by Ian Slater
“What arrangement?” Suzlov had screamed, quite deranged by now and having already launched the ICBMs from the Kola Peninsula against America. Reason was beyond him, but the nine-millimeter parabellum bullet from Chernko’s Walther P38 wasn’t. It settled the matter.
Now, even as their SPETS elite guards were trying to dislodge and annihilate the SAS attackers, they were, under Chernko’s leadership, formulating peace proposals to NATO. Marchenko moved away from the admiral toward Chernko, who immediately interpreted this as a political move away from the navy and into his camp. For the wrong reasons, he was correct. Marchenko, who was opposed to Suzlov in the final meeting, now wanted to disassociate himself, despite his military rank, from the three chiefs of the armed forces, for from the moment he had seen Suzlov temyat’ urn—”cracking up”—and heard of the ICBM launch from Kola, he knew the Soviet Union was nearing the abyss. Only with Chernko’s power, with the KGB at his disposal, could they hope to convince the others, particularly Admiral Smernov, not to launch from the nuclear fleet and hope to persuade the cocky, relatively untouched Siberian republic to surrender.
But the admiral had been stubborn in the Council of Ministers’ meeting, questioning whether the reports of Soviet launches from the Kola could not have been merely enemy propaganda to justify an all-out attack on the Soviet Union. “Have we firsthand reports from Murmansk?” he’d asked defiantly.
At that point, Marchenko had lost patience with Smernov.
“Are you mad, Admiral? Madder than Suzlov? What do you think reports will tell you? Is it photographs of the mushroom clouds you want to see — or the dust cloud that will obliterate the sun?” Marchenko had remembered the awesome outpouring of the American volcano Mount Saint Helen’s many years ago, its dark cloud darkening entire cities, turning midday into midnight, and the volcano’s explosion was only a fraction of the nuclear arsenals both sides had at their disposal. “Is it the dust of millions of vaporized bodies you wish to see? We have no time to lose, Admiral. If we don’t contact the Americans now, they will bury us.” He paused. “The trouble is, Admiral, we don’t know exactly where most of our warheads will land. Our propaganda has covered our technological deficiencies for years, but you and I — all of us here — know that the circular error of probability of your submarine-launched missiles might be as large as twenty miles. Anyway—”and here Marchenko turned to the KGB chief “—Comrade Chernko will attest to the fact that we have reports of shoddy workmanship— explosive bolts that don’t explode to separate the second and third rocket stages. Let alone the navigation system.”
“Our space program is the showpiece of—” began the admiral defiantly.
“Was—our showpiece!” cut in Marchenko. “And we have hidden how many launch failures in that program? Even at best, including the American Challenger disaster and the like, we have only matched the Americans seventy percent of the time. That other thirty percent, that inaccuracy, Admiral,” said Marchenko, leaning forward, risking Smernov’s bad breath, “could mean whole American cities are destroyed instead. Then what do you think the Americans will do?” He paused and sat back. Smernov’s breath was too much. “At least when Murmansk used the American submarine launch of the deactivated missiles as an excuse to launch, they had the sense, minimal though it was, to go for military targets in the U.S. But if we were to launch from our fleet — the more rockets we fire, the higher the danger—”
“General Marchenko,” said Chernko, staring at the admiral, his tone the most threatening any of the Politburo or STAVKA had ever known, “is correct. The American technological edge will do us in in the end. We must tell the American president it is over.” He looked about at each one of them. “Let us not compound our error, Comrades.”
“How will we let him know?” asked the minister of transport. “What about an EM pulse if his plane is near one of our targets?”
“The president’s airborne command post, Comrade, is sheathed against EMP.”
“And what if one of our missiles detonates in air burst too close to the plane? Can you guarantee communication then?”
“No,” said Chernko, exasperated. “But we will try, Comrade.”
Chernko’s assurance was uttered with such deadly and understated charm that the transport minister fell silent. Chernko then turned to the admiral. “We have your word then, Smernov, that your nuclear fleet will not launch?”
“Yes,” said the admiral reluctantly, beginning to say something else but catching himself, deciding against it.
Chernko was still looking at him searchingly. “Go on, Admiral. What is it?”
The admiral mumbled something about Suzlov.
“We had to shoot him,” said Chernko brusquely. “Are you not prepared to accept your part in our collective responsibility, Comrade?”
“No — no,” the admiral hastened. “I mean — no, I’m not discussing that, Comrade Director. Besides, history will not know who shot him. We will blame the Allies.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” said Chernko dismissively, the first time Marchenko had heard the director’s tone move from one of icy calm to undisguised contempt. “The Allies will be writing the history books, Admiral. Not us. The irony is, they will correctly say we killed Suzlov, but no one will believe them, given their commando raid. But history will end, Comrade, if you cannot assure us your fleet will not engage the Americans — goading them into a second strike against us. Have we your assurance?”
The admiral dabbed the bridge of his nose with his rolled-up khaki handkerchief where an AK-47 bullet had scraped the skin when he’d tripped in the tunnel and two SPETS had dragged him to his feet. Chernko could tell the admiral was hiding something.
“Speshi!” Hurry up!” Chernko shouted. “What have you done, Admiral?”
“I–I’ve done nothing. The nuclear fleet has been ordered not to launch, but… well, we have several diesel-electric boats. We’ve lost contact with two diesel boats operating off the American West Coast.”
Chernko saw it at once. “Gospodi! U nikh atomnye rakety!”—”My God! They are carrying nuclear missiles!”
“Two each,” said the admiral.
“Tactical or nuclear?” snapped Chernko.
“Eights,” said the admiral quietly, dabbing at his nose again, “out of Vladivostok.”
The minister of transport was looking from Chernko to the admiral. “What are ‘eights’?”
“You fool!” shouted Chernko, causing several of the members to start with fright. He turned to his comrades. “Eights are submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Over seven-thousand-kilometer range.”
“Only one warhead each,” said the admiral, as if this were some kind of enormous concession.
“Yes!” bellowed Chernko. “One warhead of seven hundred and fifty kilotons. Twice as big as the American missile. And you have four of them. What are their targets?”
“It was insurance,” the admiral retorted. Far from being cowed by Chernko’s outburst, his tone changed from apology to defiance. “Insurance against the Americans hitting our cities.”
“You—” Chernko began, pausing, fighting for self-control. “You have targeted them on American cities? Not military targets? Four cities?”
The admiral didn’t answer.
“Which cities, Admiral?” pressed Chernko.
The admiral rolled up his khaki handkerchief even more tightly. The bridge of his nose was still bleeding. “San Diego, Seattle…”He stopped as if he couldn’t quite remember the rest. Everyone was waiting. He shrugged. “Washington.”
In the room there was utter silence, and they could all clearly hear the crackle of small-arms fire from inside the Kremlin. The faint ticking of the library’s pendulum clock sounded to Marchenko like a time bomb.
“That’s only three cities, Admiral,” Chernko said, waiting.
“New York,” said the admiral.
“New York!” repeated another Politburo member, the minister of supply. “Gospodi!”—”My God!” He tur
ned to Chernko. “Can it reach that far?”
Chernko swung on him in displaced fury. “Of course it can, you idiot. And further. Over a seven-thousand-kilometer range. You think he would have targeted New York if he couldn’t reach it?” Chernko’s rage was now directed at the admiral. “We cannot contact the two subs at all?”
“No, sir.”
“We can only hope the Americans find them,” said Chernko. “If Washington and New York are hit, we will suffer… Do you know where they are now?”
The admiral shook his head. “They are on silent running. Especially now. No further communication is acknowledged once nuclear war is in progress.” He looked about at the others. “You must understand the targets were only chosen in consultation with President Suzlov.”
“Can we do nothing?” pressed the minister of transport. ‘Nothing at all?”
“Molis”—”Pray”—muttered someone.
“Molis?” said Chernko. “Yes — that the Americans find them and sink them.”
The admiral’s professional pride was ruffled. “The commanders are well trained, Comrade.”
Chernko seized on one last chance. “What are their instructions upon detecting nuclear war has broken out? Will they not surface and try to contact us to confirm whether—”
“Oh no,” said the admiral. “That’s the whole point, you see. That is strictly forbidden. An enemy could be feeding false messages over any number of bands. That’s why I said no further communication would be—”
Chernko’s voice was calm again. “We should have shot you along with Suzlov, Admiral.”
“What are we going to do about the commandos?” the minister of supply wanted to know. “We have them bottled up, but if we have to go in and root them out one by one — it will mean we will have to use tanks. It’ll destroy the cathedral— perhaps the whole Kremlin — Lenin’s Mausoleum…”
“You want us to worry about a few artifacts when we are on the brink of annihilation?” retorted the minister of transport angrily. “For all I care, send in the tanks if necessary. We wipe them out or they surrender. It’s as simple as that. Unless—” He paused. “Unless the two diesel submarines are destroyed, pulling us back from the brink. Then we could use those commandos. A good bargaining card. The Americans are especially vulnerable in such things. They worry about losing a few of their own.”
“But what,” interjected Chernko, “if the two diesels aren’t found? Their cities are hit and then ours, then we’ve had it, Comrades. Completely. Saving the Kremlin won’t mean anything.”
“But what do you propose meanwhile?” pressed the minister of transport. “Let these SAS gangsters run rampant?”
Chernko shrugged. “Of course not. Move in the tanks.”
“What,” asked another Politburo member, “will the casualties be like for the Americans if the four missiles are fired from the two diesel submarines?”
“Millions,” answered a STAVKA member, “killed outright. More millions will the from the radiation dust — over a thousand rems for everyone, Comrade. No favorites. More, not in the immediate area, will the from the invisible radiation. I don’t mean that in the dust cloud, but in the food chain, water table. Bone marrow death, especially… Everyone in the whole country, Comrade, will become more susceptible to disease — their immune systems destroyed, you see.”
The comrade could not see. He could not imagine such disaster coming back tenfold upon the Soviet Union. But he knew it was true.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
If ever there was to be a Churchillian moment in Ray Brentwood’s life, it came the moment he, so recently of IX-44E, sludge removal, “propelled,” was appointed overall commander of the task force set out to find the two diesel-electrics his oil samples had determined must be close in to the American coast. And with his command came even more power once the Soviets had contacted Kneecap, giving the Americans the information that the two diesel-electric Golf-class submarines, though they did not know where they were on the western American seaboard, were carrying four SSN-8s, each of the four warheads carrying 750 kilotons.
Issuing orders so quickly that at times runners with their cellular phones, or at least those with phones that were still functioning, literally bumped into one another, Brentwood quickly assembled his antisubmarine warfare force of frigates, destroyers, MAD — magnetic anomaly detector — aircraft, and sonar-dunking choppers. He knew it was not only the most important race in his life, a race against time at the end of which lay either glory or utter defeat, but the most important race in American history. If the four American cities were hit, in addition to those already struck but explained away, like Omaha, as legitimate targets by the Soviets, the public pressure on the president to unleash countervalue strikes — against all major Soviet cities — would be enormous, and indeed, militarily, would be the only thing the United States could do unless it was to be annihilated.
But for military targets such as the Trident bases at Bangor, Washington State, and Kings Bay, Georgia, SAC HQ in Omaha, and NORAD control in Colorado Springs near Cheyenne Mountain, it was already over, the mushrooms from the impacts depressingly the same. Only over Bangor, Washington, and at Kings Bay in Georgia had the mushroom clouds looked different, their shape essentially the same, but on a bright, clear winter day the mushroom stalks above Bangor and Kings Bay were infused with millions of gallons of superheated water evaporated by the ten-million-degree-Fahrenheit heat at the center of the fireball. The wide V-shaped bottom of the stalk, before it rose and grew thin, had become blindingly white, the sun catching the vibrant iridescence of the countless billions of sea creatures that were sucked up in the whirlwinds of the explosion’s core, the radioactive cloud sweeping out to sea.
The sick and dying overflowed out on the lawns beneath makeshift tents as rain, caused by the hot air of the explosion meeting the cold mountain air of the Rockies and the Cascades, poured down, washing much of the radioactivity into the water table faster than it normally would have been absorbed. And as in the case of those who had tried to get to the children first in Omaha, would-be rescuers were thwarted by an almost complete lack of antiradiation, anticontamination suits, the hospital budgets having been slashed in the halcyon days of Gorbachev.
High above the midwestern states, the most dreadful thing that those aboard the ADS — antiradioactive-sheathed— Kneecap experienced was that here they were, safe, at least for the moment, high above the earth, supposedly in command of the situation while all the distant mushroom clouds told them how helpless they were to do anything for those people who were dying by the thousands, the unlucky ones who had not died outright.
* * *
Twenty miles off southern California’s coast, Ray Brentwood stood in the stiff breeze that had come up since they had left San Diego aboard his command ship, the USS John T. Munro, an Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate, a sister ship to his first, the USS Blaine.
On officers’ call, he instructed his department heads that they were to keep the mission short and simple when describing it to the men. “Our job is to search for and destroy a force of two Soviet Golf-Class V diesel-electric subs which are carrying two ICBMs apiece. The Golf’s surface speed is seventeen knots. And on battery power, gentlemen, they’re very quiet. I repeat, very quiet. We suspect they have anechoic soundproofing tiles on their hulls and enough battery power to run for seventy-two hours without recharge. Which is the reason why they’ve been able to sneak past our SOSUS network.”
“Torpedoes, sir?” asked the officer in charge of the two Mark-32 triple-tube torpedo launchers on the John T. Munro.
“Ten. Twenty-one-inch diameter. Six forward, four aft.”
“Radar, sir?”
“Snoop tray and sonars. Medium frequency. Now, my guess is that given they’re out of contact with their headquarters and their orders are to remain so — that is, to launch on their own initiative — and given the fact that there is no way they cannot know a nuclear exchange has been under way, I suspect t
hat for the sake of coordinated action, they are likely to stick together in preparation for a short, simultaneous attack, because they know that if they send those four sons of bitches off together, we’re going to have twice as much trouble stopping them. It’s a pretty good bet that they won’t go it alone.” He paused. “We’ve got one thing working for us at the moment, and that is that the electromagnetic pulse from the strikes they’ve already made is going to scramble communications everywhere for a while.”
“You mean they’re going to wait a day or so until they can be sure of proper trajectories?”
“That’s what I’m hoping,” said Brentwood. “But we can’t rely on it. We’ll have to try to pin ‘em down faster than that.”
“How we going to do that, Captain?”
“That’s my job. What I want you guys to remember is that we’re going to have sonar pinging out there, magnetic anomaly detectors, and all the other ASW equipment. I don’t want anybody getting ‘signals mixed up.’ Navigators — you make sure where your ship is every second. Day and night. I don’t want any incoming noise from one of our own search ships to interfere with our sonar either, so the distance between ships’ll have to be watched closely. Should Munro be attacked, I expect the officer of the deck to bring her broadside immediately. This’ll present a bigger target to any incoming. It’ll free our radar masts and Phalanx defense system of upper-deck obstruction. Last thing — from now on, we’re Condition Four.” This meant that more than two hundred of the ship’s 453 complement of men would be on alert at all times, four hours on, eight off.
“That’s all,” said Brentwood. He took the salute and made his way to the John T. Munro’s combat information center, along with his tactical action officer, James Cameron, one of the young officers aboard USS Blaine whom he had requested along with several enlisted men who had served with him on the Blaine. It was to demonstrate that there was no grudge on his part about what had happened on the Blaine. Because he could not truly say how he had ended up in the water after the Blaine had been hit, he saw in the John T. Munro a chance to redeem himself.