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. “Clear 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.
“We got the code-letter group by ELF, sir. Colonel Kurzin has begun the attack on the silo complex near Srednekolymsk, as observed and confirmed by surveillance satellite. We’re to proceed to periscope depth, smartly, and monitor further events per our previous orders.”
“Now? Are you sure?”
“The message was repeated, sir. I checked the decryption myself.”
“But it’s a day early.”
“Something must have sped up their plans.”
Jeffrey climbed out of bed, standing barefoot in his skivvies. He ran a hand over his face.
“I guess something did…. All right…. Give me five minutes to use the head and get dressed. Have a messenger meet me in Control with coffee. You better prepare the ship for coming to periscope depth and raising the masts.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll have Meltzer start to calculate the relative bearing to watch for missiles rising above our horizon.” Bell turned to leave.
“Wait.” Jeffrey’s thoughts were racing. “Do we know how the attack is going?”
“They wouldn’t send us a code for that, due to overall mission security, sir, assuming even Washington knows.”
“Oh, yeah, right. Sorry, my mind’s still fuzzy.”
“No problem, Commodore.”
Jeffrey read the XO stateroom situation display. Sonar held no threats, neither submerged nor on the surface nor airborne. He called up a navigational chart, as Sessions, also in his boxer shorts and undershirt, looked on. The ship was heading northwest, in the middle of the Laptev Sea, on a course to skirt north of the Svernaya Zemlya islands. The nearest land was Cape Dika, about one hundred fifty nautical miles southwest. The nearest naval base in Rear Admiral Meredov’s area of command was almost due south by three hundred miles: the port of Tiksu, on one edge of the Lena River’s huge delta. Challenger was under the pack ice, near the marginal ice zone, using the noise there to hide acoustically at Bell’s favorite depth, nine hundred feet, moving at a stealthy twelve knots. They were in six thousand feet of water — the continental shelf here dropped off much closer inshore than it did by the New Siberian Islands, far astern.