Red Hammer 1994

Catching his breath, he moved through the trees in search of the next man in the jump chain. The sooner they linked up, the better. Rawlings remembered the words of an old family friend who had seen action in Southeast Asia in the secretive late fifties, when death in the jungles brought only word of a “training accident” to a distraught family. “It all gets very real very fast when your feet hit the ground,” he had offered, and as Rawlings stared into the dense Russian forest with a lump in his throat—alone—he realized how true those words were.

CHAPTER 33

Thomas and Hargesty were waiting to see the president aboard NEACP, the National Emergency Airborne Command Post. The acronym was somewhat of a misnomer—it implied a single aircraft, but there were originally four in the inventory, identically configured for the complex mission of controlling US strategic forces during nuclear war. Two were still operational on this the fifth day of the war. One had been destroyed on the ground, while the other, with its battle staff, had fallen prey to sabotage while taking off from an air force installation. Flares popping off as the plane lifted from the runway had proved inadequate against two shoulder-fired, IR homing missiles. Both were sucked up by the huge turbo-fan engines, blowing them clean off the wings. The crew didn’t have a chance when the crippled plane splintered into chunks before bursting into flames.

Cruising thirty-four thousand feet over the state of Arkansas, the converted Boeing 747 airliner had been airborne for over two hours. A hasty departure had been arranged from Polk AFB in North Carolina, for some reason not yet attacked. The pattern of bases hit and those spared made no sense. It was if the Russians had thrown darts at an alphabetical installation listing.

At Polk, the president and his entourage had surfaced, risking attack while the giant plane refueled. Thomas and Hargesty had been pulled from other duties, merging from two separate azimuths for the last-minute rendezvous. The president had sent an urgent summons. He wanted both present. They sat impatiently while the cavernous wing tanks were topped off. The unique aircraft stuck out like a sore thumb under the blazing North Carolina sun. No one felt safe until the aircraft had cleared handheld missile range.

Driven by the threat of nuclear or conventional attack, the president and his senior advisors resembled a high-tech band of Gypsies—never in one place for more than a handful of hours, looking over their shoulders. They shuffled between ground mobile command centers, slept in makeshift tent cities, held conferences in deeply buried bunkers, and endured twelve-hour stretches in the air. Rarely did they have more than two key people at any one meeting. It would be like consistently betting against the house in Vegas.

The president wasn’t helpless. In the air, assorted aircraft such as the former Air Force One and theater CINC airborne command posts flew decoy missions around the clock, flooding the airways with bogus communications. Selective war-reserve frequencies had been intentionally compromised, and an occasional uncovered voice message was fed to the scores of Russians agents infecting the countryside. One plane had been shot down by an agentled Spetsnaz team near an airbase in Indiana. The weapon of choice had been a US made Stinger missile stolen from an army stockpile years before. The later-slain agent had been identified as a local, living for years in the surrounding community, employed as a high-school math teacher. The true number of such agents was anybody’s guess.

Once airborne, Thomas prepped with Hargesty for a meeting with the president. Resting in front of the generals was a heavily marked map of Europe, including western Russia to the Urals. An army colonel seated at the table, pen pointer in hand, described American, Allied, and Russian troop deployments. US forces on the European Continent were trapped like rats, while the Allies had dispersed their ground troops to defend in depth against any invasion from the east. But the Russians weren’t inclined toward such a rash maneuver. The once-formidable Red Army was hunkered down in the Ukraine and Western Russia, weathering US attacks. The remaining armored divisions in Germany, leftovers from the Cold War, strong-armed their hosts into obedience. A nervous German Army acted as traffic cop, praying that the two belligerents on their soil wouldn’t turn united Germany into rubble reminiscent of the Second World War.