Rockets' Red Glare

by Greg Dinallo

  Tvardovskiy nodded agreeably.

  Deschin shuddered, his mind reeling. There’d be no way to stop her at the Embassy. He’d have to wait until they left to brief Gorodin, which would make it impossible for him to get to the Embassy before they did. And even if Gorodin tailed them closely, Melanie would be out of the Chaika and inside the Embassy gates before Gorodin ever arrived.

  Tvardovskiy saw the distant look in Deschin’s eyes. “Aleksei?” he said.

  Deschin stared at him blankly.

  “You were going to get something?”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” Deschin replied, coming out of it. He hurried off, forced to play out his charade, agonizing over the painful decision. His country stood on the brink of unchallenged nuclear superiority, of being in the position of ultimate power it had long sought but never enjoyed, a position of being able to actually make demands on the West. And Melanie stood in the way. The only way he could save it now was by sending his daughter to jail. If he didn’t, SLOW BURN would be finished and his chance at the premiership along with it.

  Tvardovskiy led the group out of the dacha. Uzykin had put the bag in the Chaika’s trunk. The driver closed it as they approached, then opened the rear door of the car, and gestured Melanie to enter.

  Melanie didn’t know what Deschin was up to, but under the circumstances she’d just as soon get the hell out of there before he reappeared. She glanced over her shoulder, dreading his return, then moved quickly to get into the Chaika when she didn’t see him. She had grasped the door frame, and had one foot on the sill when Deschin’s voice rang out.

  “Just a minute, Miss Winslow,” he said sharply as he hurried out of the dacha.

  Melanie froze, and turned slowly to face him.

  He approached carrying a parcel, and handed it to her. His eyes locked onto hers for what seemed like an eternity before he flicked a little glance to the Chaika’s trunk. “Good luck,” he said.

  She forced a smile, took a deep breath, and got into the car.

  Tvardovskiy joined her.

  The black sedan roared off.

  The other KGB vehicles followed.

  “Well, it’s done,” Gorodin said, relieved.

  Deschin tightened his lips in a thin smile and watched the line of cars wind through the trees until they were out of sight.

  * * * * * *

  Chapter Fifty-one

  President Hilliard returned to the White House from his visit to Arlington Cemetery in a gloomy depression. That evening, he picked at a light dinner while watching a Marx Brothers movie in the White House screening room. It gave his spirits a short-lived boost. Now, he was in the Oval Office, nursing a bourbon, pondering the arms control situation.

  It was 1:46 A.M. when the DCI called.

  “Hello, Jake,” Hilliard said wearily. “What’s up?”

  “Mission accomplished, sir.”

  “Pardon me?” Hilliard replied cautiously.

  “Station chief in Moscow reports full set of drawings on VLCC Kira in hand. Preliminary analysis identifies deployment site.”

  “Geezus!” Hilliard exclaimed, the hair on the back of his neck springing to life.

  A half hour ago, at 9:17 A.M. MOSCOW time, a Marine guard at the US Embassy ushered Melanie into the CIA station chief’s office with the package addressed to Boulton. The Chief notified the DCI immediately. He ordered that the package be pouched to Helsinki. The courier departed Moscow on Aeroflot INT-842 at 10:30 A.M., arriving at the Embassy just past noon. CIA personnel set up a digitized satellite transmission to Langley. By 6:32 A.M. EST, Boulton and the President were in the Oval Office staring at photocopies of the Kira drawings. The highly detailed plans revealed where and how the Soviet missiles were deployed.

  “Theodor—you goddamn son of a bitch,” Boulton said bitterly, almost to himself.

  The President nodded in agreement. “Right under our noses all along,” he said awestruck.

  “Deployment site is nothing short of brilliant.”

  “Sure as hell explains why we couldn’t find them. I owe you an apology, Jake.”

  The following afternoon at United Nations Palace in Geneva, Soviet negotiator Mikhail Pykonen took his seat at the long table, fully convinced that the threat to SLOW BURN had been ended once and for all.

  “Gentleman,” Keating began, “I’m pleased to inform you that I’ve been authorized to accept the Pykonen Proposal in full. However, before I take that action, I have one question for my Soviet counterpart. One which Germany’s deputy minister first put to President Hilliard and myself months ago.”

  “Please,” Pykonen replied graciously, concealing contempt for what he assumed would be another delay.

  Keating nodded and gestured to Pomerantz.

  “Whatever happened to the Heron, sir?” she asked.

  “The Heronl” Pykonen replied, trying not to sound surprised.

  “That’s correct. Your SS-16A,” Keating replied.

  “I’m quite familiar with the nomenclature, Mr. Keating. The program was discontinued fifteen years ago, as you very well know.”

  “In other words, the system was never deployed.”

  “I’d say that would be a reasonable conclusion,” Pykonen said, getting irritated. “Please, Mr. Keating, spare us the pain of further stalling tactics.”

  “I’m forced to agree with Minister Pykonen,” another delegate replied.”

  “Yes,” said a third. “Let’s get on with it, Keating. Unless you can prove what you’re inferring.”

  “Oh, I can,” Keating replied, nodding to an aide. “But I’ll let you be the judge.”

  The doors to the meeting room opened. A large-screen television was rolled in. The aide turned it on, then put a phone on the table next to Keating. He depressed the blinking button and lifted the receiver. “Whenever you’re ready,” he said.

  All eyes turned to the television.

  A sign that read—138—filled the screen.

  “That transmission is coming via satellite—” Keating said with a dramatic pause.

  The image started zooming back, revealing an offshore pumping station—Churchco 138. The camera was mounted in a helicopter that had been on the landing pad and was slowly lifting off.

  “—live from the Gulf of Mexico,” he resumed.

  The image continued widening to include the Kira. The supertanker was tied up at a floating offshore wharf. Massive hoses snaked over her side like huge aortas, filling her compartments with crude.

  “About fifteen years ago,” Keating continued, “that supertanker, the VLCC Kira, was reoutfitted with a unique capability in Leningrad shipyards. And now, you’re going to see it in action.”

  Captain Rublyov was on the Kira’s bridge. He saw the chopper circling, but thought nothing of it. They were always buzzing around the pumping stations. But he didn’t see the team of U.S. Navy divers who were brought in by helicopter the night before. Nor had he seen them at the far end of the massive wharf, in scuba gear and wet suits, as they slipped into the water a short time earlier. Two underwater television cameras that can virtually see in the dark were mounted on their sea sleds.

  The television screen appeared to go blank for a moment. A school of pogies swam into view. The image had switched from helicopter to undersea camera.

  The divers advanced toward the Kira on their underwater sleds.

  The section of hull below the water—gradually became visible on the television screen.

  The delegates gathered around it intently.

  Soon, a hairline of light split the undersea darkness and began to widen. The Kira’s bulbous bow had cracked open on its centerline, like the halves of a gigantic mussel shell. The one-hundred-foot long sections slowly hinged apart, exposing the lower missile assembly deck— the deck which Lieutenant Jon Lowell never saw.

  The Kira had been taking on crude for days. But missile deployment couldn’t commence until her holds were at least two thirds full to insure the hull was low enough in the water t
o be concealed when it opened.

  The water rolled up into the massive bow cavity with a tumultuous gurgling, and engulfed a missile launching tube. A Soviet SS-16A Heron was sealed inside.

  The tube was six feet in diameter and thirty feet long. The interior launch apparatus—though fitted with a self-contained steam generator and hi-band receiver for remote activation—was identical to those used on nuclear submarines. But the exterior had been substantially reinforced, and fitted with sharp-edged planes that spiraled around it from a pointed base, giving the launch tube the look of an undersea auger— which it was. It perched at the end of a hydraulic arm, like a gargantuan dentist’s drill.

  The hydraulic arm was gyro-gimbaled to hold its position in the sea while it moved to the precise commands of a motion-control computer. Like a long-necked sea monster, it lowered the augered launch tube from the bowels of the ship into the water. Then it began bending at the elbow, bringing it into a vertical position beneath the Kira’s hull. When fully extended, it had positioned the augered tube’s drill point thirty feet above the floor of the Gulf.

  In a control room in the Kira’s bow, technicians sat at instrument consoles monitoring the deployment. The chief missile technician evaluated the data, then pressed a button initiating phase two of the operation.

  The hydraulic arm began telescoping downward in response. It stopped when the drill point pressed against the surface of the continental shelf eighty feet beneath the Kira’s hull.

  Another signal started the augered tube turning slowly. The sharp blades began drilling a cylinder into the muddy sediment that, in this area, covers the Earth’s basalt mantle to depths of a hundred feet. Powerful air jets in the drill point helped loosen the ooze. High velocity vacuums on the hydraulic arm sucked up the debris to prevent it from surfacing.

  Since being reoutfitted, the Kira had taken on crude from thirty-six Churchco offshore pumping stations. And each time, it left a Heron behind in the muddy sea bottom. The high concentration of metal created by the storage tanks and docking facilities was responsible for the missile base being virtually impervious to detection. The multispectral scanners and thermal and infrared sensors in KH-11 satellites would have immediately detected a concentration of metal in open sea—where there had been none before; but couldn’t detect a relatively minuscule addition to the high concentration already present at a drilling or pumping station—a concentration which tended to vary widely as tankers and support vessels arrived and departed, compounding the detection problem.

  The delegates watched with growing astonishment as the augered launch tube gradually screwed its way into the sea bottom. When it was fully seated, the hydraulic arm disengaged, and began retracting into the Kira’s hull. The launch tube’s watertight hatch that explodes open on missile-launch was concealed beneath a soft mound of silt.

  The delegates were aghast.

  Keating let the impact register, then said, “Should one of those hatches become exposed, and be noticed—by maintenance divers for, example—this covered it.” He passed out copies of a Churchco memo which Boulton had procured. It was signed by Theodor Churcher, and authorized installation of underwater environmental control sensors that monitored seismic activity, and the chemical content of the seawater. The affixed specification sheet depicted a disc-shaped unit which looked exactly like a launch tube hatch.

  “It’s a hoax,” Pykonen scoffed, gesturing to the television where the hull of the Kira could be seen slowly closing. “Totally lacking in credibility.”

  “I agree, it is very hard to believe,” Keating replied. He exchanged smiles with Pomerantz, then leaning to the phone, said, “Quite a show, gentlemen. May we have verification now?”

  Moments later, one of the Navy divers came into view. He swam toward the camera until his mask filled the television screen, then displayed a plastic-wrapped copy of the Communist party newspaper, Pravda.

  “That’s today’s edition,” Keating said to the delegates. He looked to Pykonen, adding, “President Hilliard thought you’d find his selection of newspapers especially appropriate under the circumstances.” He didn’t have to remind Pykonen that Pravda means truth.

  * * * * * *

  Chapter Fifty-two

  The front-page headline of the International Tribune read:

  SOVIET MISSILES IN GULF OF MEXICO

  Beneath it was a series of underwater photographs, that had been released by the Pentagon, of the VLCC Kira deploying the Heron.

  The Soviet delegation had stormed out of the talks in protest the previous afternoon. Pykonen immediately called Moscow to report the devastating news. But the Politburo was in session, debating the merits of various candidates for the premiership and it took him longer than anticipated to get through the Vertushka. He spent the evening on the phone with Gromyko and Dobrynin, working out the official Soviet position.

  The arms control talks had been indefinitely suspended in the interim, and the following morning, Pykonen faced a swarm of reporters at Cointrin Airport, prior to his boarding a flight to Moscow.

  “The Soviet Union officially and categorically denies the false accusations brought by the American delegation,” Pykonen said through his interpreter.

  “The evidence seems irrefutable, sir,” one of the reporters prodded. “How do you account for it?”

  The interpreter was still translating the question when Pykonen interrupted in English. “Soviet film experts are in agreement that state of the art special effects techniques and electronic trickery were used to create this underhanded deception,” he replied angrily. “Be advised, my government has no doubt this is but another example of Washington involving Hollywood in foreign policy matters. Evidently, Mr. Keating, and those he represents, never believed that the Soviet Union would negotiate in good faith, and when suddenly faced with our sincerity and openness, they employed these purveyors of smut and violence to undermine the talks. We note this was accomplished with the assistance of the Republic of Germany, and we condemn this despicable attempt to embarrass our nation. It is most deplorable, especially at this time when the Soviet people are still mourning the tragic loss of a beloved leader.”

  The Aeroflot Ilyushin 62M with Pykonen aboard had just taken off when the Politburo—stung by the loss of the nuclear superiority SLOW BURN had promised, and freed from the political constraints it had imposed—bypassed Aleksei Deschin and selected Nikolai Tikhonov as the new Premier.

  * * * * * *

  A short time later, in another section of the terminal, Phil Keating entered a Lufthansa VIP lounge, carrying a bouquet of flowers.

  “Good morning,” he said, approaching Pomerantz, who was standing thoughtfully at one of the huge windows.

  “Good morning, Philip. What beautiful flowers,” she replied as she turned, and he set them in her arms.

  “It’s the least I can do,” he replied. “We’d have never gotten onto the trail of the Heron if it weren’t for you. You more than earned them.”

  “You never gave me the chance,” she teased, eyeing him flirtatiously.

  “I came close.”

  “Well, I haven’t given up on you, Keating,” she said spiritedly. “Though, we’ll probably both be in rocking chairs by the time I pull it off.”

  “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” Keating said with a grin. “I spent an entire weekend in a rocker once.”

  “And?” she asked intrigued.

  “Beth got pregnant, and I spent a month in traction.”

  Pomerantz was laughing when the last call for her flight was announced. “That’s me, Philip.”

  “We stung ’em pretty good, didn’t we?” he said as he escorted her to the gate.

  “Yes, but they always come back for more.”

  “I sure hope so.”

  “Oh, they will—and I’ll be here.”

  “So will I.”

  “I have a wonderful antique rocker at home. I’ll make sure I bring it along.” She kissed his cheek, then turned and h
urried down the boarding ramp.

  * * * * * *

  All three network news programs opened with the story of Nikolai Tikhonov’s ascendancy. President Hilliard leaned back in his chair thinking chances for an arms control agreement before the end of his term were nonexistent now. In light of the humiliating events in Geneva, the elderly Soviet Premier, and the older oligarchies who advised him, would undoubtedly revert to cold war paranoia, and back away from disarmament. The President was in a morose mood when Boulton entered the Oval Office.

  “Tikhonov—very unsteady at swearing in ceremonies,” the DCI reported. “Advanced emphysema.”

  “Prognosis?” Hilliard asked in a hopeful tone.

  “He’ll be gone within a year.”

  “So will I,” Hilliard said glumly, referring to his term. He was thinking a quick change in regimes might give him another chance for an arms control agreement.

  “NATO wanted a draw,” Boulton said encouragingly, seeing his disappointment. “You gave it to them.”

  “Not the one I wanted, Jake.”

  “Can’t win them all, sir.”

  “I can try,” the President said firmly.

  There’d be no presidential library fund-raisers, no rush to publish memoirs after his term in office, he vowed. Not until the job was done. Not until nuclear disarmament was achieved. He’d be out of the White House, but he’d still be in the thick of it. The political wags on the Hill wouldn’t have to wonder how private citizen Jim Hilliard was spending his time. Jennings would tell them on the evening news.

  That afternoon, he went for a walk in Arlington. He placed some fresh flowers at the base of his wife’s headstone, and straightened them just so.

  “I’ll be back,” he said.

  * * * * * *

  Lieutenant Jon Lowell was brought directly to CIA headquarters at Langley for further debriefing. Boulton offered him a job during the course of it, and Lowell accepted. It wasn’t a difficult decision; flying ASW would never be the same without Arnsbarger. Before leaving, Lowell requested a moment alone with the DCI. Boulton knew what was on his mind. He’d been thinking about it, too, and agreed when Lowell proposed it.