Jeffrey started to figure the distances and timings.
“Sir,” Bell said, smiling at his superior’s typical obsession with work. “Take care of your business first. There’s a polynya ideal for our purposes only three miles off.”
With the blast door closed, it was oddly quiet in control bunker one. Nyurba realized he missed the constant pounding and vibrations that the surface battle had been causing through the air and through the ground. Given the tidy, high-tech appearance of the launch consoles — computer screens and keyboards, rows of switches and knobs and dozens of indicator lights, all labeled with strange abbreviations and acronyms — the bunker seemed surreal. Safes, electronic and power supply cabinets, communications and decoding equipment, printers, and storage lockers lined the walls in the low-ceilinged enclosure. It was antiseptic — a stark contrast to the absolute mess outside.
The lack of any sensations from the violent life-and-death struggle being fought so close above his head brought home what he already knew as a civil engineer: the bunker he was standing in rode on a system of massive springs and torsion bars, powerful shock absorbers and vibration dampers, and suspension rods with high-friction universal joints. Such components surrounded the entryway blast interlock, the control bunker, the blast interlocks at both ends of the tunnels leading to each of the three missile silos, those long tunnels, and the missile silos themselves. Each of these major underground structures was a separate module made of steel and reinforced concrete, with massive rubber bumpers at the joints between them, so the whole system could flex and twist as independent pieces — and thus not build up added stresses or destructive harmonic resonances. Most of the shock-modulation components were installed in a “rattle space” between excavated bedrock and the exterior of the modules; that space was accessible through maintenance hatches. The modular design, including multiple blast interlocks, meant that if one section did fail, those around it would be isolated from any propagating fracture or collapse. American land-based ICBMs, the Upgraded Minuteman IIIs, were housed in a similar way. But the newer SS-27 complexes were built to withstand greater dynamic shear, strain, compression, torque, and shaking than were their older, lifetime-extended U.S. counterparts. Nyurba sent his Seabee chief to gather all the intel he could on the Russian construction methods and specs, using one of the Japanese digital cameras the team had brought to make permanent records. The espionage opportunities were priceless.
“We have intercom communications with bunker two,” the Air Force major said. His name was Akhmed Ildarov, born in Russia’s restive Muslim region of Dagestan. Ildarov was stocky and swarthy, all business at all times; he’d been naturalized as a U.S. citizen during his childhood. “Our people have seized control in bunker two, sir. They report proceeding to obtain information and items required for armed missile launches.”
“Very well,” Nyurba acknowledged. “Activate all surface TV cameras.”
“Yes, sir.”
The silo crewmen must have turned them off because they found the combat scenes too disturbing.
Display screens lit up to show views, in full color, from aboveground; the pictures weren’t very sharp, and the cameras had no zoom lenses. As the major’s men hurried around doing their jobs, Nyurba mostly studied these screens. Some of the cameras had failed even though they were armored — these, like the radio antennas, were expected to be lost in an attack, and reserve units hid behind armored shutters. Nyurba decided to save those cameras for right before bunker one’s missiles launched — assuming they ever did.
The cameras that were working showed that the fight for the bunker entryways, so vicious while Nyurba was in the stairwell, had reached a stalemate. Before, he’d only been able to see what a pounding his men were taking. Now, he could see what they’d dished out.
New funeral pyres of aircraft and vehicles threw flames and smoke into the sky. Dead Russians lay contorted where they fell. Charred corpses smoldered. Wounded crawled or clutched at entrails or raised their arms in pleading for help. Some of the figures that burned were moving, either because limbs drew into outreaching postures as muscles and tendons were cooked — or because they were still alive.
The Russians had suffered heavy losses from the squadron’s supersonic SA-16 missiles, the shaped-charge and hyperbaric warheads of the RPG-27s, and the grenade launchers and flak-vest-piercing AN-94s. Surviving helicopters and armored cars and troops in the open were mostly keeping their distance. Individuals fired back and forth sporadically, but at longer range the AN-94 was much more accurate than the AK-47 or the AK-74. The camera displays showed that the triple chain-link fences had been knocked down in a number of spots, but the area between them still held many unexploded mines. It was difficult to defuse these mines while under fire from the commandos — this was one factor working to the squadron’s advantage. It held the Russians at bay, even as it trapped the commandos.
On one screen, Nyurba saw man-sized lumps moving on the ground by a gap in the fence. Russian minefield-clearing teams?
The earth around them leaped into the air in many small clods. Hits from AN-94 rounds?
Some lumps jerked or rolled over and stopped moving. The others kept advancing. There was a sudden bright flash on the screen, weird because the picture had no sound. Lumps, and parts of lumps, cartwheeled through the air and landed heavily.
Scratch one more mine-clearing team.
But small units, whether Mi-24s of different varieties, or BTR-70s — or the newer, diesel-powered BTR-80s that had shown up — or squads of soldiers, would make lunges and feints to get the commandos to waste their ammo. Realizing this, the commandos in the entryway dugouts held their fire, playing possum, until the lunges got too close for their weapons to miss. Then they’d fire a missile or a grenade, causing further Russian losses — but expending further ammo, and sometimes taking killed and wounded themselves.
Nyurba saw another lunge, this one by a squad of twelve infantrymen each holding an RPG-27 or similar grenade launcher. They spread out wide to make harder targets, and ran right into the minefield through holes in the fence. Three of them set off mines, and grabbed for legs that weren’t there until they set off more mines and lay dead. Nine men never broke stride, and now were on the asphalt. They were charging straight toward bunker two, from the direction facing its entryway. They obviously wanted to get within the two-hundred-yard range of their warheads and use them as bunker-buster grenades. They wore extra-thick body armor; sometimes they hesitated or staggered as if they’d been hit, but then kept coming. One man was hit in a leg — Nyurba saw a puff of pink vapor come out the back of his thigh. He hopped forward on the other leg. A commando in bunker two fired at one Russian using the grenade launcher under his rifle, but its range in a high lob from the launcher was no better than that of the RPG rockets with their flatter flights. A flash and a puff of smoke showed that the commando’s grenade fell short. That soldier broke ranks, knelt, and fired back. A rocket streaked toward the bunker, and a ball of fire above the asphalt showed that it too fell short — a hyperbaric warhead. The other Russian soldiers were still coming on. One by one they were picked off with shots to the head or neck, or crippling shots to the lower abdomen and groin — or raking full-auto fire that shredded their thighs or their calves. Nyurba was transfixed by this amazing show of courage. Only one Russian had to get within effective grenade range, out of the dozen who had started this death charge, to take out everyone on the stairs of bunker two.