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  Then there was Hinson. Mason thought CSOC’s attack force commander, Colonel Hinson, a careerist prick. No one working under Hinson felt any sense of loyalty to the man. If any subordinate crossed him, Hinson never forgave, he simply got even. Mason would not tolerate a me-first-me-only player in a position of responsibility on his team and planned to remedy this situation ASAP.

  Mason noticed Craven waiting impatiently for the meeting to begin and so began his opening remarks. “Gentlemen—looks like the home team’s all here.”

  “Slim,” Craven interrupted, “I want this meeting to run ten minutes max. The agenda’s one item long—do we go? I want a go/no go voice vote and if anyone has a beef, speak now. Hope—talk to me.”

  “We must go!” Hope commander Pasha Yakovlev stated emphatically. “Hell Fire is bringing replacement parts. Without them, we have no backup. We could lose all communications.”

  “We understand your situation,” replied General Krol, chewing his pipe. He then spoke Russian, translated as followed. “Hell Fire will fly to low earth orbit once she’s far enough west to clear land. After taking on fuel, she'll arrive on or before 2200 (hours Zulu).”

  Turning slightly, Craven paused a moment, studying Krol’s expression. Satisfied, he asked in English, “General Krol, what are your feelings?”

  “I am satisfied,” Krol responded evenly. “We go.”

  Colonel Sam Napper, the SDIO defense commander, flashed a thumbs up. “Freedom's ready. After tonight, stealth cruise missiles will be obsolete.” Colonel Napper displayed Freedom's Status Report on screen. All seemed well.

  Before Mason finished reading the report, Colonel Hinson chimed in. “CSOC’s go. Our attack program looks good. We’re ready, no problem.”

  General Mason stood once again, looked across the table and studied the faces of both technology representatives present. Placing his hands in his pockets, he spoke slowly, “I think I know the answers to my questions ... but... I’m gonna ask ’em anyway. John, are your Livermore fellas ready?”

  “Ready,” replied John Sullivan. “DEWSATs tested and lasers are set to tag.”

  Mason shifted his weight from one leg to the other, obviously not convinced. “I get the feeling I’m in a high school pep rally here, fellas. Lincoln Lab—what’s the story on your radar?”

  “We’re ready,” replied Thomas Jackson, Lincoln Lab’s rotund technical guru. “We’ve tested these UWB (Ultra WideBand) radars six months—they’re stealth proof.”

  Mason thought the mood of the meeting overly optimistic—a sense of euphoria that didn’t sit well with him. He looked quietly into the eyes of each person around the table, then studied the faces on screen. Mason spoke sincerely, sliding the rim of his round hat through his fingers. “This cruise missile threat has plagued us for years. Everyone’s got ’em, we can’t detect ’em, and everyone knows it. We’ve had problems in the past and . . .”

  “Thanks, Slim—I hear you,” Craven interrupted. He sounded sincere, but his gut feeling told him to go for it. He spoke decisively. “Let’s do it. Let nothing stand in our way!”

  The Dorito, 12/07/2014, 1144 Zulu, 3:44 A.M. Local

  EF-12 Wild Weasel,

  Altitude: 75,000 Feet,

  Taco-Shaped Flight Pattern Over Edwards AFB

  Painted matte black, the McDonnell Douglas EF-12 flying wing vanished against the night sky. Triangular-shaped, the EF-12’s wingspan was about seventy feet with power provided by twin General Electric F404 engines. Tonight, the EF-12 Avenger—a radar jammer aircraft nicknamed “the Dorito”—would blind Centurion’s orbiting armada with broad spectrum, high-power electromagnetic noise.

  Raised on horseback, Dorito pilot Captain “Cowboy” Murray Hill grew up punching cattle on his family’s west Texas ranch. On the high plains, Cowboy found his future prospects limited to football, cattle ranching, and roughneck work on oil rigs. He was good at all three but wanted more. Using football as his ticket to college, he was very much the typical west Texas rancher-athlete until he discovered flying. The Air Force ROTC flight program changed his life forever. Precise, private, and sometimes prickly, Cowboy used his brains and brawn to move first through college, then flight school at Reese AFB outside Lubbock, Texas. Once he’d learned to pilot the Dorito flying wing, he packed his Tony Llama cowboy boots, left big sky country, and never looked back.

  “Cowboy, this is Big Shot,” crackled over the Dorito pilot’s headset. “Enter crypt key. Ground control begins in sixty seconds.” Cowboy smirked. The call sign Big Shot fit the Cheyenne Mountain Headquarters organization like a glove. To avoid revealing his position, he maintained radio silence. Entering an eight character decryption key, he watched the link status lights turn green as the receiver locked on Headquarter’s control transmission.

  “Bulldog—control link is secure and operational.” Cowboy spoke to his back-seater, Bulldog, in a matter-of-fact tone. Bulldog looked the part—a stocky Georgia boy with short brown hair, large head, and a strong square jaw—consequently his call sign stuck.

  “Roger, Cowboy. Satellite link is go.”

  “Cowboy, this is Big Shot. Enable control link on my mark.”

  “Brace yourself, Bulldog.” Cowboy slid his thumb down the control stick, carefully lifting a red protective switch cover labeled warning: control select. Immediately, the sultry female voice of the flight computer repeated an audible warning designed to attract any male pilot’s attention. He had anticipated her warning, but his hands felt cold and clammy. In less than ten seconds he would hand over flight control to Cheyenne Mountain.

  “Mark,” said Big Shot. Cowboy thought this handoff was too easy for Headquarters; he put his life on the line—they had nothing to lose.

  “She’s all yours.” Hill held his breath and threw the control select switch.

  “Roger that,” Bulldog confirmed. “HQ is flying the wing.”

  “Took over without a glitch.” Shaking his head in disbelief, Cowboy never took his hand off the stick.

  The Assault by Sea, 12/07/2014, 1144 Zulu, 3:44 a.m. Local

  Submarine USS Stennis,

  Pacific Ocean 37 Miles Due West Of Santa Cruz, California

  The USS Stennis crept along at periscope depth, drifting slowly with just enough speed to maintain steering, perfectly quiet, waiting for Headquarters to take control via satellite link. She’d been in position only fifteen minutes with her communications mast protruding above the surface, thirty-seven miles due west of Santa Cruz, California. The USS Stennis, a 362-foot-long Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine, listened attentively to the submarine communications satellite.

  The boat’s skipper double-checked the time. Reluctantly, he lifted his phone and patched into the communications shack. “ClearWater downlink status?”

  “No change, Cap’n. Threat board data is real-time. Link fully operational.”

  “And the direct link from Headquarters?”

  “Control link is go.”

  “Very well then.” Satisfied, the skipper shifted his gaze to the officer of the deck (OOD). “What’s showing on the threat board? Any contacts?”

  Scanning the threat board from his forward watch station, the OOD summarized their situation. “We’re all alone out here, Skipper, clear horizon to horizon. Nearest surface contact—thirty miles due east, just off the coast. Single submerged contact bearing southwest at two hundred miles. Airspace overhead is clear.”

  In the U.S. Navy’s vernacular, ClearWater—the submarine reconnaissance satellite network—provided a means for detecting submerged submarines by electronically transforming turbulent black seawater into a calm clear liquid. ClearWater rendered the oceans virtually transparent, ergo the code name. The first operational crown jewel in the SDI space reconnaissance program, ClearWater satellites detected submarines by their wake track using microwave reflections from the sea surface. Reconnaissance satellites photographed ocean surface waves, then Centurion electronically smoothed them—technicians described this stage
as calming the waters—by filtering out effects due to surface current, ships, and weather. After calming the waters, each computer-enhanced picture of the ocean surface looked glassy smooth and highly reflective—like the surface of a glistening Christmas ball—except for telltale V-shaped scratches, aka submarine tracks. Created by surface wake, these V-shaped scratches marked the submarine’s trail, and, to the hunter’s advantage, in average seas this trail persisted long after the boat had passed.

  So successful was this submarine detection idea in practice that the ocean depths became, for strategic purposes, transparent. Polar ice and deep water (greater than 100 meters) emerged as the only place a submarine might hide.

  But ClearWater is another story.

  The skipper picked up his phone again and patched into the sonar room. “Sonar, any contacts? Did ClearWater miss anything?”

  “No contacts, Captain. We confirm the threat board read. Area is clear of any possible threats.”

  “That is good.” Nodding approval to the OOD, the skipper continued. “Very well—give Headquarters the boat.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Much to the skipper’s relief, the transition to Headquarters’s control was smooth. Confident all was well, he studied the faces of his crew. They handle this better than I, he thought. The crew gazed intently at their instrumentation and seemed relaxed with “hands-off’ boat control.

  “Steady as she goes, Captain,” the OOD reported. “Flight profile download now under way.”

  The skipper stood silent, ready by the phone, listening intently to the sounds inside his electric boat.

  “Guidance system update complete, Captain. Weapons are warm and ready to fire.” Immediately, three sets of missile indicators flashed a bright lethal green, then the hull of the Stennis echoed with the rush of water and air. The hull groaned due to the pressure changes inside the tubes.

  “Torpedo tubes one, two, and three are ready in all respects,” the OOD continued. “Outer doors are opened. Tubes now ready to launch the weapons.”

  The younger crewmen looked to the skipper for some sign of reassurance. The commanding officer forced a tight-jawed grin, then raised one hand with a “not to worry” gesture.

  “Captain, launch cycle in progress.”

  The sound of water ramming the weapons into the sea echoed throughout the boat.

  Outside, three cruise missiles packaged inside torpedoshaped cylinders headed for the surface. Once topside, the weapons fired their booster rockets, erupted from the nose of the cylinders, and thrust out of the water. Now airborne, the missiles tilted over, ignited their air breathing engines, and headed for the Nevada Test Site at about 500 knots.

  Meanwhile down below, the horrendous sounds of missiles firing overhead convinced the skipper their cruise launch was successful. He must now assume their position no longer secret. “Our job is done,” the skipper announced. “Give me the boat.”

  “With pleasure, Captain.” The OOD disconnected the link with the flip of a switch. “She’s all yours!”

  “Depth under the keel?”

  “Three hundred fifty feet.”

  “Take her down to one five zero; all ahead one third.” His immediate priority was to silently hide his boat under the pitch-black veil of the Pacific for, to most, the oceans remained opaque.

  “Aye, Captain.” The OOD repeated the orders to the crew.

  The hull of the USS Stennis filled with the sounds of rushing water as the ballast tanks opened. Minutes later, surrounded by total darkness, the Stennis slowed her descent at 130 feet. She settled at 150 and silently headed north-northwest out to sea.

  7

  The Real-time Ran, 12107/2014, 1145 Zulu, 4:45 A.M. Local

  Crow’s Nest Overlooking The SDIO War Room,

  Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado

  “Hinson—you ready to run?” Craven questioned his attack force commander via video link.

  “All assets are in position and ready, sir.” Checking the mission clock, he continued. “Kickoff in twenty-two seconds.”

  “Colonel— what about Centurion’s activity log?” Mason asked.

  “We’ll cover it when the time comes.”

  ‘The time has come.” Mason thought Hinson on the fast track all right—right out the door. There was no time to deal with Hinson before the test, but the right time would come—soon.

  “We’re on the air!” Hinson interrupted. Headquarters now remotely controlled Hinson’s attack forces. Next, he’d simulate a large scale ICBM attack. ‘The fireworks should begin in ten seconds.”

  All eyes focused on the big blue ball. From inside the Crow’s Nest, Craven and his general staff overlooked the blue ball, a large, slowly rotating hologram of the earth, twice the size of the one on Freedom.

  Suddenly, thousands of white blips appeared covering the globe. Krol winced, biting his pipe stem so hard it cracked. As a test sequence, this attack scenario stressed Centurion’s computing power to the limits.

  Craven walked outside the Crow’s Nest onto a connecting walkway for a better view. Looking down, he felt lightheaded due to the dizzying height above the War Room floor. Trembling, he felt suddenly nauseated, nervous, and very weak. Craven hated full-scale SDI testing because it was too damn realistic. The scale was overwhelming. Inside the walls of the War Room, the tests looked, sounded, and felt larger than life. Emotionally involved with the testing, Craven knew he’d lost his objective edge.

  But the future of his organization and the Allied Forces hinged on the success of these tests.

  Craven drew in a deep breath, reminding himself again that this was only a test. Try as he might, he could not steady his hands. He’d often joked that he should get into another line of work, but now he was ready to take his own advice. He’d been in the business long enough and needed to retire.

  Watching the test progress, the calm, orderly mood of the War Room transitioned to noisy chaos—a human beehive of activity that seemed to feed on itself.

  This realism adversely affected the nerves and health of the War Room staff, so frequent job rotation was the rule. These tests bothered Mason as well, but he worked to stay ahead of the game by constantly anticipating what should happen next.

  Mason knew the missiles were simulated, but he never became accustomed to such large-scale realistic testing—he could never completely detach himself. As the simulated missiles closed in over the North Pole, Mason recalled a quote from the Hindu scriptures. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, used this quote describing his feelings as he watched the detonation of the first atomic bomb—“I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Mason felt, though only for an instant, as if he was watching the end of the world. This stifling, morose feeling shook Mason and reminded him once again of the bloody business he’d chosen as his profession. He hated war above all else and felt it good to be reminded of this—and often.

  “Keep your eyes on the California coast,” Hinson announced.

  Simultaneously, six white blips appeared. Three cruise missiles from the Stennis, three from Hell Fire.

  “We can see ’em,” Craven observed with considerable satisfaction.

  Colonel Sam Napper sat on the edge of his seat, pounding his console. “Show me some red and we’re halfway home!” If Centurion confirmed the missiles as a real threat, the missile tracks would change color, indicating the most difficult technical aspect of the test was behind them.

  Then suddenly, it happened—all six blips turned red. After years of testing and frustration, they could finally detect stealth cruise missiles.

  And—if they could detect them, they could kill them.

  “Yes! Yes! We have a winner! Look out, Disney World— here we come!” Napper hooted, throwing his headset into the air. His vacation plans along with those of Craven’s entire general staff hinged on the outcome of these tests. He had a full month of leave scheduled around Christmas and was ready to collect.

  As the simulated missile traces ove
r Russia approached the North Pole, they began disappearing. Within minutes, only six red blips remained, all converging in unison on the Nevada Test Site.

  Just as Craven was beginning to feel good about his chances for success, he noticed a young airman talking to Hinson, shaking his head in apparent confusion, on the video conference line. Craven looked at Mason. “What’s your read so far?”

  “The game’s not over till it’s over, General. Something’s going on in CSOC.” Turning to the video conference camera, Mason spoke into the microphone. “Hinson—you got any problem there we need to know about?”

  “Nothing of consequence, sir ... that activity log.”

  “Yeah, what about it?”

  “My people—uh—well, we can’t. . .” Hinson paused The Bad Seed and considered his statement. “We’re going through some start-up problems with Centurion’s activity log, sir.”

  Mason raised both eyebrows. Something wasn’t right here. “Colonel—let me speak to the person you put in charge.”

  Hinson motioned to a frightened airman with eyes the size of silver dollars. The lanky young man approached the video camera and stood silent.

  Mason smiled to put him at ease. “What’s your name, son?”