Battle Born

SEVERAL MINUTES LATER

Kevin Martindale was talking with Ellen Whiting when the telephone on his desk rang. Chief of Staff Jerrod Hale went over, looked at the flashing button, then froze. “You better take it, sir,” Hale said. “It’s Cheyenne Mountain.”

“Oh, shit,” the President muttered as he dashed over to his desk. “Jerrod, make an announcement, let’s get a nose count going, alert the Secret Service that choppers may be inbound — you know the drill.” Staff members of the White House and Old Executive Office Building had become well practiced lately in the art of rapid emergency evacuations.

The President picked up the phone, motioning for Philip Freeman to listen in on an extension in his study. He did not need to push a button — it was the most important button on the phone and would select itself. “This is the President. Go ahead.”

“Sir, this is Lieutenant Colonel Gordon, senior controller, Space Command Missile Tracking Center. DSP 9 missile-warning satellite has detected several ballistic missile launches originating inside North Kor… er, sorry, inside the northern part of United Korea. I am secure.”

“Damn it to hell,” the President swore. “Korea is attacking China?”

“Negative, sir,” the controller said. “The tracks are headed south. It appears the launches originated inside Korea and are targeted against the southern half of the peninsula. Fourth Space Surveillance Squadron radars indicate nine tracks total targeted within Korea and three tracks targeted against southern and central Japan.” The Air Force Space Command’s Fourth Space Surveillance Squadron’s radars and tracking sites in Korea were now all manned by Korean technicians. Very few American servicemen still remained in Korea.

“Who the hell is launching those missiles?” the President demanded.

“Unknown, sir,” the controller responded.

“Any reaction from China or Russia?”

“None, sir.”

“Very well. Please alert me if any more launches occur.” He hung up the phone. “Philip?” he called. “Explanation?”

“It’s got to be some rogue ex-North Korean missile units,” Freeman suggested, coming back into the Oval Office. “Most of North Korea’s operational ballistic missiles were mobile. The big ones, the Nodong series, were rail-mobile; the smaller Scud series were all-terrain road-mobile. Apparently, some were able to escape the revolution and transition, find a presurveyed launch point, and fire in a coordinated attack. Mobile missiles are the hardest to find and relatively easy to disguise.”

“Get President Kwon back on the phone right away and tell him I want to speak with him at once,” Kevin Martindale said. “I don’t want him retaliating against the Chinese.”

About to call the White House Communications Center, Hale took another incoming call.

“What was that, Jerrod?”

“It’s too late,” Jerrod Hale said, his anger palpable. “Space Command says the Koreans fired back.”

“Damn them all to hell!” Martindale shouted. “Where? How many? What kind?”

“Unknown at this time, sir,” Hale replied. “I’ll get details right away.”

“Shit. And we’re as helpless as we can be,” the President said. “Jerrod, make sure Space Command notifies the Japanese government. I want to talk with the Russians, Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese ASAP. Everyone has got to back off, or Asia is going to blow up in one big red fireball.”

Another call came in: “Reports coming in, sir: Chemical weapons attacks against Kunsan and Pusan. Vx nerve agents. Very high casualties. And State’s also issued an emergency report, saying that a thermonuclear warhead exploded at high altitude a hundred miles north of Osaka, Japan,” he said. “Japanese Self-Defense Force authorities claim the warhead was large, over three hundred kilotons. An evacuation of the entire area is under way.”

“My God,” the President said. “What about the Korean retaliation? What about the Chinese?”

“Stand by, sir, we’re checking…” It took several minutes for further reports to come in. “Looks like Korea launched a small retaliatory strike against some Chinese armored and rocket divisions stationed along the China- Korea border,” Freeman finally reported. “Short-range ballistic missiles only, a salvo of about twenty rockets, probably Scud-or FROG-7-series rockets — high-explosive, very high-powered, perhaps incendiary devices. No reports of… stand by… Now receiving reports of mushroom clouds…”

“Mushroom clouds! You mean the Koreans attacked China with nuclear weapons?”

“I’ll get clarification of this, sir. Usually, we get more reliable reports than this of nuclear detonations. We also sometimes experience blackouts of nonhardened communications facilities. We got none of that this time.”

“What could that mean?” the Vice President asked. “Did they try to hit the Chinese with nuclear weapons, and they didn’t go off?”

“Or they weren’t supposed to go off,” Freeman suggested. “It could be a dangerous game of brinkmanship — threaten China with a nuclear retaliation without producing a nuclear yield.”

“But why China?” the President asked. “Did China launch those missiles against Korea? The guy at Space Command I just talked to said the missiles came from inside Korea.”

“The Korean military could have made a mistake… or Kwon did it deliberately,” Freeman offered. “We know China had massed several thousand troops along the border, and there were intelligence reports saying that Chinese air forces were conducting more cross-border flights, perhaps probing Korea’s air defenses.”

“So you think it’s possible that Kwon was sending China a message — stay away or else?” the Vice President asked, astonished. “How suicidal can you get?”

“Suicidal, yes — but he succeeded in getting my attention, all right,” the President said. “I don’t see Kwon’s hand in this — this smells like Defense Minister Kim’s handiwork. If we had to set up an antiballistic missile system over the Korean peninsula, it looks as though we’d not only have to try to protect Korea from China, but protect China from Korea. There will be no winners in this game.”

He turned to Freeman and motioned to the thick document they had been discussing earlier. “Green-light this project, Philip. What is he calling it?”

“General McLanahan calls it Operation Battle Born, sir,” Freeman replied. “That’s the Nevada state motto, I believe.”

“I saw something in the daily report from Chastain’s office about a Nevada bomber unit, Air National Guard, I believe, being decertified following some crazy-ass stunts they pulled during an evaluation,” the President remarked. “This plan wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with them, would it?”

“I think General McLanahan was conducting an evaluation at that very same unit to determine the suitability of their bomber unit to accomplish his operation,” Freeman said. “Given the nature of it, I think the general was looking for a very aggressive, rather unconventional fighting force to implement this plan.”

“In other words, he was looking for a bunch of military barnstormers — and he found them,” the President said with a smile. “Shades of Brad Elliott, all right. I just hope there’s an Asia left to implement the plan.”

“Unfortunately, that aspect of General McLanahan’s project may not be implemented,” Freeman said. “The Air National Guard unit has been decertified and disbanded.”

“Can he do the job with a single bomber?”

“I think so, sir,” Freeman responded uneasily. “We still have a constellation of those small reconnaissance satellites — the ones we know as NIRTSats. At the very least, we can still evaluate the plan with one bomber, add a second when it comes on-line, and then perhaps add a frontline unit or another Guard bomber unit later, if things heat up. Admiral Balboa hasn’t signed onto the plan, but he has suggested some alternate strike units from the Navy’s weapons and aircraft research labs at Patuxent River and China Lake that can assist if it gets too much for HAWC. But HAWC is ready to go now, so I think it’s a good idea to get the plan under way and the forces set up as soon as possible.”

“Then let’s do it,” the President said. “Let’s make it happen, and hope to hell it’s not too little, too late.”

MINISTRY OF DEFENSE,