2024 E-Book

H. Berkeley Rourke

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Will de Young wanted to save his family. Instead, he took them to hell.

Now, Russia is waging a nuclear war with The United States, and only one thing bears on Will's mind: get his family to safety. Escaping the fallout, they travel to Frenchtown, Wyoming, but land in the middle of conspiracy and a guerrilla war on U.S. soil.

With the world on the brink of nuclear apocalypse, can Will protect his family and lead them to safety?

Leseprobe

2024

H. Berkeley Rourke

Copyright (C) 2014 H. Berkeley Rourke

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2021 by Next Chapter

Published 2021 by Next Chapter

eBook Cover Design by The Illustrated Author (www.theillustratedauthor.net)

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night. When you move, fall like a thunderbolt.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The Beginning

The day it began, a Tuesday, in San Francisco, was cloudy, a little foggy, clammy, depressing to many. The day it began in Phoenix it was 105 degrees, air conditioners were running full capacity, people were running from malls to their cars to avoid the heat, starting their cars remotely with the air conditioning running if they had that capacity, waiting in the car with open windows as the cooling began if they did not have that capacity. The day it began in Miami, Florida there was a downpour early in the morning from a localized thunderstorm that went out to sea nearly as quickly as the rain stopped falling, leaving a partially cloudy day that was warm, humid, and getting warmer as it went along.

In Moscow, Russia, the day it began there was a beautiful bright day in progress, but there was some fear as well because the press was so preoccupied with the difficulties in the Ukraine that had been going on for years. In Beijing, China, a new moment of crisis was occurring in the economy. Though the government had been increasingly allowing capitalist enterprises, many of them had failed leaving large numbers of the population without work, hungry and many even without housing. Those without housing had begun to move into the abandoned cities and buildings that came from the failures. And they were restive, uncontrolled in large measure despite the monolithic Chinese Army.

But all those places and most others on this great Mother Earth were much more peaceful in the ultimate moments than was Baghdad. For ten years the ISIS groups with various names had been warring with the government. For five years the Shia and the Sunni had warred with each other pretending to be warring about anything but religion. But the root, the actual basis for the war was their age old dispute over who should have taken the caliphate on Muhammed's death. And there were those on both sides that wanted to extend the caliphate to the entire world by whatever means could be used for accomplishment of that lofty goal.

For more than five years, the intensity of the war had grown while the rest of the world watched from afar. And for more than five years a small cabal of Shia had been paying for the acquisition and transport of a weapon, a weapon they thought would have consequence in the war, from Pakistan to the West where it ended up in Donetsk. The transaction had been highly secret and was known only to three men in the entire world, Abu Kalil Al Ghantrous, Falik Saleem, and Pasha Hashimi were the names of those three.

Even those who transported the weapon along with Falik did not know what they were carrying. It came in components that Falik had trained to assemble. When he and the two other men who transported the weapon to Donetsk arrived there he shot both of them in the head, dumped their bodies in a culvert well east of Donetsk and went on to the city. He assembled the weapon and engaged the very sophisticated timing device that would set it off on a Tuesday afternoon.

Hashimi was a Colonel in the ISI of the Pakistani Army. It was discovered by a subordinate that he was selling weapons to people in other countries. The subordinate wanted a cut of the profits. Hashimi refused the request and made plans to kill the man. But before he could do that, the man turned Hashimi in to the ISI. His interrogation was brutally intensive and physical; he was left with no fingers on his right hand. It would have been lopped off by a sword in time anyway, since he was declared a thief. His injuries, inflicted during the interrogation, caused his demise.

Hashimi confessed to many crimes, but his interrogators didn't have sufficient information to understand the largest and most dangerous of his crimes. Pasha had been able to sell one smallish nuclear weapon to the group in Iraq headed by Kalil. The group was known as the Sword of Fallujah. Its name derived from the city of Fallujah, of course. But it also came from the brother, Benji, that Kalil had lost to the Sunnis in the early battles there in the period of 2014-2018.

Kalil made arrangements for the weapon he purchased from Pasha to be delivered with Falik overseeing its transport, albeit by an extremely circuitous route, to Sevastopol, a port city on the coast of Crimea. From Sevastopol it was taken across the Crimea into Ukraine where it was placed in Donetsk. When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 Kalil began to think of a way that he could entice the filthy infidels into war which might enable his group and groups like it to re-establish the caliphate throughout the central part of the Near East.

At the same time, Kalil purchased the nuclear weapon from Pasha at a cost of over $100,000,000.00, he also purchased a smaller but equally deadly weapon from a group of separatists in the deepest and most un-inhabited jungles of Kenya. This weapon, somewhat unsophisticated in nature, but deadly as it could be contained a vial of Ebola virus. The virus held in the vial had proved to be aerosol borne in Kenya. It was encased in a simple explosive device which would rupture the tube of Ebola and let it free in the air at the moment desired by the user. The explosion causing this to occur would be no louder than a person passing gas. But it would be far deadlier to anyone within a short distance of the release of the virus.

All these things coalesced with the events in Ukraine leading to over a hundred dead Ukrainian soldiers and incursions into Ukrainian airspace by the Russian Air Force. Several air to air battles were fought between the older Sukhoi-30 fighter jets of the Ukrainian Air Force and the more advanced and capable Mig-39 jets of the Russian Air force, with predictable results. Just as it had occurred once before in Georgia, in Putin's first incursion into the states formerly constituting the Soviet Union, the outnumbered Ukrainian pilots were brave and capable but outgunned and out flown by the Russians.

The current state of affairs in Israel, always a source of unrest in the Middle East in general, was not much better. The Sunni forces in the ISIS groups and others of similar names had made very large inroads into Jordan. While there, they recruited thousands of new Jihadis from the camps. The desperate Alouites and Sunnis pushed out of Syria in the period prior to 2015, and who were among the Palestinians, also mostly Sunnis, had been spoiling for a fight with the “EESRAEELEES” for a long time. The swollen Sunni forces of ISIS, armed by Hezbollah, Hamas and by Assad of Syria, swarmed toward the Israeli border while the Russians began to occupy the eastern areas of Ukraine.

Of course the Israelis were not going to sit and do nothing while an invading army threatened their borders. For once the country of Jordan showed some military sense as well as political sense. Despite it having a majority of Sunni Muslims as its primary population, and when the Israelis made their initial, predictable air strike on the ISIS units, the Jordanians attacked with tanks and artillery as well. The result was much the same as the destruction of Saddam Hussein's army on the “Highway of Death.” Thousands of the ISIS force died instantly in Hellfire missile attacks, artillery shelling and cluster bomb attacks launched by both the Israelis and the Jordanians.

The remaining members of the attacking force, seeing they were being destroyed in wholesale numbers, fled across the desert back into the friendly confines of Iraq and Syria. The Israelis, undaunted by the bellicose statements from Egypt, Syria and other nearby nations, including the fighting groups of Hezbollah, maintained their attack until literally thousands more died.

The Jordanians defended their borders and left the arena to the Israelis. Then the Jordanian Air Force began to sortie against the Israeli Air Force. It was not authorized initially by the government, but it happened and both Jordanian and Israeli jets went down. Jordan backed away instantly knowing it did not have the capability to fight an air war with the Israelis.

Then out of Syria a flight of nearly one hundred fighter/bomber aircraft, mostly Sukhoi 30's that had been purchased from the Russians, were spotted on a course that could only mean an attack on Israel. By the time all this happened the U.S. Sixth Fleet, the Mediterranean Sea Fleet maintained at all times, was about three hundred miles off the shore of the extreme northern part of Syria. It was closer yet to Lebanon. From several airports in Lebanon the fleet detected the firing of missiles which could only be directed at the ships of America. The missiles, all older and less stealthy or more capable of being dealt with by the fleet, were destroyed.

The fleet immediately went to a status of general quarters combat readiness. The runways of the airports in the eastern part of Lebanon that had launched the attack on the fleet were destroyed by cluster bombs dropped from cruise missiles fired from the protective cruisers surrounding the two nuclear powered aircraft carriers of the fleet. Aircraft were launched repeatedly and in staggered formations, time wise to protect the fleet. Some of the Syrian jets came too close to the fleet, and were destroyed without ado by the protective ring of FA-18 fighter planes that had been launched the minute the missiles were seen by the fleet.

The Jordanian Air Force saw the Syrian launch of aircraft toward Israel. But they did nothing. The Israeli Air Force was outnumbered initially but fought brilliantly and destroyed virtually the entire group of Sukhois. The Russians watched this from Sevastopol knowing that some of the Sukhoi pilots were their brethren. The Russians sent a group of Mig 39's southward, armed to the teeth. The Americans misunderstood. They shot down half the Mig fighters from long distance with missiles capable of being destructive at a distance of over a hundred miles from launch.

The remainder of the Israeli Air Force launched their fighters in the general direction the Russians were coming from. The Russians, when their planes started falling from the sky as a result of the missiles fired from FA-18 fighters, turned tail. But they too loosed their missiles. The result was several American and Israeli planes were lost as well.

Again the telephones between Washington, D.C. and Moscow were nearly worn out with the constant usage. Again the president tried to persuade Premier Putin the entire thing started as a result of ISIS attacking the Israelis. Putin, whose arms industry was making billions arming the Syrians, the ISIS groups as well as the Shia militias with more modern Russian weaponry, dismissed the assurances of the President and at one point even threatened to attack the Sixth Fleet as a result of the air battle in which all had lost assets.

Putin finally seemed to relent and back off his belligerence. The truth was he didn't think the Russian military was quite ready to engage the U.S. As was the U.S. military, the Russian military might was stretched a little thin as it sought to annex Ukraine with standby forces. It guarded its eastern borders with divisions devoted entirely to checking any Chinese incursions. It prepared constantly for the potential of nuclear war, preparing both offensively and defensively.

Kalil watched all these developments carefully, plotted his timing with great glee. He thought the Ebola virus a perfect response to all this. In an area of Crimea controlled by the Russians, where there were massed Russian troop formations near the Ukrainian border, the ebola was let loose. The effects were incredibly monstrous. Thousands of troops died of hemorrhagic fever. It was days before the nature of the fever was diagnosed properly. The small device had been carefully placed in a Russian encampment in Crimea.

Of course the Russians immediately blamed the Ukrainians, and then the Americans, in the press. But the real difficulty with the situation was the Russians blamed the Americans diplomatically. The Kremlin sent several messages to the President of the United States in outrage over the use of weapons of mass destruction which could only have been marshaled through the efforts of the United States. It was at the very least a frightening moment in history, a moment of great wonder from the American side. The Americans had no understanding of what could have happened. The Russian military was quite convinced the U.S. was responsible.

Letters flew back and forth from Washington, D.C. to Moscow. The president called Prime Minister Putin at least a dozen times to try and persuade him it was not the United States that had done this. Putin was adamant that President Hillary Clinton, the only woman president in the history of the United States of America, was responsible for the murder of thousands of Russian troops. President Clinton did everything she could to try and persuade Prime Minister Putin, the long time dictator of Russia, it was not true. He was unconvinced. More, he thought she was lying to him.

Russia, which had long been building new ICBM's, began to place units around the country on alert. These units were known to the U.S. in part but there were several new forces in the north central part of Russia holding concealed ICBMs capable of hitting the U.S. after flying over the North Pole.

Without a lot of publicity, the military of the United States quietly went from Defcon 1, basically a peacetime status, to Defcon 2. The anti-missile batteries that had been made into mobile units began to be placed surreptitiously in areas where warheads might pass overhead. The Navy began to maneuver its missile firing ships in ways that would present Russia with extremely dangerous potentials should Russia decide to do something foolish.

All the “boomers” that were left in the Navy were put to sea on an emergency basis and headed into areas where the Soviet Navy with its rusted out attack submarines could not touch them. The air forces of both countries began to arm their aircraft fully, to keep them fueled and ready to fly, and on some of them like the B-2 Stealth Bombers nuclear weapons were loaded. The B-2's began to fly training sorties out of Diego Garcia that lasted many hours. The B-2's crossed over much of Africa without entering into the air space of any unfriendly country. They carried bombs so destructive that their explosive results could not be adequately described.

China, seeing all these military preparations and worrying some of the missiles from the U.S. or Russia, or both, might be targeted in China, put its armed forces, including its nuclear missile units, on high alert as well. North Korea, as bellicose as ever, mouthed the usual phrases of being able to attack U.S. cities with its ICBMs. China was completely at sea over the reasons the U.S. and Russia were going “nuclear” all of a sudden. Yes, there had been an outbreak of Ebola in Crimea but it could have come about in a hundred different ways the Chinese thought. They were not prepared, as were the Russians, to toss the blame for the ebola occurrence squarely onto the shoulders of the U.S. The premier kept asking his political advisors, “How did this happen?” None of them seemed to have an answer.

But this is a little ahead of where it should be I guess. I was, when all this began, a member of the State Department. My name is William De Young. I was at one time an employee of an Undersecretary of State. What does that mean? Nothing really. It didn't give me information that others didn't have. It didn't tell me anything about Kalil or Falik. I guess I was a bit of a greenhorn as well. My graduation from Thomas Jefferson had taken place only about a year prior to the world melting down. I am thirty five years old. I had been working for Secretary of State Elizabeth Warren since she ascended to the position from her status as a Senator from the State of Massachusetts.

I can tell you we were scrambling around like crazy to try and find out who the hell had let off a weapon that included the Ebola virus as part of its destructive material. It still amazes me anyone, a human being, would let loose ebola. Have you ever seen a person die of Ebola virus, or any form of hemorrhagic fever? It is devastating. It is nasty looking. It is a mess. There is blood everywhere. Thankfully the victims were isolated quickly; well quickly being a word of art here because it took several days for recognition of the type of virus to occur. Then the victims were quickly isolated, proper protective clothing and breathing apparatus were used by the doctors and the spread of the disease was seemingly controlled to the point no new cases were being seen. But all through the time of the outbreak stuff was floating across all our desks in State like crazy. The one reaction I had to all this perhaps some did not was I began to think it was really possible for a nuclear exchange to occur between the United States and Russia.

When someone in the world gets a little crazy the rest of the world tends to react and most often their reaction is negative. Saudi Arabia, for example, threatened to turn off the oil spigot if there were another outbreak of this kind caused by the U.S. Caused by the U.S.? How the hell did they come to their conclusion? I personally spoke with a man whose job it was to operate the pipelines from the refineries to the shipping docks. He fairly screamed at me we in the U.S. were trying to kill off the world population of Muslims by the use of viral bombs. I said in return, “Sir, if I could confess to you to it was true and if it would be the truth, I would do so. But it is not the truth. The truth is the Russians don't know or understand where the viral attack came from and neither do we. Because the area is so tightly cordoned off in order to avoid new outbreaks we cannot even get in there to search for the weapon used to deliver the virus. But please, sir, we in the U.S. did not do this.”

Letters went to every Prince, every Emir holding a position in the governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Yemen; you name the person, we communicated with them. We constantly tried to reinforce the idea that we had nothing to do with the Ebola outbreak. It seemed as though we were speaking in tongues or to deaf people. No one believed us. The wrangle over Crimea and Ukraine going on since 2014 made us appear to be the likely culprit in the Ebola attack.

Kalil, seeing the responses of the Saudis and other oil rich Arab countries merely smiled to himself. He sent messages to his group of black shirted members of the ISIS forces. At least he sent letters to those whose lives had not ended in the bombing of their caravan. The letters told his brethren a new day was coming, to be prepared and ready to attack, attack, attack. Kalil's plans were diabolical indeed. His Sword of Fallujah organized fifteen truck bombs which would be sent into the domains of Maliki and the Shia in Baghdad and Muqtadr Al Sadr and his Shia militias at the same time. Kalil's spies had done their work well. The truck bombs were meant to trigger additional explosions from war materials hidden by the Shia in various places. The effect, if achieved, would be disastrous for the Shia militias and would make it possible for the Sunni to triumph with “little opposition.”

Then slowly things eased up a little as the Ebola virus ran its course in the sick and isolated area in which it was now located. Then, one strange and horrible day, the world went to hell in a hurry. At about two o'clock in the afternoon Washington time a nuclear explosion occurred in Donetsk, sometimes called the capital of the eastern Ukraine. It devastated the entire city, killing tens of thousands instantly, destroying age old buildings as well as those newly constructed.

The government was not in session at the time, but all its representatives and officials lived within a ten mile radius of the capital building. They were killed, all of them. The power of the bomb was not huge by comparison to what would follow but it leveled an area of approximately thirty miles in every direction in which a mountain didn't slow the progress of the blast.

All totaled well over a million Ukrainian people were killed or injured in the blast. And in the blast and fire effects of the bomb many thousands of ethnic Russians and disguised Russian soldiers died as well. The troops had been surreptitiously taking part in the separatist efforts of the ethnic Russians in the Donetsk area. There were well over ten thousand Russian troops involved. Most of the troops were killed.

The “bloom” of the nuclear explosion was seen on every satellite within range. Some satellites had been placed in orbit by the Russians. Some had been placed there by the Chinese, the Japanese, the French and NATO via the French Ariadne series of launch vehicles and of course many had been placed there by the U.S. Some went dark within seconds after the explosion as a result of their components not being protected from the possibility of an EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) effect. Most of those were older and most belonged to the Soviets or the French and NATO.

The French, the British, the Germans, the Italians (nobody really expected them to fight if it came down to it), the Polish, among many other countries, were left pretty much in the dark as to what was going on between Russia and the U.S. But knowing the Americans were on high alert the French and British nuclear forces, as well as those of Israel, India and Pakistan were all alerted as precautionary measures.

Instantly the U.S. forces went to Defcon 3, nuclear attack alert and status for response by every means possible if someone might have the temerity to launch on the U.S. One country did, that being North Korea. None of the nuclear forces of the U.S. were launched initially since the Korean threat was so remote. No one could believe the Chinese would arm the Koreans with missiles which could reach the U.S. The response, if any were to occur from the United States, could be managed quite well without those assets.

A missile frigate sitting off the coast of Japan in the South China Sea saw the North Korean launch right away and launched an anti-missile in return. The Korean missile was destroyed at about 80,000 feet above the earth in a massive explosion that triggered the non-nuclear explosives on board the Korean bird. The Chinese radar systems had seen the launch, saw the second missile coming from the frigate which they routinely shadowed and saw the explosion of the two coming together.

A Chinese battery commander who was a nervous type anyway and who secretly admired the dictator of North Korea, ordered his anti-ship battery to fire at the frigate. At first his battery men looked at each other. They all knew this would constitute an act of war against the United States. But they were soldiers after all and they obeyed their orders. Three Chinese missiles of the same type as the French Exocets of earlier years now called the Kong Di 88 were launched by this battery. The radar units “painting” U.S.S. Glenn remained on, as did the television cameras on these missiles. The frigate responded instantly with newer HARM type missiles which would attack the radar but would cluster bomb the entire area as well.

The frigate, named the U.S.S. John Glenn, saw the launches from the mainland, knew they were being “painted” and fired up by radar and heat seeking missiles also using television capability. The frigate had defenses designed just for the purpose of bringing down the kind of missiles the Chinese fired. All three were splashed before reaching the frigate by missile or gunfire. The Chinese battery had to leave their radar on in order to guide their missiles and the battery was destroyed completely with substantial loss of life when the officer who had ordered the Frigate be fired upon failed to recognize that his facility was about to be attacked.

The Chinese Army saw this activity and ordered the Air Force to respond. The Air Force launched a dozen of its older Su-30 planes with missiles designed to attack ships as well as those used for attacking aircraft. In addition the Jengdu 10's (comparable in capabilities to the U.S. F-16 and F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft) available near the area in which these events were unfolding were prepared to fight and then launched. There were more than twenty of those fine aircraft that flew sorties toward the U.S.S. Glenn.

The Chinese planes had not cleared their own borders when a flight of eight F-15 Strike Eagles whose systems had been highly upgraded by the Formosans were sent to investigate from Taipei, Formosa. An additional flight of eight F-15 E's with their systems upgraded by the Formosan's as well were launched from Tainan, Formosa. The Chinese Jengdus did not see these planes right away and the SU-30's of the Chinese never did see them. The first eight Formosan Air Force planes were “painted with radar” by the Chinese Air Force planes from over fifty miles away and the Chinese planes fired missiles at the Formosan planes who in turn fired missiles at the Chinese aircraft. An International “Cluster Fuck” was well under way. The Formosan aircraft from Tainan also fired missiles at both the SU-30's and the Jengdu 10's.

U.S. Air bases in Japan and Korea, hearing of the launch on the U.S. by the North Koreans, seeing the response of the Chinese to the DPRK missile being splashed, began to load their planes for war. The North Koreans fired another ICBM. The second was hit by an anti-missile missile fired again from the “Glenn.” Several of the Chinese jets from the mainland got within range to launch their ship killing missiles. All totaled the Chinese launched at least ten ship killing missiles at the “Glenn.” All of them but one were shot down. The one that was not killed by the ship sank the “Glenn.” There were survivors but not many. The survivors would be picked up by Formosan boats. The Chinese aircraft which fired on the Glenn were all shot down by either U.S. or Formosan aircraft. In all the Chinese lost all of the SU-30 aircraft they launched toward the Glenn and half the Jengdu 10 aircraft. Mostly the losses of the Chinese were due to the Formosans being in constant awareness and firing early on the Chinese aircraft. The North Koreans, undaunted, prepared, watched by a satellite, a third launch. They launched just before the end of the first fateful day of the international cluster fuck. Another missile frigate, stationed just north of the Island of Okinawa shot at that third North Korean ICBM. The hit on the Korean missile was enough to cause the payload to crash into the Pacific Ocean about 500 miles from Midway Island where it detonated one of its several nuclear warheads.

In the dark of night, just after dark in fact, four F-117 Stealth Fighters killed the launch facilities of the North Koreans without the loss of a plane. The launch pads of the Koreans would take weeks or months to reconstruct. The support facilities including the underground bunkers that housed the North Korean computer systems necessary to the launch of ICBMs were all destroyed as well. Those would take years to rebuild. The death of the computer center essentially ended the intermediate and short range missile threat to Seoul and South Korea in general except from shorter range missiles carried on mobile launchers. But the North Koreans had never acquired such sophistication with their nuclear arsenal they could miniaturize sufficiently to mount nuclear warheads on short range missiles.

The few ships of the Formosan navy that were in the rough area of the Glenn picked up the few survivors. The few planes lost by the U.S., Japan or Formosa also had their survivors picked up. While the missile launch facilities of the North Koreans were virtually eliminated their army and air forces were not. Immediately after the first launch all U.S. forces in Korea went on alert, as did all South Korean forces. Total call up occurred of all able bodied South Korean veterans who were still capable of fighting. The situation there was out of hand. The situation with the Chinese began to calm when the U.S. began to pull its citizens out of the country. The loss of business activity was instant and the Chinese, ever mindful of economics, apologized for the “inadvertent actions” of a rogue officer who had been executed for his traitorous launch of planes and missiles at the U.S. ship.

The Chinese, ever masters of the apology, offered reparations for the sinking of the Glenn and for the families of the lost seamen. This calmed the situation in respect to China but not as to Korea. China did say as long as there was no invasion of North Korea which might threaten its borders China would stay out of any fracas between the North and South Koreans.

The momentary detente with the Chinese allowed the U.S. to assist the South Korean Air Force against the North Koreans. Virtually all hard protective revetments that the North Koreans had created to protect their Air Forces were destroyed in one night. All their runways were so badly cratered, as were the taxi ways along side their air fields, that the North Korean air forces were eliminated in one night. What few North Korean aircraft that did escape the bombing went into China to be grounded.

That left the A-10's of the U.S. and the South Koreans to strike under the cover of F-16s and F-15 Strike Eagles of the South Koreans and the F-35s of the U.S. along with the FA-18 naval aircraft of the U.S., at the columns of troops, tanks, etc. being marshaled by the North Koreans for an attack on the South. The North Korean army, a million plus in numbers at the beginning of that day, lost at least a third of their troops within thirty-six hours. They also lost almost all their transport systems, a large part of their tank brigades, and almost all of their helicopters and transport aircraft carrying airborne troops. All in all the vaunted members of the North Korean Army and other forces were badly treated by the South Koreans and the U.S. forces the first couple of days of the brief war in which they engaged. The South Koreans maintained an open channel with the Chinese to make sure that the Chinese understood there would be no northward thrust of South Korean forces if the North Koreans stood down. It was over the next day.

The uneasy truce between North Korea and South Korea, with the U.S. as participants along the lines of demarcation, resumed. But the Chinese influence on the North Koreans became of extreme importance to the continuation of the regime. China allowed the U.N. to bring in nuclear scientists. The U.N. representatives stripped the North Koreans of any further ability by missile or otherwise, to deliver a nuclear weapon in addition to destroying all their existing weapons, destroying all records of how to assemble or create a nuclear weapon. One thing good came out of the short war. The short war with North Korea also gave the Russians pause for consideration of their desire to confront the American beast. But the events of Ukraine caused caution to be thrown in the wind.

The tensions between Washington and Moscow had escalated all through the several days of the Korean fiasco. Nastiness was the hallmark of the communication between President Clinton and Premier Putin. He considered her a person of lesser import in part because she was a woman. His attitude made the likelihood of real communication impossible from the outset. The world conflicts and troubles in the Middle East made him even more bellicose and unreasonable. She could not “give” much or she would be seen as weak not only by Putin but by her own military. In the circumstance she must maintain control of the military. The mistakes of the Chinese and Russians already had shown her that necessity.

In spite of the recommendations of her military adviser's advice, President Clinton backed off the military alert status to Defcon 2. That meant stand down of some weapons but readiness maintained for immediate launch of those weapons if necessary. The Russians appeared to be relaxing their nuclear forces as well and the world heaved a huge sigh of relief as a moment of sanity seemed to form in both countries. Sanity has a way of giving in to misunderstanding though. So does insanity. All over the Mediterranean Sea American ships patrolled at the ready. The same was true of the Indian Ocean where in addition to U.S. ships there were ships of the nation of India as well.

Pakistan and India had co-existed with armed nuclear weapons aimed at each other for over 25 years. And the fingers of their leaders had been very close to the “buttons” during the crisis over the terrorist activities in Mumbai. The threat of Pakistan was now enhanced by the potential of a Shia caliphate running from Iran through Iraq into Syria and Lebanon. The possibility also existed of even more area to be garnered by the Shia in the other “stans” of the former Soviet Union and of course in Afghanistan. Pakistan, seeing the threat of a loss by the Shia as a great possibility before the nuclear detonation in Ukraine, was more frightened after the nuclear blast occurred. The Pakistanis immediately thought the Sunni had done the deed. They suggested it to the Russians. The Russians laughed at them and said it could not have happened as the Pakistanis suspected.

We requested the Chinese to bring their “boomers” to the surface so we could see them. Though they were loathe to do so they complied with our request. The former Soviet fleet of “boomers” and other submarines aside from their attack subs had long since either been sold to China, India, Iran or North Korea. The satellite and drone system essentially watching all of North Korea knew exactly where their subs were located.

The U.S. announced to China and North Korea that if the North Korean submarines made one belligerent move their entire sub fleet would be sunk. One general in North Korea thought the statement was hyperbolae and caused the launch of a cruise missile which narrowly missed the main government buildings of Seoul. The U.S. Navy sank a total of fifteen subs that day. The North Koreans had one left in dry dock and it was destroyed by a stealth attack from a Navy F-35 stealth fighter aircraft.

The Russians threatened nuclear war if any further attacks occurred on North Korea. The Pakistani government, allied with Russia since 2018, announced its support for the Russians. India went to high alert. Israel went to high alert when Iran announced its support for the Russian statements against the U.S. A Pakistani pilot thought he saw a drone over the northern part of the country and fired several missiles at what he thought was a drone. He missed.

The drone pilot was good and the drone was a stealth version just put into service which was armed with anti-aircraft missiles as well as air to ground ordnance. The drone pilot didn't miss. There were Indian aircraft in the area. The Pakistanis had just received very sophisticated radar systems from Russia and were not terribly good at using those systems yet. They saw the Indian aircraft, saw one of their own being destroyed and started firing ground to air missiles at the Indian aircraft.

The nearest of the three Indian aircraft carriers armed its planes and sent all its fighters toward the area of conflict along with AWACS aircraft in support. MIG 35 aircraft from Goa, in India, also headed toward the area of conflict. The AWACS reported “seeing” what appeared to be a missile silo opening. It was, but for a ground to air missile attacking the flight of Indian SU-30 and MIG-35 aircraft. The air burst of the missile was larger than usual to the pilots of the Indian aircraft and it threw an instant mushroom characteristic of a nuclear explosion. The AWACS operators were not familiar with nuclear explosions and did not take the time to use their instruments to explore the type of chemicals in the explosion. They reported a nuclear blast. India opened its silos. Pakistan opened its silos.

My boss was on the phone on one side of her head to New Delhi, on the other side of her head to Islamabad. She kept saying, “Gentlemen, please, calm down, let's talk for a few minutes. What can a few minutes of your time mean to all your people? The course you are headed down could potentially destroy both your countries.” Then she would sit and listen for a moment and then again she would begin, “Gentlemen, gentlemen, please, talk with me for a moment. Talk with me, not each other just for a moment.” Then she would listen again and then she would start all over again. This went on and on and on for what seemed like an interminable time. And then wonderfully we got word from satellite photography over India and Pakistan the silo doors had closed. Thank God, I kept thinking. What in the hell are they trying to accomplish? What in the hell is Russia doing here? Are they the instigators of all this?