“You look like hell, Mr. President.” He clucked. “How about calling it a night early — say, before three A.M. this time? And lay off all this junk food.”
“Very funny,” the President drawled. The doctor had the President work the device three times to make sure the readings were correct. He was about to take a seat to chat with his patient, but the President said, “Just leave me a full bottle of Tagamets. We’ve got work to do.” The doctor thought about checking up on the First Lady, but she warned him off with a cold stare and he quickly departed. She could see how tired and upset her husband was getting, so she ordered all of the politicos to leave as well.
“All right, Philip,” the President said to General Freeman, after everyone but the Vice President, Freeman, Scheer, Grimm, and Lifter had departed, “I’m listening. Give me your best guess as to what’s going to happen next.”
“The Russians will retaliate,” Freeman said firmly. “A massive but centralized attack, someplace that will punish the Ukrainians for their attacks and possibly the Turks and us for our role in helping them. My staff’s guess is Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine. Secondary target would be Kayseri, where the Russians know we’ve got most of the Ukrainians based — except now we’ve dispersed both the American and Ukrainian aircraft to other bases in Turkey in anticipation of an attack, and we’re getting the Patriot systems set up as fast as we can.
“The most likely alternate targets: Golcuk, the Turkish industrial and naval center; Istanbul, the historical and cultural center of Turkey and strategically vital; or Ankara, the capital itself. My staff feels the Russians will not restrict themselves to military targets but will expand their target list to include command and control, industrial centers, and communications hubs.”
“A nuclear attack?”
“My answer to that, sir, is ‘why not?’ “ Freeman replied. “Why wouldn’t they use those neutron warheads against Turkey, like they did in the Ukraine?”
“Because we’d blow their shit away and they know it!” Grimm retorted.
“General, be realistic,” the First Lady said wearily. “The Russians would not dare to use any more nuclear weapons, especially against a NATO ally. That would be suicide.”
“Would it, sir? Would it, ma’am?” Freeman asked. “What exactly would you do if the Russians attacked Turkey? Send in the bombers? Sir, we have not demonstrated the resolve to do anything, let alone stage a thermonuclear attack on a Russian target. The attack on the Russian ships in the Black Sea was a fluke, a lucky shot, and we only had six aircraft involved in the operation — the Ukrainians had over a hundred. The Russians have used nuclear weapons on multiple targets in the Ukraine, along with destroying several Turkish warships, and you have not had one meaningful conversation with President Velichko of Russia or made any sort of equivalent response.”
The First Lady rose to her feet and said icily, “I advise you to watch your tone of voice, General.”
“I know exactly what I’m saying, ma’am, and it’s my job to say it,” Freeman shot back. “We deployed virtually no forces overseas, we did not mobilize any additional Reserve forces, and we did not federalize any forces except the ones who would go on strategic alert. The entire Western World thinks we’ve abandoned them, sir.”
“That’s bullshit, Freeman, and you know it,” Grimm retorted with a snort, looking to the First Lady for support.
“Their neutron weapon is a powerful terror tool, sir,” National Security Director Lifter said. “They can set off a nuclear device and actually control the casualties they want to inflict — but it’s not a weapon of mass destruction, per se. Over a populated area it can kill tremendous numbers — but over a nonpopulated area, it will do little or no damage.”
“Mr. President, killing ten thousand persons by neutron bomb or by high-explosive bombs doesn’t make any bit of difference to me,” Freeman said, “and it obviously doesn’t make any difference to the Russian military or government. In fact, it’s a cost-effective and very efficient weapon.”
“You sound like some kind of Dr. Frankenstein,” the First Lady snapped. “The end justifies the means, is that right, General? Do whatever it takes to get the job done?”
“There’s no bad way to kill,” Freeman said. “Or any good way to die. There’s just killing and death.”
The First Lady rolled her eyes in disbelief. “I think that’s nonsense too,” the President said, popping more Fritos into his mouth along with a few Tagamets. “This is almost the twenty-first century, Philip. Modern-day wars must be fought with restraint and carefully controlled escalation, with stops and checks and pauses put in to encourage the conflict to end and diplomacy to begin again. We’re not trigger-happy, for God’s sake. We have the weapons and the technology to destroy with precision and strength without resorting to nuclear weapons. Besides, Velichko or some other wacko in Moscow probably’s got his finger on the button night and day — we let loose with a nuke of our own, and the whole world goes up in smoke.”
“That’s a myth, Mr. President,” Freeman said. “We’ve learned that a lot of the ideas we had about nuclear warfighting just don’t hold true.”
“Like what, General?” asked the First Lady skeptically.
“Like the idea that a finger is poised over a button in Russia someplace, and at the first sign of attack, the whole world is a goner,” Freeman replied. “In fact, it takes three persons in Russia — the President, the Minister of Defense, and the Chief of the General Staff — to order a nuclear attack, and only one person to stop it; in our country, of course, it only takes one to start it, but many persons can stop it and it can even stop itself, with our system of built-in termination and fail-safes. And this assumes that the Russians can in fact detect a launch or even an impact: we’ve learned that Russian surveillance satellites and other long-range detection systems aren’t as good as we once thought, to the point that a nuclear detonation in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, or Siberia might go completely unnoticed.”
“What’s your point, General?” the President asked impatiently.
“The point is, sir, is that wars aren’t started or stopped quickly, especially nuclear wars. Russia knows we’re ready to fight a nuclear war, sir, and even though we don’t have very many weapons on-line, the ones we have are devastating. Velichko isn’t insane, no matter what Sen’kov or The New York Times says. He would do the same as you’re doing right now, sir — meet with his advisers, discuss a plan of action, then proceed. He serves a constituency too.”
“Yeah — a constituency of other hard-line neo-Communist wackos.” But the President was silent for a moment; then: “So let’s assume they attack both the Ukraine and Turkey, and even use more nuclear weapons — maybe even full-yield weapons. What then?”
“That’s the question I’m posing to you, sir,” Freeman said. “What’s our priority? What’s your goal? What kind of role do you want to play? Do you want to protect a NATO ally, or punish Russia, or both? Do you want to wait and see or do you want to act?”
“Every time you say that, General, I want to bust you in the face,” the First Lady suddenly exploded, “and I consider it my job to say it. You make it sound like a cautious, wait-and-see attitude is wrong. You make it seem as if action — and I read that as war, pure violence—is the only response you’ll accept.”