doing outlandish, audacious things that Shrike himself would’ve been busted for in his early years. He had been taught that the way to get promoted was to follow orders and run a tight ship, not contravene orders and disregard the chain of command. Luger was ten years younger but was already a one-star general — in Shrike’s book that was pure crapola.
“I’d like my AL-52s fueled and ready to load the laser as soon as possible,” Luger said now. “I’m flying flight and technical crews down on a KC-135 in one hour.”
“I’d be happy to give them to you and get them the hell out of my hangars, General — as soon as I see some paperwork,” Shrike said. To call Andrew Shrike “anal” would be an understatement: He took a personal, direct interest in every aspect of all operations at the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center. Nothing happened there without his express knowledge and approval. “But since I haven’t seen or heard anything from you guys in weeks, it won’t happen. It’ll take you an entire day just to get authorization for your tanker to land here — and another week at least to get permission to launch those things out of here.”
David Luger could feel that familiar tension creeping into his brain and spinal cord — the feeling of dread, of abject fear, of impending pain — and he felt his body start to move into self-defense mode. He found he couldn’t speak, couldn’t react. He just looked straight ahead, feet planted firmly on the floor, arms becoming rigid….
“Anything else, General? It’s early, and I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“I…I…” Dave stammered, but no words were coming out.
“Nice to talk to you, sir,” Shrike said flatly, obviously not meaning one word of it. “Good—”
“Colonel,” Dave finally spit. He blinked, gritted his teeth, and willed his back and neck muscles to move.
“Yes, General? What is it?”
“I want…those planes ready for my crews in one hour.”
“I told you, General, it won’t happen,” Shrike said. “You need the proper—”
“Damn it, Colonel,
When he looked up, he saw most of his senior officers — Rebecca Furness;Colonel Daren Mace, her ops officer; Colonel Nancy Cheshire, commander of the EB-52 Megafortresses and the AL-52 Dragons of the Fifty-second Bomb Squadron; and Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Hellion, commander of the EB-1C Vampire bombers of the Fifty- first Bomb Squadron — staring at him as if he had grown an extra head.
“What are you standing around for?” Luger snapped. “I want the Alpha force ready to launch into the Foxtrot One airborne-alert area in one hour, and I want the rest of the force on the roof and ready to fly in two hours. Nancy, get your Dragon crews loaded up on a KC-135 and ready to fly to Dreamland to get the birds ready for combat operations.”
“Are you serious, sir?” Nancy Cheshire asked incredulously. Cheshire was a veteran Dreamland test pilot and one of the original program directors of both the EB-52 Megafortress airborne battleship and the AL-52 Dragon airborne laser, both modified B-52 bombers. “We’re going into combat even though we haven’t been recertified?”
“Not quite — I said I want all our planes ‘ready’ to go into combat,” Luger said. “But I’m authorized to do everything necessary to have my force survive an attack against the United States, and that’s what I plan to do.”
“The one that very well could be happening right now — if what Patrick thought might happen really
The Tupolev-160 supersonic bombers accelerated to twelve hundred kilometers per hour and climbed slightly to five hundred meters above the ground shortly before crossing just north of Wolf Mountain in central Alaska. They received a READY indication moments later, but the navigator/bombardier knew well enough to wait until the designated launch point, because his Kh-15 missiles would lose valuable range if they had to climb over or circumnavigate the mountain.
At the preplanned launch point, the bombardier flipped a switch from SAFE to COMMIT, which started the Kh-15 missile countdown. The Tu-160’s attack computers immediately downloaded navigation, heading, and velocity information to the missiles, which allowed the missiles’ gyros to perform their final transfer alignment to prepare them for flight. As soon as the missiles reported ready, the aft bomb-bay doors flew open, and four Kh-15 missiles were ejected down into the slipstream, one every fifteen seconds. Each one fell about a hundred meters in a slightly nose-low attitude while the air data sensors sampled the air, computed roll and bank velocities, set the rear fins for stabilization, and then fired its first-stage solid rocket motor. The Kh-15 shot ahead of the bomber in the blink of an eye, sped ahead for a few kilometers, then started a fast climb. The second Tu-160 fired four missiles from its rear bomb bay as well.
In fifteen seconds the missiles were at twenty thousand meters’ altitude, where they began to level off as the second-stage motor ignited. They cruised at twice the speed of sound for another forty-five seconds, then started a descent. Their precision inertial accelerometers kept them on course for their target, now less than eighty kilometers away.
Like Shemya, Clear Air Station in central Alaska was a rather isolated location that was growing in importance and development with the advent of the Aerospace Defense Command’s ballistic-missile defense system. Along with the existing Ballistic Missile Early Warning System radar, Clear Air Station hosted civilian air- traffic-control radars and NORAD surveillance radars. As part of the national missile-defense system’s expansion, the Air Force was also constructing a Battle Management Command and Control Center and an In-Flight Interceptor Communications System, plus eight silos, each housing four ground-based interceptor (GBI) rockets, spread out over eight hundred acres. The rockets were modified Minuteman II ballistic missiles fitted with a kill-vehicle warhead, designed to track and destroy ballistic-missile warhead “buses” outside Earth’s atmosphere. Three hundred military and over five hundred civilian contractors and construction workers lived and worked at the base.
Clear Air Station was definitely a “soft” target — perfect prey for the Kh-15 missiles.
In less than two minutes from launch, the first Russian attack missile reached its target. When the Kh-15 missile was still a thousand meters aboveground, its warhead detonated. The fireball of a one-kiloton thermonuclear device was very small and barely reached the ground, but the shock and overpressure of the explosion were enough to destroy every surface structure within four kilometers of ground zero. Every fifteen seconds another explosion ripped across the Alaskan wilderness, burning, crushing, or sweeping away buildings, radar antennae, and trees — and killing every living thing standing within a sixteen-square-kilometer area.
Each bomber’s third and fourth missiles were fitted with a deep-penetrating warhead and a delayed-action fuze and programmed against the ground-based interceptor silos. Although these were not as effective as the air- burst warheads programmed against aboveground targets, over half of the thirty-two GBIs were destroyed by the burrowing Kh-15 nuclear warheads.
The radio announcement came as a complete surprise. The four F-16C Fighting Falcon alert crews were inside the ramp-maintenance supervisor’s truck, sipping coffee while they reviewed their jets’ Form 781 maintenance logs prior to accepting the aircraft for alert status. Coffee cups dropped to the floor, and confused, scared eyes turned to each other inside the truck.
“Get your ass airborne, that’s what!” answered one of the other pilots, the flight commander. “Get rolling as fast as you can!” He dashed for the door, hoping like hell the others were right behind him.
