“It’s not even the height of the mountains and the deep ocean that make it unique. It’s the enormous volume of underground water, the lakes beneath the volcanic range. That’s what will explode the cliffs into the sea…if those bastards hit the Cumbre with a nuclear-tipped missile.
“And, Mr. President, we have clear photographs of the Hamas C in C standing on top of the Cumbre Vieja this year with known Iranian volcanologists, studying the terrain. They also kidnapped, interrogated, and then murdered the world’s top volcano expert in London last May.”
President Bedford nodded. “I guess that’s about as decisive as it gets,” he said. And Arnold spread out the big chart of the Atlantic in front of them and began a recap on the scale of the problem.
“Taking a point 400 miles from the island of Montserrat…puts him around here at midnight…twenty-four hours later, he’s probably here if he’s steaming through these unpatrolled waters at around 12 to 15 knots…That puts him right here tonight and probably here tomorrow night…That ship he’s in will have to move very slowly over the SOSUS wires, maybe 6 knots all the way across here…That’s only 150 miles a day…Won’t reach the datum until October 9, right?…Bang on time, son of a bitch…”
“The question is, sir,” said Admiral Dickson, “will he ever get that far? Maybe he’ll just stand off and let fly with his missiles from maybe 1,000 nautical miles out?”
“We can’t let him, Alan,” said Arnold Morgan. “We cannot let him.”
“Hard to know how to stop him.”
“Hard but not impossible. Question one. How do his missiles get their guidance?”
“They just hook up with the world global navigation system, the GPS,” replied Admiral Dickson. “Steers them right in. The satellite does the rest. Punch in the numbers and fire ‘n’ forget.”
“Question two, Alan. Who owns the GPS?”
“Essentially, we do. There’s twenty-seven satellites up there orbiting the earth every twelve hours. All American Military, made available to all the world’s navigators. They’ll guide anyone home, friend or foe.”
“Correct. So, Question three. How do we stop this bastard tuning his missiles into our satellites and homing in on the volcano’s crater?”
“Well, I guess we could switch ’em all off, so nobody could access them.”
“Correct, Alan. And that would do just what I want him to do — drive him inshore. Because when he comes to the surface to check his GPS, his screen will read, ‘Satellites nonoperational at this time.’ And that will leave him no option. He’ll have to fire visually, and that’ll bring him in to around 25 miles from La Palma. Right there he will be forced to loose off his missiles using visual range and bearing only.
“And that’s where we have a chance. Because we’ll have our frigates and helos combing the area. When he comes to the surface for a visual fix, we might just pick him up him first time. And even if he gets his missiles away, we have two and a half minutes’ flying time to locate and kill with a SAM. Failing that, we’ll have to rely on ground missiles, probably Patriots, set in a steel ring around the volcano…Take ’em out before they hit.”
“It’s going to take a lot of very brave men to man that missile battery up there on top of the volcano,” said the President.
“We got a lot of very brave men,” replied Arnold Morgan, sharply.
“Will a nuclear warhead detonate if a Patriot slams into it, in midair?” asked the President.
“Probably not, sir,” said Arnold. “These things do not explode on impact. You have to make them explode with split-second timing, crashing the two pieces of uranium-235 directly into each other with high explosive and stupendous force, accurate to a hundredth of a second. A couple of hundred pounds of TNT designed to blow the entire rocket to smithereens, on impact, will not fulfill those explicit timing credentials. But it’ll sure as hell disable it, and knock the damn thing into the sea.”
“What are our chances?”
“They’re very good, once we switch off the GPS.”
“I was coming to that,” replied President Bedford. “I assume we can’t just shut it down and leave it at that, can we? I mean, what about all the navigation, all over the world…Christ, there’d be ships running aground all over the place, wouldn’t there?”
“Sir, if we just shut off the GPS,” said Arnold, “I’d say we’d have a couple of dozen supertankers high and dry on various beaches within about five hours. The rest would be turning around in large circles, baffled by that most ancient of skills, or lack of it.”
“You’re right there,” said Admiral Dickson. “Most merchant ship navigators couldn’t find their way out of the harbor without GPS. And most of them have grown up with it. We’ve had military satellites up there since the early 1970s.
“Your average navigator on a big freighter or a tanker knows nothing else. And there are probably four thousand yachtsmen at any one time groping around the oceans entirely dependent on the GPS to find their way home.”
“Who runs GPS?” asked the President.
“Fiftieth Space Wing’s Second Space Ops Squadron, out at Falcon Air Base, Colorado,” said Arnold. “The full name of the system is NAVSTAR GPS. It’s really a constellation of satellites orbiting the earth, a space-based radio-positioning and time-transfer system. It provides incredibly accurate data position, velocity, and time. That’s PVT in the trade.
“Over the years, it has become a worldwide common grid, easily converted to other local datums, passive, all-weather operational, real-time and continuous information, and survivability in a hostile environment. It’s a twenty-four-hour navigation service. And it’s all-American, totally controlled from Colorado. We put all the satellites up there, right on the back of a Delta II expendable launch vehicle, out of Cape Canaveral, Florida.”
“And we can make the system nonoperational?”
“We can do anything we damn please,” said Arnold. “But we will have to give ample warning to the international community, otherwise the consequences might be horrendous.”
“It beats the hell out of me why we ever made this military asset available to everyone else,” said the President. “Especially since the darn thing is so accurate.”
“Left to the military, it would not have happened. But Clinton’s Vice President, the great universal do-gooder, insisted. Of course the Military were furious, but Al’s boss did not think much of the Military, and that’s why we got a bunch of deranged Muslims able to fire accurate missiles anywhere they like.”
Even Paul Bedford laughed at this vintage Morganian discourse, despite a certain loyalty to a fellow Democratic President.
“So when do we switch ’em off, Arnold?”
“Well, if the submarine’s making 600 miles a day, and he’s aiming to arrive and fire instantly, immediately making his getaway, I’d say he’ll be within 200 miles of his launch zone by midnight on October 7. He’ll probably take a satellite fix in the small hours of the morning of the eighth, and then keep steaming in to his ops area. I guess we better shut the GPS off at midnight on Wednesday the seventh, and keep it off until either we destroy him or he fires his missiles.”
“That may be forty-eight hours with the world’s navigation system nonoperational?” said Paul Bedford.
“Correct,” said Arnold. “But at least they’ve got eight days to learn how to use a sextant and take a look at the stars and study the positions of the sun, and make their timing from GMT. Do ’em good. Turn ’em into proper sailors.”
“No alternative, is there?” replied the President.
“None that I can see. We have to switch off the GPS. Blind him. Drive him inshore. Force him to periscope depth.”