One last man got close enough.
He knelt and aimed his rocket launcher.
A shower of grenades landed all around him. Nyurba was impressed — the commandos had fired in advance as a group, anticipating where he’d be before he got there, so the arcing pop flies of their grenades impacted before he could shoot. Amid the flashes and smoke engulfing the Russian, there was a brighter, more prolonged eruption — a grenade fragment had set off the rocket warhead and its fuel while still in the barrel. All that was left were burning pieces of flesh.
After this the battle went into another lull. It had become a slow and grinding attrition fight: each side wore the other down, bit by bit. The winner, at least of this phase of the larger contest, would be whoever ran out of resources last. The Russians could run low on aircraft and armored cars — or troops could run out of the willingness to advance in the next probe or feint, only to die horribly like those who’d gone before. The commandos could run out of men or ammunition. Based on the numbers on both sides, as Nyurba judged from the camera views and from reports he got over the intercom in the interlock — from which the bunkers’ defending squads were all within radio contact — the commandos would eventually lose. The real question was whether they’d be able to launch some SS-27s before Russian troops broke into bunker one and bunker two and stopped them. The Russians didn’t seem in any major hurry now, which implied that their commanders didn’t think the attackers — whoever they actually were — would be able to launch an ICBM.
Are they underestimating the preparedness and skill of my squadron, or are we underestimating their preventives against an unauthorized launch?
Do they realize we’re already inside two control bunkers?
Nyurba tore his eyes from the screens and watched as the ten men with him continued their assigned tasks systematically and speedily. Some were digesting the normal launch procedures, using the manuals that provided explicit details and checklists. Others were busy hacking the computer systems, to learn the current arming and targeting passwords, and find out how to set the desired flight coordinates and detonation parameters.
Two men kept bombarding their prisoners with questions. The six Russian silo crewmen had been blindfolded, then divided into two groups held out of earshot of each other, one in a corner on the upper level and one on the level below. By cross-examining the men, now deeply under the influence of truth serums, and then comparing answers to the same questions asked of both groups, the interrogators could confirm information and weed out any lies. The chemicals flooding their brain cells made it very hard for the Russians to lie. But these rigorously selected silo crewmen had a strong sense of duty — as two had shown right at the start, they’d rather die than help rogues launch armed nukes.
For all they knew, Nyurba was targeting Moscow.
One of the very first questions was about bunker voice or video recorders. These were located and smashed.
What simplified the main work was that Nyurba didn’t care about procedures to verify that an incoming launch order was valid. This was a large part of silo crew training in any country, but today’s purpose was achieving unauthorized launch. A valid order would include directions for safing the complex’s antirogue traps — the team had to assume that all radio messages now were tricks meant to disable or destroy the ICBMs.
A pair of warhead-bus and missile-system experts were in one silo, to complete an overall inspection making sure there’d been no gross damage done, and to verify that the electronic links to the support base command bunker had indeed been severed by the crewmen as Nyurba asked. Everything looked good on that front, so far. Nyurba hoped, as a result, that all passwords and codes in the launch console software matched those in the missiles and warheads — and that no instructions had been inserted secretly, deep within millions of lines of computer programming, to abort the launches or self-destruct the missiles or de-enable the warheads.
A pair of men, Air Force Special Ops Squadron commandos by original background, were included in each bunker team as explosive ordnance detection-and-disposal experts. The warhead and missile specialists worked closely with them, searching with electronic sniffers, and their eyes, for any range-safety devices that amounted to hidden bombs or incendiaries. Their task was badly complicated by the fact that missiles did include explosive bolts and cords as part of their normal design, to assure separation of each booster stage, and to release the aerodynamic nose cone from over the missile bus — which had its own small liquid-fueled maneuvering rocket. The thermonuclear hydrogen-fusion warhead included high-explosives too, to set off its plutonium implosion-fission trigger.
The two different types of experts were working hard to sanitize the first silo, making slow progress. When done with that, they’d go on to check the second and third silos as well; retractable platforms surrounding the missiles gave them access to maintenance hatches, but there were so many things that needed to be examined thoroughly.
The special ops ordnance men, with surgical precision, had already blown open control-bunker safes whose combinations were unknown to the crews; to prevent an unauthorized launch, the combinations would arrive only with a valid launch order. The Kremlin’s premise was that with eight men in each control bunker crew, one or two who went berserk and tried to use brute force or guile would be stopped by the others — if the regimental command bunker didn’t stop everything first by remote control. And since one part of normal oncoming crew rotation procedures was a close bodily inspection of the new men for explosives, burglar tools, and other improper equipment or materials, what the commandos were about to do could supposedly never be done by regular crews.
Via the intercom system, the major in charge of the efforts in bunker one kept tabs and compared notes with his counterpart in bunker two. A friendly competition had started. So far, bunker two was making slightly faster progress. This was fine by Nyurba. Competition brought better results, and he personally didn’t care which bunker launched the three desired missiles. The winning team, if they survived, could have all the bragging rights they wanted — though permanent security restrictions meant there was no one they could brag to afterward.
The intercom from the blast interlock to the entryway made a warbling noise. Nyurba answered.
“Sir,” an Army Ranger told him over the intercom mike, bypassing the phone talker, “we heard many heavy transport choppers landing a few miles away, out of range of our missiles. We also saw fixed-wing aircraft drop sticks of paratroopers. From the number of chutes, I’m guessing in company strength.” Company strength was a vague term, since many real Russian units were known to be undermanned, but it could mean two hundred paratroopers.
Nyurba looked at his watch. It was more than three hours since the commando’s attack began. The Russians had had enough time to get organized. This military district’s commanding general, or even the Kremlin, might inject new backbone into another, more powerful counterattack.
“Any heavy equipment with the paratroopers?”
“You mean, like field artillery, sir?”
“Yes, that’s what I mean.”