“Negative, sir. At least not yet.”
“What about mortars?”
“We haven’t taken mortar rounds yet either, sir.”
“Inform me at once if you do.”
“Understood.”
“Nyurba, out.” He replaced the handset.
The concrete overhang of the entryways should stop direct hits from mortar or artillery shells. But near misses would throw blast and shrapnel, increasing the rate of attrition for Nyurba’s ever-dwindling squadron. His greatest dread was that Russian fighter-bombers might soon reach the scene, as distant as it was from any such bases, and drop napalm.
“Sir,” Major Ildarov called Nyurba, “bunker two wants to speak to you. The guy sounds upset.”
He grabbed the handset. “Nyurba.”
“We missed a range-safety feature.” The man rattled off technical specifications that were gibberish to Nyurba.
“Wait!” he shouted to the technicians around him, repeating the specifications. “They think they did something wrong. Do you understand what those specs mean?”
The major’s people did. Now they knew one thing to not do, or an extra thing they should do… or something like that. Nyurba had to delegate the arcane technical work. But he grasped that this information was valuable. He told his men to keep working, then spoke into the intercom.
“What’s the problem? You seem fine. Calm down.”
“You don’t understand, sir. The engines of all my missiles have ignited inside the silos.”
“What?” Nyurba examined the camera displays. “But the lids are still closed. The exhaust covers haven’t slid open.”
“I know. The heat and pressure are building up inside. Two of my men were trapped, cremated.”
“Jesus…. Okay…. Just stay where you are. You should be all right, with the blast interlocks between you and the silos.”
“What about the men at the entryway?”
Nyurba glanced at the TV displays again. There was still no sign of any trouble from bunker two.
Then movement caught his eye.
The Russians were making a human-wave assault. Four hundred men on foot, six BTR-70s or 80s, and five Mi-24s were attacking all at once. Armored car machine guns, and rockets and cannon on the helicopters, blasted lanes through the minefields for the ground troops.
The troops were through the fence perimeter in overwhelming force. Their concentrated fire drove the teams back from the entryways to all three bunkers.
“I—”
Nyurba didn’t have time to finish. In volcanic eruptions like nothing he’d ever seen before in his life, one after another of bunker two’s SS-27 silo lids blew off.
They’re hardened against attack from the outside, not tremendous overpressure and searing heat within.
Giant flaming chunks of solid missile fuel were flung into the air — each missile contained fifty tons of it. The shock waves from the lid eruptions were so powerful that Nyurba could see them as moving fronts of ghostly condensation spreading out at the speed of sound; he swayed on his feet, then realized it was the bunker that was swaying on its springs.
The shock waves mowed down the Russian troops as if they were blades of grass. Countless chunks of solid fuel, burning at thousands of degrees Fahrenheit, weighing anywhere from a pound to a ton, plunged out of the sky like rain from hell.
They landed everywhere, bright yellow, as blinding as pieces of the sun. Some of the surface cameras failed and their screens went blank. What Nyurba saw on the other screens was enough.
Helicopters were snapped in half in midair. Armored cars tumbled end over end along the ground until they exploded. The dirty yellow fumes from the missile fuel swirled crazily.
“Bunker two, have your outside team take cover!”
“I’ve lost contact, sir. The intercom failed, or the men are all dead. I can’t open the blast door for them anyway now.”
“Stay put. I need to get off.”
The intercom from the vestibule to his own bunker was warbling.
“Nyurba,” he snapped. On the TV screens, flames continued to blast forth from each of bunker two’s silos, like three blowtorches reaching hundreds of feet into the air. Near one camera, on a display, he saw a big chunk of burning fuel literally melt its way through solid concrete and the steel rebars underneath. Waves of heat rippled above the hole it made for itself, and more dirty yellow fumes belched out to mingle with the fog of fumes that was blanketing the complex. Then the chunk of fuel hit permafrost, and a gigantic steam explosion burst out of the hole. As more chunks burned through elsewhere, geyser after geyser of steam and scalding water and shattered concrete or asphalt was added to the flames and fumes. Even distorted hunks of metal from the missiles burned; magnesium flared a brilliant white. Nyurba felt as if he were watching a silent movie — except in color with modern special effects.
A horror movie. Dante’s Inferno has nothing on this.
“Sir,” someone gasped over the intercom, his voice so muffled by a gas mask that Nyurba couldn’t tell who it was. “The fumes are getting through our masks. We need respirators. Let us inside or we’ll die.”
“Get hold of yourself! Wait one.” Nyurba turned to Ildarov. “How many emergency respirators are in the bunker?”
Ildarov told the interrogators to find out, and learn where they were kept.
The answer came back: eight. One for each man in a silo crew.
Nyurba had an awful thought. Each incinerated missile had carried a one-megaton nuclear warhead. Radioactive plutonium and tritium, and other deadly isotopes, were drifting amid the smoke and fumes. He looked at the TV screens. Lumps of fuel that had landed on asphalt set the asphalt on fire before melting through. Big swaths of the defoliated strip were also burning, sometimes cooking off mines among what was left of the fence barrier. Parts of the forest around the complex had caught fire.
Ildarov’s men were carrying the eight respirator packs toward the door, that thick slab of steel which separated the bunker from the nightmarish scene outside. The Russian labeling said their pure oxygen supply was good for one hour. Then it would be back into gas masks, come what may, for the commandos on the surface — the respirators came with no spare tanks.
“Major, call bunker two and tell them to mimic our actions. Get their rear guard to contact bunker three’s medics via radio. Medics are to barricade bunker three’s stairs with backpacks and duct tape to keep out the fumes. Bunker three rear guard will have to make do with gas masks.” The Russian silo crew in bunker three was still taking cover within, laying low, not interfering.
“Understood, sir.” Ildarov called bunker two.
“Chief,” Nyurba ordered. “The environmental controls. Raise air pressure in the bunker to one point two atmospheres.”
The Seabee chief acknowledged. Nyurba’s ears crackled. He gave thanks that the emergency backup diesel generator, in its hardened containment with its filtered air supply, continued functioning. He knew the bunker had a large battery bank that would last several days if the generator broke down and couldn’t be fixed, or it ran out of fuel.
He spoke into the intercom. “Have your men come into the decontamination chamber. I’m going to give you all the respirators we have. Hold your breath before taking off your gas masks. Don’t inhale until you have the respirators on. The air around you is radioactive. If there aren’t enough of the packs to go around, you’ll have to share them and buddy-breathe.”
“Understood. We’re going in.”
“Call me on the intercom in there.”
In a second the intercom warbled.
“Nyurba.”
“We’re all by the door.”
“I’m going to crack the door and toss out the respirators, then reseal the door. Expect a gush of wind, I’ve overpressured the bunker to keep out contaminants. But I can’t let you in. I need you to stand guard just in case any Russian soldiers are still alive and in a mood to fight up there.”