tanks and vehicles for now, and that isn’t going to change soon. We’re trying to fight a war at the end of one railroad line. Sure, it’s double-tracked, but it’s still just one damned line. Our logistical people are already taking a lot of Maalox over this one.”
“Russian airlift capacity?” Ryan asked.
“FedEx has more,” General Moore replied. “In fact, FedEx has a lot more. We’re going to ask you to authorize call-up of the civilian reserve air fleet, Mr. President.”
“Approved,” Ryan said at once.
“And a few other little things,” Moore said. He closed his eyes. It was pushing midnight, and nobody had gotten much sleep lately. “VMH-1 is standing-to. We’re in a shooting war with a country that has nuclear weapons on ballistic launchers. So, we have to think about the possibility—remote maybe, but still a possibility—that they could launch at us. So, VMH-1 and the Air Force’s First Heli at Andrews are standing-to. We can get a chopper here to lift you and your family out in seven minutes. That concerns you, Mrs. O’Day,” Moore said to Andrea.
The President’s Principal Agent nodded. “We’re dialed in. It’s all in The Book,” she said. That nobody had opened that particular book since 1962 was beside the point. It was written down. Mrs. Price-O’Day looked a little peaked.
“You okay?” Ryan asked.
“Stomach,” she explained.
“Try some ginger?” Jack went on.
“Nothing much works for this, Dr. North tells me. Please excuse me, Mr. President.” She was embarrassed that he’d noticed her discomfort. She always wanted to be one of the boys. But the boys didn’t get pregnant, did they?
“Why don’t you drive home?”
“Sir, I—”
“Go,” Ryan said. “That’s an order. You’re a woman, and you’re pregnant. You can’t be a cop all the time, okay? Get some relief here and go. Right now.”
Special Agent Price-O’Day hesitated, but she did have an order, so she walked out the door. Another agent came in immediately.
“Machismo from a woman. What’s the goddamned world coming to?” Ryan asked the assembly.
“You’re not real liberated, Jack,” Jackson observed with a grin.
“It’s called objective circumstances, I think. She’s still a girl, even if she does carry a pistol. Cathy says she’s doing fine. This nausea stuff doesn’t last forever. Probably feels like it to her, though. Okay, General, what else?”
“Kneecap and Air Force One are on hot-pad alert ’round the clock. So, if we get a launch warning, in seven minutes or less, you and the Vice President are on choppers, five more minutes to Andrews, and three more after that you’re doing the takeoff roll. The drill is, your family goes to Air Force One and you go to Kneecap,” he concluded. Kneecap was actually the National Emergency Airborne Command Post (NEACP), but the official acronym was too hard to pronounce. Like the VC-25A that served as Air Force One, Kneecap was a converted 747 that was really just a wrapper for a bunch of radios flying in very close formation.
“Gee, that’s nice to know. What about my family?” POTUS asked.
“In these circumstances, we keep a chopper close to where your wife and kids are at all times, and then they’ll fly in whatever direction seems the safest at the moment. If that’s not Andrews, then they’ll get picked up later by a fixed-wing aircraft and taken to whatever place seems best. It’s all theoretical,” Moore explained, “but something you might as well know about.”
“Can the Russians stop the Chinese?” Ryan asked, turning his attention back to the map.
“Sir, that remains to be seen. They do have the nuclear option, but it’s not a card I would expect them to play. The Chinese do have twelve CSS-4 ICBMs. It’s essentially a duplicate of our old Titan-II liquid fuels, with a warhead estimated to be between three and five megatons.”
“City-buster?” Ryan asked.
“Correct. No counterforce capability, and there’s nothing we have left to use against it in that role anyway. The CEP on the warhead is estimated to be plus or minus a thousand meters or so. So, it’d do a city pretty well, but that’s about all.”
“Any idea where they’re targeted?” Jackson asked. Moore nodded at once.
“Yes. The missile is pretty primitive, and the silos are oriented on their targets because the missile doesn’t have much in the way of cross-range maneuverability. Two are targeted on Washington. Others on LA, San Francisco, and Chicago. Plus Moscow, Kiev, St. Petersburg. They’re all leftovers from the Bad Old Days, and they haven’t been modified in any way.”
“Any way to take them out?” Jackson asked.
“I suppose