The president felt like he was in the middle of taking a test that he hadn’t studied for. He kept hearing terms that he didn’t recognize. And this damn kid in a uniform was talking so fast. What the hell is Nightwatch?
The military officer manning the communications console said, “Pentagon is up on secure UHF. The deputy director for operations’ ETA is sixty seconds.”
Their vehicle continued to bounce and swerve along the empty streets of D.C., racing east, the leader of the free world feeling clueless as he fled to safety.
For a brief moment, everything was quiet, and the president was alone with his thoughts. President Griffin was glad for this momentary reprieve. His pulse still raced from the physical exertions of his evacuation. He glanced out the tinted window, rubbing his eyes. Damn, he was tired. Floodlights lit up the Washington Monument, the clear night sky a dark backdrop. Would there be missiles streaking through that sky soon? Was he cut out to be a wartime president?
War.
War on an unimaginable scale. War that could begin and end with the flash of thousands of nuclear detonations. Or a conventional war that dragged on, transforming the entire globe into a muddy and bloody battlefield, ruining economies, and decimating a generation of lives.
God, let this madness come to an end.
The last time the world had been this close to a world war had been the Cuban Missile Crisis. Cooler heads had prevailed then. The president tried to convince himself that they would again.
But for this madman in China.
Cheng Jinshan. The newly installed Chinese president. Self-made billionaire and former Chinese intelligence official.
During President Griffin’s daily briefing a few months ago, the CIA’s analysts had painted a formidable yet frightening portrait of the man. A brilliant businessman. A master spy. A cunning strategist. He was an enigma. Unpredictable, and harboring a ruthless ambition.
It was only a few weeks ago that Cheng Jinshan had been in a Chinese prison for crimes against the state. He, along with a cadre of Chinese military, intelligence, and political leaders, had conspired to overthrow their government and, soon after, attack the United States. But the CIA had discovered the plot, resulting in a small naval battle in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
Until then, Jinshan had kept the plans hidden from the former Chinese president and any leaders who were not in his inner circle. His rebellion had yet to be executed, and American intervention had exposed the plot to the former Chinese leader. The coup had been stopped, and for a brief time, with Jinshan behind bars, the world was once again at peace.
Then the former Chinese president had been assassinated. Chinese state media claimed it was a religiously motivated attack. The masked men had executed the Chinese leader, along with his wife and daughter, and live-streamed it over the internet.
The Chinese president and his wife’s cause of death was hard to determine. It was either asphyxiation from hanging, or burning to death while hanging. Then, with billions of people watching around the world, their teenage daughter had been shot in the head.
The event had occurred on the rooftop garden of their Beijing penthouse. Cameras from nearby skyscrapers and news helicopters had caught the whole thing. The executioners had worn masks while on camera and had supposedly been killed by Chinese police immediately after the assassination.
One of the attackers had been ID’d as an American citizen. Some lunatic religious extremist. One of those guys with a loudspeaker and a sign around his neck, standing at the street corner. Chinese state media released videos the man had made, calling for the death of Chinese political leadership.
A horrific killing of the Chinese president and his family, on live TV, blamed on a US religious fanatic. But the Chinese populace wasn’t being told he was a fanatic. They were led to believe that this was the new normal in the United States. That Americans’ views were becoming radically anti-Chinese, inspired by religion. President Griffin knew that was untrue. But fighting a government-sponsored propaganda machine in a state like China was impossible.
The CIA believed the assassination to be a ruse, carefully orchestrated to maximize the emotional impact to the Chinese populace. The deaths themselves weren’t faked. They were very real. But there was no way some aged Midwestern religious fanatic who spoke no Chinese and had no military training had been able to fly to China, get past the Chinese president’s security detail, and do what he had supposedly done.
So who had done it?
According to US intelligence, Cheng Jinshan and his allies.
After the Chinese president had been killed, Cheng Jinshan had pulled off a political resurrection. He had vanquished his rivals and consolidated power within a matter of days. Anti-American policies had been enacted, and Chinese military readiness had never been so high.
State-sponsored media fanned the flames of civil unrest. Hate and angst directed at countries that promoted religious freedom, and at America specifically. The CIA analysts guessed that the religious angle was just a convenient fuel for the fire. Jinshan was not motivated by religion or hatred of it. But he needed an excuse to create anti-American loathing among the Chinese people. Propaganda soon began flooding onto Chinese social media and TV, all carefully curated by 3PLA. Jinshan’s cyberwarriors.
And now, it seemed, Jinshan was finally able to execute his plans.
“Mr. President, you’re on the line with the National Military Command Center. The Pentagon’s deputy director of operations, General Rice, is speaking.”
“Mr. President, this is General Rice, can you hear me?”
“Yes, General. What’s happened?”
“Sir, we now have reports of large-scale attacks on multiple US bases in Korea and Japan, as well as Naval and Air Force assets in the Western Pacific region.” President Griffin thought the general sounded shaken. “Mr. President, an ICBM launch alert was also just issued by NORAD.”
“What does that mean, General? Are we under nuclear attack?”
Another voice over the speakerphone. “Mr. President, this is General Sprague at STRATCOM. I’m on board Nightwatch.”
The president remembered what Nightwatch was now. It was the other Boeing 747 that the Air Force operated in conjunction with Air Force One, as a second mobile command center. The doomsday machine, there to pick up the reins in a flash in case Air Force One became “unavailable” in a different type of flash. President Griffin remembered smiling at the idea of such a plane when he’d first heard it. The term doomsday machine had sounded darkly comical then. Certainly unnecessary. Some silly holdover from the Cold War, never to be used.
How his mind had changed this evening.
General Sprague said, “Sir, our ability to detect and track nuclear threats has been diminished. We’ve lost our entire Space-Based Infrared System and eighty percent of our DSP birds. They were hit simultaneously during the past thirty minutes.”
The president felt his face flush. “Now hold on just a second. I thought we didn’t even have satellite capability, after last month’s cyberattacks? How can we be so sure of all of this?”