Decision Point
It was Christmas in the underground bunker, and the President wanted nothing more than to visit the troops in Israel or Europe. However, it was deemed far too dangerous for the President to travel. The recent political assassinations by Chinese intelligence agents and Special Forces against American elected officials had been very successful in the initial days of the war, until the Trinity program was activated. With the Russians now in the war, there was a lot of concern of potential Russian direct action units trying to assassinate the President, or worse, take him hostage. Seventeen US Senators and eighty-four Congressional leaders had been assassinated over the last three months — this was just at the Federal level. The Chinese, IR, and now the Russians were trying to sow as much chaos, confusion and fear as they could by going after the American leadership structure. It was complete and total war they were waging on the US and its way of life.
As the President walked through his quarters and into the underground Presidential offices of the HIVE, he couldn’t help but notice that despite the world being at war, the Presidential staff still found time to decorate the facility for Christmas. The President invited the troops guarding the facility perimeter to be rotated in for a Christmas lunch and dinner served by the President, his family and his staff.
After serving the last round of soldiers their Christmas dinner and talking with as many soldiers as he could, the President walked into the Situation Room for the scheduled briefing at 2000 hours, and took his seat at the head of the table. Once he was situated, he signaled for the meeting to begin. He glanced at the agenda in front of him, which included the cyber-attacks to the country’s communication infrastructure, the Trinity program, the civil violence problem, and disaster recovery efforts underway in New York and Baltimore.
Director Jorge Perez from DHS began, “Merry Christmas, Mr. President, and to everyone here. I have a brief update on the cyber-attacks we have been experiencing and an update on the fixes that have been made. With a lot of help from both the UK and Australia, our major phone, internet and data providers are back to being operational. There were some brief rolling blackouts from the utility companies that had been affected, but they are shorter and less frequent now as we bring more power plants back online. We expect to have the power grid back to 100 % capacity within the next the month. The internet, phone and data exchanges are also back up and running at 100 %. We attribute about 12,300 deaths to the cyber-attack. We came to this number by looking at the number of 911 calls during a similar timeframe that would have resulted in a death had emergency personnel not been able to get to a patient or respond to a car crash, break-in, etc. We also added in the number of people who died at various hospitals and nursing home across the country from the rolling blackouts. This number could conceivably have been much higher.”
The President just shook his head in disgust.
Director Perez continued, “We have replaced the destroyed routers and switches to get everything back up and running, but it will still take many months to replace and repair everything. With AT&T, and other phone and internet providers operational again, we have returned operational control of Verizon back to the company. The government has successfully switched our service provider over to Verizon as well, and will diversify that service once the other companies’ infrastructure is fully repaired. As for the utility companies, by in large they were not affected by the current wave of cyber-attacks. Similar cyber-attacks continue to emanate from China, but not nearly in the volume they had been. We attribute that to the cruise missile strike in Shanghai that destroyed the PLA’s main cyberwarfare headquarters.”
“We are seeing an uptick in cyber-attacks from Russia now that they are in the war. Presently, none of the cyber-attacks are penetrating anything vital and are being shut down as soon as they are detected. I am sure the NSA can give you a better picture of our offensive cyber-attacks and how effective they are; I will leave that for their brief. It would appear our concerted effort to reinforce our cyber defenses and hardening of the power grid against cyber-attacks has really paid off.”
Changing images on the screen, Director Perez resumed his briefing. “Mr. President, the recovery effort in New York and Baltimore continues to run relatively smoothly. We continue to relocate the injured people to various hospitals and cities around the country, just as the plans called for. People whose homes are in the hot zones and are too close to the blast site to return are being relocated to a city of their choosing, and assistance is being provided. We’ve expended $600 Million NAD in the last week. We will need another $16.2 Billion NAD for the remainder of the year for the resettlements, and another $52 Billion NAD for recovery and cleanup operations.”
The President interrupted, “—Monty, ensure Speaker Fultz knows director Perez is going to be contacting his office for a supplemental budget increase. Make sure they get the funds they need and let’s get an oversight group involved to ensure the money is getting to the right people.”
“Yes, Mr. President. I’ll send him a message following the meeting,” Monty responded, tapping a short note on his tablet.
President Stein was pleased at the incredible response time with which FEMA and DHS had deployed to the disaster zones. The planners for this type of disaster had really put a lot of thought in to how people would be evacuated and treated, and they had not neglected to plan for what to do with refugees and resettlement. Obviously, people who lived in the hot zones could not go back to their homes, so some sort of compensation plan needed to be developed. FEMA had established a process that would take the fair market value of an individual’s home, and then add $75K for personal belongings and would pay that to the affected person, minus the mortgage on the property. This enabled the banks to recover their loans, the displaced families to be free of debt to homes they could no longer use, and gave enough cash so that people could purchase the necessities to start over.
“Please continue, Director, and thank you for keeping us up to date on the recovery. It is important that we take care of our people,” the President said with sincerity in his voice.
“As of twelve hours ago (when we update the search parameters), the Trinity program has identified 496 individuals with ties to Russian intelligence. We have FBI units detaining them now for questioning. Our main concern is the intercepts we decoded a few hours ago. Several Spetsnaz teams located in the US received orders to begin carrying out attacks. We have no idea what the targets are or how many people are involved; that is why the FBI is detaining those individuals I mentioned earlier,” Director Perez said.
The President was concerned with this last statement; America had already suffered enough domestic and political attacks. The last thing the country needed was further nasty surprises. “Director Perez, please continue to do whatever is necessary to apprehend these individuals. I want the CIA, DIA and NSA to have some potential targets identified; then quickly draft a plan to beef up security at those locations. The country has suffered enough domestic terror attacks; we need stability while we focus on the recovery of New York, Baltimore and the war overseas.”
“What is the status of our operations in Europe?” asked the President, changing topics.
General Branson stood up and addressed the President and the group directly. “Mr. President, the situation in Europe is tense and fluid. The Russians have moved their army groups into Hungary and Romania, and are pushing EU forces to their fallback positions faster than we had planned for. The Poles and Germans are holding the line a little better; they’ve managed to stop the 3rd Shock Army near Warsaw. The EU is starting to pour tens of thousands of troops into Poland.”