's Channel 13, WJZ — put up its “Network Difficulty — Please Stand By” graphic, whereas Elizabeth 's channel was just random noise now. How very odd. Like any male TV viewer, Fowler picked up the TV controller and changed channels. CNN was off the air, too, but the local Baltimore and Washington stations were not. He'd just started wondering what that meant when a phone started ringing. It had an unusually atonal, strident sound, and was one of the four kept on the lower shelf of the coffee table that sat right in front of his couch. He reached down for it before he realized which one it was, and that delayed understanding caused his skin to go cold. It was the red phone, the one from North American Aerospace Defense Command at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado.
“This is the President,” Fowler said in a gruff, suddenly frightened voice.
“Mr. President, this is Major General Joe Borstein. I am the senior NORAD watch officer. Sir, we have just registered a nuclear detonation in the Central United States.”
“What?” the President said after two or three seconds' pause.
“Sir, there's been a nuclear explosion. We're checking the exact location now, but it appears to have been in the Denver area.”
“Are you sure?” the President asked, fighting to keep calm.
“We're re-checking our instruments now, sir, but, yes, we're pretty sure. Sir, we don't know what happened or how it got there, but there was a nuclear explosion. I urge you to get to a place of safety at once while we try and figure out what's going on.”
Fowler looked up. Neither TV picture had changed and now alarm klaxons were erupting all over the Presidential compound.
Offutt Air Force Base, just outside Omaha, Nebraska, was once known as Fort Crook. The former cavalry post had a splendid if somewhat anachronistic collection of red brick dwellings for its most senior officers, in the rear of which was stabling for the horses they no longer needed, and in front of which was a flat parade ground of sufficient size to exercise a regiment of cavalry. About a mile from that was the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command, a much more modern building with its own antique, a B-17 Flying Fortress of World War II, sitting outside. Also outside the building but below ground was the new command post, completed in 1989. A capacious room, local wags joked that it had been built because Hollywood 's rendition of such rooms was better than the one SAC had originally built for itself, and the Air Force had decided to alter its reality to fit a fictional image.
Major General Chuck Timmons, Deputy Chief of Staff (Operations), had availed himself of the opportunity to stand his watch here instead of in his upstairs office, and had in fact been watching the Superbowl out of one eye on one of the eight large-screen TVs, but on two of the others had been real-time imagery from the Defense Support Program Satellites, called the DSPS birds, and he had caught the double-flash at Denver just as fast as everyone else. Timmons dropped the pencil he'd been working with. Behind his battle-staff seat were several glassed-in rooms — there were two levels of such rooms — which contained the fifty or so support personnel who kept SAC operating around the clock. Timmons lifted his phone and punched the button for the senior intelligence officer.
“I see it, sir.”
“Possible mistake?”
“Negative, sir, test circuitry says the bird's working just fine.”
“Keep me posted.” Timmons turned to his deputy. “Get the boss in here. Beep everybody, I want a full emergency-action team and a full battle-staff — and I want it now!” To his operations officer: “Get Looking Glass up now! I want the alert wings postured for takeoff, and I want an immediate alert flashed to everybody.”
In the glassed-in room behind the General and to his left, a sergeant pushed a few buttons. Though SAC had long since ceased keeping aircraft in the air around the clock, thirty percent of SAC's aircraft were typically kept on alert status at any time. The order out to the alert wings was sent by land-line and used a computer-generated voice, because it had been decided that a human might get excited and slur his words. The orders took perhaps twenty seconds to be transmitted, and the operations officers at the alert wings were galvanized to action.
At the moment, that meant two wings, the 416th Bomb Wing at Griffiss Air Force Base, Rome, New York, which flew the B-52, and the 384th, which flew the B-1B out of nearby McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas. At the latter, crewmen in their ready rooms, nearly all of whom had also been watching the Superbowl, raced out the door to waiting vehicles which took them to their guarded aircraft. The first man from each crew of four slapped the emergency-startup button that was part of the nosewheel assembly, then ran further aft to sprint up the ladder into the aircraft. Even before the crews were strapped in, the engines were starting up. The ground crews yanked off the red-flagged safety pins. Rifle-armed sentries got out of the way of the aircraft, training their weapons outward to engage any possible threat. To this point, no one knew that this was anything more than a particularly ill-timed drill.
At McConnell, the first aircraft to move was the wing commander's personal B-1B. An athletic forty-five, the colonel also had the advantage of having his aircraft parked closest to the alert shack. As soon as all four of his engines were turning and the way cleared, he tripped his brakes and began to taxi his aircraft towards the end of the runway. That took two minutes, and on reaching the spot, he was told to wait.
At Offutt, the alert KC-135 was under no such restrictions. Called “Looking Glass,” the converted — and twenty-five-year-old — Boeing 707 had aboard a general officer and a complete if downsized battle-staff. It was just lifting off into the falling darkness. Onboard radios and command links were just coming on line, and the officer aboard hadn't yet learned what all the hubbub was about. Behind him on the ground, three more additional and identical aircraft were being prepped for departure.
“What gives, Chuck?” CINC-SAC said as he came in. He was wearing casual clothes, and his shoes were not tied yet.
“Nuclear detonation at Denver, also some trouble on satellite communications links that we just found out about. I've postured the alert aircraft. Looking Glass just lifted off. Still don't know what the hell's going on, but Denver just blew up.”
“Get 'em off,” the Commander-in-Chief Strategic Air Command ordered. Timmons gestured to a communications officer, who relayed the order. Twenty seconds later, the first B-1B roared down the runway at McConnell.
It was not a time for niceties. A Marine captain pushed open the door into the President's cabin and tossed two white parkas at Fowler and Elliot even before the first Secret Service agent showed up.
“Right now, sir!” he urged. “Chopper's still broke, sir.”
“Where to?” Pete Connor arrived with his overcoat unbuttoned, just in time to hear what the Marine had said.
“Command post, 'less you say different. Chopper's broke,” the captain said yet again. “Come on, sir!” he nearly screamed at the President.
“Bob!” Elliot said in some alarm. She didn't know what the President had heard over the phone, merely that he looked pale and sick. Both donned their parkas and came outside. They saw that a full squad of Marines lay in the snow, their loaded rifles pointed outward. Six more stood around the Hummer whose engine was screaming in neutral.
At Anacostia Naval Air Station in Washington, the crew of Marine Two — it wouldn't be Marine One until the President got aboard — was just lifting off amid a worrisome cloud of snow, but in a few seconds they were above the ground effect and able to see fairly well. The pilot, a major, turned his aircraft northwest, wondering what the hell was happening. The only people who knew anything knew merely that they didn't know very much. For a few minutes, this would not matter. As with any organization, responses to a sudden emergency were planned beforehand and had been thoroughly rehearsed both to get things done and to attenuate the panic that might come from indecision mixed with danger.
“What the hell is going on in Denver that I need to know about?” General Kuropatkin asked in his hole outside Moscow.
“Nothing I know of,” his intelligence officer replied honestly.
That's a big help, the General thought. He lifted the phone to the Soviet military intelligence agency, the
