Goliath

The hair on Rocky’s neck stands on end. “Covah … what are you doing?”

“What should have been done long ago.”

With a reverberating hiss, the 130,000-pound Trident II (D5) missile is forcibly expelled vertically through one of Goliath’s silos, rising within a massive, protective bubble of nitrogen. Gas and warhead ascend at the same rate, the SLBM never getting wet—until the monstrous white missile bursts from the sea.

The Trident’s first-stage motor ignites in a thunderous roar, sending the mammoth missile leaping into the air above a dense white trailing cloud of smoke. With a slight lean to the east, onboard guidance initiates a gravity turn, minimizing aerodynamic torque on the structure. Within minutes, the missile and its lethal payload are traveling in excess of twenty thousand feet per second.

Before the froth along the turbulent surface can dissipate, four smaller missiles—Tomahawks—are ejected from the two torpedo bays located within each of Goliath’s enormous wings. The birds spring from the sea in pairs, the first following the Trident to the east, the second on a northward trajectory.

Gunnar stares at the overhead map, breathlessly watching … and waiting.

North American Aerospace Defense Command NORAD Colorado

3:02 A.M.

NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, is a four-and-a-half-acre subterranean compound buried within Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. Although the complex serves as a unified command center linking every branch of the Armed Forces, the facility’s primary function is to detect missile launches occurring anywhere in the world. To do this, NORAD relies on an early-warning missile detection system originating from 22,300 miles in space.

The Defense Support Program (DSP) is an array of satellites that circle the Earth in geostationary orbits, providing continuous, overlapping coverage of most of the planet. Outfitted with advanced infrared optics, the constellation of two-and-a-half-ton satellites can quickly detect heat signatures of a missile’s boost phase anywhere above the world’s cloud tops.

Major Kady Walker enters the Combined Command Center (CCC) and takes her place at one of the three command posts within the chamber. Four computer monitors are mounted at each post, with large screens lining the forward wall. To her back is a glass partition, separating the gallery from the technicians.

The CCC is the focal point for all incoming data. All missile, air, and space events are monitored twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. As Command Director, Kady must make sure that the proper responses to each warning or intrusion are initiated.

This is Kady’s world—a nerve-wracking existence in a fortified underground city—a daily, unending game of chess where nuclear weapons are the major pieces on the board. NORAD completes eighty thousand space observations daily, tracking eighty-seven hundred objects each year. Over the last ten years, Kady has witnessed no less than a thousand rocket launches. Communication satellites, space probes, spy satellites—the NORAD veteran has seen them all.

What she witnesses this early hour of November 5 will stay with her the rest of her days.

QUICK ALERT! QUICK ALERT! MULTIPLE MISSILE LAUNCHES DETECTED

LAUNCH SITE: MEDITERRANEAN SEA

34.6 degrees. 24 minutes N. Latitude

33.3 degrees. 06 minutes E. Longitude

FIVE [5] Missiles. Four [4] Trajectories.

TRAJECTORY 1: Trident 11 [05] Nuclear Missile

NUMBER OF MISSILES: ONE

TARGET: IRAQ: Baghdad

TIME TO IMPACT: 04 minutes 12 seconds

TRAJECTORY 2: TOMAHAWK BLOCK III TLAM

NUMBER OF MISSILES: ONE

TARGET: IRAQ: Northern Region

TIME TO IMPACT: 04 minutes 39 seconds

TRAJECTORY 3: TOMAHAWK BLOCK III TLAM

NUMBER OF MISSILES: ONE

TARGET: IRAQ: Southern Desert

TIME TO IMPACT: 05 minutes 14 seconds

TRAJECTORY 4: TOMAHAWK BLOCK IV DEEP STRIKE TLAM

NUMBER OF MISSILES: TWO

TARGET:RUSSIA: South Ural Mountains

TIME TO IMPACT: 122 minutes 03 seconds

Training takes over. Kady and her fellow technicians frantically relay information to the National Command Authorities in the United States and Canada via direct phone lines as a crowd gathers in the gallery. The emotional intensity in the chamber is suffocating.

Kady looks up, focusing on the color-coded track of Trajectory 1, her eyes following the missile as it loops over the southern border of Iraq.

“Two minutes! Two minutes!”

Her heart skips a beat as the clock ticks down, the 475-kiloton rocket and its multiple nuclear warheads soaring on its slanted path over the desert, precisely on target.

In the background, she hears the surreal voice of a CNN news anchor informing the public about reports that “a missile may have just been launched in the Mediterranean …”

Twenty seconds—

The chamber grows deathly quiet.

Baghdad, Iraq