As the Striker missiles sped inbound, McLanahan suddenly whooped for joy: “Hey, crew, I think we hit the jackpot! ” He could clearly see two separate parking areas at the huge bomber base at Wuhan — both filled with heavy bombers. One area was reserved for at least forty H-6 bombers, lined up almost wingtip to wingtip; the other parking area had four H-7 bombers, former Russian Tupolev-26 supersonic heavy bombers. “I’m going to program the last two Striker missiles for the base, too — might as well nail the targets as we get ’em. The navy base at Shanghai will have to wait for our next attack opportunity.” McLanahan steered the two Striker missiles already in flight at the H-7 supersonic bombers, planting one Striker in between two bombers so the tremendous blast knocked out both bombers at once, then launched the two remaining Strikers at the H-6 parking ramp. All four H-7 bombers went up in huge clouds of fire, and the Strikers destroyed eight more H-6 bombers and damaged several more.
As a parting gesture, McLanahan quickly programmed the last two Wolverine missiles to orbit over Wuhan bomber base and attack any targets of opportunity with the anti-vehicle skeets — any H-6 bomber that tried to start engines and taxi clear of the devastated parking ramp for the next forty minutes would be treated to a personalized demonstration of the power of an anti-vehicle skeet shooting molten copper slugs into it from out of the darkness. Another thirteen H-6 bombers, plus a number of fuel, security, and maintenance vehicles, were damaged or destroyed by the skeets launched from the Wolverine cruise missiles.
As the Chinese air defense fighters from Nanjing and Wuhu air bases converged first on Anqing, then Wuhan, to try to find and destroy the unidentified attacker, the crew of the Megafortress turned southeast through sparsely settled Zhejiang province, going feet-wet directly between the two Chinese naval bases at Wenzhou and Dinghai. Chinese air defense sites were in an uproar over the invasion on the garrisons at Xiamen, which meant that all available naval air fighter units had been sent on patrol to the south to try to stop any more Taiwanese invaders. Like a ghost riding the rising coastal fog, the Megafortress quietly slipped out of Chinese airspace and disappeared over the East China Sea.
The first detection was from the U.S. Space Commands Pacific Satellite Early Warning System, or SEWS, a large heat-sensing satellite that detected the bright flash of fire from the first 65,000-pound Dong Feng-4 ballistic missile lifting off from its fixed launching pad in east-central China. Since the launch detection was immediately correlated with a known DF-4 launch site, an automatic ICBM launch warning was issued by Space Command to all American, Canadian, and NATO military units throughout the world through the North American Aerospace Defense Command at Cheyenne Mountain. The entire Space Command complex, known as Team 21—the Space Operations missile detection wings, the worldwide communications network, and the crisis management team of the Cheyenne Mountain Strategic Defense Combat Operations Center— were on full alert when the next seven DF-4 missiles were detected moments later.
The commander of U.S. Space Command was called out of a lunch meeting with some of his visiting wing commanders, and he was quickly escorted to the Air Force Missile Warning and Space Operations Command Center. General Joseph G. Wyle was the new commander of “the Mountain.” A father of three daughters, a former F-4 Phantom fighter WSO (weapons systems officer) turned computer engineer, Wyle was one of the U.S. military’s few “triple hats,” a commander of three major military commands: U.S. Air Force Space Command, in charge of all of the Air Force’s satellites, boosters, land-based missiles, and launch facilities; U.S. Space Command, in charge of all of America’s strategic defense systems, such as surveillance satellites and radars; and the North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD) Command, the joint U.S. and Canadian military team dedicated to detecting, tracking, and identifying all incoming threats against the North American continent. The four-star general had been the deputy “triple hat” commander under General Mike Talbot during the last major international crisis in Asia, when China had first started flexing its blue-water muscles against its neighbors.
“Still waiting for SEWS confirmation of a Chinese IRBM launch,” the senior controller reported on the commander’s net in the command center.
“Let’s hear what you do know,” Wyle ordered.
“SEWS Pacific detected a total of ten missile launches in east-central China,” the senior controller reported. “Subsequent sensor hits showing large rocket plumes rising through the atmosphere, heading east. We have course and speed and approximate missile weight and performance data correlated through SEWS.”
“So we’re positive that we’re looking at Chinese ballistic missiles?”
“The latest intelligence data says the Chinese still had DF-4 missiles at all of the ten known launch sites in the area of the current launches— not the longer-range DF-5, not any of the experimental long-range ICBMs, nor any civil or commercial Long March boosters,” one of the intelligence officers reported. “So we can rule out with very good probability that the Chinese are not launching satellites, and that the attack is not against any targets in North America.”
That basic information saved a lot of time and wasted efforts — and a lot of officers and technicians who were holding their breath finally could breathe. It was well-known to everyone that Peterson Air Force Base would be a likely target for any enemy seeking to wipe out America’s defense network — but these missiles were not heading for the continental United States. “Good,” Wyle said. “Let’s notify the Pentagon and the NCA, but put it out over the non-emergency priority net.”
“We’ve got a BMEWS confirmation of ten, repeat ten, inbounds powering up through the atmosphere,” another controller reported. Space surveillance radar sites in Alaska, South Korea, and the Philippines called BMEWSs, or Ballistic Missile Early Warning Systems, now started tracking the inbound missiles, and trajectory projections appeared on the large full-color monitors in the operations center; they were backed up by radar satellites called DSSSs, or Defense Surveillance Satellite Systems. The probable target was pinpointed less than a minute from first detection: “Impact area, Guam,” the controller said.
“Ah, shit — the Chinese launched an attack on Guam,” Wyle muttered. “Get it out on the network — target Guam. Time to impact?”
“Twelve minutes,” the controller responded.
“Dammit. I hope the Army toads are on their toes this afternoon.” “Sir, now we have a track update via BMEWS and DSSS,” the controller reported. “We’re showing three of the missiles taking a different trajectory—”
“Where?” Wyle asked. “South Korea? Japan? Alaska?”
“No, sir — it’s a flatter trajectory, possibly a satellite insertion profile,” the controller responded. “The three missiles are using power to maintain a two-hundred-and-ninety-mile altitude. They could be ready to insert satellites into orbit.”