Flash fiction thread

[forcon]

The Before Time

The year is 2046, and Christmas is approaching. It’s raining and windy, but there is no sign of snow, because global warming will kill us all just as dead as the Great Plague. I’m slumped on the sofa, drinking my thirty-seventh cup of tea. Come sunset – the concept of time died with our civilisation – I will exit my dwelling and clap into oblivion, a tribute to a service which died with our hopes and dreams many years ago.

My children will also involve themselves in this ingrained ritual. They are lucky, in that they have never known freedom, or smelt the choking air of an inner city bus, or greeted another human from another household.

My generation is the last to have known the outdoors. At bedtime, I tell them stories of The Before Time.

Interaction with the outside world is but a forlorn memory. But for the evening two minutes adoration ritual, they have never been outside. Men have evolved to reproduce asexually after being confined to the entombment of their bedrooms for so long.

I remember the days when we would dare to step outside. The days before the Great Plague of 2020. Things are different now, I explain to them as I light a candle. It wasn’t always like this. There is no power, no running water.

Boris Johnson, Lord Protector and High Chancellor of the Kingdom of Southern England, reigns supreme over a kingdom devastated by austerity, plague, famine and violence.

The Knife Gangs of London roam the streets. When the Great Plague came, they graduated from nicking the handbag of every hapless Granny they encountered to pinching valuable supplies of baked beans and toilet roll from the endless columns of Lorries strung out across the M25. Now, they ride on modified mopeds wearing a disturbing plethora of gimp masks and, some say, the skin of their victims. They plunder the weak for food and bog roll.

The North seceded some years ago, and while they must endure the misery of the merciless rain, they live in a comparative paradise, having eliminated poverty with their dirty, communist, Scandinavian economics. Rumour has it that in the north they even have running water and flushing toilets. This seems too good to be true.

There are exceptions, of course. Hull, Birmingham and Glasgow were left to the rule of the Kingdom of Southern England, but Lord Protector and High Chancellor Johnson didn’t want them.

The Before Time was so different, I tell the children.

[Brky2020]

The Exodus

A country of a billion people, blessed abundantly in every area imaginable, the strongest and most prosperous nation in human history. Reagan's City on a Hill, shining its light on an entire world thanks to good ol' fashioned American ingenuity, cash and technology so graciously given to it by aliens all those decades ago. The Stars and Stripes fly from sea to shining sea, including the Sea of Tranquility and Mare Erythraeum. There is little poverty, and even the poorest of people can find a hot meal and a warm cot thanks to federal social programs funded by the precious minerals and the mysterious fuel found in the asteroid belt.

In just seven months, that nation went straight to hell.

A pandemic cut the population by 40 million, and overreaction by the federal government not only resulted in pushback from 27 of the 68 states and open rebellion by tens of millions of otherwise loyal Americans, but opened the door for more sinister elements to create and spread their misery.

The Second Civil War began with dozens of explosions, all civilian targets, in Oklahoma City. It ended with a radical Communist faction in control of the federal government and eager to test out its new toys pilfered from the decimated military and National Guard.

Biological and chemical weapons were used against moderate and conservative elements. The military split into five factions, and so did the government. The nuclear button, though, was guarded by those loyal to the center-right faction led by an old Army general who oversaw America's last major military victory against the cartels controlling Mexico.

He couldn't keep them at bay, though. They took back control, and the far-left faction responsible in part for the war opened the back door in south Texas for them to come up and settle whatever grievances they had.

The war went on. Europe, Russia, China, Australasia, Africa, South Africa and the Global Commonwealth stayed out. The Caliphate sold arms to all sides, and Switzerland patched up their wounded. North Korea offered aid and comfort to the far-leftists, while the far-right got the same treatment from Costa Rica.

Oligarchs, trillionaires, despots and politicians made their post-war plans for the country, dividing it up in ways that reflected their own agendas and their own greed. The factions fighting for control of the country had their own post-war plans; the moderate factions planned to cull or exile the extremists, while the extremists planned to cull or subjugate the moderates.

And the centrists who represented the so-called establishment had plans to neuter everyone else while taking the nation's riches for themselves.

The war dragged on. The rules of war were held to, the Geneva Convention observed. It looked like the so-called Greatest Nation would split five ways.

Then the extremists broke the rules, and played dirty.

Finally, in the spring of the fourth year, the far-left and the far-right factions began to prevail, and to kick ass. In many ways, their policies and goals were indistinguishable. The lunatics were winning.

In Colorado, at NORAD Headquarters deep inside Cheyenne Mountain, the center-left and center-right factions called it: the barbarians had overrun the gate, and it was time to flee. Not forever, for a long while, until they could rebuild their population and military enough to return, someday, and take back the homeland. They authorized Operation Exodus.

The centrist elitists came to the same conclusion from their redoubt in Omaha. Operation Strategic Retreat was authorized.

Meanwhile, the far-right factions traveled from their headquarters in Alabama, west Texas, Idaho and west Virginia to the battered capital of Washington, while the far-leftists came to the capital from their strongholds of Portland, Berkeley, Dearborn and Manhattan. Great plans were made. The binary political system would be restored, the old party names brought back from the dead, and the 560 million citizens made to submit to whatever the new two-headed regime wished.

As the true and the figurehead architects of the New American Revolution gathered on the grounds of the shattered Capitol Hill, the rockets lifted off across the nation that spanned two continents and three worlds. 51 million people got away before the regime's military arm shut down the Exodus.

The other global powers won't let the American Diaspora flee to Luna nor Mars. Titan and Europa are decades away from being livable. Alpha Centauri, though...no one can reach them there.

On one of the ships, a special document is held under tight security. The radicals on Earth cannot take it and use it as waste paper as they had planned. Those in the Diaspora, of all genders, races, religions and creeds, rich, poor and middle-class, who believe in the best that they country was and could stil be...they appreciate that document, and the best things it represents.

On another, much larger, tourist ship, a certain statue is being rebuilt in the facility's largest body of water, not too far from the miniature Manhattan that is the ship's centerpiece. The Light of Liberty will still shine.

As the caravan approaches the passage through the Kuiper Belt, the City on a Hill is about to leave its home, perhaps for a long while.

But it will return.

[James G]

The day the Blackjack came to visit


Officially given the name ‘Vladimir Seryogin’ (the pilot killed alongside Yuri Gagarin in 1968) by the Russian Aerospace Forces, the Tupolev-160M bomber crewed by four airmen left its home base at Engels-2 – deep in the heart of the Russian Federation – and flew northwards towards the Arctic. It was on a training mission, one which would take place today alongside other Russian aircraft far from home. An airborne tanker was met over the Kola Peninsula before the Vladimir Seryogin made a turn westwards to take it out over the waters of the Barents Sea. The Norwegian Sea was overflown next with another identical aircraft just behind. There was a launch point over the Labrador Sea where there would be the mock launch of cruise missiles being carried before the pair of bombers would practice evading enemy fire and make a dash for home. On exercise in peacetime they were, yet the Vladimir Seryogin and the other Tu-160M drew attention to them. The Norwegians first then the Canadians and also the Americans had aircraft of their own in the sky. The Russians were flying through international airspace and without any hostile intentions but the air forces of those NATO countries reacted as if they were on a war mission. Such a response was welcomed though. It gave the Russian Aerospace Forces an idea of capabilities from a hostile, potential one day opponent.

Everything went as planned with the mock launch. Vladimir Seryogin was in position on time and none of those fighters coming up from NATO countries had managed to reach a possible firing situation on them. It was time now to practise evasion. Splitting apart, each bomber swept back its huge swing wings, increased speed and turned eastwards. Racing towards Britain, causing alarm with that country’s air defences – once more useful for training purposes –, the Vladimir Seryogin was meant to fly between the Scottish mainland and the Faroe Islands to get back into the Norwegian Sea. If this was wartime, there would be extensive electronic jamming done: those systems weren’t activated today less the British get a good read on them. Everything else was done as if this was real though with the pilot taking them low and even faster than before. Full power was demanded from each of the four huge engines which powered the Vladimir Seryogin.

Engine #4 exploded.

An unseen maintenance issue, one which should have been detected before the bomber left home, caused an utter (and avoidable) catastrophe. Parts of Engine #4 were at once sucked into #3. That second engine burst into flames. The aircrew aboard Vladimir Seryogin sought to save their aircraft… it was a long swim home otherwise. Fire suppression came on automatically ahead of their actions but they did everything else to try and save their aircraft. There was more damage than first realised though. When Engine #4 blew, pieces of it had ripped into the tail. Parts of the vertical stabilizer started coming off as the aircraft flew on. Dangerously unstable, the pilot took the Vladimir Seryogin higher and slowed down. He and his co-pilot fought to stop flight control being lost. Meanwhile, the navigator had his emergency maps out. He was looking at airfields to put the aircraft down should the need arise. Making it home was the intention but only a fool wouldn’t be thinking about putting down safely if it came to it. The bombardier, seated beside him behind the pilot & co-pilot, aided him in looking for somewhere that could take an aircraft of this size.

The Vladimir Seryogin couldn’t be saved. Looking out from the cockpit, the co-pilot saw that the starboard wing had also been struck by debris from the engine explosion. As he watched, parts of it were coming off in-flight. This was bad news. That wing was full of fuel! As he told the pilot this, he was cut off by that officer telling him that the fuel gauge indicator was starting to show a drop in fuel. The co-pilot began running mental calculations to see if they had enough to make it home but he was alerted by the pilot to the fact that the loss rate was increasing. More and more aviation fuel was pouring out of unseen holes. The tanks in the wings were separated into self-sealing compartments to guard against loss in battle-damage yet the fuel was still escaping.

They weren’t going to make it home.

The co-pilot, who was the senior ranking officer and thus serving as flight commander, asked the navigator for possible landing sites. As he did so, there was the beep of the radar warning receiver. He saw that the Vladimir Seryogin was being highlighted on radar with the flight computer saying that there was a British fighter jet out there. He suspected that there would likely be more than one with another deliberately not using its radar. In normal times, that would be a big deal… but this wasn’t a normal flight. Again, he called for landing options. Shannon International Airport was the first possible landing site named, on the west coast of Ireland, followed by two more ones in Scotland. Such places had a long enough runway to take the Vladimir Seryogin. From the pilot came the remark that they needed to think about ejecting rather than ‘handing the aircraft over’ to ‘hostile foreigners’. The co-pilot ignored him. This wasn’t wartime. No one back home would be happy to see this aircraft put down in the Republic of Ireland, much less the United Kingdom, but if it could be saved and later somehow returned home, that was better than losing it. Survival was in his mind too: he didn’t believe that he and the others would live through an ejection over the ocean. He made the decision and set the radio channel for that of an emergency message.

From the Vladimir Seryogin came a Mayday broadcast made in English.

Oceanic Control from Shannon replied immediately. That Irish airport was a major trans-Atlantic hub and the response wasn’t negative. The co-pilot told them that he was aboard a Russian military aircraft on exercise and had a significant in-flight emergency. He needed to put down as soon as possible due to damage and an out of control fuel leak. Shannon was prepared to take the Vladimir Seryogin. There was likewise a response from the British. The Irish beat them to the punch – just – but civilian air controllers based at Glasgow-Prestwick Airport were also prepared to take the aircraft if need be. Furthermore, coming next was a radio communication made by the RAF. Identifying himself as piloting ‘a nearby aircraft’, a Briton was in contact saying that he was coming closer, up from behind off the port side. He offered to make a visual observation of the damage incurred. Negative, the co-pilot said: that is too dangerous! Stay back the Briton was told.

The pilot began to turn to the southeast aiming to make it to Shannon and its long runway. At once, the co-pilot saw more fuel pouring out of the starboard wing. He looked back at the fuel gauge and also all the flashing red lights giving warning of leaks when there shouldn’t be. They weren’t going to make it to that Irish airport. He did the maths in his head as best as he can but knew the outcome. Shannon was too far off. The navigator understood the issue too. ‘Machrihanish’ was what he said. The pilot argued back: they couldn’t go there, not to a British military airbase. He was told by the co-pilot to concentrate on keeping them alive while the bombardier contradicted him on that matter: Machrihanish was a civilian site and not an RAF site anymore. The Vladimir Seryogin would have to put down there or else they’d all soon be in the water.

Confirming their new destination with Prestwick, the co-pilot gave a negative reply to the civilian controller there on the raised matter of whether they could make it to that airport. Machrihanish was closer and, if they were lucky, their fuel would last them to there. Prestwick was too far away. Emergency services were being dispatched to Machrihanish, Prestwick replied, but they were based at that second Scottish air facility and wouldn’t be-on hand at once. Was the co-pilot sure he couldn’t make it to Prestwick? Negative, we cannot make it! Moments later, the bombardier saw that RAF fighter. It was one of their Typhoon fighters. Told to stay away, that was being ignored. He and the other crew – even the pilot – looked around for the second Typhoon which they were sure was nearby but they couldn’t see it. The one in-sight didn’t come too close but remained annoyingly nearby. A radio call came from him where he asked whether there were any live weapons aboard the Tu-160M. The co-pilot told him to back off and not endanger the Vladimir Seryogin …without answering that question.

What was marked on the maps of the Russian Aerospace Force as ‘Machrihanish Airport’ was once RAF Machrihanish. Back during the Cold War, the British had let the Americans use it for support for the nuclear submarine operations based out of Holy Loch and also their own secretive SEAL operations. De-commissioned in the mid-1990s, it was now Campbeltown Airport. Rarely used but not deserted, the airport’s runway extended to the almost the shore on the western side of the Kintyre Peninsula: over to the east was the town after which the airport took its modern name. Emergency services were being directed towards there, British military forces too, but the Vladimir Seryogin arrived ahead of them. From out of a clear sky, slowing down with landing gear extended and wings swept forward, that Russian bomber arrived. Both the pilot and co-pilot gave it everything that had to make the best of it. They did a stellar job. Behind them, the bombardier and navigator each silently prayed (they suddenly found religion), and each man was thankful for their distant saviour. It was their fellow aircrew seated ahead of them who did all the hard work though.

NATO had long given codenames to Soviet and later Russian aircraft. The Tu-160M was a ‘Blackjack B’ under the classification system used. When the huge aircraft came to a stop at the eastern end of the long runway at Campbeltown Airport, one of the two RAF pilots in those Typhoons (just as the Russians suspected, there had been a pair of fighters) made a radio call over a secure channel back to his listening commander.

He affirmed that the bomber was down intact and therefore a Blackjack had come to visit.

Another pair of Typhoons showed up, relieving the first pair flying circles up above who were getting low on fuel, and so too did civilian emergency personnel. The RAF would have a helicopter here soon, not one with a rescue team but instead intelligence specialists. A select detachment of the British Army would show up too. The Vladimir Seryogin was a foreign warplane on the ground in the UK, coming from an unfriendly country. It was carrying weapons (it would be sometime before they were confirmed as inert) and in no state at all to fly back out of here. One heck of a diplomatic and political sh*tstorm was to be the result. Meanwhile, the four aircrew, alive and unhurt, climbed out of their aircraft and backed away for fear of a fire or explosion. This was their first time in Britain and all were sure it wasn’t going to be fun.

[stevep]

   Question is who's impersonating James?  A story about a Russia nuclear equipped a/c landing in Britain and it doesn't result in a nuclear exchange.  Something off here.

 

  Seriously good to see this doesn't go any nastier than some spilt fuel and a few nasty looks.  Albeit that as you say there's going to be a political s**t-storm brewing as a result.  The crew might find Britain a lot friendlier than returning to Russia having 'handed over' a 'modern' aircraft with nuclear weapons.

[James G]

Dec 29, 2020 10:59:11 GMT stevep said:

   Question is who's impersonating James?  A story about a Russia nuclear equipped a/c landing in Britain and it doesn't result in a nuclear exchange.  Something off here.

 

  Seriously good to see this doesn't go any nastier than some spilt fuel and a few nasty looks.  Albeit that as you say there's going to be a political s**t-storm brewing as a result.  The crew might find Britain a lot friendlier than returning to Russia having 'handed over' a 'modern' aircraft with nuclear weapons.

I heard the 'New James' is smarter and more handsome than the Old James. That could be Russian disinformation though.

Ah, no, there are no nukes aboard. That is feared but not true. Your comment about those aircrew gave me an idea though. Then I had some more ideas.
Therefore, the piece below is a (longer) follow-up to the first Blackjack one. 

[James G]

Giving the Blackjack back


When Britain’s Prime Minister was informed that the Blackjack had landed at Campbeltown Airport, he at once said that it would have to be given back to the Russians in the end. The aircraft, and its crew too, would be returned to them. Quick off the mark, the Russians were at once causing a stir about what happened. Their Ambassador in London was on his way to the Foreign Office and the Russian Foreign Minister was demanding that the UK Ambassador in Moscow make an appearance at the Foreign Ministry building there. In New York, Britain’s UN Ambassador couldn’t avoid the attention of his Russian counterpart. From out of the Russian Defence Attaché’s office in North London, their senior accredited military official from there was soon setting off for Scotland joined by the ambassador’s second from the embassy. A remark made by a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman to the media in Moscow made the accusation that the RAF had ‘forced down’ a Russian aircraft which was conducting a peaceful training mission and the aircrew had been ‘kidnapped’. The Prime Minister waited for the Russian President to call him. It was quite the wait. Perhaps that dictator in Moscow was expecting that he would make the first call? If that was the case, it was a foolish hope. The Prime Minister held his nerve and, finally, there was contact from the Kremlin. Through translators, the two men had a long conversation about the fate of the Blackjack and what had happened with regards to the accident and emergency landing. Bluster and accusations came, met by a cool and calm response. Agreement eventually came. Britain would return the aircraft and those who’d been aboard. Russia would cut out the over-the-top response and act in a grown up manner. A meeting in Downing Street between ministers, officials and senior uniformed personnel took place afterwards. Presented with a course of action to take, one which first raised his eyebrows and then brought a smile to his lips, the Prime Minister gave his consent for what his Secretary of Defence proposed.

The hastily-conceived Operation Minotaur was given the green light. Brigadier Stuart Carter, head of the Special Projects Desk at Defence Intelligence, went to the Kintyre Peninsula to lead that on the ground there. The Russians would be getting what was theirs back… but they were going to be driven mad by Carter and what he would do with Operation Minotaur in the meantime.


Campbeltown Airport had been closed by Police Scotland working in conjunction with the Ministry of Defence and the Civilian Aviation Authority. Carter arrived by helicopter – a British Army one – and wasn’t stopped by the police from getting inside like the Russian Defence Attaché was. He assumed full responsibility for everything to do with the Blackjack.

The aircrew were the first issue. The four men were all uninjured. They fled from their aircraft after landing for fear that it might catch fire and hadn’t been allowed to get back inside. One of them, the co-pilot, had tried to do so but had been stopped from doing so. Carter spoke with the police officer who had arrived early on-scene and was responsible for that. He congratulated the man. The sergeant, a long-serving officer with Police Scotland, said that he thought that that Russian wanted to go back and destroy what would be evidence in an accident inquiry. Carter clapped him on the back and said to the sergeant that the matter of ‘health and safety’ was important here. He said so with a smile and then the sergeant caught on to what Carter meant. They shared a laugh. Health and safety was a reasoning which he intended to exploit himself. That was for later. The fate of those who had flown the Blackjack here was the priority.

Carter confirmed that each man had seen a doctor to check on their physical well-being. He made sure that the – impatient and verbally aggressive – Defence Attaché remained unable to see them while he put each of the four in front of two of those who’d come up from London with him. One was an officer with MI-6 and the other was an official from the Home Office with an immigration brief. Carter had the Russian-speaking spook from MI-6 ask each man if he wished to seek political asylum in the United Kingdom. Perhaps one of these Russians was fleeing from persecution and that would have been part of the reason why they landed their aircraft here. As expected, each of the aircrew from the Blackjack denied that this was the case at all. Two of them were rather angry at such a suggestion. Carter hadn’t thought it would work – but he had the immigration man here – and it was never meant to. He wanted to see the fallout from when the Defence Attaché found out. There would be other, unseen consequences down the line too with this within the Russian Aerospace Forces once they found out back home that these questions had been asked. They would hopefully shoot themselves in the foot investigating that possibility on their end and be weary of whom they sent out flying their bombers. The effects from a few questions asked here would go on for some time back in Russia, affecting morale and capability.

Carter finally granted access to the aircrew to the Russians who’d come up from London. There was a consular official from the embassy with the Defence Attaché and it was insisted by Carter that there was a Briton who could speak Russian who was with them when the officials met with the aircrew. Feet-stomping aplenty came from the Defence Attaché when he heard about this condition of Carter’s and he made the open accusation of ‘kidnap’. Carter acted offended, personally so. He wouldn’t budge though. The meeting took place in one of the airport buildings here at Campbeltown where the diplomats got to see their people. Then Carter had the Defence Attaché informed that the aircrew needed to remain available to assist into the investigation underway with regards to the Blackjack’s landing. He needed them to stay in Britain rather than at once fly home. The Defence Attaché hit the roof. Carter had been given permission back in London to keep them for seventy-two hours at the most: he was to disregard anything said in the media or by anyone else on that timescale as it would all be posturing. He had three whole days to keep them. He explained that the Civilian Aviation Authority and the Military Aviation Authority (the latter a semi-independent agency of the Ministry of Defence) both had questions they needed answering with the regard to the air accident which was the landing made here in Scotland by this Russian aircraft. There were no words to adequately describe how mad the Defence Attaché went. Carter was keeping those four aircrew though. He’d put them in front of questioners, allowing for the Russians to have people there too, but they were staying. It was a legal requirement that they be available and, as he explained to the Defence Attaché, Carter was bound to act within British laws on the serious matter of an emergency landing made by a foreign military aircraft at a civilian airport in the UK. Moreover, there were international agreements to this affect… ones which the Russian Federation was a signatory to. His own hands were tied, he said with the most innocent face he could muster, by the unfortunate matter of bureaucracy!

Leaving the Russians and the diplomats, Carter’s attention moved next to the aircraft at the eastern end of the runway. He knew at once that it would never fly again. The damage was too extensive, beyond what a repair job could do. There were RAF people who were here – under his command with them being told they were part of Operation Minotaur – and a Group Captain currently serving with RAF Intelligence at once agreed with this assessment. The Blackjack was just too badly damaged for the Russians to ever get it airborne again. It could be stripped for parts but there was no way they would ever get this airframe in the skies again not with all the damage which it had incurred during its final flight and the last landing it would ever make. It was a beautiful aircraft despite all that damage. Carter knew that the Russian’s unofficially called the Tupolev-160M the ‘White Swan’ due to its graceful appearance and colour. This was one bashed-up bird, that Group Captain remarked. Two of the four engines were a burnt-out wreck. The tail structure had holes in it and was missing pieces. A third of the starboard wing was gone and the fuel tanks in them torn open. All of the landing gear was bent out of shape and Carter was surprised it had yet to collapse under the weight of the fuselage. The rear fuselage, near to those two destroyed engines, was torn open as well with a lot of damage from one engine exploding and the second catching fire. This was the damage which Carter could see with his own eyes. He was informed of more structural and mechanical issues which couldn’t be seen. There were a lot of them, many the result of what he was told was shoddy maintenance.

There were RAF personnel all over the aircraft. Half of them were intelligence people while the rest were examining the Blackjack with regards to it capability for flight. Carter’s background in uniform ahead of service with Defence Intelligence was with the British Army’s Signal Corps before he moved to their Intelligence Corps. He had some understanding of aircraft operations on a technical level though it wasn’t his particular field. Regardless, while a layman when it came to the terms being used, he easily grasped what he was being told. This aircraft was a write-off. He was happy with that. If there was any chance that the Blackjack would be flown out of here, that might make his Operation Minotaur task more difficult. The situation could be resolved easier if the Russians were able to fly it home. His mission brief was to make things difficult though and this was only good news. Carter issued instructions that those complying the official report on the airworthy status of this aircraft include everything in their report. All problems that they could find, they were to get them in the report. The Russians might be foolish enough to try but Carter wanted to present them with all the reasons why it would not be possible. London would likely release these details to the media at a later date. As many interested parties who were poking their noses in being presented with the facts as to why that couldn’t be done would be welcomed to add their voices in the media. Carter would give them plenty to use. Even with a new wing, a new tail, new engines and a massive patch up, all somehow fitted to this aircraft while it was here – that was just never going to be allowed to happen –, it wasn’t going to be flown home to Russia from out of Campbeltown.

Like that police officer who’d done so well when making the initial response, Carter believed that the Russian airman who had been stopped from returning to his aircraft had wanted to destroy evidence. It wouldn’t have been things which would be needed for an accident investigation though. No, Carter thought that it would instead have been secrets. Those who’d flown the Blackjack here had run from the wreck which was their aircraft in fear of it going up in flames and not done as they should have upon landing. There would have been paperwork left behind. The communications equipment and electronic systems aboard would all be fitted with a self-destruct charge so it wouldn’t all be useful to an enemy if captured in wartime. His suspicions were confirmed by those intelligence personnel under his command he had tasked to get inside the aircraft. They found maps (the markings on them were of importance from an intelligence point of view) and that none of the equipment had been destroyed. A self-destruct system – a small demolition charge – was being worked upon by explosives experts before a proper examination of the equipment could be done. Carter didn’t rush them on that. It would be foolish to do so. Away from the cockpit, below the fuselage so precariously held up by the bent landing gear, were attached electronic pods. That was all jamming gear, Carter knew. It would be secret stuff that the Russians would be holding their heads in their hands at the knowledge that he had people taking a look at right this moment.

There were two internal bomb bays. The Blackjack was capable of carrying external ordnance under the wings too but the pylons there were empty. It was in the bomb bays were the missiles were found. The aircrew had said nothing about them when asked and the Defence Attaché had said to Carter that yes, there were missiles aboard, but no, they weren’t live weapons. This was a nuclear-capable bomber. Carter knew that before Operation Minotaur came into being, the Prime Minister had to extensively press the Russian President over the matter of whether there were any nuclear munitions aboard. A demand for absolute assurance that there were no nukes aboard had been sought. Moscow had said that there weren’t. Carter’s weapons specialists – more RAF personnel – were now inside those bomb bays. They’d used detection equipment first to search for radiological particles from afar then gone in once receiving negative results. Just as the Defence Attaché said, there were no live munitions of a conventional nature either. Twelve cruise missiles were within the Blackjack but each was an inert training round. They hadn’t been launched during the exercise which the aircraft was on. Carter could only speculate that this was about making the mock attack run with the right weight and giving the aircrew a feel for carrying them rather than firing inert rounds. All that aside, there was much value to having these missiles in British custody even for a temporary period. They were designed to fly exactly as their real-life counterparts, including nuclear ones, were meant to. The RAF was about to get a real understanding of the capability of these missiles in this once in a lifetime opportunity to do so. The orders for Carter’s implementation of Operation Minotaur weren’t just about making the Russians squirm and lose their cool: he was to oversee the intelligence operation that had been gifted to Britain by this aircraft landing like it had done.

It had been eleven o’clock in the morning when the Blackjack made it’s landing: Carter had arrived after five that evening. He was going to be spending much time here and so would all those under his command. There was no rush. Once darkness came, the work around the aircraft would have to be suspended due to light constraints. Electrical lighting could have been brought in but Carter purposely didn’t have that done. For health and safety reasons, he ordered a suspension of work being done around the aircraft until the next morning. He made sure that the Defence Attaché got word of this, knowing that the man would see through the game which was being played. Predictably, there was more verbal outrage. Carter had all his answers ready though. Operation Minotaur was a psychological tasking: this is how it had been explained to him upon assuming the role that he had. He was to make the Russians mad all while providing reasonable excuses for everything he was doing… but to let them see through it all too. The Defence Attaché had nothing of substance to say though. He got mad because he’d been frustrated all day and this was just more British games. Carter asked him whether he wanted to see British military personnel and civilian investigators endanger themselves? What was the rush? This aircraft was never flying home.

At first light the next day, taking their time with the excuse that there were risk assessments to be completed first – bureaucracy is a pain, isn’t it? –, Carter had work done to make sure that the weight of the fuselage wasn’t going to cause the landing gear to collapse. He had emplaced underneath the Blackjack large pneumatic jacks to make everything safe. The Defence Attaché was invited to watch that, starting to once more complain to Carter about the holding of the aircrew against their will when they had concerned families back home etc., when he changed moaning to screams of outrage. On cue, once Carter had the man watching, the missiles were removed from the bomb bays and taken away. There was a hangar when they would be stored. This was for health and safety reasons, Carter told him. The infuriated diplomat (he was a spook too) repeated the assertion that those were inert training rounds but Carter replied that Britain needed to be sure on that. What if someone back home in Russia had made a paperwork mix-up and sent it out with live rounds? These things happened. He related the tale of the Americans doing that only a few years ago with live nuclear weapons on their bombers during a transfer flight. The Defence Attaché didn’t believe him but it was a true story. Once more, Carter was playing the game he was sent here to undertake.

The diplomat shut up eventually. Carter said nothing more either. The two of them, with a Russian interpreter behind them (Carter did speak Russian but had yet to here because he kept that back), just watched the process of once more the safety of those here near the Blackjack taking precedence. There were investigators who were soon at work. Carter waited for the Defence Attaché to start complaining about them and he mentally rehearsed his responses to what would come. It was a legal requirement, one he would be bound by, to allow for an accident investigation to take place. It would be one which would go on for a while too with the efforts made by Operation Minotaur to slow that down in every way which Carter and his people could conceive. Although he wouldn’t accurately predict all that would happen as time went on, Carter was of the belief this morning that this could all go on for some time. Not days, not weeks. It would likely be months. Russia would get its Blackjack back, and everything from within it including those missiles, but the aircraft would have to be taken part here – safety – and either flown or shipped home in pieces rather than as one complete airframe. He would do everything to slow that down, knowing that he had the political coverage to do so. That was what those in London wanted and what he was glad to be here overseeing. He smiled at the thought of driving the Defence Attaché mad for the next couple of months.

[gillan1220]

Original post here. This is part of a larger timeline I am working on in the other forum.

The Global T-Virus Pandemic

The Umbrella Corporation thought they'd contained the infection. Well, they were wrong. Raccoon City was just the beginning. Within weeks, the T-virus had consumed the United States. Within months, the world. The virus didn't just wipe out human life. Lakes and rivers dried up, forests became deserts and whole continents were reduced to nothing more than barren wastelands. Slowly but surely, the Earth began to wither and die. What few survivors there were learned to keep on the move. We avoided major cities. If we stopped anyplace too long, they would be drawn to us. Only a few at first, but then more and more. A never-ending army of undead. For those of us left, staying on the road seemed the only way to stay alive.

- Alice (Project Alice/Janus Prospero)

The U.S. military fought the zombies till the end, until much of them was overrun. So far, the Army and the Marine Corps took severe casaulties as they fought the infected on the ground. The Air Force, while not suffering much casaulties, were without bases to operate as both air force bases and civilian airports were overrun with the undead. Several air
craft ranging from the F-16 Falcon to the C-130 Hercules to the mighty B-52, B-1, and B-2 bombers remained abandoned in their hangars. The U.S. Navy perhaps was the most unaffected branch, as most warships were deployed at sea. Though it did suffer moderate casaulties as some warships got compromised and majority of naval bases and air stations lost to the undead, it came out 70% strong. Alaska, Hawaii, and the territories in the Atlantic and the Pacific remained unaffected. Several warships evacuated here. The largest FOB of the U.S. Navy was the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Ceiba, Puerto Rico and Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii. Notably, the USS Nimitz and the USS Ronald Reagan along with several warships and Coast Guard vessels formed the largest refugee camp in Alaska and the Aleutians. They were soon joined by some elements of the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force.

As the entire United States was engulfed in chaos, countless refugees try to escape into both Canada and the United States. On strict orders not to accept refugees, several were shot and killed. However, due to the open borders policy of Canada and the United States, several infected refugees managed to slip through the net and reanimate elsewhere, thus bringing the T-Virus into Canada. Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary, Halifax, and Vancouver became slaughterhouses. The Canadian Armed Forces were to spread out thin to contain the outbreaks. Just like their southern neighbor, the country collapsed. Several surviving government officials, refugees, and military personnel retreated to Yukon and the northern provinces, where it is isolated and unlikely for the undead to pick up the scent.

The Mexican Federales imposed a "shoot-on-sight" policy as both undead and uninfected American citizens tried to cross at border crossings. While it did work at first, more and more undead kept piling up. With ammunition low in supply, the Federales were overrun as the undead simply waded via the Rio Grande River and the military took over. Yet, it was not enough. Mexico then was overrun with the undead, with few survivors and cartel gangs holding up in the Aztec and Mayan structures, Spanish fortress, and the dense jungles of the region. The virus would then take over Central and South America in a matter of 27 days from the first outbreak in the United States.

In an ironic twist of the situation, the communist island of Cuba initially survived intact thanks to its system. However, several refugees from the U.S. and South America came to Cuba by sea in boats, tugboats, cruise ships, and makeshift rafts made up of trash. Fidel Castro ordered these "boat people" to be killed. Cuban Revolutionary Navy gunboats and patrol craft then began sinking these refugee flotilla, killing several infected and uninfected. However, they were too plentiful to handle as the widely overextended Cuban Revolutionary Navy ran out of ammunition and fuel. The first infected arrived in Cuba and the island was doomed. With no help coming from Russia, the country then collapsed. Only the U.S. Naval base in Guantanamo Bay survived. Later, the remaining U.S. military personnel would evacuate the now-useless stronghold into their Atlantic territories which survived.

The T-Virus would then reach Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia all throughout. Despite the mobilization of the militaries and security, it was not enough to stop its onslaught. Europe became a wasteland as the iconic footages of hordes of undead roaming the streets of London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, and elsewhere were seen just before the news channels cut. India and China became Hell on Earth as overpopulation took its tall. Both countries attempted to use their nuclear weapons on cities full of undead, but did nothing to stop the ever increasing hordes. Several survivors managed to hold up into the Himalayas. However, Indian and Pakistani forces clashed for control over Kashmir, with the Indians claiming victory. Tibet also declared independence and remained safe throughout the Global T-Virus Pandemic as it was protected by the Tibetal Plateau. The rest of China was not so fortunate. The Russian Far East also held survivors coming from Japan, including what remained of the U.S. 7th Fleet. It would then evacuate all together to Alaska which along with Hawaii remained safe from the hordes of undead by virtue of isolation, linking up with the Nimitz and the Reagan there.

As Australia and New Zealand fell to the T-Virus, humanity then accepted that it had enter a new dark age as the world was overrun with the undead. Only isolated regions of the world with harsh terrain or surrounded by miles of ocean survived.

While this occurred, the Umbrella Corporation survived intact as it moved its vital assets to underground bunkers around the world. They would then try to find a solution for the T-Virus pandemic, but all research would prove futile for the next five years. Food and manpower shortages occurred.

Elsewhere, the Raccoon City survivors group formed a "strike team" composed of former military personnel, police officers, and armed militias in dispatching the undead. Intially successful in their first operations, the hordes of undead were too much and the "strike team" was dissolved as members either died or went their separate ways. Jill Valentine went alone and as a result would be captured by the Umbrella Corporation to be used as a subject for their supersoldier program. Alice would also go alone after she murdered Angela Ashford in cold blood on the control of Dr. Alexander Isaac's via the chip implanted in her brain. Carlos Oliveira and Lloyd Jefferson Wayne would then be found by Claire Redfield's convoy where they would remain for the next five years.

The population of the world as of 2002 was pegged at 6.5 million. Five years into the outbreak, by 2007, the population would drop to 1.5 million humans.

[stevep]

Dec 29, 2020 19:52:14 GMT James G said:

Giving the Blackjack back - very slowly


When Britain’s Prime Minister was informed that the Blackjack had landed at Campbeltown Airport, he at once said that it would have to be given back to the Russians in the end. The aircraft, and its crew too, would be returned to them. Quick off the mark, the Russians were at once causing a stir about what happened. Their Ambassador in London was on his way to the Foreign Office and the Russian Foreign Minister was demanding that the UK Ambassador in Moscow make an appearance at the Foreign Ministry building there. In New York, Britain’s UN Ambassador couldn’t avoid the attention of his Russian counterpart. From out of the Russian Defence Attaché’s office in North London, their senior accredited military official from there was soon setting off for Scotland joined by the ambassador’s second from the embassy. A remark made by a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman to the media in Moscow made the accusation that the RAF had ‘forced down’ a Russian aircraft which was conducting a peaceful training mission and the aircrew had been ‘kidnapped’. The Prime Minister waited for the Russian President to call him. It was quite the wait. Perhaps that dictator in Moscow was expecting that he would make the first call? If that was the case, it was a foolish hope. The Prime Minister held his nerve and, finally, there was contact from the Kremlin. Through translators, the two men had a long conversation about the fate of the Blackjack and what had happened with regards to the accident and emergency landing. Bluster and accusations came, met by a cool and calm response. Agreement eventually came. Britain would return the aircraft and those who’d been aboard. Russia would cut out the over-the-top response and act in a grown up manner. A meeting in Downing Street between ministers, officials and senior uniformed personnel took place afterwards. Presented with a course of action to take, one which first raised his eyebrows and then brought a smile to his lips, the Prime Minister gave his consent for what his Secretary of Defence proposed.

The hastily-conceived Operation Minotaur was given the green light. Brigadier Stuart Carter, head of the Special Projects Desk at Defence Intelligence, went to the Kintyre Peninsula to lead that on the ground there. The Russians would be getting what was theirs back… but they were going to be driven mad by Carter and what he would do with Operation Minotaur in the meantime.


Campbeltown Airport had been closed by Police Scotland working in conjunction with the Ministry of Defence and the Civilian Aviation Authority. Carter arrived by helicopter – a British Army one – and wasn’t stopped by the police from getting inside like the Russian Defence Attaché was. He assumed full responsibility for everything to do with the Blackjack.

The aircrew were the first issue. The four men were all uninjured. They fled from their aircraft after landing for fear that it might catch fire and hadn’t been allowed to get back inside. One of them, the co-pilot, had tried to do so but had been stopped from doing so. Carter spoke with the police officer who had arrived early on-scene and was responsible for that. He congratulated the man. The sergeant, a long-serving officer with Police Scotland, said that he thought that that Russian wanted to go back and destroy what would be evidence in an accident inquiry. Carter clapped him on the back and said to the sergeant that the matter of ‘health and safety’ was important here. He said so with a smile and then the sergeant caught on to what Carter meant. They shared a laugh. Health and safety was a reasoning which he intended to exploit himself. That was for later. The fate of those who had flown the Blackjack here was the priority.

Carter confirmed that each man had seen a doctor to check on their physical well-being. He made sure that the – impatient and verbally aggressive – Defence Attaché remained unable to see them while he put each of the four in front of two of those who’d come up from London with him. One was an officer with MI-6 and the other was an official from the Home Office with an immigration brief. Carter had the Russian-speaking spook from MI-6 ask each man if he wished to seek political asylum in the United Kingdom. Perhaps one of these Russians was fleeing from persecution and that would have been part of the reason why they landed their aircraft here. As expected, each of the aircrew from the Blackjack denied that this was the case at all. Two of them were rather angry at such a suggestion. Carter hadn’t thought it would work – but he had the immigration man here – and it was never meant to. He wanted to see the fallout from when the Defence Attaché found out. There would be other, unseen consequences down the line too with this within the Russian Aerospace Forces once they found out back home that these questions had been asked. They would hopefully shoot themselves in the foot investigating that possibility on their end and be weary of whom they sent out flying their bombers. The effects from a few questions asked here would go on for some time back in Russia, affecting morale and capability.

Carter finally granted access to the aircrew to the Russians who’d come up from London. There was a consular official from the embassy with the Defence Attaché and it was insisted by Carter that there was a Briton who could speak Russian who was with them when the officials met with the aircrew. Feet-stomping aplenty came from the Defence Attaché when he heard about this condition of Carter’s and he made the open accusation of ‘kidnap’. Carter acted offended, personally so. He wouldn’t budge though. The meeting took place in one of the airport buildings here at Campbeltown where the diplomats got to see their people. Then Carter had the Defence Attaché informed that the aircrew needed to remain available to assist into the investigation underway with regards to the Blackjack’s landing. He needed them to stay in Britain rather than at once fly home. The Defence Attaché hit the roof. Carter had been given permission back in London to keep them for seventy-two hours at the most: he was to disregard anything said in the media or by anyone else on that timescale as it would all be posturing. He had three whole days to keep them. He explained that the Civilian Aviation Authority and the Military Aviation Authority (the latter a semi-independent agency of the Ministry of Defence) both had questions they needed answering with the regard to the air accident which was the landing made here in Scotland by this Russian aircraft. There were no words to adequately describe how mad the Defence Attaché went. Carter was keeping those four aircrew though. He’d put them in front of questioners, allowing for the Russians to have people there too, but they were staying. It was a legal requirement that they be available and, as he explained to the Defence Attaché, Carter was bound to act within British laws on the serious matter of an emergency landing made by a foreign military aircraft at a civilian airport in the UK. Moreover, there were international agreements to this affect… ones which the Russian Federation was a signatory to. His own hands were tied, he said with the most innocent face he could muster, by the unfortunate matter of bureaucracy!

Leaving the Russians and the diplomats, Carter’s attention moved next to the aircraft at the eastern end of the runway. He knew at once that it would never fly again. The damage was too extensive, beyond what a repair job could do. There were RAF people who were here – under his command with them being told they were part of Operation Minotaur – and a Group Captain currently serving with RAF Intelligence at once agreed with this assessment. The Blackjack was just too badly damaged for the Russians to ever get it airborne again. It could be stripped for parts but there was no way they would ever get this airframe in the skies again not with all the damage which it had incurred during its final flight and the last landing it would ever make. It was a beautiful aircraft despite all that damage. Carter knew that the Russian’s unofficially called the Tupolev-160M the ‘White Swan’ due to its graceful appearance and colour. This was one bashed-up bird, that Group Captain remarked. Two of the four engines were a burnt-out wreck. The tail structure had holes in it and was missing pieces. A third of the starboard wing was gone and the fuel tanks in them torn open. All of the landing gear was bent out of shape and Carter was surprised it had yet to collapse under the weight of the fuselage. The rear fuselage, near to those two destroyed engines, was torn open as well with a lot of damage from one engine exploding and the second catching fire. This was the damage which Carter could see with his own eyes. He was informed of more structural and mechanical issues which couldn’t be seen. There were a lot of them, many the result of what he was told was shoddy maintenance.

There were RAF personnel all over the aircraft. Half of them were intelligence people while the rest were examining the Blackjack with regards to it capability for flight. Carter’s background in uniform ahead of service with Defence Intelligence was with the British Army’s Signal Corps before he moved to their Intelligence Corps. He had some understanding of aircraft operations on a technical level though it wasn’t his particular field. Regardless, while a layman when it came to the terms being used, he easily grasped what he was being told. This aircraft was a write-off. He was happy with that. If there was any chance that the Blackjack would be flown out of here, that might make his Operation Minotaur task more difficult. The situation could be resolved easier if the Russians were able to fly it home. His mission brief was to make things difficult though and this was only good news. Carter issued instructions that those complying the official report on the airworthy status of this aircraft include everything in their report. All problems that they could find, they were to get them in the report. The Russians might be foolish enough to try but Carter wanted to present them with all the reasons why it would not be possible. London would likely release these details to the media at a later date. As many interested parties who were poking their noses in being presented with the facts as to why that couldn’t be done would be welcomed to add their voices in the media. Carter would give them plenty to use. Even with a new wing, a new tail, new engines and a massive patch up, all somehow fitted to this aircraft while it was here – that was just never going to be allowed to happen –, it wasn’t going to be flown home to Russia from out of Campbeltown.

Like that police officer who’d done so well when making the initial response, Carter believed that the Russian airman who had been stopped from returning to his aircraft had wanted to destroy evidence. It wouldn’t have been things which would be needed for an accident investigation though. No, Carter thought that it would instead have been secrets. Those who’d flown the Blackjack here had run from the wreck which was their aircraft in fear of it going up in flames and not done as they should have upon landing. There would have been paperwork left behind. The communications equipment and electronic systems aboard would all be fitted with a self-destruct charge so it wouldn’t all be useful to an enemy if captured in wartime. His suspicions were confirmed by those intelligence personnel under his command he had tasked to get inside the aircraft. They found maps (the markings on them were of importance from an intelligence point of view) and that none of the equipment had been destroyed. A self-destruct system – a small demolition charge – was being worked upon by explosives experts before a proper examination of the equipment could be done. Carter didn’t rush them on that. It would be foolish to do so. Away from the cockpit, below the fuselage so precariously held up by the bent landing gear, were attached electronic pods. That was all jamming gear, Carter knew. It would be secret stuff that the Russians would be holding their heads in their hands at the knowledge that he had people taking a look at right this moment.

There were two internal bomb bays. The Blackjack was capable of carrying external ordnance under the wings too but the pylons there were empty. It was in the bomb bays were the missiles were found. The aircrew had said nothing about them when asked and the Defence Attaché had said to Carter that yes, there were missiles aboard, but no, they weren’t live weapons. This was a nuclear-capable bomber. Carter knew that before Operation Minotaur came into being, the Prime Minister had to extensively press the Russian President over the matter of whether there were any nuclear munitions aboard. A demand for absolute assurance that there were no nukes aboard had been sought. Moscow had said that there weren’t. Carter’s weapons specialists – more RAF personnel – were now inside those bomb bays. They’d used detection equipment first to search for radiological particles from afar then gone in once receiving negative results. Just as the Defence Attaché said, there were no live munitions of a conventional nature either. Twelve cruise missiles were within the Blackjack but each was an inert training round. They hadn’t been launched during the exercise which the aircraft was on. Carter could only speculate that this was about making the mock attack run with the right weight and giving the aircrew a feel for carrying them rather than firing inert rounds. All that aside, there was much value to having these missiles in British custody even for a temporary period. They were designed to fly exactly as their real-life counterparts, including nuclear ones, were meant to. The RAF was about to get a real understanding of the capability of these missiles in this once in a lifetime opportunity to do so. The orders for Carter’s implementation of Operation Minotaur weren’t just about making the Russians squirm and lose their cool: he was to oversee the intelligence operation that had been gifted to Britain by this aircraft landing like it had done.

It had been eleven o’clock in the morning when the Blackjack made it’s landing: Carter had arrived after five that evening. He was going to be spending much time here and so would all those under his command. There was no rush. Once darkness came, the work around the aircraft would have to be suspended due to light constraints. Electrical lighting could have been brought in but Carter purposely didn’t have that done. For health and safety reasons, he ordered a suspension of work being done around the aircraft until the next morning. He made sure that the Defence Attaché got word of this, knowing that the man would see through the game which was being played. Predictably, there was more verbal outrage. Carter had all his answers ready though. Operation Minotaur was a psychological tasking: this is how it had been explained to him upon assuming the role that he had. He was to make the Russians mad all while providing reasonable excuses for everything he was doing… but to let them see through it all too. The Defence Attaché had nothing of substance to say though. He got mad because he’d been frustrated all day and this was just more British games. Carter asked him whether he wanted to see British military personnel and civilian investigators endanger themselves? What was the rush? This aircraft was never flying home.

At first light the next day, taking their time with the excuse that there were risk assessments to be completed first – bureaucracy is a pain, isn’t it? –, Carter had work done to make sure that the weight of the fuselage wasn’t going to cause the landing gear to collapse. He had emplaced underneath the Blackjack large pneumatic jacks to make everything safe. The Defence Attaché was invited to watch that, starting to once more complain to Carter about the holding of the aircrew against their will when they had concerned families back home etc., when he changed moaning to screams of outrage. On cue, once Carter had the man watching, the missiles were removed from the bomb bays and taken away. There was a hangar when they would be stored. This was for health and safety reasons, Carter told him. The infuriated diplomat (he was a spook too) repeated the assertion that those were inert training rounds but Carter replied that Britain needed to be sure on that. What if someone back home in Russia had made a paperwork mix-up and sent it out with live rounds? These things happened. He related the tale of the Americans doing that only a few years ago with live nuclear weapons on their bombers during a transfer flight. The Defence Attaché didn’t believe him but it was a true story. Once more, Carter was playing the game he was sent here to undertake.

The diplomat shut up eventually. Carter said nothing more either. The two of them, with a Russian interpreter behind them (Carter did speak Russian but had yet to here because he kept that back), just watched the process of once more the safety of those here near the Blackjack taking precedence. There were investigators who were soon at work. Carter waited for the Defence Attaché to start complaining about them and he mentally rehearsed his responses to what would come. It was a legal requirement, one he would be bound by, to allow for an accident investigation to take place. It would be one which would go on for a while too with the efforts made by Operation Minotaur to slow that down in every way which Carter and his people could conceive. Although he wouldn’t accurately predict all that would happen as time went on, Carter was of the belief this morning that this could all go on for some time. Not days, not weeks. It would likely be months. Russia would get its Blackjack back, and everything from within it including those missiles, but the aircraft would have to be taken part here – safety – and either flown or shipped home in pieces rather than as one complete airframe. He would do everything to slow that down, knowing that he had the political coverage to do so. That was what those in London wanted and what he was glad to be here overseeing. He smiled at the thought of driving the Defence Attaché mad for the next couple of months.

  James

  I like it.  Could be bad for the crew when they do get home.  Both because of the immigration questions and because they failed to destroy items on the aircraft.  Plus simply the authorities in Moscow will be in a rage and want someone to take their anger out about.

  As well as the games with the Russians there's going to be a valuable intelligence bonus here as you mention.  Plus the fact the Russians were only using training rounds on those missiles could be useful infp as it suggests their less aggressive than they often try and appear to be.

  Definitely like this PM you have here.

  Steve

[James G]

Dec 30, 2020 12:14:40 GMT stevep said:

Dec 29, 2020 19:52:14 GMT James G said:

Giving the Blackjack back - very slowly


When Britain’s Prime Minister was informed that the Blackjack had landed at Campbeltown Airport, he at once said that it would have to be given back to the Russians in the end. The aircraft, and its crew too, would be returned to them. Quick off the mark, the Russians were at once causing a stir about what happened. Their Ambassador in London was on his way to the Foreign Office and the Russian Foreign Minister was demanding that the UK Ambassador in Moscow make an appearance at the Foreign Ministry building there. In New York, Britain’s UN Ambassador couldn’t avoid the attention of his Russian counterpart. From out of the Russian Defence Attaché’s office in North London, their senior accredited military official from there was soon setting off for Scotland joined by the ambassador’s second from the embassy. A remark made by a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman to the media in Moscow made the accusation that the RAF had ‘forced down’ a Russian aircraft which was conducting a peaceful training mission and the aircrew had been ‘kidnapped’. The Prime Minister waited for the Russian President to call him. It was quite the wait. Perhaps that dictator in Moscow was expecting that he would make the first call? If that was the case, it was a foolish hope. The Prime Minister held his nerve and, finally, there was contact from the Kremlin. Through translators, the two men had a long conversation about the fate of the Blackjack and what had happened with regards to the accident and emergency landing. Bluster and accusations came, met by a cool and calm response. Agreement eventually came. Britain would return the aircraft and those who’d been aboard. Russia would cut out the over-the-top response and act in a grown up manner. A meeting in Downing Street between ministers, officials and senior uniformed personnel took place afterwards. Presented with a course of action to take, one which first raised his eyebrows and then brought a smile to his lips, the Prime Minister gave his consent for what his Secretary of Defence proposed.

The hastily-conceived Operation Minotaur was given the green light. Brigadier Stuart Carter, head of the Special Projects Desk at Defence Intelligence, went to the Kintyre Peninsula to lead that on the ground there. The Russians would be getting what was theirs back… but they were going to be driven mad by Carter and what he would do with Operation Minotaur in the meantime.


Campbeltown Airport had been closed by Police Scotland working in conjunction with the Ministry of Defence and the Civilian Aviation Authority. Carter arrived by helicopter – a British Army one – and wasn’t stopped by the police from getting inside like the Russian Defence Attaché was. He assumed full responsibility for everything to do with the Blackjack.

The aircrew were the first issue. The four men were all uninjured. They fled from their aircraft after landing for fear that it might catch fire and hadn’t been allowed to get back inside. One of them, the co-pilot, had tried to do so but had been stopped from doing so. Carter spoke with the police officer who had arrived early on-scene and was responsible for that. He congratulated the man. The sergeant, a long-serving officer with Police Scotland, said that he thought that that Russian wanted to go back and destroy what would be evidence in an accident inquiry. Carter clapped him on the back and said to the sergeant that the matter of ‘health and safety’ was important here. He said so with a smile and then the sergeant caught on to what Carter meant. They shared a laugh. Health and safety was a reasoning which he intended to exploit himself. That was for later. The fate of those who had flown the Blackjack here was the priority.

Carter confirmed that each man had seen a doctor to check on their physical well-being. He made sure that the – impatient and verbally aggressive – Defence Attaché remained unable to see them while he put each of the four in front of two of those who’d come up from London with him. One was an officer with MI-6 and the other was an official from the Home Office with an immigration brief. Carter had the Russian-speaking spook from MI-6 ask each man if he wished to seek political asylum in the United Kingdom. Perhaps one of these Russians was fleeing from persecution and that would have been part of the reason why they landed their aircraft here. As expected, each of the aircrew from the Blackjack denied that this was the case at all. Two of them were rather angry at such a suggestion. Carter hadn’t thought it would work – but he had the immigration man here – and it was never meant to. He wanted to see the fallout from when the Defence Attaché found out. There would be other, unseen consequences down the line too with this within the Russian Aerospace Forces once they found out back home that these questions had been asked. They would hopefully shoot themselves in the foot investigating that possibility on their end and be weary of whom they sent out flying their bombers. The effects from a few questions asked here would go on for some time back in Russia, affecting morale and capability.

Carter finally granted access to the aircrew to the Russians who’d come up from London. There was a consular official from the embassy with the Defence Attaché and it was insisted by Carter that there was a Briton who could speak Russian who was with them when the officials met with the aircrew. Feet-stomping aplenty came from the Defence Attaché when he heard about this condition of Carter’s and he made the open accusation of ‘kidnap’. Carter acted offended, personally so. He wouldn’t budge though. The meeting took place in one of the airport buildings here at Campbeltown where the diplomats got to see their people. Then Carter had the Defence Attaché informed that the aircrew needed to remain available to assist into the investigation underway with regards to the Blackjack’s landing. He needed them to stay in Britain rather than at once fly home. The Defence Attaché hit the roof. Carter had been given permission back in London to keep them for seventy-two hours at the most: he was to disregard anything said in the media or by anyone else on that timescale as it would all be posturing. He had three whole days to keep them. He explained that the Civilian Aviation Authority and the Military Aviation Authority (the latter a semi-independent agency of the Ministry of Defence) both had questions they needed answering with the regard to the air accident which was the landing made here in Scotland by this Russian aircraft. There were no words to adequately describe how mad the Defence Attaché went. Carter was keeping those four aircrew though. He’d put them in front of questioners, allowing for the Russians to have people there too, but they were staying. It was a legal requirement that they be available and, as he explained to the Defence Attaché, Carter was bound to act within British laws on the serious matter of an emergency landing made by a foreign military aircraft at a civilian airport in the UK. Moreover, there were international agreements to this affect… ones which the Russian Federation was a signatory to. His own hands were tied, he said with the most innocent face he could muster, by the unfortunate matter of bureaucracy!

Leaving the Russians and the diplomats, Carter’s attention moved next to the aircraft at the eastern end of the runway. He knew at once that it would never fly again. The damage was too extensive, beyond what a repair job could do. There were RAF people who were here – under his command with them being told they were part of Operation Minotaur – and a Group Captain currently serving with RAF Intelligence at once agreed with this assessment. The Blackjack was just too badly damaged for the Russians to ever get it airborne again. It could be stripped for parts but there was no way they would ever get this airframe in the skies again not with all the damage which it had incurred during its final flight and the last landing it would ever make. It was a beautiful aircraft despite all that damage. Carter knew that the Russian’s unofficially called the Tupolev-160M the ‘White Swan’ due to its graceful appearance and colour. This was one bashed-up bird, that Group Captain remarked. Two of the four engines were a burnt-out wreck. The tail structure had holes in it and was missing pieces. A third of the starboard wing was gone and the fuel tanks in them torn open. All of the landing gear was bent out of shape and Carter was surprised it had yet to collapse under the weight of the fuselage. The rear fuselage, near to those two destroyed engines, was torn open as well with a lot of damage from one engine exploding and the second catching fire. This was the damage which Carter could see with his own eyes. He was informed of more structural and mechanical issues which couldn’t be seen. There were a lot of them, many the result of what he was told was shoddy maintenance.

There were RAF personnel all over the aircraft. Half of them were intelligence people while the rest were examining the Blackjack with regards to it capability for flight. Carter’s background in uniform ahead of service with Defence Intelligence was with the British Army’s Signal Corps before he moved to their Intelligence Corps. He had some understanding of aircraft operations on a technical level though it wasn’t his particular field. Regardless, while a layman when it came to the terms being used, he easily grasped what he was being told. This aircraft was a write-off. He was happy with that. If there was any chance that the Blackjack would be flown out of here, that might make his Operation Minotaur task more difficult. The situation could be resolved easier if the Russians were able to fly it home. His mission brief was to make things difficult though and this was only good news. Carter issued instructions that those complying the official report on the airworthy status of this aircraft include everything in their report. All problems that they could find, they were to get them in the report. The Russians might be foolish enough to try but Carter wanted to present them with all the reasons why it would not be possible. London would likely release these details to the media at a later date. As many interested parties who were poking their noses in being presented with the facts as to why that couldn’t be done would be welcomed to add their voices in the media. Carter would give them plenty to use. Even with a new wing, a new tail, new engines and a massive patch up, all somehow fitted to this aircraft while it was here – that was just never going to be allowed to happen –, it wasn’t going to be flown home to Russia from out of Campbeltown.

Like that police officer who’d done so well when making the initial response, Carter believed that the Russian airman who had been stopped from returning to his aircraft had wanted to destroy evidence. It wouldn’t have been things which would be needed for an accident investigation though. No, Carter thought that it would instead have been secrets. Those who’d flown the Blackjack here had run from the wreck which was their aircraft in fear of it going up in flames and not done as they should have upon landing. There would have been paperwork left behind. The communications equipment and electronic systems aboard would all be fitted with a self-destruct charge so it wouldn’t all be useful to an enemy if captured in wartime. His suspicions were confirmed by those intelligence personnel under his command he had tasked to get inside the aircraft. They found maps (the markings on them were of importance from an intelligence point of view) and that none of the equipment had been destroyed. A self-destruct system – a small demolition charge – was being worked upon by explosives experts before a proper examination of the equipment could be done. Carter didn’t rush them on that. It would be foolish to do so. Away from the cockpit, below the fuselage so precariously held up by the bent landing gear, were attached electronic pods. That was all jamming gear, Carter knew. It would be secret stuff that the Russians would be holding their heads in their hands at the knowledge that he had people taking a look at right this moment.

There were two internal bomb bays. The Blackjack was capable of carrying external ordnance under the wings too but the pylons there were empty. It was in the bomb bays were the missiles were found. The aircrew had said nothing about them when asked and the Defence Attaché had said to Carter that yes, there were missiles aboard, but no, they weren’t live weapons. This was a nuclear-capable bomber. Carter knew that before Operation Minotaur came into being, the Prime Minister had to extensively press the Russian President over the matter of whether there were any nuclear munitions aboard. A demand for absolute assurance that there were no nukes aboard had been sought. Moscow had said that there weren’t. Carter’s weapons specialists – more RAF personnel – were now inside those bomb bays. They’d used detection equipment first to search for radiological particles from afar then gone in once receiving negative results. Just as the Defence Attaché said, there were no live munitions of a conventional nature either. Twelve cruise missiles were within the Blackjack but each was an inert training round. They hadn’t been launched during the exercise which the aircraft was on. Carter could only speculate that this was about making the mock attack run with the right weight and giving the aircrew a feel for carrying them rather than firing inert rounds. All that aside, there was much value to having these missiles in British custody even for a temporary period. They were designed to fly exactly as their real-life counterparts, including nuclear ones, were meant to. The RAF was about to get a real understanding of the capability of these missiles in this once in a lifetime opportunity to do so. The orders for Carter’s implementation of Operation Minotaur weren’t just about making the Russians squirm and lose their cool: he was to oversee the intelligence operation that had been gifted to Britain by this aircraft landing like it had done.

It had been eleven o’clock in the morning when the Blackjack made it’s landing: Carter had arrived after five that evening. He was going to be spending much time here and so would all those under his command. There was no rush. Once darkness came, the work around the aircraft would have to be suspended due to light constraints. Electrical lighting could have been brought in but Carter purposely didn’t have that done. For health and safety reasons, he ordered a suspension of work being done around the aircraft until the next morning. He made sure that the Defence Attaché got word of this, knowing that the man would see through the game which was being played. Predictably, there was more verbal outrage. Carter had all his answers ready though. Operation Minotaur was a psychological tasking: this is how it had been explained to him upon assuming the role that he had. He was to make the Russians mad all while providing reasonable excuses for everything he was doing… but to let them see through it all too. The Defence Attaché had nothing of substance to say though. He got mad because he’d been frustrated all day and this was just more British games. Carter asked him whether he wanted to see British military personnel and civilian investigators endanger themselves? What was the rush? This aircraft was never flying home.

At first light the next day, taking their time with the excuse that there were risk assessments to be completed first – bureaucracy is a pain, isn’t it? –, Carter had work done to make sure that the weight of the fuselage wasn’t going to cause the landing gear to collapse. He had emplaced underneath the Blackjack large pneumatic jacks to make everything safe. The Defence Attaché was invited to watch that, starting to once more complain to Carter about the holding of the aircrew against their will when they had concerned families back home etc., when he changed moaning to screams of outrage. On cue, once Carter had the man watching, the missiles were removed from the bomb bays and taken away. There was a hangar when they would be stored. This was for health and safety reasons, Carter told him. The infuriated diplomat (he was a spook too) repeated the assertion that those were inert training rounds but Carter replied that Britain needed to be sure on that. What if someone back home in Russia had made a paperwork mix-up and sent it out with live rounds? These things happened. He related the tale of the Americans doing that only a few years ago with live nuclear weapons on their bombers during a transfer flight. The Defence Attaché didn’t believe him but it was a true story. Once more, Carter was playing the game he was sent here to undertake.

The diplomat shut up eventually. Carter said nothing more either. The two of them, with a Russian interpreter behind them (Carter did speak Russian but had yet to here because he kept that back), just watched the process of once more the safety of those here near the Blackjack taking precedence. There were investigators who were soon at work. Carter waited for the Defence Attaché to start complaining about them and he mentally rehearsed his responses to what would come. It was a legal requirement, one he would be bound by, to allow for an accident investigation to take place. It would be one which would go on for a while too with the efforts made by Operation Minotaur to slow that down in every way which Carter and his people could conceive. Although he wouldn’t accurately predict all that would happen as time went on, Carter was of the belief this morning that this could all go on for some time. Not days, not weeks. It would likely be months. Russia would get its Blackjack back, and everything from within it including those missiles, but the aircraft would have to be taken part here – safety – and either flown or shipped home in pieces rather than as one complete airframe. He would do everything to slow that down, knowing that he had the political coverage to do so. That was what those in London wanted and what he was glad to be here overseeing. He smiled at the thought of driving the Defence Attaché mad for the next couple of months.

  James

  I like it.  Could be bad for the crew when they do get home.  Both because of the immigration questions and because they failed to destroy items on the aircraft.  Plus simply the authorities in Moscow will be in a rage and want someone to take their anger out about.

  As well as the games with the Russians there's going to be a valuable intelligence bonus here as you mention.  Plus the fact the Russians were only using training rounds on those missiles could be useful infp as it suggests their less aggressive than they often try and appear to be.

  Definitely like this PM you have here.

  Steve

I like the addition to the title.
Yes, the aircrew won't have fun back home. They can saw why they did what they did but they'll be in hot water.
Plenty of info will come from the aircraft and contents, which allies will want a piece of too.
Ah, the PM only has to do what others from elsewhere have done: the Japanese in 1976 with the MiG-25 (Viktor Belenko) or the Chinese in 2001 with the EP-3E (Hainan Island incident). Hardball should be expected really.

[James G]

Hotbox


It is a Wednesday in early March. The American President is having a late lunch in the White House with his brother-in-law. That guest in the residence within the East Wing is currently the Governor of Ohio. The two of them have known each other a long time and are friends as well as relatives. Each man represents a different political party yet their personal relationship trumps the partisan divide. The Governor is in Washington today for meetings with Congressional figures. As to the President, he has a busy schedule too with an ongoing national security concern of the utmost importance taking up most of his time. However, he can spare an hour for his brother-in-law. Both their wives are elsewhere – the First Ladies of the United States and Ohio are respectively in Chicago and Columbus – and they are catching up with old ‘war stories’: combat in the political arena back in the Mid-West in past years. A joke about a former mutual acquaintance being told by the Governor is interrupted by the door to the dining room opening… without a knock first.

Entering without being bidden are the President’s National Security Adviser, his Chief-of-Staff and the head of his Secret Service detail. The first of them announces that the President needs to leave the White House straight away. The Chief-of-Staff, the President’s closest confidant, affirms this. As to the Secret Service officer, the President is told by her that they have a ‘Hotbox situation’. She crosses the room towards the President and is prepared to lift him out of his chair should he hesitate. The Governor asks what is ‘Hotbox’, but no one has time to give him an answer. The President is on his feet and moving. He knows what it is. He tells his brother-in-law to come with him. The National Security Adviser is momentarily unsure about that but the Chief-of-Staff agrees. Out of the dining room the five of them go.

There are more Secret Service agents in the residence and in the emergency stairwell which the party in a hurry go down. The President sees guns drawn among them and watches as one of the agents shoves aside a rather confused White House aide in the corridor at the bottom of the stairwell. As they all march rapidly along that corridor, he asks his Chief-of-Staff if this is ‘Pakistan-related’. Its an affirmative answer. That is why Hotbox has been declared. The nukes are all accounted for, his brother-in-law says: he was told that! No one answers. It is not the time to discuss that. There is a room at the end of the corridor. The President and the Governor are hustled into there. The National Security Adviser says they need to wait just a minute. Marine One is inbound from Anacostia but they aren’t going outside until then. Where is the Vice President? The Congressional leadership too? The President wants to know about them. He is told that they are being evacuated too. The protocols of Hotbox call for them being moved to safety like he is.

Marine One is outside on the South Lawn. Go, go, go! The senior Secret Service agent is on the President’s left with other agents on his right, ahead and behind. They form a wall around him. There is a run towards the helicopter. Both the Governor and the Chief-of-Staff aren’t in the best physical shape and struggle to keep up. As to the President, he is a fitness freak but if he wasn’t, and he was too slow, he would be carried to the helicopter. There are more agents everywhere on the South Lawn. Some have their light machine guns out, the ones which can be concealed inside oversized jackets. Up above, two more helicopters are low in the sky. Marine One will join with them with the trio flying together. Anyone taking a shot will not know which one the President is in. Without any of the usual fanfare, into Marine One the President goes. His brother-in-law and top aide and pulled aboard by Secret Service agents just as the doors close aboard the VH-92. Up the helicopter goes, climbing fast without the usual grace expected when the President is aboard.

As they race towards Andrews AFB, the President is told exactly what is going on.

There is new, alarming information that up to half a dozen Pakistani nuclear weapons might be in the hands of fanatics. The ongoing civil war in that country, one which has seen not just the intervention of America but India, China and Russia too – what a mess –, has meant that the security of those weapons has been called into question. This news is recent. Less than half an hour ago, the CIA & NSA both agreed that everything said before about their security is rubbish and there are missing nukes. That general there, leading the embattled government, has either been lied to or is deceiving everyone about their control. The nukes have been missing for weeks too. Just as this has come in, there is a situation here in Washington. On 14th Street SW, outside the National Holocaust Memorial Museum – under a mile from the White House! –, there is a truck which has been stopped by the DC Police. Shots have been fired and there is an ongoing situation there. The NSA have picked up disturbing internet chatter from watched fanatics about a ‘big bomb’ and a ‘new-born sun’.

That is why Hotbox has been declared.

The Governor is talking about access codes for nuclear weapons and United States border security being able to detect smuggled bombs. The National Security Adviser tells him that no security is one hundred per cent secure. The President cannot be sitting in the White House at a time like this, not with this happening. The consequences of one of those bombs in DC and him being taken out are too much to be left to chance. He needs to be taken to safety and that safety can only be found out of Washington. Asked by the President, what is happening back in DC, his Chief-of-Staff tells him that there is an evacuation going on in the area around where the truck has been stopped by the police. It wasn’t parked outside that museum. Instead, it was just stopped there when heading northwards, closer to the White House. It is the middle of the day though and the area is full of people. The Department of Agriculture is on the other side of the road and the Washington Monument a couple of blocks away. But if it is a nuke, the Governor says, they whole city is in danger not just the immediate area.

Marine One reaches Andrews. It is the fastest trip to the airbase in Maryland which the President has ever taken. As they come into land, the National Security Adviser tells them that they are going straight aboard Air Force One. NEACP – the E-4B serving as the National Emergency Airborne Command Post; oft known as ‘Nightwatch’ – has already left Offutt AFB in Nebraska but they will meet it elsewhere for a transfer. Getting aboard Air Force One and being airborne is the priority. Andrews is pretty far from the middle of DC, the Governor remarks. He’s correct, the National Security Adviser says, but they need to be airborne to be safe. Upon touchdown, the President in bundled out of the helicopter and near carried up the stairs onto the aircraft. Marine One has landed almost within touching distance of Air Force One. There are Secret Service Agents and US Air Force Security Forces troopers everywhere. The worry back in DC is about a nuke but, as per standard operational procedures, there are men with guns everywhere ready to confront someone else with a gun. Onboard Air Force One already are the Deputy Secretary of Defence and the Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. SecDef is in Pakistan and so his deputy came from the Pentagon to here with the nation’s senior-most uniformed military officer. Their helicopter got here faster than Marine One too.

In another hurry unlike the President has known before, Air Force One is flying. A pair of F-16Cs with the D.C. Air National Guard lift off just ahead of the bigger aircraft with each making combat take-offs: they shoot up near vertical and drop infrared flares. Airspace is being shut down over a wide area and those F-16s will enforce that with extreme prejudice. They are going eastwards, out towards the water, the President is told but then will be heading for Virginia to meet the Nightwatch aircraft when it reaches NAS Oceana for a transfer. The Governor doesn’t stay with his brother-in-law when the President goes into meetings with his senior people. He stays up front thinking about all those people back in Washington. He prays for those who live and work there with the hope that all this is one massive overreaction. It would certainly be a political cluster-f*ck because something like that would always leak, but he hopes for that because it would be better than this all being necessary. His mind turns to how crazy this all is, how it all just cannot be true. As Air Force One continues to fly, he tells himself that there is no way that a group of terrorists managed to steal a Pakistani nuke, get it to America and will be able to make it work.

He shakes his head: that isn’t possible.

Moments later, at the behest of the President, the Governor of Ohio is informed by an airman that Hotbox was necessary. Washington DC is the ground zero of a nuclear blast. An explosion, yield and exact location each unknown, took place sixteen minutes after they left Andrews. America has just lost its capital city with casualties sure to be enormous. He prays again. For them, his country, his President… and the world too.

[gillan1220]

Jan 1, 2021 14:15:18 GMT James G said:

Hotbox


It is a Wednesday in early March. The American President is having a late lunch in the White House with his brother-in-law. That guest in the residence within the East Wing is currently the Governor of Ohio. The two of them have known each other a long time and are friends as well as relatives. Each man represents a different political party yet their personal relationship trumps the partisan divide. The Governor is in Washington today for meetings with Congressional figures. As to the President, he has a busy schedule too with an ongoing national security concern of the utmost importance taking up most of his time. However, he can spare an hour for his brother-in-law. Both their wives are elsewhere – the First Ladies of the United States and Ohio are respectively in Chicago and Columbus – and they are catching up with old ‘war stories’: combat in the political arena back in the Mid-West in past years. A joke about a former mutual acquaintance being told by the Governor is interrupted by the door to the dining room opening… without a knock first.

Entering without being bidden are the President’s National Security Adviser, his Chief-of-Staff and the head of his Secret Service detail. The first of them announces that the President needs to leave the White House straight away. The Chief-of-Staff, the President’s closest confidant, affirms this. As to the Secret Service officer, the President is told by her that they have a ‘Hotbox situation’. She crosses the room towards the President and is prepared to lift him out of his chair should he hesitate. The Governor asks what is ‘Hotbox’, but no one has time to give him an answer. The President is on his feet and moving. He knows what it is. He tells his brother-in-law to come with him. The National Security Adviser is momentarily unsure about that but the Chief-of-Staff agrees. Out of the dining room the five of them go.

There are more Secret Service agents in the residence and in the emergency stairwell which the party in a hurry go down. The President sees guns drawn among them and watches as one of the agents shoves aside a rather confused White House aide in the corridor at the bottom of the stairwell. As they all march rapidly along that corridor, he asks his Chief-of-Staff if this is ‘Pakistan-related’. Its an affirmative answer. That is why Hotbox has been declared. The nukes are all accounted for, his brother-in-law says: he was told that! No one answers. It is not the time to discuss that. There is a room at the end of the corridor. The President and the Governor are hustled into there. The National Security Adviser says they need to wait just a minute. Marine One is inbound from Anacostia but they aren’t going outside until then. Where is the Vice President? The Congressional leadership too? The President wants to know about them. He is told that they are being evacuated too. The protocols of Hotbox call for them being moved to safety like he is.

Marine One is outside on the South Lawn. Go, go, go! The senior Secret Service agent is on the President’s left with other agents on his right, ahead and behind. They form a wall around him. There is a run towards the helicopter. Both the Governor and the Chief-of-Staff aren’t in the best physical shape and struggle to keep up. As to the President, he is a fitness freak but if he wasn’t, and he was too slow, he would be carried to the helicopter. There are more agents everywhere on the South Lawn. Some have their light machine guns out, the ones which can be concealed inside oversized jackets. Up above, two more helicopters are low in the sky. Marine One will join with them with the trio flying together. Anyone taking a shot will not know which one the President is in. Without any of the usual fanfare, into Marine One the President goes. His brother-in-law and top aide and pulled aboard by Secret Service agents just as the doors close aboard the VH-92. Up the helicopter goes, climbing fast without the usual grace expected when the President is aboard.

As they race towards Andrews AFB, the President is told exactly what is going on.

There is new, alarming information that up to half a dozen Pakistani nuclear weapons might be in the hands of fanatics. The ongoing civil war in that country, one which has seen not just the intervention of America but India, China and Russia too – what a mess –, has meant that the security of those weapons has been called into question. This news is recent. Less than half an hour ago, the CIA & NSA both agreed that everything said before about their security is rubbish and there are missing nukes. That general there, leading the embattled government, has either been lied to or is deceiving everyone about their control. The nukes have been missing for weeks too. Just as this has come in, there is a situation here in Washington. On 14th Street SW, outside the National Holocaust Memorial Museum – under a mile from the White House! –, there is a truck which has been stopped by the DC Police. Shots have been fired and there is an ongoing situation there. The NSA have picked up disturbing internet chatter from watched fanatics about a ‘big bomb’ and a ‘new-born sun’.

That is why Hotbox has been declared.

The Governor is talking about access codes for nuclear weapons and United States border security being able to detect smuggled bombs. The National Security Adviser tells him that no security is one hundred per cent secure. The President cannot be sitting in the White House at a time like this, not with this happening. The consequences of one of those bombs in DC and him being taken out are too much to be left to chance. He needs to be taken to safety and that safety can only be found out of Washington. Asked by the President, what is happening back in DC, his Chief-of-Staff tells him that there is an evacuation going on in the area around where the truck has been stopped by the police. It wasn’t parked outside that museum. Instead, it was just stopped there when heading northwards, closer to the White House. It is the middle of the day though and the area is full of people. The Department of Agriculture is on the other side of the road and the Washington Monument a couple of blocks away. But if it is a nuke, the Governor says, they whole city is in danger not just the immediate area.

Marine One reaches Andrews. It is the fastest trip to the airbase in Maryland which the President has ever taken. As they come into land, the National Security Adviser tells them that they are going straight aboard Air Force One. NEACP – the E-4B serving as the National Emergency Airborne Command Post; oft known as ‘Nightwatch’ – has already left Offutt AFB in Nebraska but they will meet it elsewhere for a transfer. Getting aboard Air Force One and being airborne is the priority. Andrews is pretty far from the middle of DC, the Governor remarks. He’s correct, the National Security Adviser says, but they need to be airborne to be safe. Upon touchdown, the President in bundled out of the helicopter and near carried up the stairs onto the aircraft. Marine One has landed almost within touching distance of Air Force One. There are Secret Service Agents and US Air Force Security Forces troopers everywhere. The worry back in DC is about a nuke but, as per standard operational procedures, there are men with guns everywhere ready to confront someone else with a gun. Onboard Air Force One already are the Deputy Secretary of Defence and the Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. SecDef is in Pakistan and so his deputy came from the Pentagon to here with the nation’s senior-most uniformed military officer. Their helicopter got here faster than Marine One too.

In another hurry unlike the President has known before, Air Force One is flying. A pair of F-16Cs with the D.C. Air National Guard lift off just ahead of the bigger aircraft with each making combat take-offs: they shoot up near vertical and drop infrared flares. Airspace is being shut down over a wide area and those F-16s will enforce that with extreme prejudice. They are going eastwards, out towards the water, the President is told but then will be heading for Virginia to meet the Nightwatch aircraft when it reaches NAS Oceana for a transfer. The Governor doesn’t stay with his brother-in-law when the President goes into meetings with his senior people. He stays up front thinking about all those people back in Washington. He prays for those who live and work there with the hope that all this is one massive overreaction. It would certainly be a political cluster-f*ck because something like that would always leak, but he hopes for that because it would be better than this all being necessary. His mind turns to how crazy this all is, how it all just cannot be true. As Air Force One continues to fly, he tells himself that there is no way that a group of terrorists managed to steal a Pakistani nuke, get it to America and will be able to make it work.

He shakes his head: that isn’t possible.

Moments later, at the behest of the President, the Governor of Ohio is informed by an airman that Hotbox was necessary. Washington DC is the ground zero of a nuclear blast. An explosion, yield and exact location each unknown, took place sixteen minutes after they left Andrews. America has just lost its capital city with casualties sure to be enormous. He prays again. For them, his country, his President… and the world too.

This reminds me of Shattered Union.

[stevep]

  James G ,

  Nasty, as I suspect will be the consequences for Pakistan.  I wonder if other missing warheads will be used elsewhere, either in the US or the other great powers intervening inside Pakistan?

  Steve

[James G]

Jan 1, 2021 14:34:38 GMT gillan1220 said:

Jan 1, 2021 14:15:18 GMT James G said:

Hotbox


It is a Wednesday in early March. The American President is having a late lunch in the White House with his brother-in-law. That guest in the residence within the East Wing is currently the Governor of Ohio. The two of them have known each other a long time and are friends as well as relatives. Each man represents a different political party yet their personal relationship trumps the partisan divide. The Governor is in Washington today for meetings with Congressional figures. As to the President, he has a busy schedule too with an ongoing national security concern of the utmost importance taking up most of his time. However, he can spare an hour for his brother-in-law. Both their wives are elsewhere – the First Ladies of the United States and Ohio are respectively in Chicago and Columbus – and they are catching up with old ‘war stories’: combat in the political arena back in the Mid-West in past years. A joke about a former mutual acquaintance being told by the Governor is interrupted by the door to the dining room opening… without a knock first.

Entering without being bidden are the President’s National Security Adviser, his Chief-of-Staff and the head of his Secret Service detail. The first of them announces that the President needs to leave the White House straight away. The Chief-of-Staff, the President’s closest confidant, affirms this. As to the Secret Service officer, the President is told by her that they have a ‘Hotbox situation’. She crosses the room towards the President and is prepared to lift him out of his chair should he hesitate. The Governor asks what is ‘Hotbox’, but no one has time to give him an answer. The President is on his feet and moving. He knows what it is. He tells his brother-in-law to come with him. The National Security Adviser is momentarily unsure about that but the Chief-of-Staff agrees. Out of the dining room the five of them go.

There are more Secret Service agents in the residence and in the emergency stairwell which the party in a hurry go down. The President sees guns drawn among them and watches as one of the agents shoves aside a rather confused White House aide in the corridor at the bottom of the stairwell. As they all march rapidly along that corridor, he asks his Chief-of-Staff if this is ‘Pakistan-related’. Its an affirmative answer. That is why Hotbox has been declared. The nukes are all accounted for, his brother-in-law says: he was told that! No one answers. It is not the time to discuss that. There is a room at the end of the corridor. The President and the Governor are hustled into there. The National Security Adviser says they need to wait just a minute. Marine One is inbound from Anacostia but they aren’t going outside until then. Where is the Vice President? The Congressional leadership too? The President wants to know about them. He is told that they are being evacuated too. The protocols of Hotbox call for them being moved to safety like he is.

Marine One is outside on the South Lawn. Go, go, go! The senior Secret Service agent is on the President’s left with other agents on his right, ahead and behind. They form a wall around him. There is a run towards the helicopter. Both the Governor and the Chief-of-Staff aren’t in the best physical shape and struggle to keep up. As to the President, he is a fitness freak but if he wasn’t, and he was too slow, he would be carried to the helicopter. There are more agents everywhere on the South Lawn. Some have their light machine guns out, the ones which can be concealed inside oversized jackets. Up above, two more helicopters are low in the sky. Marine One will join with them with the trio flying together. Anyone taking a shot will not know which one the President is in. Without any of the usual fanfare, into Marine One the President goes. His brother-in-law and top aide and pulled aboard by Secret Service agents just as the doors close aboard the VH-92. Up the helicopter goes, climbing fast without the usual grace expected when the President is aboard.

As they race towards Andrews AFB, the President is told exactly what is going on.

There is new, alarming information that up to half a dozen Pakistani nuclear weapons might be in the hands of fanatics. The ongoing civil war in that country, one which has seen not just the intervention of America but India, China and Russia too – what a mess –, has meant that the security of those weapons has been called into question. This news is recent. Less than half an hour ago, the CIA & NSA both agreed that everything said before about their security is rubbish and there are missing nukes. That general there, leading the embattled government, has either been lied to or is deceiving everyone about their control. The nukes have been missing for weeks too. Just as this has come in, there is a situation here in Washington. On 14th Street SW, outside the National Holocaust Memorial Museum – under a mile from the White House! –, there is a truck which has been stopped by the DC Police. Shots have been fired and there is an ongoing situation there. The NSA have picked up disturbing internet chatter from watched fanatics about a ‘big bomb’ and a ‘new-born sun’.

That is why Hotbox has been declared.

The Governor is talking about access codes for nuclear weapons and United States border security being able to detect smuggled bombs. The National Security Adviser tells him that no security is one hundred per cent secure. The President cannot be sitting in the White House at a time like this, not with this happening. The consequences of one of those bombs in DC and him being taken out are too much to be left to chance. He needs to be taken to safety and that safety can only be found out of Washington. Asked by the President, what is happening back in DC, his Chief-of-Staff tells him that there is an evacuation going on in the area around where the truck has been stopped by the police. It wasn’t parked outside that museum. Instead, it was just stopped there when heading northwards, closer to the White House. It is the middle of the day though and the area is full of people. The Department of Agriculture is on the other side of the road and the Washington Monument a couple of blocks away. But if it is a nuke, the Governor says, they whole city is in danger not just the immediate area.

Marine One reaches Andrews. It is the fastest trip to the airbase in Maryland which the President has ever taken. As they come into land, the National Security Adviser tells them that they are going straight aboard Air Force One. NEACP – the E-4B serving as the National Emergency Airborne Command Post; oft known as ‘Nightwatch’ – has already left Offutt AFB in Nebraska but they will meet it elsewhere for a transfer. Getting aboard Air Force One and being airborne is the priority. Andrews is pretty far from the middle of DC, the Governor remarks. He’s correct, the National Security Adviser says, but they need to be airborne to be safe. Upon touchdown, the President in bundled out of the helicopter and near carried up the stairs onto the aircraft. Marine One has landed almost within touching distance of Air Force One. There are Secret Service Agents and US Air Force Security Forces troopers everywhere. The worry back in DC is about a nuke but, as per standard operational procedures, there are men with guns everywhere ready to confront someone else with a gun. Onboard Air Force One already are the Deputy Secretary of Defence and the Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. SecDef is in Pakistan and so his deputy came from the Pentagon to here with the nation’s senior-most uniformed military officer. Their helicopter got here faster than Marine One too.

In another hurry unlike the President has known before, Air Force One is flying. A pair of F-16Cs with the D.C. Air National Guard lift off just ahead of the bigger aircraft with each making combat take-offs: they shoot up near vertical and drop infrared flares. Airspace is being shut down over a wide area and those F-16s will enforce that with extreme prejudice. They are going eastwards, out towards the water, the President is told but then will be heading for Virginia to meet the Nightwatch aircraft when it reaches NAS Oceana for a transfer. The Governor doesn’t stay with his brother-in-law when the President goes into meetings with his senior people. He stays up front thinking about all those people back in Washington. He prays for those who live and work there with the hope that all this is one massive overreaction. It would certainly be a political cluster-f*ck because something like that would always leak, but he hopes for that because it would be better than this all being necessary. His mind turns to how crazy this all is, how it all just cannot be true. As Air Force One continues to fly, he tells himself that there is no way that a group of terrorists managed to steal a Pakistani nuke, get it to America and will be able to make it work.

He shakes his head: that isn’t possible.

Moments later, at the behest of the President, the Governor of Ohio is informed by an airman that Hotbox was necessary. Washington DC is the ground zero of a nuclear blast. An explosion, yield and exact location each unknown, took place sixteen minutes after they left Andrews. America has just lost its capital city with casualties sure to be enormous. He prays again. For them, his country, his President… and the world too.

This reminds me of Shattered Union.

Just read what Shattered Union is.

Jan 1, 2021 15:12:36 GMT stevep said:

  James G ,

  Nasty, as I suspect will be the consequences for Pakistan.  I wonder if other missing warheads will be used elsewhere, either in the US or the other great powers intervening inside Pakistan?

  Steve

It's likely that Pakistan would get the blame, yes.
Tel Aviv, London, Paris, Rome, New York: such places would be high on a target list.
However, all that presumes that this was what it looked like. A bit of a coincidence, wasn't it? That intel. arriving, a truck stopped and then a just-in-time evacuation seems a little too neat.

[stevep]

Jan 2, 2021 11:30:11 GMT James G said:

Jan 1, 2021 14:34:38 GMT gillan1220 said:

This reminds me of Shattered Union.

Just read what Shattered Union is.

Jan 1, 2021 15:12:36 GMT stevep said:

  James G ,

  Nasty, as I suspect will be the consequences for Pakistan.  I wonder if other missing warheads will be used elsewhere, either in the US or the other great powers intervening inside Pakistan?

  Steve

It's likely that Pakistan would get the blame, yes.
Tel Aviv, London, Paris, Rome, New York: such places would be high on a target list.
However, all that presumes that this was what it looked like. A bit of a coincidence, wasn't it? That intel. arriving, a truck stopped and then a just-in-time evacuation seems a little too neat.

  Possibly but that does sound like verging on paranoia unless there is evidence supporting the idea.  After all, unless the conspiracy is widespread analysis of of the fall-out should demonstrate whether its a Pakistani bomb or not and rogue US elements managing to spirit one of them out of the country and then blow up their own capital does sound unlikely.

[sandyman]

Jan 1, 2021 14:34:38 GMT gillan1220 said:

Jan 1, 2021 14:15:18 GMT James G said:

Hotbox

It is a Wednesday in early March. The American President is having a late lunch in the White House with his brother-in-law. That guest in the residence within the East Wing is currently the Governor of Ohio. The two of them have known each other a long time and are friends as well as relatives. Each man represents a different political party yet their personal relationship trumps the partisan divide. The Governor is in Washington today for meetings with Congressional figures. As to the President, he has a busy schedule too with an ongoing national security concern of the utmost importance taking up most of his time. However, he can spare an hour for his brother-in-law. Both their wives are elsewhere – the First Ladies of the United States and Ohio are respectively in Chicago and Columbus – and they are catching up with old ‘war stories’: combat in the political arena back in the Mid-West in past years. A joke about a former mutual acquaintance being told by the Governor is interrupted by the door to the dining room opening… without a knock first.

Entering without being bidden are the President’s National Security Adviser, his Chief-of-Staff and the head of his Secret Service detail. The first of them announces that the President needs to leave the White House straight away. The Chief-of-Staff, the President’s closest confidant, affirms this. As to the Secret Service officer, the President is told by her that they have a ‘Hotbox situation’. She crosses the room towards the President and is prepared to lift him out of his chair should he hesitate. The Governor asks what is ‘Hotbox’, but no one has time to give him an answer. The President is on his feet and moving. He knows what it is. He tells his brother-in-law to come with him. The National Security Adviser is momentarily unsure about that but the Chief-of-Staff agrees. Out of the dining room the five of them go.

There are more Secret Service agents in the residence and in the emergency stairwell which the party in a hurry go down. The President sees guns drawn among them and watches as one of the agents shoves aside a rather confused White House aide in the corridor at the bottom of the stairwell. As they all march rapidly along that corridor, he asks his Chief-of-Staff if this is ‘Pakistan-related’. Its an affirmative answer. That is why Hotbox has been declared. The nukes are all accounted for, his brother-in-law says: he was told that! No one answers. It is not the time to discuss that. There is a room at the end of the corridor. The President and the Governor are hustled into there. The National Security Adviser says they need to wait just a minute. Marine One is inbound from Anacostia but they aren’t going outside until then. Where is the Vice President? The Congressional leadership too? The President wants to know about them. He is told that they are being evacuated too. The protocols of Hotbox call for them being moved to safety like he is.

Marine One is outside on the South Lawn. Go, go, go! The senior Secret Service agent is on the President’s left with other agents on his right, ahead and behind. They form a wall around him. There is a run towards the helicopter. Both the Governor and the Chief-of-Staff aren’t in the best physical shape and struggle to keep up. As to the President, he is a fitness freak but if he wasn’t, and he was too slow, he would be carried to the helicopter. There are more agents everywhere on the South Lawn. Some have their light machine guns out, the ones which can be concealed inside oversized jackets. Up above, two more helicopters are low in the sky. Marine One will join with them with the trio flying together. Anyone taking a shot will not know which one the President is in. Without any of the usual fanfare, into Marine One the President goes. His brother-in-law and top aide and pulled aboard by Secret Service agents just as the doors close aboard the VH-92. Up the helicopter goes, climbing fast without the usual grace expected when the President is aboard.

As they race towards Andrews AFB, the President is told exactly what is going on.

There is new, alarming information that up to half a dozen Pakistani nuclear weapons might be in the hands of fanatics. The ongoing civil war in that country, one which has seen not just the intervention of America but India, China and Russia too – what a mess –, has meant that the security of those weapons has been called into question. This news is recent. Less than half an hour ago, the CIA & NSA both agreed that everything said before about their security is rubbish and there are missing nukes. That general there, leading the embattled government, has either been lied to or is deceiving everyone about their control. The nukes have been missing for weeks too. Just as this has come in, there is a situation here in Washington. On 14th Street SW, outside the National Holocaust Memorial Museum – under a mile from the White House! –, there is a truck which has been stopped by the DC Police. Shots have been fired and there is an ongoing situation there. The NSA have picked up disturbing internet chatter from watched fanatics about a ‘big bomb’ and a ‘new-born sun’.

That is why Hotbox has been declared.

The Governor is talking about access codes for nuclear weapons and United States border security being able to detect smuggled bombs. The National Security Adviser tells him that no security is one hundred per cent secure. The President cannot be sitting in the White House at a time like this, not with this happening. The consequences of one of those bombs in DC and him being taken out are too much to be left to chance. He needs to be taken to safety and that safety can only be found out of Washington. Asked by the President, what is happening back in DC, his Chief-of-Staff tells him that there is an evacuation going on in the area around where the truck has been stopped by the police. It wasn’t parked outside that museum. Instead, it was just stopped there when heading northwards, closer to the White House. It is the middle of the day though and the area is full of people. The Department of Agriculture is on the other side of the road and the Washington Monument a couple of blocks away. But if it is a nuke, the Governor says, they whole city is in danger not just the immediate area.

Marine One reaches Andrews. It is the fastest trip to the airbase in Maryland which the President has ever taken. As they come into land, the National Security Adviser tells them that they are going straight aboard Air Force One. NEACP – the E-4B serving as the National Emergency Airborne Command Post; oft known as ‘Nightwatch’ – has already left Offutt AFB in Nebraska but they will meet it elsewhere for a transfer. Getting aboard Air Force One and being airborne is the priority. Andrews is pretty far from the middle of DC, the Governor remarks. He’s correct, the National Security Adviser says, but they need to be airborne to be safe. Upon touchdown, the President in bundled out of the helicopter and near carried up the stairs onto the aircraft. Marine One has landed almost within touching distance of Air Force One. There are Secret Service Agents and US Air Force Security Forces troopers everywhere. The worry back in DC is about a nuke but, as per standard operational procedures, there are men with guns everywhere ready to confront someone else with a gun. Onboard Air Force One already are the Deputy Secretary of Defence and the Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. SecDef is in Pakistan and so his deputy came from the Pentagon to here with the nation’s senior-most uniformed military officer. Their helicopter got here faster than Marine One too.

In another hurry unlike the President has known before, Air Force One is flying. A pair of F-16Cs with the D.C. Air National Guard lift off just ahead of the bigger aircraft with each making combat take-offs: they shoot up near vertical and drop infrared flares. Airspace is being shut down over a wide area and those F-16s will enforce that with extreme prejudice. They are going eastwards, out towards the water, the President is told but then will be heading for Virginia to meet the Nightwatch aircraft when it reaches NAS Oceana for a transfer. The Governor doesn’t stay with his brother-in-law when the President goes into meetings with his senior people. He stays up front thinking about all those people back in Washington. He prays for those who live and work there with the hope that all this is one massive overreaction. It would certainly be a political cluster-f*ck because something like that would always leak, but he hopes for that because it would be better than this all being necessary. His mind turns to how crazy this all is, how it all just cannot be true. As Air Force One continues to fly, he tells himself that there is no way that a group of terrorists managed to steal a Pakistani nuke, get it to America and will be able to make it work.

He shakes his head: that isn’t possible.

Moments later, at the behest of the President, the Governor of Ohio is informed by an airman that Hotbox was necessary. Washington DC is the ground zero of a nuclear blast. An explosion, yield and exact location each unknown, took place sixteen minutes after they left Andrews. America has just lost its capital city with casualties sure to be enormous. He prays again. For them, his country, his President… and the world too.

This reminds me of Shattered Union.

Great story where is shattered union is there any chance of a link please