Red Hammer 1994

Thomas stood at the entrance to the command-and-control trailer. Troopers checked his identification. The trailer was marked with the logo of a grocery chain, and except for the recessed topside compartments housing small EHF satellite dishes, even a trained observer would have difficulty distinguishing it from any other eighteen-wheeler cruising the nation’s highways. The inconspicuous entrance was through a small hatch behind the tractor’s sleeper cab. Thomas hoisted himself to the tractor then gripped the handrail and swung his body through the hatch.

His eyes adjusted slowly to the soft white glow. The hum of cooling fans and air-conditioning blowers greeted him. An officer stepped over and reported with a salute. Thomas followed through a cramped passageway between floor-to-ceiling racks of communications equipment, computer CPUs, and multiterabyte disk drives. At the trailer’s rear was a horseshoe-shaped cluster of powerful engineering workstations networked to a database server. Three operators glanced up then went back about their business.

“You can sit there, General.” The army captain pointed toward a vacant seat. His guide knelt unobtrusively, working the mouse with his free hand. He brought up a detailed globe, which hung effortlessly in computer-generated black space. A click of the mouse energized ring after ring of brightly colored satellite tracks circling the globe; the platforms themselves appeared as detailed icons in the same color scheme. The mini-satellites inched along the orbital tracks while the earth rotated imperceptibly beneath. A second click activated day/night shading.

“General Ogden said you want a detailed rundown, sir.” Thomas nodded. The officer used the mouse to rapidly rotate the globe, positioning the United States front and center. A double click zoomed until the continental United States filled the ample screen. He froze the image then popped open a series of menus to query the underlying database. He cocked his head up at Thomas, waiting for directions. Thomas paused to soak up the new view of the world that had unfolded before his eyes.

“Can you expand the view to include Canada and Alaska?”

The officer obliged with an effortless swirl of the mouse. The forty-eight states shrunk to accommodate the expanded landmass. “How’s that, sir?”

“Fine. Start with CONUS-based forces pre-attack.”

The officer triggered hundreds of small icons, which bloomed in bright colors across the map. Bombers sortied or on the ground, ICBMs, submarines in port or near the coast, the entire US arsenal sprang to life in the wink of an eye.

“Overlay C3,” added Thomas.

The previous symbols were joined by almost one hundred others, which marked fixed communications, radar, and satellite control sites and the multitude of command centers, including the dozen or more aircraft.

Thomas pointed to a menu selection permitting a historical replay. “Run the attack at sixty-times normal.” he said, tapping the screen. The first hour of the attack would be reduced to less than sixty seconds. An additional minute would capture the devastating Russian second wave.

In the first twenty seconds, the only movement was bombers and tankers scrambling for their lives. Suddenly red symbols appeared, blotting out targets on the East Coast. Next, the US ICBMs were fired in salvoes from STRATCOM bases. They were countered by hundreds of red icons, which methodically hammered targets across the breadth of the country, moving north to south.

Thomas was stunned by the sheer power of the onslaught. Nearly fifteen hundred weapons had detonated with unimaginable ferocity, yet this was still less than half of the Russians’ arsenal, one-tenth of the peak in the mid 1980s.

Thomas sagged backward in the seat, closing his eyes. His country couldn’t stand any more.

“General?” The young officer had replayed the horror show enough times to be numb.

“Too fast. Slow it down.” The captain obliged. The second go-around left Thomas with a seed of hope. So far only military targets had been hit. Industrial complexes had been spared, as had cities. Collateral damage appeared tolerable. Thomas frowned. The nasty word “relative” had crept into his thought processes, a cold-hearted frame of reference for evaluating human misery.

“Show me Russia.” The globe spun, and the captain clicked the mouse.