take them out. The war fighting theory accepted this reality, but the difficult fact remains that it takes a missile thirty minutes to travel over the pole and fifteen minutes to travel from the Pacific or Atlantic. Time enough to launch an overwhelming and civilization-ending barrage.
Andy wondered where his sons were right now. One was a B-52 crewman; the other flew an F-15 based in Germany. He said a quick prayer before loosening his tie and settling down to business. He had given his staff leave to change into their more comfortable BDUs. They would be insidethe hole for a while; perhaps, the rest of their lives.
An identical command post was located beneath the Pentagon’s E-ring. It was called theTank. The Joint Chiefs, their planning staffs, and the necessary technicians locked themselves into the command center. Settled along the Potomac’s west bank just below Arlington National Cemetery, the nation’s top military officers prepared for a long night. The equipment hummed to life and the screens snapped on. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs examined the first images of the bomb blast. The images were computer enhanced and radar mapped, because the actual ground probably would be covered in a gray black haze for another day. He had seen enough combat to recognize a crater, and the size of the crater was astounding.
Running on a separate monitor was the satellite imagery from DSP-7. The flash and expanding orange brown cloud ran in slow motion without sound from DSP-7’s perspective above the rolling Connecticut countryside. His people were already telling him the bomb’s yield was between two and three kilotons. He leaned back in his command chair and wondered if this could be one of the suitcase bombs.
