Red Hammer 1994

“Those god-damn bastards have agents and special forces crawling over the entire country, designating targets for their mobile ICBMs. We’ve even caught groups scouting our ICBM bases.” McClain shook his head. He wished he owned an army of the handy SS-25s. He walked toward a bank of computer workstations. “I don’t know how they discovered the storage site. Colonel Jenkins!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get word to the unit at Fort Bliss to get the hell out of there. Take what they can. They’ve got less than thirty minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

A young air force captain behind a 19-inch graphics monitor had retrieved data on the Minuteman III wing. On his display was the silo-field geometry, with color coding for silo status. A green icon indicated a surviving silo containing one of the few reserve Minuteman’s still in STRATCOM’s arsenal. They were being held in reserve to counter high-threat Russian targets. Number-one priority was the surviving Russian military and party leadership bunkers, the linchpin of the Russian army’s command and control infrastructure. McClain leaned over his shoulder and studied the screen.

“Plot the calculated impacts.” A keystroke caused a series of four magenta ellipses to blossom on the CRT. Three blotted out a green dot, which now flashed a plea for action. To the right of each popped up a digital counter that decremented toward zero—the time to impact and detonation.

“Data looks good, sir,” reported the captain calmly. They had done this so many times in the past twenty-four hours that they were doing it in their sleep. “Launch the birds, General? Five minutes for a commit.”

McClain’s concentration left the screen and zeroed in on Thomas. He was hunched over the adjoining console, quizzing a sweat-soaked major.

“It’s up to General Thomas,” announced McClain. All eyes fixed on Thomas. He ignored McClain, not even looking up to acknowledge the statement. He wasn’t about to be baited.

“Give me the current list of Russian targets,” Thomas instructed the major. A mouse click triggered a cascade of tabular data, which presented a priority listing of Russian targets. One field displayed a confidence level. Thomas rapidly scrutinized the list, honing in on the game changers then tapped screen repeatedly like an instructing school teacher.

“Call up those.”

The target table dissolved, and a brilliant Russian map appeared. The designated targets were displayed as icons. The symbols on the screen pointed to where Thomas wanted to drop the hammer.

“Lay down the Mark 12 footprints here, here, and here.” The major did as ordered, creating three large north-to-south ellipses. A MIRVed missile could disperse its deadly cargo over an area governed by missile-bus design and fuel consumption. The bus couldn’t be flown anywhere they pleased. In the Minuteman’s case, the footprint was large, over hundreds of miles on the longitudinal axis.

“Drop these two and pick up the ones here.” The farthest-west ellipse shifted northeast. “That’s it. Send the release order along with the targeting data,” Thomas instructed.

The major was caught off guard. He twisted and cocked his head at his boss. His surprised look transmitted the message. McClain nodded approvingly, just as surprised.

“Yes, sir,” he replied smartly, righting himself in his chair.

In ten short minutes, the Minuteman IIIs blasted skyward. They would root out hardened command bunkers and deeply buried nuclear storage sites. The launch brought a sense of satisfaction to those in the tent.

Thomas studied his watch. Two minutes to spare. McClain was chagrinned.

“Well done, General Thomas. I couldn’t have done better myself.”

The tension engulfing the Center lifted like a fog bank before the morning sun. McClain’s deep blue eyes displayed respect for his service brother. Perhaps a workable relationship could be forged after all. Thomas stepped over, wiping the sweat from his brow with his shirt sleeve.

“How about the storage site? Can’t anything be done?” McClain had his hands on his hips, waiting for word from the Minuteman Wing.

“It was a secondary location,” McClain answered, not looking up. “We had twenty-five or so bombs there, no big deal. Close-by is a site that has old cruise-missile warheads, hundreds of them. Thank God that wasn’t it. Maybe the weapon will fall short. That’s why we placed the sites so far south. But don’t count on it. Russian ICBMs have more range than we thought.”

“What if one of those had been heading our way?”

McClain shrugged. “Evacuate as many people as possible. The vans can get underway in five minutes and cover ten miles in the next fifteen. Identifying escape routes is part of the site-selection process. Ten miles might just be enough. But then we’d expect them to hit us with a pattern of five or more RVs. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure that one out, and Lord knows they have enough RVs to do it. Sooner or later, they’ll catch us with our pants down. It’s only a matter of time.”