by Joe Buff
That’s lie number one, Jeffrey told himself.
WASHINGTON: How can I be sure this is not a subterfuge, a distraction, a prelude to a strategic first strike?
MOSCOW: You insult me. Your intelligence assets would give signs if we were preparing for such a mutually suicidal act.
WASHINGTON: Depending on your tactics and goals, you might not consider it suicidal. Do not attempt to manipulate me by your own view of American antinuke phobias.
MOSCOW: Our submarines are not surging! Our bomber fleets aren’t mobilizing! It was only a maintenance accident.
WASHINGTON: Then am I to assume there will be no further accidents in the near future?
MOSCOW: Do not ask of me impossible promises. You had a Titan II explode during maintenance in Arkansas in 1980. It blew the lid off the silo and hurled the warhead through the air. Can you assure me that such a thing will not occur again in America?
WASHINGTON: Yes, we have had accidents. But never an attempted rogue attack like from your submarine in 1968.
MOSCOW: Do not harass me further with such ancient history!
WASHINGTON: Then you can assure me that no such unauthorized launch was attempted today? And no more attempts are in progress?
MOSCOW: [Long hesitation] Of course not! It was a maintenance accident!
Gotcha twice now. That “long hesitation” suggests Kurzin’s team hasn’t been wiped out yet . . . but the Russian president chooses to count on the fact that they will be.
WASHINGTON: We will monitor the situation carefully. I have nine SSBNs at sea. They alone give me a thousand warheads for a retaliatory strike. Each W-88 yields half a megaton.
MOSCOW: I will not be extorted by any such wholly unjustified insinuations or threats! . . . However, as a safety concession, we will hold our strategic thermonuclear assets below their maximum force readiness. We will not raise readiness if you do not go to your DEFCON One. Let us agree now to both avoid a launch-on-warning strategy.
Jeffrey knew that launch-on-warning meant “pushing the button” as soon as you received indication that the other guy’s ICBMs were taking off. The Russian president is nervous. . . . As well he should be. And he just telegraphed, to me and my commander in chief, that Kurzin does still have a chance.
WASHINGTON: I agree to not follow a policy of launch-on-warning. The events in Srednekolymsk show us both how dangerous such tactics can be. Misinterpretation of vague or unconfirmed data can lead to disaster.
MOSCOW: I concur wholeheartedly.
WASHINGTON: I will keep my strategic thermonuclear forces at DEFCON Two, but giving me an equivalent assurance about your own strategic command-and-control is not enough. You must stay immediately available for further verbal consultation. And do not evacuate your leadership. Do not evacuate your civilians from cities. I would consider either as proof of impending aggression. In return, as a gesture of good faith, I will not leave the White House for the next forty-eight hours. I am sure you have assets that can verify my whereabouts.
MOSCOW: I give my word on these matters. I will remain in my suite in the Kremlin for two days.
WASHINGTON: Why did you not inform us in advance of your maintenance work in Srednekolymsk? By treaty you are required to, precisely to avoid confrontations like this.
MOSCOW: [Long hesitation] The announcement was issued. It may have been misplaced. We must all be more cautious in future.
Another bald-faced lie, and a cover-up too, Jeffrey thought.
WASHINGTON: You really need to shake the dust and deadwood from your bureaucracy. You misplace important messages too often. I sometimes suspect that you do it on purpose.
MOSCOW: This conversation is ended.
WASHINGTON: No it is not. I must insist on more. The tactical nuclear conflict with Germany is too destabilizing, and they will have their own theories about unfolding events at Srednekolymsk despite what you might tell them. The potential for misunderstanding or unintentional provocation between your country and mine is high, when additional thermal signatures from Srednekolymsk may not yet be ruled out, or others elsewhere may be misidentified. Human error and mechanical breakdown in any complex system are most likely, and most damaging, while under such stress.
MOSCOW: With that I agree. What do you want?
WASHINGTON: Issue an order to your high political and military commanders immediately, and insist on positive confirmation of receipt of the order by each.
MOSCOW: What order?
WASHINGTON: That if for some reason in the next two days their contact with you is temporarily lost, for instance due to an attempted coup or sudden illness, they are not to exercise independent initiative, or implement succession plans, going so far as launching any ICBMs themselves. Only during the next two days, as a cooling-off period for both our nations.
MOSCOW: [Pause, background murmurs audible, appears to consult with advisors] You are overreacting to nothing. However, that being the case, I see no harm in issuing such orders. Provided that you reciprocate, regarding your own chain of custody for thermonuclear forces. I will not be held hostage to American whims because of a minor maintenance accident!
WASHINGTON: I will reciprocate. Caution is not whimsy, with half the world already at war.
MOSCOW: This discussion is ended. [Terminates call.]
Jeffrey smiled to himself despite the uncertainties and dangers, and the trials that he knew lay ahead. The President of the United States had politely but firmly kicked ass, while skillfully putting in place arrangements to avoid inadvertent escalation by either side—setting things up for the bluff about a next-generation missile shield. And he’d caught the President of Russia, on the record, repeatedly telling blatant untruths. If Kurzin’s team succeeded, those untruths would come back to haunt him—partly at Jeffrey’s behest. But if Kurzin made the wrong mistakes, Jeffrey was the one who’d be haunted.
The U.S. had raised its H-bomb alert status to DEFCON 2 at the start of the war with the Berlin-Boer Axis. The last time this had happened was during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I’ve had my doubts about this scheme all along, but it’s way too late to back out now.
Chapter 26
As Nyurba watched, Ildarov’s team switched each SS-27 over to internal battery power; indicator lights showed that operations continued to be nominal. By remote control they disconnected all physical and electronic links to the missiles, except for the launch umbilicals.
“We are ready to launch, sir,” the major said. “I think.”
“Deploy all reserve TV cameras. We need to see how the launches go, and what the Russians try next.”
More display screens lit up. The inferno topside still raged furiously, but all three silo lids were clear of obstructions.
Nyurba couldn’t afford to take any chances. The unbreakable mission doctrine, and circumstance, forced him to issue the most difficult order he ever imagined having to give.
“Major, contact bunker two and bunker three vestibules and all bunker entryway squads. Inform them to take cover, we’re preparing to attempt missile launch.” Too much hinged on that single important qualifier, attempt. But it got worse. Nyurba continued. “Men unfit to run for twenty miles without assistance are to be . . .” He struggled for the words. “Rendered permanently unavailable for hostile interrogation. This is a direct order. I accept full responsibility.”
A dark pall came over the group of commandos in the bunker. Everyone knew this was coming, but repression and denial, and their own will to survive, had up to now kept them from accepting the brutal, raw fact.
“Each martyr today might be helping save hundreds of millions of lives later on. The calculus of war is abhorrent, but inescapable. May God forgive me.”
I doubt He will. There’s war fighting, and then there’s murder. Nyurba had to blink back tears. The squadron had trained together for a year. Every man felt like a brother. Their bonding was stronger than family.
Ildarov needed to clear his throat twice to be able t
o speak. He relayed the orders.
“Bunker two acknowledges. . . . Medics in bunker three vestibule acknowledge. . . . Squads at entryways to all bunkers acknowledge.” The major’s voice was dead and flat.
“Very well,” Nyurba said coldly. “Launch the missiles.”
His heart had been pounding. Now he took a deep breath, his throat painfully constricted with grief, waiting for something to explode—or for everything to simply go dark and useless, inert, which would be just as bad.
The men used their controls to select the first missile. To initiate the final launch sequence, Ildarov and one of his men inserted and turned their keys. Other lights started flashing. A camera showed the lid of the silo rise open by its hydraulic jacks in less than twenty seconds—it tapered toward its bottom, like a cork, to seal the silo top against incoming nukes. Nyurba felt disembodied as he watched, and became fascinated by trivial details: the bottom of the lid was painted dark green.
I’m an executioner, not a warrior. And I’m the first person in history to launch a hydrogen bomb in anger, not in a test.
The flame-deflector exhaust duct covers slid open, pushing debris and bits of burning fuel aside. The first-stage booster engine ignited. On TV, towers of searing flame shot through the surface exhaust ducts. Nyurba saw the missile’s nose cone emerge from the silo, followed by its sleek, silvery body. It seemed to barely move. Then the monster was out of the silo, seventy-five feet long and six feet in diameter, its engine nozzle giving off blinding yellow glare and a churning cloud of brownish smoke. The missile climbed faster and faster. Ildarov followed it with one camera, using a joystick. Soon the missile was too high to see anything but the incandescent glow from its engine, until that moved out of the camera’s field of view, around the solid curvature of the Earth. Nyurba prayed that the warhead actually detonated, and prayed even harder that it went off only where it was supposed to, in outer space above Moscow.
The team repeated this with the second missile, and a guilt-wracked Nyurba repeated his fervent prayers.
Then they launched the third. As it began to leave its silo, a scattering of Russian troops, still alive amid the surface inferno and fumes, managed to rally and rouse themselves.
They found their last reserves of drive and energy, knowing what was unfolding before their eyes.
Nyurba grabbed for the intercom to the interlock, to warn his commandos to rush to defend the missile. But it was too late. As he watched on the TV display, Russian soldiers aimed their rifles at the missile and fired. The engine nozzle came out of the silo and roasted them.
Nyurba waited to see what damage they’d inflicted. The missile soared into the sky like the others, but it headed in a different direction. It was off-course, its trajectory all wrong. He had no idea what its warhead would do, and had no way to disarm or self-destruct it.
Nyurba felt that his last ounce of humanity was shredded by what the team under his orders had just made happen. “Major, have your men bag up as much intel materials as they can carry.”
Ildarov was more than glad to hurry his specialists to this task. He knew what was coming, and welcomed distraction.
The mission doctrine saying “no prisoners” cuts both ways.
Nor could the commandos afford to leave any witnesses. They might have seen the team do subtle things revealing that they were Americans. Deceased, the silo crewmen’s corpses would stop metabolizing those all-important, telltale German interrogation chemicals in their blood.
Nyurba drew his PRI and unemotionally shot each Russian silo crewman in the head; the small-caliber bullets made tiny holes and stayed inside their skulls. The pistol reports were deafening. Ejected shell casings bounced and clinked and rolled along the floor. The pistol slugs and the casings, under close forensic analysis, would be found to have been made in German-occupied Poland, not Russia.
“There it is!” one of Challenger’s fire control technicians shouted.
Jeffrey, startled from his reverie, saw it on his screen, a tiny yellow dot moving up in the dusky purple sky; it was after midnight, and the sun lay behind them to the north.
“Make a proper report,” Bell snapped before Torelli or Sessions could. Everybody was understandably on edge.
“New visual contact, designate Victor One, assess as a Russian ICBM in flight.”
“I concur with assessment,” Torelli said.
“Very well, Weps,” Bell acknowledged.
Jeffrey saw another dot, following the first.
“New visual contact! Designate Victor Two! Second Russian ICBM in flight.”
The photonics head began tracking the missiles. The first one blinked out, then reappeared. “First-stage booster separation. Second-stage ignition.” The spent first stage, already outside the atmosphere, would burn up on its way down.
“Maximum image magnification,” Jeffrey ordered. The picture zoomed in and narrowed, like a twenty-four-power telescope. The technician kept shifting the head from Victor One to Victor Two and back again, since they didn’t fit in the field of view at once now. Both were accelerating rapidly.
Victor Two seemed to blink for a moment. “Victor Two first-stage separation, second-stage booster ignition.”
The second photonics mast was busy scanning the horizon to the south and east. Missiles on other trajectories, or launched from other places, could mean a full-scale Russian preemptive first strike—despite everything the two presidents said.
A third yellow dot appeared above the horizon, on a more northerly course. “New visual contact, designate Victor Three!”
Victor Three was definitely not behaving like the other two missiles. Who had launched it? From where? And why?
Jeffrey grabbed the handset for the radio room. He was so agitated he almost fumbled it the first time he tried to press the Talk button. “Radio, Commodore Fuller. Prepare to transmit on all available frequencies, warning of an unaccounted-for Russian missile in flight, targeting appears to be West Coast United States.”
Victor Three suddenly began plunging back toward the Earth.
“What the—”
“Rig for nuclear depth charge!” Bell shouted. The missile appeared to be coming straight for them. Had the Russians detected Challenger after all, and uncovered Kurzin’s disguise, and chosen a fitting method of revenge?
Victor Three burst into pieces. The scene reminded Jeffrey of the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger.
An unfortunate choice of namesake for this ship.
“Victor Three explosion is chemical,” Sessions announced. Victor One and Two had already gone into
second-stage booster separation and third-stage ignition. Even on maximum zoom with further computerized image enhancement, and one mast’s sensor in infrared mode so the missiles would stand out better against the frigid backdrop of outer space, they were tiny dots receding just above the visual horizon, far to the east. Their speed would top out at Mach twenty-four—over fifteen thousand miles per hour.
“Victor Three wreckage includes a one-megaton warhead,” Torelli cautioned. “Warhead status is unknown.”
Debris was fluttering and falling through the sky, trailing smoke. The warhead reentry body, if intact, would be dense and aerodynamically streamlined. It could carry much farther than other wreckage. Its fusing might think it was nearing a target.
Challenger, so shallow and with masts raised, would not withstand the shock and EMP this close. But Jeffrey needed to keep observing for more Russian missile liftoffs. He couldn’t order Bell to go deep. And Victor One and Two, assuming they were launched by Kurzin and not the Kremlin, might have faulty fusing—and could target the U.S. homeland for real.
“Victor One detonation!”
A violet-white flash lit up the entire sky. The brilliant flash was followed by a diffuse greenish glow that lasted about a second. When this faded, a warhead fireball of evanescent blue and red—excited gas molecules and superheated plasma—swelled in the vacuum of space, only a few degrees above
the eastern horizon, but four hundred miles above the Earth.
“Victor Two detonation!”
Another bright flash, another green glow, another eerie expanding sphere.
“Bearings are correct to pancake the Moscow-to-Ural-Mountains area,” Torelli reported by the weapons consoles.
“I concur,” Meltzer said from the navigation plotting table.
On the photonics display screens, the whole sky turned blood red, in shimmering sheets and dancing curtains—an awesome aurora caused by the exoatmospheric nuclear blasts. As intended, Challenger’s location, and all of eastern Siberia, were outside the area hit by the powerful twin EMPs.
Jeffrey waited for reports from ESM and the Radio Room. He waited to see if more missiles took off. He waited to see if the warhead from Victor Three was live and still coming his way.
In the next few minutes, no nuke exploded from the third ICBM that had launched from Srednekolymsk. No more missiles launched anywhere, so far, that he was aware of. ESM and Radio tuned to local news broadcasts, which were being fed incomplete reports from the edges of
the worst-affected zone. These helped confirm that—as expected—the electromagnetic pulses had pancaked cities ranging from Moscow to Magnitogorsk. They’d knocked out power and communications in a broad area of European Russia, sowing confusion and chaos, starting electrical fires in everything from large transformers to laptop computers. Rumors and speculation reported by Russian newscasters about the cause of all this varied from UFOs, to an asteroid hit, to nuclear war, to a new German or American secret weapon.
An ELF code group came through meaning Jeffrey should wait fifteen minutes and then commence the next mission phase, and put his script into action—ELF was immune to distant, prompt EMP effects. The wait was to make it look like he’d received and studied a longer message sent by low-frequency radio, with a much faster data rate than ELF.
Even a quarter-hour later, reception at higher, tactical frequencies was heavy with static—hissing and whistling and popping—but Radio managed to make line-of-sight contact with a Tupolev-204 to the east. Jeffrey used his best Russian.