by Joe Buff
“Yes, sir!”
“Second, ignore any radio messages you receive about either harming or launching the missiles, even if they’re in valid codes and have the proper passwords.”
“Ignore them?” ICBM bunkers had multiple communication backups, to assure absolute and constant control by the Kremlin.
“Do not use any radios or telephones, or intercoms other than this one, and do not respond to any calls other than mine. We don’t know how far the coup’s infiltration extends. Hurry!”
“You said there were three things, sir?”
It was time for Nyurba to build more credibility, to support the big lies about isolating the bunker from the support base and higher officials. He had to keep the junior officer from thinking too much, calling the support base to see what they said, or talking things over with the rest of his silo crew or the men in the other two bunkers.
“On no account let anyone into your bunker. We will defend the entrance from out here. More rebel forces will arrive soon. Stay where you are, you’ll be safe. You can hold out for weeks if you have to, longer if you ration your food and parcel using electricity. When the rebellion is suppressed, the government will find some way to give you an unambiguous all-clear.”
“What about you, sir?”
“We’re Spetsnaz! Oo-rah for the Motherland!” He hung up.
Echoing down the concrete steps, above the roaring and crackling of the burning Mi-24s and armored cars, Nyurba could hear the heavy beating of more military helicopters.
“Missileers up,” he ordered, to those with him and over the radio. Assigned men rushed up the stairs and opened the three dozen backpacks arrayed there — some of which had belonged to the wounded or dead. They went through this improvised ammo dump until their arms cradled bundles of SA-16s. Situations like this were why they’d worked out six hours a day while on Carter; each loaded missile launcher weighed twenty-five pounds, and the staircase was ten stories high.
Nyurba told his two SERT Seabees and three of the Delta Force to stay with him, and sent the rest of the men up the stairs; two SERT Seabees and their Delta Force teammates were with the group assigned to enter bunker two. The remainder of the commandos, he’d decided, were most valuable for defense against the superior forces about to arrive. The ICBM launch specialists would crouch halfway up the staircase for now.
Several men, minor wounds bandaged, darted from bunker three to strengthen the teams at each of the other two entryways. As this was reported by radio, Nyurba felt proud of their devotion, but knew full well how vital every man with a weapon would be very soon. Listening on his radio, seeing his commandos on the stairs or in the vestibule, he sensed their fidgety hyperalertness as they awaited the next phase of combat.
His own immediate task was getting inside bunker one — whose crew he’d just told to admit nobody whatsoever.
The outer blast door measured about eight feet on a side. It would be several feet thick, weighing tons. It opened outward, so that the overpressure from a nuclear blast would shut it more tightly against the massive steel and reinforced concrete frame. As a result, the door hinges had to be on the outside.
This was the whole design’s weakness. Proof against the widely distributed force of a nuclear blast, those hinges could be attacked by a pinpoint placement of custom-shaped charges. There were four hinges from top to bottom; the armored steel of each was a foot wide and four inches thick.
“What do you think?” Nyurba asked the Delta Force sergeant, an expert in forced entry and hostage rescue.
“Three or four charges in sequence per hinge, sir. We need to chip away at stuff this thick.”
The SERT Seabee chief, experienced at sizing up and taking apart all sorts of structures, eyed the hinges and agreed.
“Let’s get to it,” Nyurba told them.
They discussed the weight of C-4 plastic explosive to use in each charge. Too much at once would be wasteful, and dangerous.
They molded the first set of charges to the hinges. They carefully inserted blasting caps to obtain the optimal cutting effect and connected the caps with wires so that they’d go off at the same instant. They led a master wire and a backup through the vestibule, well into the staircase. The sergeant connected these to a detonator control box. Nyurba opened his mouth, covered his ears, and braced himself. The sharp, hard vroom that came up the stairs was deafening. The concussive force of it punished his insides. Dust and fumes drifted up the stairs.
“Time for gas masks,” Nyurba ordered. Everyone pulled theirs on before running back down the stairs. The hinges had grooves cut partway in. They cooled the red-hot metal with water from their canteens, so they could install more C-4 quickly. Then they began the methodical process of molding and placing another set of shaped charges, inserting all the blasting caps, and connecting all the wires.
Three more times, they ran up the stairs, set off the charges, and ran back down.
The last time, the echoing explosion felt and sounded different. When they reentered the vestibule, the hinges at last were severed through. Lacking their support, the multi-ton door had come off the retractable pins, on the side opposite the hinges, that held it locked closed. It lay flat on the floor in the vestibule. The sergeant eased around the edge of the vestibule and used his mirror to look into the gap where the door had been. He fired his pistol, taking out another TV camera.
Nyurba and the other explosives handlers moved in. Beyond the now-empty door frame was the inside of the blast interlock, and at its far end was another, identical door. A mechanism made sure that, without special steps to override it — such as for installing large pieces of new equipment — the outer and inner door were never open at the same time. On the walls and ceiling of the interlock were shower heads, hoses, and other items needed for decontamination. Nyurba ignored these, and his crew went to work on the inner blast door.
“Nyurba, Sniper Two,” crackled in his headphones, now worn over his gas mask and under his Russian-style helmet.
“Sniper Two, Nyurba.”
“Mi-Twenty-six transport helicopters are landing on the road near the complex. Two Mi-Twenty-four Hind-Ds are approaching the complex.”
Nyurba acknowledged. He needed to hurry up.
The Mi-26s could carry dozens of soldiers with full battle gear. The Hind-D version of the Mi-24 lacked the Gatling cannon, but still carried rockets and missiles — and the fuselage had a passenger compartment for squads of air-mobile troops.
Soon, from up the stairwell, he heard shouting and shooting. Russian reinforcements had arrived; his men were engaging them.
His team repeated their painstaking actions with C-4, placed on the inner door hinges. They once again laid wire and worked their way far up the stairs.
A very real Russian counterattack was in full swing. Nyurba’s men in each of the three bunker entryways had their hands full, firing hyperbaric grenades, antiarmor grenades, and antiaircraft missiles, and expending magazine after magazine of AN-94 rounds. The steps around Nyurba’s boots were littered more and more with bouncing spent brass and discarded grenade packaging, and he noticed backpacks and bloody load-bearing vests emptied of every bit of ammo of any kind. Fumes from bullet propellant and rocket propellant grew thicker and thicker near the top of the stairs, obscuring visibility through his gas mask.
A roaring noise outside rose to a booming crescendo — a rippling salvo of helicopter rockets impacted near the entryway. Nyurba saw the flashes and felt the heat, an instant before he was almost knocked backward down the stairs by the blasts.
Incoming bullets smacked into concrete, or screeched as they ricocheted.
The SEAL chief worked the detonator box. A blast of a different sort pounded Nyurba from underground.
He and his demolition team rushed down. The decontamination showers were damaged, the hoses were torn to shreds, and water poured from broken mains in the ceiling. They refilled their empty canteens and used them to cool the sizzling-hot hinges, to be able to
set the next charges.
This time when they withdrew up the stairs, two commandos lay dead for real, at the bottom of gleaming, dripping blood trails; they weren’t faking anything for hidden TV cameras. Over his radio Nyurba issued more orders, and received status reports. All contact had been lost with the sniper-observers. The men in bunker two had also reached the inner blast door. The medics in the vestibule of bunker three were doing what they could for the wounded, but two of their patients had already died. All three bunker entryways were receiving heavy fire from a coordinated Russian assault, and the men there were taking losses.
Nyurba was forced to rethink his plan. It was looking like too slow a job to blow open the bunker blast doors, and the Russian counterattack was gaining momentum too quickly. Advancing hostile troops were going to trap the commandos against the inner door. Even if they did have time to break open the door, they’d be caught between fire from a forewarned silo crew and Russian soldiers. If they overcame the silo crew, the bunker without any blast doors would be an undefendable cul de sac.
Clustered like this in underground chambers, the risk of Russian ordnance knocking men out to be captured alive was high, but the mission doctrine stated that that outcome was unacceptable. Nyurba realized he needed to do something drastic, fast, to preserve the inner door as an armored barrier yet also get behind it somehow. Otherwise he’d have to issue the final, most hideous order of all — mass self-murder, to avoid incriminating the U.S. His family’s adopted homeland would be left at square one, facing Apocalypse Soon or Apocalypse Later.
He grabbed the intercom handset on the wall of the interlock chamber. It had been knocked off its hook by the shaped charge explosion and was dangling by its cord. He hoped it worked.
“Hello! Hello! This is Colonel Nyurba!” He was breathless and hoarse and worn out — that part wasn’t faked.
“Colonel,” the same junior officer answered, “what’s going on? We did what you said, but now the cameras show more combat on the surface, and we heard our inner door being blasted.”
Everything depended on what he said and how the other man reacted. Instead of toothpicks and ego with Commodore Fuller, Nyurba was playing poker for the highest stakes imaginable.
Half-truths are the best way to lie.
“Listen to me. The battle is seesawing. It’s like Stalingrad out here! Rebels forced their way down and almost penetrated the interlock. My men wiped out the traitors, but now more rebels have arrived in greater strength. We’re being overwhelmed. You need to open the inner door and let us in so we can help protect your bunker in the last extreme.”
“But you said to let no one in.”
“The situation has changed! My men are dying, we can’t hold out much longer. The outer blast door’s completely down. We need to shelter inside the bunker and defend it.”
“We have our own weapons.”
“What weapons do you have? Pistols?”
“Yes.”
“We have grenade launchers and assault rifles!”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“You saw us shed our blood to protect you! You saw it right on the fucking TV!”
“Er, yes.”
“Now you must help protect us, and let us help protect you further, or else they’ll blow open this inner door and kill you all and take the bunker.”
“I don’t know, sir. Maybe we should just smash the launch consoles and hope for the best.”
“And leave the Motherland defenseless? You’ll be shot for treason yourselves if you destroy the launching computers! Now override the interlock and let us in!”
“We need a minute to work the mechanism.”
“Do it!” Nyurba hung up and ran up the stairs.
He told his men defending the entryway that they might need to fight a rearguard action, slowly withdrawing down the stairs, using each right-angle turn as a strongpoint until forced further back. He explained that he’d convinced the silo crew to open the inner door to let the Spetsnaz in, on the belief that they, not the Russians busy counterattacking, were the genuine loyalists.
By monitoring Nyurba over his open mike, the men infiltrating bunker two had known to use his same logic and lies to get that bunker’s silo crew to open their inner door.
Once the commandos seized control of bunker one and bunker two, and closed the inner blast doors while they worked to launch the missiles, the rear guards on the stairs could keep in touch via the interlock chambers’ intercoms — their radios wouldn’t penetrate the EMP-shielded doors. A wounded man would be stationed by each intercom, as a phone talker.
Nyurba ordered his men in bunker three’s entryway to hold out as long as they could. He reminded the medics that nobody in the squadron could be taken alive. Over the open mike, every one of my people heard that. He hated this, but it wouldn’t be long before other Russian rapid-response shock troops reached the scene, even genuine Spetsnaz units who’d fight ferociously.
He collected the experts he’d need once they got into the bunker. He told the ICBM specialists to hide around the corner of the vestibule. He and the bunker entry team — Delta Force and SERT Seabees — took up positions, with military tear-gas grenades in their hands, and nonlethal rubber bullets in the grenade launchers clipped to their rifles. All were close-combat veterans; the Seabees could instinctively grasp the arrangement of an industrial-like installation with an unknown floor plan.
Everyone was ready. The mounting noises of battle on the surface urged them on. Nyurba picked up the intercom, telling the Russian junior officer to open the inner door. It began to swing outward slowly toward them. The entry team hid behind it.
As soon as the door was open by one meter, the Seabee chief reached around and placed a titanium bar in the gap to prevent the bunker crew from closing the door too soon. The others rushed inside, tossing gas grenades in every direction and knocking down every man they saw with rubber bullets.
Some of the silo crew tried to don their gas masks. Others reached for their pistols. None succeeded. Nyurba saw one officer begin to swallow something. When he aimed his weapon at the man, the Russian raised his hands in surrender; dangling on a lanyard from one hand was one of the launch keys.
The Russians were gasping and choking; their eyes teared so badly they were practically blind. Two were doubled over in pain, where rubber bullets at short range had hit their abdomens.
The entry team quickly disarmed everyone they saw and secured them with duct tape, gagging their mouths and binding them hand and foot, a total of four prisoners — two officers and two senior enlisteds. But this was only the on-duty half of the crew. These men stood twelve-hour shifts in every three-day work rotation. Half of them would be on the lower level, where they slept and ate and relaxed during their twelve hours off.
A metal stairway led below. The entry team dashed down, preceded by more gas grenades, their weapons reloaded.
Nyurba was confronted by a man holding a pistol. He shot the man in the stomach with a rubber bullet. He fell onto his backside but raised the pistol again. Nyurba shot him with the AN-94, a two-round burst to the head.
Another off-duty officer, when he saw how heavily armed the commandos were, including their bulletproof vests, committed suicide with his own pistol, to not be captured. The remaining two on the accommodation level, enlisted men, were less brave or less stupid. Already in gas masks, they put up their hands. The entry team disarmed and secured them with duct tape. Nyurba dragged both Russians upstairs. He dumped them next to the first four prisoners, then removed their gags before the men could suffocate as their noses ran with mucus from the gas. Beneath him, part of the entry team was searching the utility spaces in the bunker’s lowest levels, for anyone cowering there, and for any signs of sabotage — or bombs emplaced by higher command to kill rogues. A Delta Force commando and a Seabee worked together at this, pooling their knowledge of booby traps and machinery.
“Find the blowers,” Nyurba shouted through his mask. “C
lear the air.” He was gasping from exertion, and wearing the mask didn’t help. He saw a Russian junior officer involuntarily glance at an equipment console on a wall. Nyurba pointed to it. “See if that’s the environmental control.”
A Seabee read the panel labels, flipped switches, and the tear gas quickly cleared. The team removed their masks.
“Get back outside and firm up the rear guard,” Nyurba told them. “Get the launch specialists in here.” He rethought. “Chief,” he said to one Seabee, “don’t leave.” Nyurba was a SERT Seabee officer himself, but because Kurzin was dead, he was too busy leading the entire effort to be able to apply that expertise. He needed someone on hand who could figure out repairs that might be called for of electrics and hydraulics.
One group of commandos stepped out, through the blast door standing ajar. Different men came in. The last removed the titanium bar and sealed the blast door shut, as others took seats at the consoles, or riffled through technical manuals sitting in piles, or began to inject the silo crewmen with truth drugs.
Chapter 24
Jeffrey Fuller awoke groggily from a sleep so deep he didn’t remember dreaming.
“Commodore!”
Jeffrey recognized Bell’s voice. That was what had woken him. “Yes. Yes. I’m awake.”
Bell switched on Challenger’s XO stateroom’s light. Jeffrey squinted until his puffy, bleary eyes could adjust. Sessions, asleep in his own rack under the VIP rack, began to stir.
Lord, he was out cold even more than me. Jeffrey wondered for a moment whether he himself had slept well due to peace of mind about the mission, resulting from his newfound amoral coping mechanism. Or were internal conflicts and ethical qualms so repressed for now that they’d destroy his mental health later?
He brushed this troubling thought aside and glanced at his watch. All peace of mind vanished. “What’s wrong?” He wasn’t supposed to be woken for another three hours. And he should have been woken by a messenger, normal procedure, not by Captain Bell.