Suddenly there appeared on the screen the silhouette of a sleek slim missile. The camera pulled back as it slowly panned down it.
The missile stood erect in some kind of parkland. The camera panned around to show two more missiles on either side of it, revealing, as it moved, the shapes of buildings ringing the missile site.
The coverage cut to another missile site, this one in a church courtyard. And another in the middle of a traffic circle. And another and another and another.
“Oh no,” Father muttered.
“What is it, Father?” Franja said. His face had turned ashen. He looked like he had just seen the end of the world.
“Those are Slam-Dunk missiles!” Jerry moaned. “They’re fucking Slam-Dunk missiles!”
God, they were elegant, the latest triumph of an American aerospace technology long since given over to the black science of destruction.
The details were secret, but Jerry knew the conceptual design, and the concept, he had to admit even now, was brilliant.
There were five warheads on the bus atop the Slam-Dunk missile. Small ones, maybe two hundred kilotons apiece. These weren’t city-killers, they were decapitation weapons, designed to take out command centers, government bunkers, selected missile sites, system control radars, launching facilities.
First-strike weapons, designed to penetrate defenses before anyone even knew they were coming.
In terms of throw-weight, the boosters were vastly overpowered to sprint the payload up to about fifty miles at blinding speed, giving less than a three-minute window to boost-phase interceptors. At the apogee of this steep, short parabola, the warhead bus separated. The bus itself was powered, blasting itself along the suborbital curve just under escape velocity until it was in position for separation, moving too fast for orbital interceptors to lock on.
It didn’t matter that this moved the bus up to about a hundred miles before the warheads separated, for the warheads were also powered. They didn’t just reenter the atmosphere and jig and jag as they fell onto their targets at mere terminal velocity. They came straight down at incredible speed—protected from incineration by their own shaped shock wave and by an ablative superconductor-cooled heat shield—with enough kinetic energy to vaporize twenty feet of concrete even if the detonator malfunctioned.
“. . . ten missiles, each with five two-hundred-kiloton fusion warheads . . .”
“What’s wrong, Jerry?” Sonya cried. “A minute ago, you were all brave talk, and now you look like you’ve seen your own ghost.”
“Those are Slam-Dunk missiles. Starblitz weapons. They go up like a bat out of hell, and they come down at a thousand miles a second.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we can’t stop them, Mother,” Franja told her.
“That’s right,” Jerry said. “The Russians have nothing that can stop them. There’s no time for a boost-phase detection-intercept cycle. Once the warheads separate, it’s only seconds to impact. The only chance is to get the bus between injection and separation, and between the Ukraine and Moscow, that’s maybe a sixty-second window. Battlestar America, just maybe. What the Russians have, never.”
“. . . as assurance to the world that these missiles are strictly defensive, and as proof positive to the Russian imperialists of the dedication of the Ukrainian people to their national destiny, we have placed these missiles in the midst of our major population centers, where any attempted preemptive nuclear strike at these purely defensive missiles will result in the deaths of millions of our own people. . . .”
“Shit, that’s diabolical!” Bobby moaned.
“The man is crazy!”
“Like a fox,” Sonya said grimly.
“. . . to die for our national independence if need be! We will fire these missiles at Russian population centers if and only if the Red Army crosses our border. We say to the generals in Moscow, we have made our decision, now you must make yours. Invade the Ukraine at the cost of millions of Russian lives. Attempt to preempt us and bring on a general holocaust. Or let us have our freedom and accept us as a member of a fraternal Europe, not of nation-states or empires, but of free and independent peoples!”
Vadim Kronkol held a heroic pose for a long moment to let it all sink in, and then he spoke again, this time in much lower tones of sly insinuation.
“In the interests of peace and humanity, and in order to make the best effort possible to prevent a nuclear catastrophe that nobody really wants, we have sacrificed one tenth of our national deterrent to arrange a nonlethal demonstration. At eleven fifty-six tomorrow morning, Moscow time, we will launch a missile carrying five warheads containing not nuclear explosives but honest Ukrainian pig manure. At approximately noon, Moscow time, our fraternal donations of fertilizer will be delivered to Red Square.”
Kronkol smiled sweetly at the camera. “We invite the generals in Moscow to get in some target practice at our expense. We have given you the launch time and the trajectory. Let’s see how well you do in ideal conditions against dummy warheads. It should give you some idea of how you will fare if you force us to use these weapons in earnest.”
“. . . still no further word from the Red Army Central Command, while in Washington, President Nathan Wolfowitz still refuses to clarify the bizarre response to the Russian ultimatum that has so shocked an already-stunned world.”
—CNN
“What do you think, Dad?” Bobby said. “Is there any chance at all?”
Dad shook his head. “If they get one out of five, it’ll be a miracle,” he said.
They had all stayed up till late in the night, transfixed by the wall screen. At any moment, the Russians might attempt a nuclear strike on the Ukrainian missile sites. Or the Russians might capitulate. If Dad was right, and when it came to this stuff, it was hard to believe he could be wrong, Bobby certainly knew that he would do one thing or the other if he were Marshal Bronksky.
But all during the world’s long night vigil, neither had happened. Bronksky issued a short statement accusing the United States of nuclear blackmail. He demanded to know what President Wolfowitz was going to do when the Ukrainians fired their missile. He warned that if Kronkol was lying and live warheads exploded on Soviet territory, it would be taken as an act of war on the part of the United States and “dealt with accordingly.”
Nearly two hours of talking heads later, Nathan Wolfowitz had used a photo opportunity to give a one-sentence answer that only seemed to make matters worse.
“Mr. President, Marshal Bronksky wants to know what you’re going to do when the Ukrainians fire their dummy warheads at Moscow!”
Nathan Wolfowitz had smiled sardonically and shrugged his shoulders. “Like the rest of the world,” he said, “I think I’ll just sit back with a six-pack and watch the big game on television.”
The reporters had been appalled, and so had everyone else, to judge by the rest of the night’s commentary, but Bobby had been mightily relieved, though he couldn’t make anyone who hadn’t known the man understand why.
That was the real Nathan Wolfowitz, playing the awful hand he had been dealt with a perfect poker face.
Bobby didn’t envy Wolfowitz the hand of cards he had to play one little bit. But still less did he envy the marks who were now playing against him.
And now here they were again, gathered in the living room before the wall screen, with a long-range TV camera far away atop a Tverskaya Street skyscraper holding a panoramic shot on Red Square while a white digital insert ticked off the minutes and seconds till noon.
The huge square was eerily deserted under the bright noontime sun. Nothing moved but a flag waving above the empty buildings behind the Kremlin wall and pigeons too stupid to realize they were scavenging on ground zero.
11:56
“Ignition and lift-off,” Dad droned, just as he always had when he watched live coverage of an ordinary space shot. His eyes were bright and fixated on the wall screen, and there was a weird little smile on his lips. Even no
w, Dad was still the same crazy space cadet, no doubt in some twisted way, he was enjoying this.
11:58
“Insertion and warhead bus ignition.”
11:59
“Warhead separation and—”
A blinding white light washed out the video image, followed immediately by an unguessable sound that blasted the audio into static. Another and another and another, too rapid to separate, and then the screen resolved into a fireball rising through a rolling gray cloud like a miniature nuclear mushroom and then five enormous overlapping thunderclaps as the microphones cleared to carry the secondary shock waves.
The cloud rose rapidly, dissipating quickly, raining debris across the screen for a few moments before the awful results could be seen.
Where the onion-domed church had been at one end of the square there was now a jagged ruin. The Kremlin wall was a line of rubble. The center of the square was a huge irregularly shaped crater. Lenin’s tomb had had one of its corners blown off, and the stonework was a crumbling spiderweb of cracks, but, miraculously, it was more or less still standing.
Franja could not quite transfer the image of what she was seeing from her eyes into her brain. St. Basil’s destroyed. The Kremlin wall smashed to rubble. Lenin’s tomb cracked and crumbling. An enormous hole gouged in the center of the Russian heart. It was like a physical blow to her own breast. It took her long moments to catch her breath before she could even feel the pain.
“Well, it’s good to see that Vladimir Ilyich, at least, still knows how to be a survivor,” Mother stammered.
It was an idiot remark, but Franja understood it. What else was there to say at a moment like this?
Those vicious cretins in Kiev had no doubt sought to humiliate the Russian people, to terrorize them, to break their hearts, by choosing as a demonstration the obliteration of the center of their world and their spirit and their history.
But if the Ukrainians thought that would cow Russia into submission, they had made a fatal error that the whole world was about to pay for. No one who had been in Red Square the night of the Ukrainian secession could doubt that fear, reason, or even the dictates of sanity itself, would allow this evilly brilliant attempt at psychic castration to go unavenged.
“I would not want to be in Kiev or Odessa right now. . . ,” Franja said savagely, feeling the impulse to retaliate herself, even while knowing it was madness. But the generals of the Red Army, with the power to really do it in their hands, with Red Square a smoking ruin—
“Here comes the end of the world . . . ,” Mother whispered as Marshal Bronksky’s face replaced the awful spectacle. Bronksky himself looked like death in both senses of the term. His face was pale and drawn, his eyes blazing with fury, his jaws clenched tight in a futile attempt to choke back his obvious rage.
“We regard this unspeakable outrage as an act of war by the United States against the Soviet Union,” he growled in a voice hoarse with contained emotion. “We demand that the United States forthwith remove its missiles from the Ukraine. If it fails to accomplish this within forty-eight hours, we will launch a nuclear strike against both the Ukrainian missiles and the United States, aimed not at military targets, but at population centers.”
“The man’s gone crazy!” Bobby exclaimed.
“On the contrary,” Mother said grimly, “under the circumstances, this is quite an impressive degree of statesmanlike restraint.”
Franja knew just what she meant.
ALL SOVIET FORCES ON FULL RED ALERT AS WORLD AWAITS RESPONSE OF PRESIDENT WOLFOWITZ
—Tass
Nathan Wolfowitz did not wait for forty-eight hours to reply to the Russian ultimatum. Bobby had to admire his timing, and somehow it also gave him hope. Wolfowitz waited till 6:00 P.M. Paris time, 8:00 P.M. in Moscow, right at the top of the prime-time Vremya news, when it was noon in New York and 9:00 A.M. on the West Coast. Meaning that Nat was timing it to hit his maximum European audience.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”
Nathan Wolfowitz sat behind his desk in the Oval Office. He was wearing a tan sports jacket with leather patches on the elbows and a white turtleneck. His hair was neatly combed. His eyes sparkled with the unreadable amusement, feigned or not, that Bobby had faced a thousand times across the poker table.
“I will dispense with the usual formalities,” President Wolfowitz said in a dry, cool voice. “In fact, I think I might as well dispense with all the formalities. In the name of the people of the United States, I apologize profoundly to the Soviet people before the world for the reckless stupidity of my pinheaded predecessor.”
“Incredible!”
“That’s Nathan Wolfowitz,” Bobby said, and somehow found himself heaving a sigh of premature relief.
“I convey the condolences of the American people for the damage done to the heart of their capital, and offer to rebuild it under Soviet supervision entirely at American expense.”
“He’s . . . he’s a genius!” Mom exclaimed.
“Now, I suppose I have to answer Marshal Bronksky’s ultimatum,” Wolfowitz drawled in quite another voice. “Well, unfortunately, I’m afraid there’s no way I can do that, seeing as how there’s no way I can retrieve Harry Carson’s missiles from the Ukrainians without starting World War III myself.”
He shrugged. He threw up his hands. “What can I tell you, Marshal? I guess you’re just going to have to go ahead and launch your first strike against our population centers.”
“What?”
“The man’s gone mad!”
Nathan Wolfowitz’s eyes grew harder than Bobby had ever seen them. For the first time he realized deep in his gut that his one-time friend really was the President of the United States. And he suspected that much of the world felt the same. This was no Nat Wolfowitz that he had ever known. The game had changed the player.
“But do remember that we have bankrupted ourselves building a missile defense system with all the bells and whistles that our poor taxpayers’ money could possibly buy and then some. And after we swat down most of your missiles, we’re gonna be licking our wounds with most of our own strategic forces still intact, and everything neatly in place between here and the Moon.”
Wolfowitz leered theatrically at the camera, just as he had leered at Bobby when he was sitting on a full house and didn’t care who knew it.
“And we will not be amused,” Wolfowitz said. “Think about it, Marshal Bronksky. And, oh yes, do have a nice day.”
“This has been an address by the President of the United States, speaking from the White House in Washington, D.C.”
“And you better believe it!” Bobby cried jubilantly.
* * *
WOLFOWITZ FIRES HEAD OF CENTRAL SECURITY AGENCY, VOWS NEVER TO APPOINT ANOTHER
—New York Times
WOLFOMANIA SWEEPS EUROPE!
—News of the World
NAT CANS DEFENSE SECRETARY, APPOINTS CHAIRMAN OF JOINT CHIEFS TO SILENCE JINGOS IN CONGRESS
—New York Post
* * *
XXVIII
It was Bobby’s most improbable boyhood dream come true. Within a week, the long-despised Americans had become the heroes of the hour and the toast of Paris, and he had become StarNet’s star reporter.
Nathan Wolfowitz had done the impossible. He had faced down the Russian ultimatum and stabilized a situation on the very brink of nuclear war, while committing himself to nothing at all.
Four hours before the Soviet ultimatum was due to expire, Marshal Bronksky announced that the deadline would be extended through the Soviet election in order to allow the Soviet people to express their opinion on this grave matter of national survival. Under the circumstances, it was the best face he could put on things.
Nathan Wolfowitz praised his action and archly professed a policy of noninterference in the Soviet election, interfering quite artfully in the act of doing so.
“Anything I said now would be entirely counterproductive,” he declare
d. “It would only fan the flames of bug-brained nationalist passions and encourage the election of precisely the kind of irresponsible assholes who have gotten us into this mess in the first place. In the interests of sanity and world peace, I think I had better keep my opinions to myself, encourage like-minded Soviet citizens to vote early and often, and sit this one out.”
The Eurorussians went up seventeen points in the polls.
The Red Army moved more troops up to the Ukrainian border as a continued show of force. The Russians also detached a task force from their Baltic fleet and sent it steaming through the English Channel toward the Strait of Gibraltar.
It made for an impressively bellicose spot on each evening’s news, but optimists pointed out that the fact that it would take the task force ten days to arrive in the Black Sea off the Ukrainian coast could be taken as proof of Bronksky’s temporary restraint, since its arrival on the scene would be neatly timed to coincide with the date of the Soviet election.
Constantin Gorchenko praised the American President lavishly in a campaign speech in Leningrad as “a man after our own hearts” and “an American Gorbachev indeed.”
When asked to comment, President Wolfowitz shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and praised his “friend Constantin Gorchenko” for his “good taste.”
The Eurorussians went up another five points.
Wolfowitz T-shirts were everywhere. The most popular one showed the American President dressed as a matador, holding his cape behind him with one hand as he turned his back on a transfixed Russian bear, one finger of the other hand resting lightly on its fire-breathing nose.
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