The Bear and the Dragon

The infrared signature was impossible to miss. Over the equator, a DSP satellite focused in on the thermal bloom and cross-loaded the signal to Sunnyvale, California. From there it went to NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, dug into the sub-basement level of Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado.

“Launch! Possible launch at Xuanhua!”

“What’s that?” asked CINC-NORAD.

“We got a bloom, a huge-two huge ones at Xuanhua,” the female captain announced. “Fuck, there’s another one.”

“Okay, Captain, settle down,” the four-star told her. “There’s a special op taking that base down right now. Settle down, girl.”

In the control bunker, men were turning keys. The general in command had never really expected to do this. Sure, it was a possibility, the thing he’d trained his entire career for, but, no, not this. No. Not a chance.

But someone was trying to destroy his command-and he did have his orders, and like the automaton he’d been trained to be, he gave the orders and turned his command key.

The Spetsnaz people were doing well. Four silos were now disabled. One of the Russian teams managed to crack the maintenance door on their first try. This team, General Kirillin’s own, sent its technical genius inside, and he found the missile’s guidance module and blew it apart with gunfire. It would take a week at least to fix this missile, and just to make sure that didn’t happen, he affixed an explosive charge to the stainless steel body and set the timer for fifteen minutes. “Done!” he called.

“Out!” Kirillin ordered. The lieutenant general, now feeling like a new cadet in parachute school, gathered his team and ran to the pickup point. As guilty as any man would be of mission focus, he looked around, surprised by the fire and flame to his north-

— but more surprised to see three silo covers moving. The nearest was only three hundred meters away, and there he saw one of his Spetsnaz troopers walk right to the suddenly open silo and toss something in-then he ran like a rabbit-

— because three seconds later, the hand grenade he’d tossed in exploded, and took the entire missile up with it. The Spetsnaz soldier disappeared in the fireball he’d caused, and would not be seen again-

— but then something worse happened. From exhaust vents set left and right of Silos #5 and #7 came two vertical fountains of solid white-yellow flame, and less than two seconds later appeared the blunt, black shape of a missile’s nosecone.

Fuck,” breathed the Apache pilot coded CROOK Two. He was circling a kilometer away, and without any conscious thought at all, lowered his nose, twisted throttle, and pulled collective to jerk his attack helicopter at the rising missile.

“Got it,” the gunner called. He selected his 20-mm cannon and held down the trigger. The tracers blazed out like laser beams. The first set missed, but the gunner adjusted his lead and walked them into the missile’s upper half-

— the resulting explosion threw CROOK Two out of control, rolling it over on its back. The pilot threw his cyclic to the left, continuing the roll before he stopped it, barely, a quarter of the way through the second one, and then he saw the fireball rising, and the burning missile fuel falling back to the ground, atop Silo #9, and on all the men there who’d disabled that bird.

The last missile cleared its silo before the soldiers there could do much about it. Two tried to shoot at it with their personal weapons, but the flaming exhaust incinerated them in less time than it takes to pull a trigger. Another Apache swept in, having seen what CROOK Two had accomplished, but its rounds fell short, so rapidly the CSS-4 climbed into the air.

Oh, fuck,” Clark heard in his radio earpiece. It was Ding’s voice. ”Oh, fuck.”

John got back on his satellite phone.

“Yeah, how’s it going?” Ed Foley asked.

“One got off, one got away, man.”

“What?”

“You heard me. We killed all but one, but that one got off… going north, but leaning east some. Sorry, Ed. We tried.”

It took Foley a few seconds to gather his thoughts and reply. “Thanks, John. I guess I have some things to do here.”

There’s another one,” the captain said.

CINC-NORAD was trying to play this one as cool as he could. Yes, there was a spec-op laid on to take this Chinese missile farm down, and so he expected to see some hot flashes on the screen, and okay, all of them so far had been on the ground.

“That should be all of them,” the general announced.

“Sir, this one’s moving. This one’s a launch.”

“Are you sure?”

“Look, sir, the bloom is moving off the site,” she said urgently. “Valid launch, valid launch-valid threat!” she concluded. “Oh, my God…”

“Oh, shit,” CINC-NORAD said. He took one breath and lifted the Gold Phone. No, first he’d call the NMCC.

The senior watch officer in the National Military Command Center was a Marine one-star named Sullivan. The NORAD phone didn’t ring very often.

“NMCC, Brigadier General Sullivan speaking.”

“This is CINC-NORAD. We have a valid launch, valid threat from Xuanhua missile base in China. I say again, we have a valid launch, valid threat from China. It’s angling east, coming to North America.”

“Fuck,” the Marine observed.

“Tell me about it.”

The procedures were all written down. His first call went to the White House military office.

Ryan was sitting down to dinner with the family. An unusual night, he had nothing scheduled, no speeches to give, and that was good, because reporters always showed up and asked questions, and lately-

“Say that again?” Andrea Price-O’Day said into her sleeve microphone. “What?”

Then another Secret Service agent bashed into the room. “Marching Order!” he proclaimed. It was a code phrase often practiced but never spoken in reality.

“What?” Jack said, half a second before his wife could make the same sound.

“Mr. President, we have to get you and your family out of here,” Andrea said. “The Marines have the helicopters on the way.”

“What’s happening?”

“Sir, NORAD reports an inbound ballistic threat”

“What? China?”

“That’s all I know. Let’s go, right now,” Andrea said forcefully.

“Jack,” Cathy said in alarm.

“Okay, Andrea.” The President turned. “Time to go, honey. Right now.”

“But-what’s happening?”

He got her to her feet first, and walked to the door. The corridor was full of agents. Trenton Kelly was holding Kyle Daniel-the lionesses were nowhere in sight-and the principal agents for all the other kids were there. In a moment, they saw that there was not enough room in the elevator. The Ryan family rode. The agents mainly ran down the wide, white marble steps to the ground level.