Admiral Robinson reached down and grabbed the red hotline phone to the White House. It rang twice before the President picked up.
Gates had been shocked when he saw the red phone ring; no one had ever called his desk on that phone before. He immediately knew that something terrible had happened or was in the process of happening, and he wasn’t completely sure what to say.
“This is the President” he answered tentatively.
Robinson cleared his throat before proceeding. “Mr. President, this is Admiral Robinson from NORAD. I am calling to inform you that we have positive confirmation of twenty-three ballistic missile launches from North Korea towards US and South Korea Forces. We have activated our missile defense systems and are currently engaging the missiles as we speak. What are your orders, Mr. President?” he asked, wanting to know if the President wanted to authorize an immediate retaliatory strike.
The President slowly sat back down in his chair as the general relayed the situation. Just then, the Oval Office began to fill with Secret Service agents. “Mr. President, we have to get you out of here NOW!” his head agent said urgently as he approached the president.
Gates held up a hand and pointed at the red phone. They paused for a second, letting him finish talking to NORAD. “Admiral, I’m being told by the Secret Service that we need to evacuate right now. I want you to intercept those missiles. Keep our nuclear capabilities at a high state of readiness, but do not launch a counterstrike yet. We need to see if we are able to neutralize the threat first. I will call you back once I am on Air Force One,” the President directed and then he hung up the phone.
As the receiver made the clank of being returned to its base, the Secret Service agents breathed a sigh of relief. They immediately began to rush him towards Marine One, which was just starting to approach the White House.
Master Sergeant Collins was reading the trajectories of the missiles when she saw that the two U.S. airbases in Korea were being targeted, as well as several points along the DMZ where the bulk of the ROK and American forces were marshaling. She watched nervously as the THAAD missiles began to accelerate to intercept the incoming missiles, followed quickly by SM-6 and SM-3 interceptors from the naval battlegroups.
While everyone was collectively holding their breath, the klaxons sounded again, indicating another missile launch had been detected. Her computer screen immediately zoomed into a part of Korea they had never looked at before. The small flash occurred near the North Korean/Chinese border. Her computer program immediately identified it as originating from the Paektu mountain range.
She zoomed in further, locating the source of the launch. To her shock and horror, she realized that there were hardened missile silos that they had been completely unaware of until that moment.
“How could we have missed that?” she thought in a panic. “As far as we knew, the North’s ballistic missile program only consisted of mobile missile launchers and several open-air missile platforms. They only tested the Hwasong-14 missile this past summer, and it’s not possible that they readied those missiles for mass production yet to place them in the silos-what in the world is going on?!”
Within seconds, the computer had identified the missiles as Chinese-made Dongfeng 5 ICBM based on the missiles rate of acceleration and subsequent booster phase. As the processor began to estimate the flight path and probable targets, it quickly became clear that the ten ballistic missiles were heading in a trajectory that would take them towards the continental United States.
Admiral Robinson walked into the room, and nearly all eyes turned to him. He looked up at the screen and saw the ten new missile tracks, in addition to the twenty-three that were already halfway to their targets.
“Seal the building immediately!” he yelled to the watch officer. “Bring us to DEFCON 1 immediately! Scramble our alert bombers and make sure the Secret Service knows we have incoming ICBMs!”
Everyone immediately went in to action, their training taking over as they methodically raised America’s defense posture to “nuclear war is imminent,” which ordered the Air Force to scramble all their aircraft and begin to disperse them to their secondary positions to await further orders. The Army would also begin to try and race their military equipment to secondary locations near their bases, in hopes of saving as much military equipment as possible in case their facilities were targeted. The Navy would begin to put their ships to sea as quickly as possible, even without full crews; as long as they had enough people on board to get the engines running and steer the ships out of the ports, they would try to move out to a secondary location to wait for further orders and hopefully save those vessels from a tragic fate.
The Continuity of Government (COG) group, which was a small cadre of emergency operations personnel, would immediately initiate the government’s COG program. This would begin the evacuation of the Cabinet, the Supreme Court Justices, and the Congress to a myriad of hardened nuclear bomb shelters outside of Washington, DC, and then disburse them further throughout the country if need be. This was critical in keeping the US Government alive and functioning should the capital be the target of one of the nuclear missiles.
Helicopters from Joint Base Anacostia-Boiling and Ft. Myer immediately began to get into the air, and headed to a series of designated landing zones at the Capital and Supreme Court buildings, to begin evacuating as much of the government as they could. In minutes, DC and the surrounding area was going to turn into pure chaos as word got out about the incoming nuclear missiles. The military had to act swiftly to get as much of the government to safety before panic set in and the city ground to a halt. A DF-5B would take roughly 34 minutes to hit DC, so time was short to get key personnel out of the city.
One of the operations officers turned to the Admiral. “Sir, the President just boarded Air Force One. They should be airborne shortly. Secret Service also reports they are starting to evacuate the Capital and moving the cabinet members to a secured bunker.”
The Admiral just nodded, almost not sure what more to say. “This isn’t supposed to be happening,” he thought. “This was supposed to be an easy final tour, a last command before retirement.”
“Sir, we are receiving a FLASH message from the Commander of Russian Strategic Rocket Forces. He is calling to let us know that Russia has no intentions of launching any ballistic missiles at the US or Europe, and he claims that Russia was completely unaware of the North Koreans’ intentions. He expressed that his forces will not be moving to a higher state of readiness and again, and wants to assure the US that they are not launching a coordinated attack with the Koreans,” said one of the colonels who had been manning the hotline phones. The ops center had direct hotlines to Russia, China, Israel, Great Britain, and France; these lines were meant to speed communication between each country’s nuclear commands, de-escalating potential conflicts and hopefully ensure no miscommunications occurred.
“Call the Chinese and tell them we demand to know if this launch was from them,” ordered Admiral Robinson. “The launch occurred on the Chinese-Korean border, and we have confirmation that those missiles are DongFeng-5’s.” He spoke with confidence as his training began to take over.
While they were contacting the Chinese, he turned to the group manning the country’s missile defense system and said, “Alert Ft. Greely that we have ten inbound ICBMs to the United States. They are to begin intercepting the missiles immediately! Does anyone know if those missiles are MIRV capable?” he barked at his operations officers.