“Where does Rojas fit in?”
“He had to help us master the new heat-resistant coating that we used to cover all of the hypersonic glide vehicles. Now they are able to keep a much higher speed upon reentry into the earth’s atmosphere without overheating their inner navigational computers. That means we now have hundreds of incredibly powerful hypersonic weapons that can hit targets with pinpoint accuracy, anywhere on the world, within thirty minutes.”
Henry said, “Holy crap.”
David smiled. “Yeah.”
“Well when do we launch those?”
One of the Air Force officers manning a terminal near Susan called out, “STRATCOM reporting in. Standing by for launch.”
David looked at Henry. “Soon.”
Hightower and the six other B-1s departed north out of Gander, not south like the other aircraft. They went supersonic shortly thereafter, covering as much ground as possible before slowing to refuel with a KC-10 tanker orbiting near Iceland.
After refueling, the bombers headed east at high speed, where they met up with a flight of five Royal Air Force jets circling over the Norwegian Sea after launching from RAF Marham in Norfolk, England. Four UK F-35 Lightning IIs, the newest-generation fighter recently acquired from the US, escorted an ultra-secret RAF RC-135 Rivet Joint electronic surveillance aircraft. Inside the RC-135 were, among others, two members of the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, the UK counterpart to the American NSA. Both men sat at computer terminals on the aircraft with black curtains surrounding their station. They were operating the latest in offensive cyber weaponry, tetrabytes of code painstakingly crafted to demolish Russian defensive networks. The GCHQ chaps were excited to finally put it to use.
As the American B-1s approached the RAF planes, a pair of F-35s broke off and took up station on Hightower’s wing. Dawn was breaking, and the B-1 crew watched as one of the RAF pilots pressed a handwritten note against the gold-tinted cockpit glass. The mission had called for complete external radio silence, so this must have been important.
“What’s it say?” asked Hightower from the left seat.
His copilot sounded out the words. “Y-O-U-R-E. W-E-L–C-O-M-E. It says ‘You’re welcome, treasonous colonials.’” His copilot turned, grinning. “Ha. That’s hilarious. Brit’s got a sense of humor.”
“Wonderful. If we don’t die from Russian missiles we’ll die from British humor.”
Hightower gave the RAF pilot a thumbs up, which he returned, before banking right and climbing.
They flew for another two hours, skimming a layer of cirrus clouds as the night sky turned into morning. Both pilots knew that cyber and electronic attacks were now being launched on a variety of Russian networks, including electrical grids, communications networks, and, most importantly, air defense computers. The gentlemen from GCHQ were tapping into Russian military communications, taking over the message traffic of some commanders, and telling the few air defense radars still online to stand down until further notice.
Now over the Baltic Sea, the B-1s separated, dropping low to the deck as they made their weapons runs, still thousands of miles from target.
“Coming up on the outer range line,” called the weapons systems officer. “Configure for weapons release.”
“Roger, airspeed coming back. Bay doors opening.”
Beneath each B-1, massive bomb bay doors opened, the air whipping by at hundreds of knots. One by one, the bombers launched the newest variant of the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon.
Each missile’s nose was angled down sharply like a doorstop and widened at the base into a cylinder. Four metal tail fins made microscopic adjustments to control its flight path.
Upon release, the missiles momentarily floated below their aircraft, seemingly suspended in mid-air before their scramjet engines ignited. Then the hypersonic weapons zoomed off toward the horizon, their engines pulsating, the missiles reaching speeds in excess of one thousand feet per second.
The hypersonic cruise missiles headed toward separate targets spread out over thousands of miles. The closest target was the Volga radar at Baranavichy, Belarus. Other radar stations were targeted near St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, and Armavir, Russia. Two of the missiles struck command and control centers for the Russian ICBM strategic missiles while others destroyed naval Extreme Low Frequency communications facilities so they couldn’t provide launch orders to Russian nuclear missile submarines. Lastly, one of the hypersonic cruise missiles targeted Russia’s “Doomsday” plane, the newly built command and control aircraft based on the IL-96 airframe. With all other strategic nuclear command and control facilities destroyed, this plane was supposed to provide survivability.
That wouldn’t happen.
Without warning, each of the American hypersonic missiles drove into their targets at over six thousand miles per hour. The kinetic energy negated the need for warheads. Each impact was the equivalent of three tons of TNT. The damage was catastrophic.
When it was over, Russia still had hundreds of nuclear weapons. Missiles on mobile launchers. Warheads in bunkers near strategic bombers. A handful of nuclear missile submarines. But the American hypersonic attack wasn’t meant for them. This was only the first step, and it was very effective.
The Russian nuclear early warning radar centers, and short-fused nuclear launch mechanism, was destroyed.
In the Silversmith tactical operations center, David witnessed an Air Force officer pounding his desk in jubilation.
“Russian early warning radars are offline. MQ-180 data confirms the BDA.”
Henry said, “What’s that mean?”
David whispered, “We’ve just taken out Russia’s ability to detect a nuclear missile launch.”
“That’s great.”
“That’s good and bad. Russia won’t know if we launch our ICBMs. That’s good. But destroying those systems is also a possible indication of an imminent nuclear strike.”
Henry’s eyes widened. “So they might get trigger happy and launch on us just because we took out their radars?”
David said, “We’ve made that difficult. We destroyed some of their communications networks that would slow down the kill chain. And we have agents and allies working to influence their decision process. But ultimately, the Russian president could end the world right now. This might be the riskiest part of the operation.”
Henry looked horror-stricken.
“I know. But it’s the only way.”
“The only way to what?”
David said, “We need to take out both China’s and Russia’s ability to launch nuclear weapons.”
Henry said, “That’s how you’re using Rojas’s technology? Our hypersonic glide vehicles in the ICBMs?”
David nodded.
Susan said, “What’s the status at STRATCOM?”
An Air Force officer replied, “They just started the launch, ma’am.”
For ARCHANGEL Phase Two, Pentagon planners had provided a list of no less than five hundred targets in Russia and two hundred in China, all of which needed to be destroyed within thirty minutes of taking out the Russian early warning systems.
Cruise missiles, even hypersonic ones, wouldn’t do. The strike aircraft launching them would have to travel too far over enemy terrain, which posed too great a risk.
So, David’s team settled on a different solution: a conventional global strike using ICBMs. Before the war began, America had four hundred and fifty LGM-30G ICBM missiles deployed at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, and Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.