Chapter 8 - Terrorism

“No one can kill Americans and brag about it. No one.”

Ronald Reagan

The United States government mobilized immediately. An air raid alert was sounded in every first strike city across the nation. Mobilization of USSTRATCOM for a full scale offensive was ordered within minutes of the explosion. Within 20 minutes of the disaster, news networks were informing the nation of the horror. Currently, all that was known was that a nuclear weapon had detonated in the heart of Chicago. Radar sightings, a tremendous crater, and the amount of particulate matter projected into the atmosphere meant the device was not dropped from an aircraft but exploded at or below ground level.

Television and radio interrupted all programs to bring coverage of the incident. People around the world were horror stricken by the magnitude of the violence. Cameras rolled across a barren bull’s-eye surrounded by sparsely placed askew telephone poles. The Chicago River flowed into a thousand foot wide crater where the South Fork of the Chicago River and the Chicago rail yards had once met. The heart of the city was completely destroyed for two miles from the epicenter. For another mile people were seen on TV wandering about aimlessly screaming, sitting on piles of debris in tears, tearing through debris to get at loved ones, or trying to rip melted nylon off of their bodies. Overpasses, bridges, buildings and signs were flattened beyond recognition. Although the day had started as a bright winter morning, the view from the camera showed an overcast city fatally wounded in less than a minute, without warning or cause. Soot drifted across every camera shot. A giant dust devil focused a funnel of airborne dust and soot around the inner city in testament to the apocalypse.

All investigative agencies of the government; Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA, the NSC, and all three armed forces investigative teams were working to determine the enemy. Each agency mobilized 100% of its existing forces to determine who and how this atrocity had been committed. As the teams worked, calls were being received from people claiming responsibility for the destruction.