“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.