Anvil (10 page)

“Oh fuck,”
went through my head the instant I saw the helo.

“Hey,
LT.  You’re wanted on the sat phone.”

Navy SEAL
Lieutenant Sam looked over from the observation window he was standing in front
of to see Master Chief Petty Officer Gonzales holding out a small
handset.  It was connected via an encrypted wireless signal to the
satellite phone system they had placed on the roof of the building. 
Taking the offered device, he raised it to his ear and turned back to watching
the three infected males that were in secure isolation.  They were test
subjects for Dr. Kanger’s efforts at creating a Terminator virus.

“Go for
Sam,” he spoke into the handset.

“Do you show
secure on your end?”  A voice asked.

Sam lowered
the handset and checked the display, verifying that the call was properly
encrypted and secure.

“Confirmed,”
he replied.

“This is
Lieutenant Hunt at Pearl Harbor.  I’m in charge of the Cyber Warfare unit
and we wound up in control of the remaining surveillance satellites.  We
have been monitoring your area since the sinking of the Russian battlecruiser,
Peter the Great.  The reactor core was breached and radiation levels are
continuing to rise.”

“How
bad?”  Sam asked, turning his attention away from the infected.

“We’re
unable to determine that from orbital based analysis.  The system was a
former black budget NSA project and we’re still learning how to use it. 
What we can tell is that there has been an increase, but we’re unable to
measure the values.  That’s why I’m calling.”

“I don’t
understand,” Sam said, hiding his irritation and wishing the man would get to
the point.  “If you can’t measure it, how do you know it’s rising?”

“We are
receiving a radiation alert from the satellite, and are also observing wildlife
and infected in the area of the docks that are dead or dying.”

“I’m sure
it’s bad right next to the reactor, but the docks are several miles away and
there’s terrain between here and there,” Sam said.

“Correct,
but there’s also a steady wind blowing directly over you from across the
site.  I’ve checked with several nuclear power engineers here in Hawaii
and they all agree that there’s a high possibility you are at risk.  But
there’s also another problem.”

“Of course
there is.  What else?”

“We engaged
the Russians a few hundred miles off the coast.  The Russians used nuclear
Shipwrecks to take out two of our carriers.  Weather patterns are bringing
the radiation your way.  Much of it’s falling into the sea, but combined
with the reactor breach on your doorstep…”

“So what do
we do?  Pack up and move?  There’s nowhere else for the scientists to
do their work.”

“Moving has
not been advised yet.  The recommendation is you need to isolate the
building’s environment from contaminated air, make preparations in the event
you do have to relocate and monitor the fallout levels where you are,” Hunt
said.

“The
building is already sealed.  It’s a bio-research lab.  Any ideas
where I can get my hands on a Geiger Counter and radiation suits?”  Sam
asked sarcastically. 

Few things
scared him, but here was one of the two at the top of his list. Radiation. 
The irony wasn’t lost on him that he was most afraid of the things that could
stealthily kill him before he even realized he was being attacked.

“The
experts’ best suggestion is the University of Washington.  It’s close to
your location and you can get there by boat.  We’ve identified the nuclear
physics lab, which is the most likely place to have the equipment you
need.  There should be exposure suits in the lab in the event you have to
move, as well as potassium iodide pills to protect your thyroid glands against
radioactive fallout.  I’ll text the specifics to you momentarily.”

Sam took a
deep breath and let it out quietly.  Another damn trip outside. 
Another risk of detection by the Russians.  And if that happened, they’d
come in here and wipe out the work the virologists had done.  His orders
were to keep the facility buttoned up and off the enemy’s radar, but if he had
to keep taking trips outside…

“What’s the
status of the Russians?  Still evacuating?”

“They’ve
evacuated all civilian and military from a ten-mile radius around the
docks.  The University is not within the evacuation zone, but you are at
the moment.  We threw a lot of conventional Tomahawks at them.  Took
out a lot of infrastructure they were using, but they’re still coming in.”

“Do we
really need to be concerned inside this facility?”  Sam asked, doing a
masterful job of disguising his frustration.

“According
to the experts, yes, you do.  You are most likely safe, but after briefing
the Admiral he wants to make sure.  There are other labs where the work
could be conducted if we need to move you.”

“Other
labs?  Where?”

“Two,
actually,” Hunt said.  “One here in Hawaii, but it’s not well
equipped.  The other is in Australia.”

Sam was
quiet for a few moments, digesting everything he’d been told.  He was by
no means knowledgeable about what Kanger and Revard were doing to create a
virus that would kill the infected, but he doubted it would be a simple thing
to just pick up and move.  And the risk of losing one or both of the
scientists during an extraction from occupied territory was higher than
acceptable.

“Understood. 
Text me the location of the University’s lab and I’ll put a plan
together.” 

Sam broke
the connection without waiting to see if Hunt had anything else to say.

“What’s up,
LT?”  Gonzales had stayed within earshot during the call.

“That’s just
fucking great,” he said when Sam filled him in on the conversation.  “What
if the levels are too high when we go on our little boat trip to the
University?  We get exposed to find out we’ll be dead if we go outside?”

“We’re not
paid to like it, Master Chief.  We’re just paid to do it,” Sam said,
handing him the handset and leading the way down a long hall.

“Yes, sir,”
Gonzales grinned.  “Maybe I should have listened to my mother and joined
the Peace Corps.”

“Travel the
world and meet strange new people?  But the Peace Corps doesn’t let you
shoot them and blow shit up.”

Sam grinned
back as they turned into a new corridor.

“Yes,
sir.  There’s that little drawback, for sure.” 

By this
time, they had reached a common area of the large facility.  A radio call
gathered all the SEALs that weren’t on sentry duty.  Within ten minutes
they were all in a large cafeteria, occupying a small corner.  Sam briefed
the men, a couple of them voicing the same concerns Gonzales had in the
hallway.  This time the Master Chief shut down their objections with a few
terse words.

“We’re going
tonight,” Sam said, wrapping up the briefing.  “Master Chief, I want a run
through ready for review in an hour.”

“Aye, sir,”
Gonzales answered as the young Lieutenant strode out of the room to give Kanger
and Revard a heads up.

The SEALs
settled in around several laptops that were connected to the satellite signal
and allowed them to access maps and sat imagery from the servers in
Hawaii.  Getting to the University was easy.  The hard part was going
to be getting to the Nuclear Physics Lab building once they disembarked their
boat.  While the sprawling campus wasn’t thronged with infected, there
were still enough to overwhelm the men if they were caught in the open and
couldn’t concentrate their firepower.

Then they
had the problem of breaching the lab itself.  Any facility dealing with
nuclear physics had always been well secured, but after 9/11 the US Government
had conducted a review of all such locations within America and installed
dramatically stronger defenses.  Any glass in the building would be thick
and ballistic rated.  Very tough stuff that could only be breached with
explosives.  Doors would be tough, heavy and just as difficult to
penetrate. 

While the
SEALs were more than capable of penetrating the building, it was the noise
involved that concerned them.  No one could estimate the amount of time it
would take to find the equipment they needed once they made entry.  If
they made a lot of noise going in, the infected would be attracted in large
numbers and there was a very real possibility that they would become
trapped.  Outnumbered beyond their ability to fight through to return to
their boat.

The only
positive was they did have some C-4 explosive which they would need to breach
doors or windows.  When Sam and Gonzales had stopped at the National Guard
Armory with the crazy Army Colonel, the Master Chief had stuffed a few extra
bricks and some detonators into his pack.  He had more than enough and as
the team discussed the plan, part of his mind was already working on the design
for a small, shaped breaching charge that would get them inside with minimal
noise.

Precisely an
hour after he had left, Sam returned to be briefed on the plan his men had
developed.  It was simple and straightforward, as most plans made by the
men who actually have to execute them are.  After several questions he
approved it without changes.

“Sunset is
at seventeen-fifty-three,” he said, glancing at his watch.  “We launch at
twenty-hundred.  Questions?”

A SEAL who
looked more like a movie star/California surfer than a warrior spoke up from
the back of the room.

“LT, think
there’ll be any hot co-eds on campus?”  He grinned with perfectly straight
and white teeth.

“There’s
plenty of them,” Master Chief Gonzales answered.  “And the best part is
they’ll all be running right to you.”

“Is GMD
online?”  Admiral Packard snapped, rushing to stand behind a Master Chief
Petty Officer manning a console at the far side of the large CIC.

GMD stands
for Ground-based Midcourse Defense and is comprised of anti-ballistic missiles. 
The missile shield that had become so prominent in the news when the United
States proposed installing the system in Poland.  Russia had flipped out,
threatening all sorts of horrible things until the US President abandoned the
idea.

“Green
across the board, sir,” the man answered, fingers flying across his keyboard.

“Set the
system to automatic and execute,” Packard ordered.

The console
operator quickly entered the appropriate commands, the Admiral providing his
authorization code when requested by the software that controlled the missiles. 
Within seconds, several Navy ships were networked into the targeting system as
the GMD utilized their Aegis AN/SPY radar to augment its own.

“I want
every ship that can move exiting the area at flank speed!” 

Packard
looked around the CIC as he shouted, satisfied to see several operators
immediately begin issuing emergency orders.  While the GMD’s targeting
software identified, tracked and calculated the intercept, four missile silos
buried deep in the earth at Fort Greely, Alaska came to life. 

There was no
one left on the post, even the infected having succumbed to the bitter cold,
but the GMD system was more than capable of operating independently. 
Millions of dollars had been spent to ensure that nothing short of a direct hit
from a ground penetrating thermonuclear weapon could prevent it from
functioning.

Blast doors
at ground level opened in preparation for launch.  Restraining arms fell
away from the sides of the missiles and inside each a computer woke up.  Readiness
for launch was verified and the authorization codes accepted.  Seconds
later, the missiles received their flight trajectory data.  This was only
a preliminary track which would get them into the general vicinity of the
Russian ICBMs.  Once in flight, they would maintain communication with the
command system, constantly updating their individual target’s location. 

 
With
a ground shaking roar, four anti-missiles streaked skyward.  Cameras
positioned around the massive field where the silos were located gave a view of
the launch to the CIC in Pearl Harbor.  The Master Chief had taken over
one of the large displays at the front of the room, putting up a computer
generated plot of the incoming ICBMs as well as the intercepting GMD missiles.

“How long to
intercept?”  Packard asked quietly, eyes glued to the display.

“Five
minutes, sir.” 

The Master
Chief used his mouse cursor to point out a small set of numbers in the lower
right corner of the screen that were counting backwards.  The tracks went
nearly straight up from the launch platform, a Russian sub.  The lines
drawn on the display were solid to show where the weapons had already traveled,
changing to dashed to indicate the predicted path. 

The ICBMs
had completed their five-minute boost phase.  The engines had burned out
and dropped away when they were two hundred miles above the Earth’s surface. 
Still gaining altitude from the tremendous velocity of the launch, the missiles
were headed for an apogee of eight hundred miles.  Once there, gravity
would overcome their momentum and they would tip over and begin to fall back
towards the atmosphere. 

This is the
midcourse phase and can last from fifteen to twenty-five minutes, depending on
the distance from the launch site to target.  It is during this phase,
before re-entry, when there is an opportunity to intercept and destroy the
warhead.

“Sir, I
recommend launching a second wave of interceptors.  We have intelligence
that Russian missiles deploy decoy warheads when they reach apogee.  There
is still time to get additional missiles on target.” 

Packard
turned and met the eyes of a Captain from Naval Intelligence.  Without
hesitating, he issued the order to the Master Chief operating the system. 
In short order, the tracks of four more anti-missiles appeared on the
display.  They raced to intercept the small objects traveling at greater
than 15,000 miles per hour, eight hundred miles above the surface of the
planet.

The GMD
system had never been used to intercept a real ICBM.  There had been
multiple tests for nearly two decades, but the track record of the system was
anything but confidence inspiring.  The success rate had never been
greater than fifty percent.  The Admiral knew this, but also recognized
there was no other option.

Once the
ICBMs re-entered the atmosphere, they would be traveling at speeds exceeding
four miles per second.  There was nothing that could be done at that
point.  No defensive weapon ever devised by man was capable of tracking
and hitting something moving that fast.

It was
deathly quiet in the CIC as all eyes watched the display.  The view zoomed
as the first wave of interceptors closed the distance to the Russian
missiles.  The ICBMs were almost at their apogee, speed reduced as their
flight path flattened out. 

“Missiles
are at apogee.” 

The Master
Chief confirmed what everyone could see on the screen.  There were gasps
and curses from around the room when the four dots on the screen representing
the inbound missiles suddenly separated and became sixteen.

“MIRVs?” 
Packard asked the Master Chief.

A MIRV is a
Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicle, or in simpler terms, several nuclear
warheads packed onto one missile that separate and strike different targets.

“Decoys, I
believe, sir.  But unable to confirm,” the Master Chief answered after a
moment of carefully analyzing the data that was streaming into his system.

Packard and
the Captain exchanged worried glances as silence fell across the room.  The
clock kept counting down the time to intercept of the first wave, ticking to
under fifteen seconds.  Everyone held their breath as the tracks of the
Russian weapons and the American interceptors converged.

For a few
moments nothing could be seen on the display other than a large flare that
marked the point in space where all of the tracks had converged.  The
Master Chief was closely watching different data sets on his console, ignoring
the monitor at the front of the room.

“Two
successful intercepts, sir,” he reported.  “The other two were misses.”

“Can you
tell if we hit warheads or decoys?”  The Admiral asked.

“No,
sir.  I cannot.” 

The man
answered in a professional monotone that belied the seriousness of the
situation.  Packard looked back up at the master display, noting the
second wave was less than two minutes from intercept.

“Time to
re-entry?”  He asked.

“Twelve
minutes, sir.” 

The Master
Chief highlighted a different location where another countdown clock was
running.

“Send
another wave, Master Chief.  As many as you can.”

“Aye,
sir.” 

The man banged
out commands on his keyboard, quickly overriding the GMD system and ordering
twelve more interceptors to launch.  Their tracks quickly appeared at the
bottom of the display as the second wave converged on the inbound
targets.  Once again, the tracking of individual objects on the screen
merged into a large blob of light.  The Master Chief was watching one of
his displays as he typed furiously.  Soon, the remaining interceptors left
their silos in Alaska.

“Three
targets destroyed and one miss, sir,” he reported.  “All silos at Fort
Greely are now empty.  Without personnel on site to reload, we cannot
launch any additional.”

“What about
Vandenberg?”  The Admiral asked, referring to the other location in the
California desert where the GMD system was located.

“Unable to
communicate with the system at Vandenberg, sir.  It’s been off line since
the attacks in the LA area.”

Packard
cursed to himself, maintaining a calm outer appearance.  There was nothing
else they could do.  If the Russians threw short range, or theatre,
ballistic missiles at them, the Navy had more than enough ships remaining that
were capable of knocking them down.  But defense against ICBMs?  He
was out of rabbits.

“Time to
impact on target?”  He asked, the Master Chief understanding he meant how
long before any warheads that made it through would detonate in Hawaii.

“Ten
minutes, twenty-three seconds.  Sir.”

“Do we sound
an alarm for the civilians, sir?”  The Captain asked in a quiet voice.

“If even one
of those leaks through, it won’t matter,” the Admiral shook his head as he
spoke.  “There’s not enough time and besides, where would they go? 
It’s a small island, Captain.”

“Yes, sir,”
the man answered, nervously fingering the Naval Academy ring on his right hand.

The third
wave arrived, the room waiting anxiously for a report.

“We have nine
kills and three misses, sir,” the Master Chief said.  “One target remains
inbound.”

“Odds are in
our favor.  Ten interceptors for one target,” Packard said quietly.

“Respectfully,
sir, the odds are getting worse.  The remaining target is accelerating as
it falls back towards the atmosphere.  That makes it more difficult to
knock down.” 

The Master
Chief had turned and spoken so softly that the Admiral had to lean in to hear
him.  He appreciated the man’s discretion.  Nodding, he turned his
attention back to the display, willing one of the anti-missiles to find its
target. 

It wasn’t
long before all of the tracks converged.  Everyone in the CIC knew the
drill by now, turning to look at the console where the Master Chief worked,
waiting for his report.  This one took slightly longer, the man double
checking before turning to face Admiral Packard.

“All
interceptors missed, sir.  One target remains inbound.”

This time he
spoke loud enough for the whole room to hear.  There was stunned silence
as the enormity of the report weighed on each man and woman.

“Can you
tell exactly where it’s targeted?”  Packard asked after several moments of
silence.

The man turned
back to his console and opened a new window on one of his screens. 
Several clicks of the mouse fed data into the software which quickly provided a
set of coordinates in a textual display before drawing them on a map.  The
Master Chief looked up as he sent the results to be displayed on another of the
large screens. 

A satellite
image of Oahu slowly zoomed, a pulsing red dot appearing directly over the USS
Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor.  Packard looked at the image for a
couple of heartbeats before turning to the Captain at his side.

“Get all
essential personnel into shelter,” he ordered.