“That’s kind of obscure, don’t you think?” asked Joel, unaware the idea had been Scott’s.
Scott started to argue but held back. “I suppose so,” he admitted. “But that’s the signal that has been passed to the resistance forces. Hopefully, others will join in when they see the fighting start in the streets.”
Over the next two hours Joel was given concise briefings by each of the eight people in the operations room concerning their individual parts of the project.
Three weeks later
New York, New York
The phone rang three times before Ambassador Hansen could rouse himself from his sleep to answer it. “Hello,” he said, as he checked his alarm clock. It was just after eleven.
“Mr. Ambassador,” said Decker, “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’ve just heard that about thirty minutes ago, at 5:30 A.M. Israeli time, there were an undisclosed number of nuclear explosions in Israel.”
The sleep suddenly rushed from Hansen’s brain as his eyes opened wide. “The Russians?” he asked.
“Reports are very sketchy so far. It’s not clear who’s responsible, and there have been no official statements from the Russians.”
“Decker, is there any chance there’s been a mistake?”
“No, sir. I don’t think so. The detonations were detected by U.S., U.K., and Chinese satellites. To make things worse, the explosions were followed by a major earthquake along the Dead Sea Rift.”
“Okay, hold on a second while I switch on the telly.” A moment later Decker heard the sound of Hansen’s television through the phone. “Okay, I’m back,” Hansen said, but he and Decker stayed silent as each listened to the report just being read.
“Fox News has just learned that the United States has scrambled Strategic Command bombers. The State Department has emphasized that this is only a precautionary measure and that STRATCOM has been ordered to remain in U.S. air space pending further orders.”
“What the devil is going on?” Hansen asked.
“I don’t know, sir,” Decker answered, stating the obvious.
“Do you have the Russian ambassador’s phone number?”
“I have Ambassador Kruszkegin’s number right here, sir,” Decker said. He relayed it to Hansen.
“Okay,” Hansen said. “I’ll call Kruszkegin. You call Jackie, Peter, and Jack and have everyone get to the office ASAP.”
The phone rang only once at Ambassador Kruszkegin’s residence before it was answered by an official-sounding “Hello.”
“This is Ambassador Jon Hansen,” Hansen said. “I would like to speak with Ambassador Kruszkegin immediately on a matter of utmost importance.”
“I’m sorry, Ambassador Hansen,” the voice answered. “Ambassador Kruszkegin is in a meeting right now and cannot be disturbed.”
“I’ll take it,” Hansen heard Kruszkegin say in the background. Obviously the person who answered the phone had lied.
Ambassador Kruszkegin stood by the phone wearing a finely woven black and gold silk dressing gown, his warm Italian slippers protecting his feet from the cold marble floor. “Good evening, Jon,” he began. Jon Hansen liked Kruszkegin as a person and respected him as an adversary. For his part, Kruszkegin was fond of referring to Hansen as “a man who has failed to notice that Britain no longer rules the world.” Kruszkegin had found that, when possible, it was more productive to cooperate with Hansen than not to.
“Jon,” he continued, anticipating Hansen’s question, “I honestly do not know what is happening in Israel. I’ve just spoken with the foreign minister in Moscow and he swears we have not launched an attack. I believe they are just as confused as we are.”
Hansen was surprised that Kruszkegin had even taken his call; the straight answer was even more unexpected. Hansen knew the Russian well enough to have a pretty good idea when he was lying and when he was telling the truth. Right now he seemed to be telling the truth—at least as far as he knew it.
“Thank you, Yuri,” Hansen said. Kruszkegin’s straightforward answer left little else to be said.
Ambassador Hansen’s senior staff members watched the news reports on television at the British Mission as they awaited the ambassador’s arrival.
“Can anyone tell me what’s going on?” Hansen asked as he walked in the door and handed Jackie his coat, just before 2:00 A.M. New York time.
“The Russians claim they had nothing to do with it,” began Jack Redmond, Hansen’s legislative assistant. “They say the attack was against the Russian troops in Israel’s mountains.”
This was a new twist on the story. “How the devil could that happen?” Hansen asked, incredulously.
Redmond shook his head.
In the brief silence, Hansen’s attention turned to the reporter on television. “There is speculation at the State Department,” the reporter was saying, “that the attack on Israel could be the result of some internal power struggle inside the Russian government. The battle for power and control of policy has been heated, to say the least. Hard-liners like Foreign Minister Cherov and Defense Minister Khromchenkov want to lead Russia back to communism and world power, while others like President Perelyakin favor a more moderate approach. The Russian invasion of Israel still has many analysts unsure of who’s in charge.”
Redmond shrugged his broad shoulders as Hansen looked at him for his comment. “It’s possible,” he said. “But it doesn’t really answer the big questions. We know that no cities were hit; apparently the missiles fell in the wilderness areas of the country. That would seem to support Russia’s assertion that it was their troops that were hit, but I can’t imagine any kind of political situation so bad that one group of Russians would bomb another.”
“Okay, let’s assume for a moment that the Russians are telling the truth: They’re not responsible for the bombing,” Hansen said. “Which country with the capability to launch a nuclear attack would actually do it?”
No one had an answer. “All we can do is wait for release of the satellite data to identify the origin of the launch,” Redmond concluded.
“Mr. Ambassador,” Decker interjected, “whoever launched the attack, the Israelis have apparently taken advantage of the combined confusion of the explosions and the earthquake. There are reports of fighting between Russians and Israelis in every major city, and Israeli resistance fighters apparently have taken over all of the television and radio stations not destroyed by the quake.”
Hansen ran his hand through his hair, thought for a second, and then shook his head. “Except for the quake, I’d wonder if this whole thing was the work of the Israelis!”
Tel Aviv, Israel
Deep beneath the streets of Tel Aviv the mood was bright and hopeful. It was now five hours since the launch, and the quake had left the OSTF shaken but undamaged. Phase one of the plan had been a complete success: The Russians had been completely unaware of the transfer of control from the SDCF to the OSTF; the evacuation of civilians had taken place with only a few delays; the Gideons had been launched (much to the surprise of Russian security teams guarding the missile silos); and all of the designated targets had been hit.
Russian troops who had been outside the initial kill radius of the bombs vainly sought relief in the surrounding mountains, but the seed of death planted within them by the neutron radiation would not yield until it had consumed them. Their dead bodies, leached of the quickly decaying neutron radiation, would provide carrion for wild animals and birds, and for the next seven months their scattered bones would be collected by the survivors and laid to rest with their comrades in a massive cemetery in the Valley of Hamon Gog.
Far from hindering the Israelis’ efforts, the earthquake along the Dead Sea Rift, where the African and Arabian tectonic plates meet, had actually aided their cause by adding to their enemies’ confusion. In the streets of Israel, citizens were attacking the occupying Russians troops. In the mountains near Mizpe Ramon, an Israeli squadron had surprised the security force outside the SDCF and was now preparing
to wait out the surrender of those inside. It would be useless to try to force them out; the facility, with its three-foot-thick steel walls and doors, was impervious to anything, with the possible exception of a direct hit by a multi-megaton nuclear warhead. When the Russians invaded four months earlier, those in control of the facility had surrendered it only after they were ordered to do so by the Israeli defense minister. Though the facility had been completely overridden by the OSTF and was therefore useless to the Russians, it would likely be a long wait before the occupants surrendered.
Any celebration would have to wait, however. Phase two required the full attention of Colonel White and his team at the OSTF. While the Israelis would soon be able to secure the weaponry warehoused at the Russian camps, those in Colonel White’s team had the immediate responsibility of directing Israel’s strategic defense against a possible retaliatory nuclear strike from the Russians.
Scott Rosen estimated that Israel’s strategic defense could eliminate 97 percent or more of anything the Russians might send at them in a full-scale attack. The throw-weight of the Russian nuclear arsenal had been substantially reduced since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Israel’s strategic defense was made practicable by the fact that it has a very limited land mass to defend. But a full-scale attack would still mean that several soft targets— that is, cities—could be hit. If the attack were of a lesser scale— a “limited” response—the strategic defense could probably destroy all incoming warheads. The most likely scenario was that the Russians would choose a strong but limited response in order to reduce the possibility of a response from the West. What everyone hoped for, however, was that the Russians, realizing Israel was once again in control of its own strategic defense, would see that a nuclear attack would ultimately prove futile and therefore would not launch at all.
There was no way to be certain how the Russians would respond and each person in Colonel White’s team understood that every warhead that got through meant the deaths of tens of thousands of their countrymen. This was not a game of sighting targets and pulling triggers, however; the strategic defense was fully automated. It had to be. Destroying the maximum number of approaching missiles required a nearly instantaneous response to launch. There was no room for “man in the loop.” Once the order was given to place the Battle Management/Command, Control and Communications (BM/C 3) computers on threat status, the role of humans was reduced to support and repair. Some argued that it was dangerous to turn the control of the system over to the system itself, but as Joshua Rosen and his colleagues had successfully countered, it was the best way to ensure survival.
The strategic defense was now initiated for immediate response to any sign of launch from Russia, her allies, or from the sea.
16
The Hand of God
Moscow, Russia
ELEVEN HUNDRED MILES and nearly due north of Tel Aviv, the Russian Security Council was meeting to discuss the events in Israel. It was now 12:05 P.M. in Moscow, 4:05 A.M. in New York, and 11:05 A.M. in Israel.
At eighty-six years old, Defense Minister Vladimir Leon Josef Khromchenkov was the oldest of the thirteen men assembled in the Kremlin’s war-room. Khromchenkov had been born in the early days of the Russian Revolution. His father had missed the birth, choosing instead to take part in the fighting in Petrograd. Throughout the revolution and the years that followed, Khromchenkov’s father somehow managed to walk the fine line of being close to Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky and yet was never so close to any one of them that he was considered a threat by the other two. His ability to maneuver through politically treacherous waters had been passed on to his son. After serving for nearly forty years in the Soviet Army, Vladimir Khromchenkov had come to the Kremlin during the early days of Gorbachev as a candidate of the hard-liners who opposed Gorbachev’s reforms and were afraid he might “give away the store.”
Boris Yeltzin and Vladimir Putin had both attempted to weaken Khromchenkov’s political power and even to remove him from the Security Council, without success. Khromchenkov knew the inner workings of everything and used it to his advantage. Had he wanted it, he might well have become president, but Khromchenkov preferred manipulating to being manipulated. It was said of Khromchenkov that he believed it was his destiny not to die until the Soviet Union had been restored as a world power. And though he gave the credit to others, it was Khromchenkov who had engineered the invasion of Israel as a key step toward bringing about that destiny.
“Comrades,” Defense Minister Khromchenkov began in old Soviet style, which always irritated some of those around him but warmed the hearts of others, “our intelligence reports have just confirmed that this morning’s strike against our international peacekeeping forces in Israel was conceived and initiated by Israeli insurgents. We have very recently regained communications with General Serov, who is in charge of the Strategic Defense Control Facility at Mizpe Ramon. He reports that the Israelis apparently took control of the nuclear forces from a remote facility, from which they launched this morning’s attack. At present the insurgents are fighting our troops stationed in the cities, and a small force of Israelis has set up camp outside the control facility. General Serov has sealed the blast doors so his forces are in no danger from the insurgents outside. Presently, he reports, he is working to isolate the breach in operations in order to attempt to regain control. One other point,” Khromchenkov said, as if it were only an afterthought, though in reality it was the most significant thing he would say, “in addition to having control of their launch facilities, the Israelis have also taken control of their strategic defense.”
Foreign Minister Cherov recognized the importance of Khromchenkov’s final point. If the Israeli resistance had control of the strategic defense, then it greatly limited Russia’s options for response.
“Our damage estimates indicate that the warheads used were Gideon-class five-megaton neutron devices targeted for just outside the perimeter of each of our six temporary installations. We believe the loss of personnel in the camps was total.”
“What about the materiel?” asked the minister of finance, concerned more about the stockpiles of weaponry than the thousands of lost lives.
“At this moment we have no assessment of damage to our weaponry, but it is likely the equipment has survived the attack.”
“What do you suggest?” President Perelyakin asked the defense minister.
“We must assume,” Khromchenkov began, “that the use of low megatonnage neutron bombs was intended to kill our soldiers while allowing the Israelis to seize our weapons for their defense against the Arabs. While we can hope that General Serov will regain control of the nuclear capabilities and strategic defense, we must plan a response in the event those attempts are unsuccessful. Therefore, in addition to immediately replacing our peacekeeping forces, I recommend we prepare both a nuclear and a conventional response. First, if we regain control of the strategic defense, then our response to the Israeli nuclear attack should be in kind. I recommend a launch of six low-yield neutron bombs on Israeli targets to match the unprovoked Israeli attack on our troops. Second, if we are not able to regain control of the strategic defense, then within twenty-four hours, before Israel can avail itself of our equipment, we must launch an air strike against those same six targets, followed by additional strikes against any Israeli troops who attempt to take our equipment. The second option is not as colorful, but it will make the point.”
“Defense Minister Khromchenkov,” said Interior Minister Stefan Ulinov, “if we can regain control of the Israeli’s nuclear forces, then I recommend that the launch come from their own silos.”
“Excellent,” approved President Perelyakin, and everyone agreed.
“As for a nuclear response,” Ulinov continued, “if Israel’s strategic defense is anywhere near as effective as our intelligence reports indicate, then Defense Minister Khromchenkov is absolutely correct. We must not launch a nuclear response unless we are sure the warheads will reach their targets. We cannot
afford to provide the world with a demonstration of what a well-developed missile defense can do. It would be,” Ulinov said, measuring his words for effect, “a catastrophic mistake if the net result of this entire event was to encourage the West to finally deploy their own full-scale strategic defense.” Ulinov paused to allow the members of the Security Council a moment to consider what he felt was the great wisdom of his words and then looked over at Defense Minister Khromchenkov to surrender the floor to him.
“Ultimately,” said Khromchenkov, “if we are unable to retake the nuclear capabilities or the strategic defense, we will have to expend much greater forces to disable the missile silos with conventional air strikes. Once they have again been stripped of their nuclear forces I believe we can count on Israel to surrender its strategic defenses.”
“Excellent,” the president said again. “I commend you, Mr. Defense Minister, for your clear thought and planning of a sensible response to this incident.”
When the meeting was over, Defense Minister Khromchenkov hung back to catch Foreign Minister Cherov alone. Khromchenkov felt sure he knew Cherov’s feelings on what he was about to ask, but one could never be too careful. “Tell me, Comrade Cherov,” he said when he was sure no one could overhear their conversation, “what did you think of my recommendations for a limited response?”
“I think they were well planned … if your intent was to satisfy the wishes of President Perelyakin.” Cherov’s voice hid nothing; it was obvious he was not satisfied with Khromchenkov’s plan.
In His Image Page 25