Red Glare by Thomas Greanias

Red Glare by Thomas Greanias

Author:Thomas Greanias [Greanias, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Atlantis Ink
Published: 2020-08-03T16:00:00+00:00


28

1435 Hours

Looking Glass

Marshall’s first read on Sachs was that she had a much quicker grasp of an evolving situation than her predecessor Rhinehart. But he was worried about her trigger finger. He doubted she was born with one.

He sat back in his chair inside the battle staff compartment of his Looking Glass plane and studied President Sachs on the split screen as she took in everything he said. General Carver’s expression from Omaha seemed to be giving her the benefit of the doubt. But then Carver was a consensus builder who only weighed in at the end after all viewpoints were shared.

General Block, buried under Cheyenne Mountain, looked like he was about to burst. Marshall saw it coming a full minute before Block opened his mouth. “Say the word, Madame President, and we’re ready to point and shoot.”

Marshall groaned inside and watched Sachs start.

“Point and shoot?” she repeated incredulously. “That’s the option you’re giving me?”

Marshall cleared his throat and addressed the screen. “You’ve basically got three decent options, Madame President,” he told her. “Tall, Grande and Venti.”

She said, “Venti, I suppose, means an all-out nuclear attack like General Block is suggesting?”

Marshall said, “Basically.”

Sachs said, “I don’t want to bring an end to China, gentlemen. I want to end this war before it gets out of control. So we can eliminate the Venti option right now. What’s the so-called Grande option?”

“Limited strike,” Marshall said. “We wipe out their artificial islands in the South China Sea. But we spare their most valued targets on the mainland and leave them at risk. That way the enemy has a strong incentive to seek an end to the conflict. As you just said, that’s what we want: an end to the escalation.”

“What if they don’t ‘get’ that we’re only inflicting limited harm? They’re liable to launch everything they’ve got at us. What’s the Tall option?”

Marshall didn’t like the direction this conversation was going. “Something you can reliably recall, like our new B-21 stealth bomber. But instead of the usual thermonuclear weapons we arm it with a nuclear-tipped Maverick surface-penetrating cruise missile.”

“A Maverick?”

“I’m sending the data over right now,” Marshall said, and immediately a 3-D model appeared on the screen. “It’s a next-generation bunker-buster than can burrow through hundreds of feet of earth and concrete and knock out Zhang’s underground headquarters.”

Sachs blinked. “You call that the ‘tall’ option?”

“Yes,” Marshall said. “Just like they took out Washington. Tit for tat. An eye for an eye. An underground detonation means no fallout or wind shift worries and collateral civilian casualties. Might even liberate the Chinese people.”

“Or their DF-5 missiles,” said a voice off screen, and then Marshall saw Nightwatch’s chief communications officer, Captain Linda Li, lean toward Sachs and mumble something.

Marshall knew Li had a point, but it was obvious that Colonel Kozlowski, standing behind Sachs, didn’t like it. Neither did Block or Carver onscreen. Neither did he. It was all he could do to not tempt the fates by reminding Sachs that if she and her kind



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