Ian Slater - Warshot

When Trainor reached the press room, another aide, a younger man, wide-eyed and pasty-faced from the cataclysm of bad news that was spewing through the White House fax machines, asked, “What the hell are they doing? I mean — the military attacks, yes, but now we’ve got news of forest fires in California, the southwest. Man-made. I mean what the hell do they hope to achieve by—”

“Chaos,” answered Trainor simply. “On a scale we’ve never seen before.” Trainor glanced up at the bank of press room TVs. It was probably the first presidential speech in years written entirely by the chief executive himself.

“…This administration therefore has no alternative but to invoke the Emergency Powers Act. Under this act, stricter access and exit controls for all U.S. ports, civil and military facilities and bases will immediately be put into effect. These are already in operation in most of our bases around the world, but they will be extended to all bases in Hawaii and within the continental United States itself. This will mean that normal policing, arrest, and detention procedures will have to be shortened so as to best use our limited resources and manpower in combating sabotage within.”

The president was looking straight at his audience. “I realize this will involve inconveniences for many of us, and the implementation of restrictions on individual liberty, which is as repugnant to you as it is to me. But there are times, and this is one of them, when, if a free society is to remain free, it must be prepared to expect as much from those at home as those we send to do our battles abroad— for those at home to do as much as they can to support and protect those brave men and women who are at this very moment fighting and dying in Siberia and on the sea lanes leading to that embattled place.

“…And so, beginning at ten p.m. Eastern Standard Time tomorrow, the following federal agencies will be authorized to use extraordinary measures to meet the threat of extraordinary times. The Federal Bureau of Investigation…”

A sound man, earphones comically high on his head, cords trailing behind him, appeared from the dark fringe of the klieg lights and handed another sheaf of papers to Trainor, returning from the press room. The Wisconsin sub “farm,” a vast acreage of VLF — very low frequency— aerial array for contacting submarines at sea, had been attacked. Apparently, a pack of stray dogs and cats had been let loose at several points on the northern side, setting vibration and heat sensors off, diverting most of the security guards’ attention from the real point of entry on the southern perimeter, which had been penetrated by saboteurs; someone later reported having seen a weather forecast news chopper in the area. In any event, the demolition on the farm for the second time in the war was such that already nine of the North Pacific sub fleet, including the USS Reagan, had not received their burst messages updating the positions of submarine friends and foes.

Hawkeye TACAMOS — take charge and move out aircraft — had been ordered aloft from the West Coast stations to take over the always tricky task of making radio contact with the subs at their next rendezvous points. But it was always more complicated than it seemed. The Hawkeyes’ rotodomes’ 360-degree sweeps had ranges of up to three hundred miles, with overlap patterns so they could cover all nine subs that had already missed their first call, together with the overlap patterns necessary to reach another six nuclear subs in the Pacific due for call-in within the next twelve hours. This meant the endurance of the half-dozen allocated planes and their crews would be stretched to the limit — that quite simply, some of the subs would not be reached. Meanwhile, a large Siberian fleet was now in the process of gathering in the fog-shrouded seas where the Kuro Siwo, or Japanese current, meets the ice-cold waters south of the Aleutians.

The New York Times argued that the president was “overreacting” to the sabotage, while the Washington Post editorial agreed with the adoption of the Emergency Powers Act, the Post tempering its approval, however, with the warning that “emergency contingency planning must not usurp reasoned restraint,” that there was a danger of the restriction of individual liberties becoming a “habit all too easy for a majority to accept as the new norm.” The Washington Post also joined the Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the L.A. Times, and other major newspapers in recommending that an “oversight body” representing all segments of society should be established as soon as possible to monitor the Emergency Powers Act.

While looking soberly concerned, “wholeheartedly” welcoming the idea of oversight committees, the country’s police chiefs were ecstatic, but played it down in front of the press conferences.

For the first time since the Vietnam War, editorial offices raged with argument — calm debate no longer possible in the atmosphere of growing panic — about whether or not to release certain stories and sow further fear. One holdout was Peter Ovan, the editor of a small New Hampshire daily, the Logan Examiner. The short, balding editor argued that a tip he’d received, confirmed by a second source, about a small team of arsonists who had been able to start a fire that gutted the Lockheed Stealth fighter plant at Burbank, California, should be told to the American people. “If the government can’t protect one of our most vital defense plants,” argued Ovan, “then what hope’ve we got?”

“Hell,” responded the Pentagon chief of PR, “anyone can start a fire, Mr. Ovan.”

“That supposed to comfort me, Major?” responded Ovan, shifting the phone from one shoulder to another, tearing off a fax of a reported sniper attack on the approach road to the “secret” Savannah River atomic weapons production plant in South Carolina. It was a better story, in Ovan’s opinion, for the truth was that if he wanted to nail the administration for incompetence, the Stealth fire story wasn’t the best. Besides, he’d already run a column on the open secret among the pilots of the 450th Tactical Group at Nelles Air Force Base in Nevada that the twin-engined multimillion-dollar Stealth fighter, with swept wings and V tail, had been flown at night since 1983 and was responsible for many UFO sightings over the mountains and deserts of the western United States. More importantly, in the pilots’ opinion, it was perhaps the most overrated plane in history. Inherently unstable and therefore remarkably maneuverable, kept on the edge by its computers, the Stealth fighter hadn’t proved to be the ultimate “radar evader” after all. The Soviets had designed low frequency detection sets that could pick up the fighters almost as quickly as they could the Stealth B-2 bomber. It was one of the reasons the B-52 program had been drastically cut, ostensibly for “economic reasons.”

As it turned out, Ovan didn’t run either the Stealth or the Savannah River sniper stories in the Logan Examiner, for at 9:00 a.m., just before he was to go to press, his wife rang, saying there was an urgent Federal Express overnight courier envelope for him from Washington, D.C.

Cautious by nature, and made more so, given the rash of reported crazies and sabotage, Ovan asked his wife the sender’s address. He could hear the rustle of Ida handling the plastic envelope. “Ida! Don’t open it!”

“I’m not. I’m looking for an — it’s from a Mr. Carlisle. Internal Revenue Service, Washington.”

“Since when do the IRS use courier?” Ovan asked.

“Since most of the phones aren’t working,” said Ida.

“All right, have Billy run it down here. I’ll go over it with the rod.” He meant the metal detector he kept in the office as a precaution against crank mail.