The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [516]
"NMCC, Brigadier General Sullivan speaking."
"This is CINC-NORAD. We have a valid launch, valid threat from Xuanhua missile base in China. I say again, we have a valid launch, valid threat from China. It's angling east, coming to North America."
"Fuck," the Marine observed.
"Tell me about it."
The procedures were all written down. His first call went to the White House military office.
Ryan was setting down to dinner with the family. An unusual night, he had nothing scheduled, no speeches to give, and that was good, because reporters always showed up and asked questions, and lately—
"Say that again?" Andrea Price-O'Day said into her sleeve microphone. "What?"
Then another Secret Service agent bashed into the room. "Marching Order!" he proclaimed. It was a code phrase often practiced but never spoken in reality.
"What?" Jack said, half a second before his wife could make the same sound.
"Mr. President, we have to get you and your family out of here," Andrea said. "The Marines have the helicopters on the way."
"What's happening?"
"Sir, NORAD reports an inbound ballistic threat."
"What? China?"
"That's all I know. Let's go, right now," Andrea said forcefully.
"Jack," Cathy said in alarm.
"Okay, Andrea." The President turned. "Time to go, honey. Right now."
"But—what's happening?"
He got her to her feet first, and walked to the door. The corridor was full of agents. Trenton Kelly was holding Kyle Daniel—the lionesses were nowhere in sight—and the principal agents for all the other kids were there. In a moment, they saw that there was not enough room in the elevator. The Ryan family rode. The agents mainly ran down the wide, white marble steps to the ground level.
"Wait!" another agent called, holding his left hand up. His pistol was in his right hand, and none of them had seen that very often. They halted as commanded—even the President doesn't often argue with a person holding a gun.
Ryan was thinking as fast as he knew how: "Andrea, where do I go?"
"You go to KNEECAP. Vice President Jackson will join you there. The family goes to Air Force One."
At Andrews Air Force base, just outside Washington, the pilots of First Heli, the USAF 1st Helicopter Squadron, were sprinting to their Bell Hueys. Each had an assignment, and each knew where his Principal was, because the security detail of each was reporting in constantly. Their job was to collect the cabinet members and spirit them away from Washington to preselected places of supposed safety. Their choppers were off the ground in less than three minutes, scattering off to different preselected pickup points.
"Jack, what is this?" It took a lot to make his wife afraid, but this one had done it.
"Honey, we have a report that a ballistic missile is flying toward America, and the safest place for us to be is in the air. So, they're getting you and the kids to Air Force One. Robby and I will be on KNEECAP. Okay?"
"Okay? Okay? What is this?"
"It's bad, but that's all I know."
On the Aleutian island of Shemya, the huge Cobra Dane radar scanned the sky to the north and west. It frequently detected satellites, which mainly fly lower than ICBM warheads, but the computer that analyzed the tracks of everything that came into the system's view categorized this contact as exactly what it was, too high to be a low-orbit satellite, and too slow to be a launch vehicle.
"What's the track?" a major asked a sergeant.
"Computer says East Coast of the United States. In a few minutes we'll know more … for now, somewhere between Buffalo and Atlanta." That information was relayed automatically to NORAD and the Pentagon.
The entire structure of the United States military went into hyper-drive, one segment at a time, as the information reached it. That included USS Gettysburg, alongside the pier in the Washington Navy Yard.
Captain Blandy was in his in-port cabin when the growler phone went off. "Captain speaking … go to general quarters, Mr. Gibson,"