He felt a sickening feeling enter his chest. “Can we turn off the attack order?”
STRATCOM answered over the phone. “Sir, the system is designed so that—”
“Yes or no, General?”
“Yes, sir. But—”
The colonel who kept the Football said, “Sir, the order may not be received in time.”
The president looked around the room, his heart beating in his chest.
The national security advisor said, “Mr. President, I advise against changing course. Regardless of whether the Chinese have nukes headed this way, you have made the right call, sir. We need to—”
General Rice looked horrified. “I disagree. I think we should try to terminate the order. Regardless of Chinese actions, our strategic response should be proportional in nature. If—”
The president nodded. “Agreed. Terminate the order. Now.”
Two of the officers in the room sprang into action. One began calling for Nightwatch on the radio and relaying a set of coded instructions. A frantic back-and-forth ensued. The president could barely understand the language the men were using, with many of the words heavy jargon, code words, or military acronyms.
After sixty seconds of this, the colonel who manned the Football once again turned to the president. “Sir, we’ll need you to provide your challenge code again.”
The president nodded and began to speak but was interrupted by a warning alarm that began blaring over the overhead speaker system.
The Air Force pilot’s voice was loud, clear, and professional. “This is the pilot. Surface-to-air missile warning. Secure passengers and brace for impact.”
The president’s personal security detail jumped to their feet and began treating him like an emergency room patient. Their hands raced over him, once again making sure that he was secured and in the crash position.
The aircraft banked sharply to the left, and the president felt his head grow heavy and his body pressed down into his seat as increased G-forces came over the aircraft. The Secret Service agents were tossed back into the opposite wall and then rose off the floor towards the ceiling as Air Force One dove.
The president saw one of the Secret Service men, now unconscious on the floor after bumping his head. Then the president noticed the officer in charge of the Football sitting next to him, pounding on the surface of the table. The man’s mouth was moving, but the president couldn’t understand what he was saying.
The officer had one hand on the Football computer and was pointing at the president’s chest. General Rice was also now yelling something.
The sound of the world was coming back. An Air Force steward was pointing at the president. “Sir, your head is bleeding…”
Everyone at the table was yelling for his attention.
“…pass code!” General Rice said.
Pass code.
The president touched his head and felt something wet. He removed his hand and saw blood. Something must have struck him when the aircraft had maneuvered.
The overhead speakers announced, “All personnel, brace for impact!”
The first two surface-to-air missiles were tricked by countermeasures released from Air Force One, sailing harmlessly past and landing in the Chesapeake Bay. The third missile drove itself right into the innermost engine on the left wing, exploding and sending metallic fragments throughout the aircraft. Less than one second later, a fourth missile exploded after impacting an engine on the opposite wing, the detonation igniting one of the aircraft’s fuel cells. The subsequent explosion of jet fuel was catastrophic.
The blast killed everyone on board and was clearly visible five miles away on the ground, at a hilly farm property in rural Maryland.
Lieutenant Ping allowed his men a moment of quiet celebration and then ordered them to stow all gear in the trucks and move out. The war had just begun. And with any luck, their contributions would be many.
5
First Lieutenant Lucy Esposito hated the feeling she always got at the beginning of her shift. She sat in the passenger seat of a US Air Force pickup truck. The vehicle bounced and jolted as it made its way down the gravel farm road in the middle of the night. This meant that she was near her destination. The nuclear missile silos were spread out over acres and acres of Nebraska farmland.
Flight Golf was hers. Ironic, since she’d been a golfer at the Academy. But there was no golfing out here. Golf was part of the phonetic alphabet — the letter G identified this section of the US Air Force’s missile field. One hundred and fifty nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles, stuffed five stories below the earth, awaiting the moment they were needed to end the world.
Which was like, never. It was a bullshit job, thought up decades ago by a bunch of men who were all dead now. Yet here she was, wasting her life away underground.
God help her.
Three years ago, Lucy had been a senior at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Her hopes had been high. Like most Air Force Academy cadets, she had wanted to become a pilot after graduation. But the Air Force was minting more drone pilots than manned aircraft pilots nowadays. And Lucy didn’t have the class rank to get her first choice… or her fourth choice, for that matter. Never in a million years had she expected to spend her career in a missile silo. But that was sure as shit where she’d ended up.
It had started out a little rough, but she was at least proud of the progress she’d made. Now she was a twenty-five-year-old commander of a two-person missile squadron combat crew. There were ten missile silos in her flight, with a single missile alert facility centrally located.
Lucy was stationed at F.E. Warren Air Force Base near Cheyenne, Wyoming. Her life was spent standing duty, studying for her qualifications, and working on her military education credits.
It was dead out in this part of the country. She missed the city. Lucy had made her way home to Brooklyn on Christmas leave back in December. It had been good to see them, but hard to leave. Her older brothers couldn’t believe it when she’d described her job. They’d taken her out drinking, and she had proudly told them that she was now a steely-eyed missile man.
She sighed, bouncing around in the truck. She missed her family.
The driver made a call over the radio as the truck continued down the dark road.
“Golf Control, Trip 14 on your axis, request entry Lieutenant Esposito plus one.”
The voice over the radio responded, “Roger, entry granted.”
She watched as the gate opened in front of them.
The rectangular missile alert area in front of her was not large — only two acres. Dim lights flickered on overhead as they arrived. The land had been purchased by the government from a local farmer several decades ago. It had easy access to the main road — you could see it from where they were. And it was surrounded by chain metal fencing and barbed wire. Towering poles mounted with flood lights overhead, each with tiny security cameras that monitored the barren area around the missile silo.
A few minutes later, the pickup truck had dropped off Lieutenant Esposito and parked next to the lone building inside the fence. It would wait here until she was done with her watch turnover, then it would bring the man she was relieving back to F.E. Warren Air Force Base, a little over an hour away.
“Have fun, Ma’am.”
“Oh yeah.” She gave him a thumbs-up and threw her duffle bag over her shoulder, shutting the passenger door behind her.
Inside, she went through more security. ID checks and signing the log. Security personnel behind glass windows, ensuring that even though they knew her, she wasn’t able to get past the first room of the building without passing muster.