“And the exoatmospheric detonation is what causes the massive electromagnetic pulse that does a lot of damage between Moscow and the Urals. That part I get. Russia is really hurting, and it looks like she’s been deservedly punished for trying to nuke the U.S. Punished by this magical, mystical, mysterious missile shield. I remain extremely skeptical.”
“Remember, sir,” Nyurba answered, “the shield doesn’t need to exist. The Russians simply need to believe, or be convinced, that it exists.”
“But it has to be plausible. I can guarantee you, no matter how badly computers and communications are degraded in western Russia, there’ll be enough engineers and academicians in fine shape in other places to put together whatever the Russians call a tiger team. They’ll look really hard at how anything could make two or three separate SS-Twenty-seven warheads all go off simultaneously after third-stage booster separation, in the vacuum of space. Assuming you even manage to get the missiles to launch properly, with the proper programming. If you, like those Russkie rogues back in sixty-eight, goof and a booby trap goes off, this mission is a flop. What if you do manage somehow to actually achieve an unauthorized launch of several armed ICBMs, but your reprogramming is flawed and they do, for real, target the U.S. homeland?”
“In real life this launch won’t be a surprise. Commander, U.S. Strategic Command will be expecting it. He’ll know exactly where and when the missiles will launch, and he’ll be very well prepared to target and destroy them using our conventional ground- and sea-based missile shields.”
“Assuming they work reliably at the time.”
“Yes. But they only have to work if our reprogramming of the live warheads doesn’t work.”
“That’s one hell of a ‘but’!”
“That’s why we’re only launching three missiles.”
“That’s one hell of an ‘only’!”
“Allow me to address your other concern or question,” Kurzin interrupted. “Achieving successful launch of Russian ICBMs at all. Without going into details that you don’t need to know, suffice it to say that we have both human and electronic intelligence that provides us with a good deal of critical information about the SS-Twenty-seven missile and warhead-bus design. Including methods of arming the warhead and triggering detonation, and of bypassing range-safety devices.”
“Sorry, Colonel, I do need to know. If I’m not convinced this whole thing from A to Z makes total sense, there’s no way I’ll ever convince the Russians in a no-holds-barred confrontation somewhere in Siberia while they have every home-field advantage.”
Nyurba looked to Kurzin for direction. Kurzin reluctantly nodded, and Nyurba responded for both of them.
“It’s no secret that the U.S. recovered intact nuclear ballistic missiles from a Soviet Yankee-class SSBN that sank in the Atlantic a few hundred miles from Bermuda in nineteen-eighty-six.”
“I know. K-Two-nineteen.”
“Specialists, aware of the earlier loss of the Golf-class, dissected the range safety devices carefully.”
“That’s twenty-five-year-old technology!”
“And the basis for all further Soviet and Russian thinking.”
“They know we grabbed some missiles. They’ll have changed everything!”
“Seeing how they thought at one time gives hints at what they’d change and how they’d change it. And we know that, to save money, some parts in the SS-Twenty-sevens are identical to those in earlier land-based missiles which because of arms reduction treaties were dismantled and destroyed in public. For many of these parts we gained illicit actual samples, or very good intel about their specs.”
“That’s still too much of a stretch.”
“On its own, yes. But we also have expatriate Russian missile engineers and nuclear scientists who worked on their weapons programs more recently. They emigrated to the U.S. over the years after the Berlin Wall fell. They were discreetly interviewed.”
“They might have been sleeper agents, giving you disinformation. That’s a favorite Russian gimmick.”
“Which of course the CIA and the Pentagon realize. There were methods to cross-validate what they told us.”
“Such as?”
“Other Russians with similar expertise, after the USSR collapsed and they found themselves unemployed, were less enthralled at the prospects of coming to America to wash dishes or drive a taxi. They put themselves up for grabs on the world underground arms market. During the Global War on Terror, some of them were captured. Let’s just say they were thoroughly interrogated.”
“This part, I truly don’t want to know.”
“You see, Commodore, we’re not entirely in the dark on what we’ll be trying to do. And before you ask, in this context it’s perfectly believable that the raiders were sent by Berlin. Germany had its own ample share of arrested rogue weapons scientists, and honest Russian emigrés too, especially ones with key technical skills. Germany was Russia’s largest import-export partner even before this war. Since the communist state imploded two decades ago, many Russians having the ways and means abandoned the dreary place with lasting bitterness. Some moved to Germany. Some are German citizens now. As we already covered once, immigrants can be passionately patriotic to their new homes.” Kurzin’s men nodded.
“Fine,” Jeffrey said. “But there’ll be computer passwords, now, today. Ones that are frequently altered, if their procedures are anything like ours. You won’t have those passwords, will you?”
“Some things we can sort of hotwire,” Nyurba said, “if we can’t intercept the couriers or overhear the new passwords as they’re conveyed by electronic means.”
“You’re taking far too much for granted.”
“No we aren’t,” Kurzin stepped in firmly. “If any set of circuitry requires a certain password to unlock any protective device in real time, that circuitry itself must know the password. Correct?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“If the password is anywhere in such circuitry, and that circuitry falls into our hands on this raid, we have ways to force it to reveal the password to us.”
“Who’s this ‘we’?”
“Among my squadron officers are experts who were stationed in American missile silos, and others who have great talents at computer hacking. We brought with us devices, designed in the U.S., mimicking German high-end hacker styles, and constructed using Russian and German or neutral components and tools, which will assist us in attempting to crack the codes.”
“You said ‘attempting.’ ”
“Total success is never guaranteed.”
“All right, let’s be optimists on that for now. I have a good cover story for why Challenger is where she is when the warheads go off. I’m on my way to blockade the next Eight-six-eight-U-class submarine that the Russians are selling to Germany. And Carter will emit the acoustic signature of a German Amethyste-Two if she faces any risk of detection. Those parts work for me, in and of themselves. But how do you get into a silo bunker to begin with? They’re hardened against attack by nuclear bombs.”
“The bunkers and silos are hardened, but their locations are permanently fixed. We know exactly where they are, which is a significant plus. Russia’s road-mobile nuclear missiles are far too elusive to preplan a hijacking with any surety. Their carrier vehicles can move much faster than we’d ever be able to keep up with on foot. Their crews, out in the open, if they see they’re losing an ambush, can sabotage their own ICBMs too easily. Ditto for rail-mobile units. The same is not the case for missiles in silos. And yes, the control bunkers are hardened, but the people on duty inside them are not. The humans must rotate in and out periodically, for recreation and rest, the same as U.S. Air Force silo crews. This is their Achilles’ heel.”