Alea Jacta Est: A Novel of the Fall of America (Future History of America Book 1) (36 page)

SIR, ONE OF the
missiles has just changed its vector.  It’s going to land somewhere in northern
Iraq,” reported the officer of the watch to General Munson.  They were all
watching the same giant digital displays on the far wall deep in the heart of
the North American Air Defense Command Center.  It showed a detailed map of the
world, highlighting the trails of the nine rockets from their launch in Iran
towards the west.  Sure enough, one of the little blips snaked a little south
and became an ‘X’, signaling that the missile had impacted the surface and
stopped.  Another blip changed direction and headed southwest.

A commotion
at the rear of the theater-like room got General Munson’s attention.  He turned
in irritation to see the Commander in Chief of the United States and his
entourage march into his situation room like a conquering hero.  His irritation
turned into annoyance.,

“That one’s
not going to hit Israel…looks like another dud.  Any reports as to what it was
carrying?” asked the President, coming up next to General Munson and pointing
at the stray line sticking out of Iran.

“Negative
on fallout readings detected from our monitoring stations, sir.  But that could
mean they were just too small…” offered a Lieutenant sitting just to the left
of the group of men. 

“Delta is
changing vector,” someone announced behind a computer station.  On the main
screen, one of the colored lines suddenly veered course.  Its altitude was
displayed in feet and was evident to anyone who cared to look that the missile
couldn’t possibly hit Israel.  It was thousands of feet above the tiny Jewish
nation and holding altitude.  Israel was not its target.

“My God,
it’s heading for the Med,” one of the Colonels gasped.

WHOA, HEY, WHAT the
hell is going on here?” asked the pilot of the F-35C Lightning II patrolling
the skies on the western edge of Israeli airspace.  His threat warning
indicator had just come to life indicating someone was trying targeting his
fifth generation fighter aircraft with air-to-air missiles.  “What the hell are
those Egyptians doing?”

His wingman
spotted it at the same time.  “
Comin’ out of the southwest, no lock…it’s
that Egyptian patrol we spotted an hour ago.  Pesky bastards…I got ‘em tagged,
man
.”

“This is
Navy One-One-Niner to Egyptian Mirage flight.  You are targeting United States
Naval aircraft—cease and desist.  I repeat, cease your targeting of U.S. Naval
aircraft,” said the calm but stern voice of Lieutenant Commander Riggs.  Fully
aware of the situation at home and here in the eastern Med, he wasn’t about to
let something that could be just a prank turn into an event that triggers a
war.  He gave the Egyptians a few seconds to acknowledge, but they were silent.

“
Still
trackin’ us
…” announced his wingman over the radio.

Riggs
glanced out the starboard side of his sleek aircraft to take a look at his wingman’s
plane.  The F-35C Lightning II was a handsome bird, he had to admit.  He never
got tired of flying it.

“This is
Hawk One to Nest, Hawk One to Nest…we are being targeted by Egyptian bogeys,
repeat, we are being actively targeted by Egyptian air—“

The beeping
tone from the alarm suddenly went into an angry growl and grew in volume.  His
wingman saw it too and called out, “
Shit!  They got lock.  I don’t know how,
but they got lock!
”

Without
replying, the Riggs dropped the nearly empty external fuel tanks and sent the
single engine Lightning II into a wild maneuver designed to throw off an enemy
trying to attain missile lock.  It worked in a matter of seconds as the warning
tone returned to the calmer beeping of an active target acquisition attempt.

“Nest, Hawk
One, please advise!”

The crackly
response came back, “
Hawk, Nest.  You are to avoid contact.”

GODDAMN EGYPTIANS,
GRUMBLED the Admiral in command of the U.S.S.
Roosevelt
battlegroup.  He
stood in the massive aircraft carrier’s Combat Information Center, observing
the course of both the American flight of F-35s and the Egyptian Air Force
Mirages. 

“Admiral,
we just received new orders,” said the Captain of the huge vessel.  He handed
the printout to the Admiral.  The message came directly from the Commander In
Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, to which, despite the fact that it was in the
Mediterranean, the
Roosevelt
belonged.

The Admiral
read the printout twice to be certain.  He grinned.  “’Bout Goddamn time. 
Captain, sound general quarters and alert the battlegroup.”

“
Hawk
Two to Nest, we are taking enemy fire!  Repeat, the Egyptians just launched a
missile at us!”
came over the command center’s speakers.

HAWK ONE, NEST. 
New
orders—you are authorized to engage the Egyptians, repeat, you are authorized
to engage—good hunting!
” squawked in Riggs’ headset.

“Finally,”
grunted the Riggs as he spun the Lightning around again looking for the errant
Egyptian missile that had just streaked by.  He didn’t want that thing coming
about and biting him in the ass.  

“Hawk Lead
to Hawk Flight, let’s take these bastards out of the sky,” called out Riggs. 
He pulled back hard on the controls and spun the plane around to face the
enemy.  Now it was his turn.  He flipped the switch to activate his missile
systems and their powerful search radar.

“
Hawk
Four, that’s affirmative, targeting now
.”

“
Hawk
Two, roger that
.”

“
Hawk
Three, copy.”

“
Missiles
hot and locked…target acquired…and locked!
” reported his wingman.  Riggs’
own AIM-9M Sidewinder missiles infrared targeting systems sought out and found
the Egyptian fighters heat signature.

“Fox-one!”
he called out as he pressed the trigger and one of the Lightning’s nine and a
half foot Sidewinder missiles leaped from its internal port and streaked
towards its destiny with the French-made Mirage fighter leading a ribbon of
smoke.

“
Fox-one!”
called out another American fighter.

“
Missile
away!”
radioed Hawk Three.

“Switching
targets,” said Riggs, adjusting the path of his jet so he could lock onto
another Egyptian target, still some eight miles away.

“They’re
looking for a lock…” warned his wingman.  Riggs checked his own threat
assessment screen.  The warning lights lit up again.

“
They’ve
locked on again—going evasive
,” said the voice of one of the fighter
pilots.  Riggs could see out the canopy one of the other Lightnings, perhaps
two miles away to his west, suddenly swerve to port and dive for the ocean.

“
Missile
inbound—missile inbound!
” reported Riggs’ wingman, Lieutenant Al Jones, his
voice going up in pitch.

“
Fox-two…”
came the voice of the pilot of Hawk Two.  Another of the famous Sidewinders
streaked off to the south, heading for the Egyptian planes

“
Whoo-hooooo! 
Got the bastard!”
cried out Hawk Three.  “
Splash one Mirage.  Okay boys,
we got five left
.”

“
Splash
two!  Reaper’s in the house
!”

“Target
locked….Fox-two!” said Riggs, squeezing the missile trigger again.  There was a
flash of smoke and the plane shuddered when the missile jumped clear of his
plane.

“
Splash
three—“
called out Jones. 

The
exploding Egyptian fighters were just coming into visual range.  They were
painted to blend in with the sky and were hard to pick out from the clouds, but
the little fireballs that signaled a dead Egyptian fighter were easy to pick
out.  The two groups of fighters, one American made, the other French, raced
towards each other.  In less than a minute, both flights of fighters were too
close for missiles.  The air battle became a dog-fight.

The
Lightnings, propelled by more thrust capability than the French Mirage
fighters, were the more powerful fighter.  They were newer—5
^th
Generation fighters—and came packaged with all the bells and whistles that only
a Superpower could afford.  However, the Mirages were lighter and more agile,
offering a balance to the speed and technology of the American planes. 

However,
the quality of the respective pilots was incomparable.  The Americans were
trained to be the best in the world and kept a constant edge on their skills. 
The Egyptians had only been flying the Mirage for twenty years or so off and
on.  They were good, but not great.  This day, they weren’t even adequate. 

The fact
that these pilots were fighting over the Mediterranean Sea only added to the
advantage held by the Americans.  The Egyptians were flat out not comfortable
being that far out to sea.  They were forced out over the unfamiliar waters as
a diversion only.  They were expendable.  The Lightning Riders—as they so
fondly called each other—were Naval Aviators.  They weren’t just
pilots
,
and they were perfectly at home over open water. 

As a
result, three more Egyptians were plucked from the sky like ripe oranges in
quick succession as the odds grew longer and longer.  In minutes, it was down
to one on four.

In less
than ten minutes, the first air battle of the new unnamed war was over.  All
six Egyptian fighters had been blasted from the sky and only one American plane
had been damaged.  An Egyptian fighter pilot had gotten a lucky shot with his
on-board machine gun, strafing the starboard wing on Hawk Three’s Lightning. 

“
Did we
just start a war?
” The Americans had dropped back to subsonic speeds to
keep in proximity with their wounded comrade.

“Damn if I
know, Jonesy,” replied Riggs.  He unstrapped his oxygen mask and let his
breathing rate return to normal as he scanned the horizon for the carrier. 
When he landed he’d be debriefed and he couldn’t wait to get some answers of
his own as to just what the hell was going on.

CAPTAIN, I’M PICKING
up multiple bogeys,
fast moving…”

“What are
they?” asked the Captain of the U.S.S.
Roosevelt
, still in the CIC.

“This
profile matches ballistic missiles, sir,” replied the petty officer, watching
the screen in front of him.  “Sir, they’re gonna hit Israel, but one’s heading
out towards the Med.  Sir, it’s gonna be close.”

The Captain
snatched up the nearest intra-ship microphone.  “Admiral, we’ve got to warn the
battlegroup—“

“Go ahead,
but it’s too late,” said the grizzled old Admiral, watching the radar returns. 

He was
right of course, the Captain could see.  Undaunted, he began the frantic
message sent out to the little fleet the
Roosevelt
spearheaded.  He
thought how pointless the warning was as he was speaking.  What could any of
the massive ships do to avoid a ballistic missile that may or may not be
carrying nuclear warheads?  The
Roosevelt
took miles to turn around.  He
grimaced and put the microphone down.  May as well go stand on the flight deck
and piss in the wind for all the good it’ll do.  They were had. 

By now five
of the eight missiles had already hit Israel, two more were still falling an
and the third would be closing in on the carrier battlegroup faster than the
mammoth ship could even
begin
to turn.

The Captain
thumbed the mic again, “All hands, this is the Captain, brace for impact, I say
again, brace for impact!”

The control
room went silent…everyone held their breath.  Was it a nuke?  Was it air burst
or ground-impact?  Was it chemical or biological?

THERE SHE IS! called
out Lt. Commander Riggs from the pilot’s seat of his F-35C.  He could just make
out the dark smudge on the horizon that marked the location of the
Roosevelt
. 
The little specks to the left and right of the smudge were the support vessels
and other ships of the line that made up the battlegroup.

“Still
hangin’ in there, Stackhouse?” he asked.

“
Copy
that, Hawk Lead, still here.  It’ll take more than a lucky shot to drop this
ol’ bird
.”

Riggs
grinned as he saw the wounded yet lethal looking Lightning bobble it’s wings in
tandem with its pilot’s words.  The rest of the Flight were spread out in a
diamond pattern, designed to offer maximum protection to the wounded fighter.

“
What
the hell is that?
” asked Jones from the next plane over.  Riggs glanced at
his wingman’s plane and saw the small form of his friend pointing to a bright
point in the sky that quickly over took the Lightnings.

“Jesus,
that’s a
missile
Jonesy—“

“
Hawk
Lead, Hawk Two—you see that?  Looks like a Goddamn ICBM!
”

“
Where
the hell did
that
come from?
”

“
Look! 
It’s heading for the carrier!
”

Before
Riggs could switch his frequencies to contact the
Roosevelt
, the missile
gained speed and dropped from the sky, about halfway between the carrier and
the returning fighters.  It disappeared in a flash of sea foam and steam.  A
trail of smoke and steam pointed straight up into the sky like a giant spear
thrust into the ocean.

“
That
was fuckin’ weird
…”

“Hawk One,
Nest—be ad—“ the incoming transmission simply stopped.  At almost the same
time, a
huge
white bulge appeared beneath the surface of the
Mediterranean Sea faster than Riggs thought was possible.  It was as if he had
just watched a bad edit on a movie.  One frame the ocean is fine, the next
there’s a huge underwater explosion appears.  The editor cut out the buildup. 
It was surreal. 

The ball of
vaporized seawater was big enough to swallow the carrier and half the battle
group whole.  The white-water circle of ocean seemed to swell upwards before
suddenly exploding into the sky, throwing hundreds of thousands of tons of
seawater up from beneath the surface.  The explosion formed into a dirty-white
giant ping pong ball on the surface of the ocean.  There was a crown of boiling
steam and smoke expanding at the very top of the giant ball. 

“
Oh my
God—that was a nuke!
”

“Christ! 
Evasive, evasive, evasive!” called out Riggs, not knowing or caring if his
microphone still functioned. 
Nukes are supposed to have EMP effects that
cripple electronics, so how are we still flying—the radiation, what about the
radiation—God Almighty, that was a nuclear missile
…the thoughts waterfalled
through Riggs’ mind as he pulled his fighter into a hard turn to avoid the massive
ball of vaporized water and smoke only a few miles ahead.