Overkill pr-1

by James Barrington

  ‘Yes,’ Richter replied.

  ‘I would suggest,’ Modin said, ‘that you remove the cards from all the telephones we are carrying, and so disable them. If you don’t, there is nothing to stop me making a call direct to Moscow as soon as we land in Britain to alert Minister Trushenko. A cellular telephone would be secure enough to permit that. If you do that,’ Modin continued, ‘then I can delay sending the message until we reach the London Embassy because I will have to use secure communications. However, Bykov will certainly suggest driving south and sending it from our Paris Embassy.’

  ‘I can probably arrange for the DST to escort your vehicles to Calais and insist on your departure from French soil,’ Richter said.

  ‘That would be a sensible move,’ Modin replied. ‘That is the first point. The second matter is more difficult to assess. I cannot predict what effect my message to Minister Trushenko will have,’ he continued. ‘I explained before that I tried to stop this scheme and I failed. Whether your discovery of the plan at the eleventh hour will be sufficient to stop it I do not know. My guess is that it won’t, and that Minister Trushenko will simply implement it slightly sooner than he originally intended.’

  Richter was starting to feel cold, despite the sunshine. ‘Even with the British nuclear deterrent in place, and no weapon positioned in London, he would still go ahead?’

  ‘Probably,’ Modin replied. ‘You must realize that Dmitri Trushenko has dedicated the last four years of his life to Operation Podstava, and he will not willingly see the plan fail. He is a driven man, Mr Beatty, and driven men are dangerous. I think he will go ahead because it is his plan, and his plan might still work. It might still work,’ he added, ‘because Europe is Europe and Britain is Britain. Whatever your European Parliament might say, and despite the Channel Tunnel, Britain is still an island and it is possible – or Minister Trushenko might believe it is possible – that Britain would not intervene if Russian forces invaded Europe.’

  Richter digested this for a moment. ‘You said there were three things, General. What is the third?’

  Modin looked at him. ‘Really, it’s another aspect of the same thing,’ he said. ‘You haven’t asked all the right questions, Mr Beatty, and there is one answer that you really do need. You know about the American devices, and you know about the neutron weapons in Europe, but you haven’t asked about how the plan was to be initiated, about how Minister Trushenko was going to convince the nations of Western Europe to agree to our demands.’

  ‘Go on,’ Richter said.

  ‘In the final stage of Podstava statements will be issued to all Western European governments. These will specify what we want, but Minister Trushenko didn’t seriously expect that just telling the governments would be enough. So he’s planned a demonstration first.’ Modin waved his hand in irritation. ‘I tried to stop that too, or at least get it moved somewhere else, and I failed in that as well. I wanted him to detonate it in a desert or somewhere where there would be little or no loss of life, but he over-ruled me. Trushenko wanted a location that was sufficiently far from major centres of population to avoid a catastrophic death toll, which might provoke an immediate nuclear response from either the French or the British in retaliation. But he also wanted a significant loss of life, to prove his serious intent, and he also wanted a really spectacular demonstration of the power of the strategic neutron bomb.’

  Richter’s mouth was going dry. ‘Where is it?’ he asked. ‘Where is the demonstration?’

  ‘Gibraltar,’ Modin replied. ‘A Russian freighter – the Anton Kirov – has already arrived there with “engine trouble”. The crew is almost entirely Spetsnaz, and the ship’s hold contains a neutron bomb with a calculated yield of seven megatons, sufficient to reduce a large proportion of the “Rock” to rubble and certainly sufficient to kill every living thing in Gibraltar as well as most of the populations of La Linea and Algeciras. The Spetsnaz have orders to defend the ship and its cargo with their lives. The weapon is scheduled to be unloaded at Gibraltar tomorrow and positioned in a local warehouse, but it can be detonated while still aboard the ship.’

  Modin passed a hand over his brow. ‘I cannot be certain, Mr Beatty, but I think that within hours or perhaps even minutes of my message reaching Moscow, Minister Trushenko will detonate that weapon by signal from the satellite.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s now seven in the evening. My guess is that you have no more than twelve hours to stop Gibraltar from being blown off the face of the Earth.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Wednesday

  The Walnut Room, the Kremlin, Krasnaya ploshchad, Moscow

  The Russian President looked across at Yuri Baratov, Chairman of the SVR. ‘Find Minister Trushenko,’ he growled. ‘Immediately.’ Baratov said nothing but stood up, nodded respectfully towards the head of the table and left the room. The President looked, in a somewhat hostile manner, down the table and Sokolov could feel himself start to tremble.

  ‘General Sokolov,’ the President said, ‘in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I am prepared to accept that neither you nor General Modin were aware that this Operation Podstava was not official government policy. However,’ he added, ‘if any such evidence is subsequently found, well – I need hardly dwell upon the consequences.’ He bestowed a wintry smile upon the old man. ‘Now,’ the President went on, ‘we have to formulate a course of action to recover the situation. Yevgeni, what are your recommendations?’

  Yevgeni Ryzhkov, Vice-President of the Supreme Soviet, glanced round the table. ‘We have, Comrade President, only two options, as far as I can see. The first option is to make a clean breast of it. Contact the White House on the hot-line and explain that the whole thing was an unauthorized venture, which we will stop as soon as we are able to do so.’

  The President looked unconvinced. ‘From what Ambassador Karasin has told me,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure that the Americans will accept that. And even if they accept that what we’re saying is true, that does not mean that they will stand down their forces.’

  ‘And what is the other option?’ Anatoli Lomonosov asked.

  ‘As the Americans would say,’ Ryzhkov replied with a shrug, ‘we go with the flow. We implement Podstava.’

  Autoroute A26, vicinity of Couvron-et-Aumencourt, France

  Richter jumped out of the Transit van as soon as Modin stopped speaking, and took Colin Dekker and Colonel Lacomte off to a secluded section of the rest area. He told them what Modin had said, and what they had to do. Dekker contacted Hereford on a secure circuit using Lacomte’s comprehensive communications equipment and explained the situation. Immediately, operational control passed from him to the major in charge of the duty troop. Dekker was told to await further orders, but to begin formulating plans for an assault on the Russian ship.

  This seemed to Richter a somewhat pointless exercise, as they knew nothing about the number of the freighter’s crew, or the vessel’s size, type, or even location at Gibraltar, and Modin wasn’t much help when Richter went back to the van to ask him. He thought the crew numbered about twenty-five, but all he knew for certain was that they were all – apart from the captain and perhaps one or two other ship’s officers – Spetsnaz personnel. However, Colin Dekker dutifully sat down with Trooper Brown at a picnic table and started work.

  Ten minutes later, Trooper Jones told them that Hereford had activated the three remaining four-man SAS patrol units from the duty troop, and that they would be flown by helicopter from Hereford to Northolt, the RAF airfield located a few miles north of Heathrow airport in north-west London. They would then fly to France by a C–130 Hercules transport aircraft from the Special Forces Flight of 47 Squadron, Royal Air Force, departing Northolt no later than nineteen hundred hours local time – seven in the evening. Permission was sought by the RAF, and immediately granted by Lacomte, for the Hercules to land at Reims, the closest airport to their position on the autoroute.

  Lacomte raised the French Minister of the Interior at home
and, using a scrambled circuit, explained the new development and what he proposed to do. When he had received the Minister’s approval, he instructed his Headquarters to make the necessary arrangements for the Hercules’ arrival at Reims, which would include briefing the French area radar units on the unscheduled flight. He also told his staff to organize a carte blanche clearance for the C–130 to depart from Reims that evening and route directly to Gibraltar. ‘No delays, no re-routes, no exceptions,’ he said. ‘If you get any objections from anyone – and I do mean anyone – refer them immediately to the Minister of the Interior himself.’

  ‘What about the Spanish authorities?’ Richter asked.

  ‘The Minister will make sure they won’t give you any problems. At least, not if they still want anyone to be alive in Algeciras tomorrow night.’

  Richter spent half an hour in the back of Lacomte’s Renault talking to FOE on a secure circuit. First he briefed the duty officer on the day’s events, then waited while he arranged a conference call which brought in Simpson and the Intelligence Director. Then they discussed the bomb at Gibraltar, and what they were going to need.

  ‘I don’t know what time the Herky-bird will get there,’ Richter said, ‘so we need Gibraltar airfield kept open until further notice. We’ll need accommodation of some sort there – HMS Rooke, the Naval base, would do nicely. We’ll need transport from the airfield to Rooke for twenty people, including the Hercules crew. At Rooke, we’ll need a conference room or similar as soon as we get there to conduct the final briefings and then, depending on where the freighter is moored, dories or inflatables or something to get us out to the ship. If it’s not at anchor they won’t be necessary, but we do need to know as soon as possible, so can you drag the Gibraltar harbour master out of whatever bar he’s in and ask him.’

  ‘Is that it?’ Simpson asked.

  ‘No,’ Richter said. ‘We’re sitting here by a French autoroute with a Russian nuclear weapon in the back of a lorry, and there are two things I want sorted out. That weapon, according to General Modin, is identical in most respects to the one in the hold of the freighter at Gibraltar. I want someone to come out here and show me how to disarm the bloody thing, so I know what colour wire to cut tomorrow morning.’

  ‘We’re way ahead of you,’ said Simpson. ‘We’ve had a team from Aldermaston on standby since you went to France. They’re on their way out to you now.’

  ‘Good. What’s their ETA?’

  ‘About seven thirty tonight, French time. They’re coming by road, because of the X-ray gear and other equipment they’re bringing.’

  Richter thought for a moment. ‘Then you’re going to have to organize another aircraft to get me down to Gibraltar,’ he said. ‘The SAS will be leaving Northolt at seven, which means arrival at Reims about half an hour later, which is actually eight thirty French time, and my guess is they’ll just pick up the SAS guys here and head south. I doubt if the Aldermaston boffins can crack the system, and explain it to me in words of one syllable, in much less than two or three hours.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Simpson, and Richter could hear murmurs as he consulted with someone.

  ‘Right,’ he said, coming back on to the line. ‘We’ll have an RAF Tornado fly into Reims and wait there until you’re ready to go. You can fly down in the navigator’s seat.’

  ‘What about Diplomatic Clearance?’ the Intelligence Director said. ‘Technically, we’ll need—’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Simpson snapped, irritation evident in his tone. ‘Richter can get the DST to sort that out from the French end – right?’

  ‘Shouldn’t be a problem,’ Richter said. ‘Lacomte has the ear of the Minister on this, for obvious reasons. If I’m flying in a Tornado,’ he added, ‘you’ll have to provide the RAF with my measurements for the flying suit – it has to be reasonably tight-fitting.’

  ‘Right. You said two things,’ Simpson said. ‘What’s the second?’

  Richter told him, which produced a loud protest from the Intelligence Director. ‘You can’t do that,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’ Richter replied. ‘We’d only be pointing the same gun in a different direction, so to speak.’

  ‘I like it,’ Simpson interrupted. ‘Yes, it’s sneaky and devious, and that’s usually the best way to work. Leave it to me. Now, is that it – as far as the weapon is concerned?’

  ‘Probably not,’ Richter replied, ‘but it’s about all I can think of at the moment. But there are a couple of other things we need to sort out.’

  The Gold Room, the Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

  ‘And that is your unanimous recommendation?’ the Secretary of Defense asked. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shook his head. ‘Not unanimous, Mr Secretary, but that is our majority view.’

  The Secretary of Defense nodded slowly. ‘Very well,’ he said finally. ‘We go to DEFCON ONE now.’

  Defence Readiness Condition One is the ultimate state of emergency. It ensures maximum force readiness and implies that the country is either at war or about to go to war.

  Four minutes later the Secretary of Defense was talking on a secure telephone to the President. ‘The Joint Chiefs have recommended escalation now,’ he said, ‘so, subject to your veto, we’re going to DEFCON ONE immediately. Do you agree, sir?’

  ‘Yes. Implement it immediately.’

  ‘I’m leaving with the Joint Chiefs for SITE R as soon as the choppers get here, and the NMCC will revert to skeleton manning with immediate effect.’

  ‘I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this,’ the President replied. He sounded more depressed than the Secretary of Defense had ever known.

  ‘Still no word from Karasin?’

  ‘Nothing,’ the President replied. ‘I contacted the Kremlin on the hot-line telex link about an hour ago, but they told me that the Russian President is still in conference. I don’t know,’ he added, ‘exactly what that means.’ The Secretary of Defense didn’t reply. ‘I was intending to stay here throughout the crisis,’ the President went on, ‘but I’ve changed my mind. I’ve ordered a helicopter to take me to Camp David. My family’s gone there already, and I can conduct operations from there as well as from here.’

  Camp David has an underground emergency operations centre designed to operate as a nuclear war command post. The centre is linked to SITE R by armoured underground communications cables.

  ‘Very good, Mr President,’ the Secretary of Defense said. ‘We’ve already activated the Mystic Star and Nationwide secure communications systems. The Joint Chiefs are linked with the Cover All and Nightwatch aircraft, Cheyenne Mountain, SITE R, USStratCom at Offutt and the other centres, and I’ll get Camp David added. I’ll make sure that you can contact me, the Vice-President and your nuclear commanders as soon as you get there.’ There was a short silence on the line. ‘Mr President?’

  ‘Sorry. Just thinking. My staff will tell Karasin where I’m going, and the Kremlin too. Is there anything else we can do?’

  ‘Nothing, Mr President,’ the Secretary said. ‘All we can do now is wait and pray.’

  Le Moulin au Pouchon, St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France

  Sadoun Khamil actually took over six hours to draft a reply to Abbas’ email, and as he read the decrypted text Abbas guessed that the delay had been because Khamil had been in prolonged consultation with senior al-Qaeda personnel.

  Khamil’s response was unequivocal – they would wait for the last phase of the operation to be implemented, for the London weapon to be put in place, for the Gibraltar bomb to be detonated and for Trushenko’s ultimatum to be delivered. Only then was Abbas authorized to take charge of the integrated weapons system the Russians had so obligingly constructed for them, and change the world.

  Camp David, Maryland

  The President settled himself wearily into an armchair in the underground bunker and glanced around. His wife and children were still above ground, watching an afternoon movie in the comfort of the Camp David house. There would be,
the President knew, ample time to bring them down into the bunker when – and if – necessary. Sitting about ten feet away from him was a Marine Corps major, clutching a black attaché case which was chained to his left wrist. Known colloquially as The Football, the case contained everything the President needed to wage global thermonuclear war – the current SIOP options, the President’s Decision Book and, most importantly, the Top Secret Gold Codes.

  The Gold Codes are a jumble of random letters and numbers issued on a daily basis by the National Security Agency. One copy of the Codes is delivered to the White House, or wherever the President happens to be, for inclusion in The Football, and simultaneously duplicate sets are delivered to all American nuclear command posts, including the Cover All and Nightwatch aircraft. Possession of the Gold Codes, and access to one of the secure communication networks, is all the American President – or anyone else, in fact – needs to authorize the release of nuclear weapons.

  The Marine Corps major, one of three officers assigned to The Football detail, had a simple job. He was to stay with the President at all times, day and night, until the President was either incapacitated or dead, when he would immediately transfer his allegiance to the next appointed Head of State.

  ‘Cheer up, Marine,’ the President said, a somewhat forced smile on his face. ‘It may never happen.’

  ‘No, sir,’ the major replied, doubtfully.

  An Army colonel approached the President. ‘The Secretary of Defense, sir,’ he said, ‘on the Mystic Star console.’

  The President walked across the floor and picked up the headset. The Secretary of Defense’s voice was scratchy and echoed in the earphones – a function of the scrambling system used – and the President had to concentrate to hear what he was saying.