MOSCOW: [Long hesitation] The announcement was issued. It may have been misplaced. We must all be more cautious in future.
Another bald-faced lie, and a cover-up too, Jeffrey thought.
WASHINGTON: You really need to shake the dust and deadwood from your bureaucracy. You misplace important messages too often. I sometimes suspect that you do it on purpose.
MOSCOW: This conversation is ended.
WASHINGTON: No it is not. I must insist on more. The tactical nuclear conflict with Germany is too destabilizing, and they will have their own theories about unfolding events at Srednekolymsk despite what you might tell them. The potential for misunderstanding or unintentional provocation between your country and mine is high, when additional thermal signatures from Srednekolymsk may not yet be ruled out, or others elsewhere may be misidentified. Human error and mechanical breakdown in any complex system are most likely, and most damaging, while under such stress.
MOSCOW: With that I agree. What do you want?
WASHINGTON: Issue an order to your high political and military commanders immediately, and insist on positive confirmation of receipt of the order by each.
MOSCOW: What order?
WASHINGTON: That if for some reason in the next two days their contact with you is temporarily lost, for instance due to an attempted coup or sudden illness, they are not to exercise independent initiative, or implement succession plans, going so far as launching any ICBMs themselves. Only during the next two days, as a cooling-off period for both our nations.
MOSCOW: [Pause, background murmurs audible, appears to consult with advisors] You are overreacting to nothing. However, that being the case, I see no harm in issuing such orders. Provided that you reciprocate, regarding your own chain of custody for thermonuclear forces. I will not be held hostage to American whims because of a minor maintenance accident!
WASHINGTON: I will reciprocate. Caution is not whimsy, with half the world already at war.
MOSCOW: This discussion is ended. [Terminates call.]
Jeffrey smiled to himself despite the uncertainties and dangers, and the trials that he knew lay ahead. The President of the United States had politely but firmly kicked ass, while skillfully putting in place arrangements to avoid inadvertent escalation by either side — setting things up for the bluff about a next-generation missile shield. And he’d caught the President of Russia, on the record, repeatedly telling blatant untruths. If Kurzin’s team succeeded, those untruths would come back to haunt him — partly at Jeffrey’s behest. But if Kurzin made the wrong mistakes, Jeffrey was the one who’d be haunted.
The U.S. had raised its H-bomb alert status to DEFCON 2 at the start of the war with the Berlin-Boer Axis. The last time this had happened was during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I’ve had my doubts about this scheme all along, but it’s way too late to back out now.
Chapter 26
As Nyurba watched, Ildarov’s team switched each SS-27 over to internal battery power; indicator lights showed that operations continued to be nominal. By remote control they disconnected all physical and electronic links to the missiles, except for the launch umbilicals.
“We are ready to launch, sir,” the major said. “I think.”
“Deploy all reserve TV cameras. We need to see how the launches go, and what the Russians try next.”
More display screens lit up. The inferno topside still raged furiously, but all three silo lids were clear of obstructions.
Nyurba couldn’t afford to take any chances. The unbreakable mission doctrine, and circumstance, forced him to issue the most difficult order he ever imagined having to give.
“Major, contact bunker two and bunker three vestibules and all bunker entryway squads. Inform them to take cover, we’re preparing to attempt missile launch.” Too much hinged on that single important qualifier, attempt. But it got worse. Nyurba continued. “Men unfit to run for twenty miles without assistance are to be…” He struggled for the words. “Rendered permanently unavailable for hostile interrogation. This is a direct order. I accept full responsibility.”
A dark pall came over the group of commandos in the bunker. Everyone knew this was coming, but repression and denial, and their own will to survive, had up to now kept them from accepting the brutal, raw fact.
“Each martyr today might be helping save hundreds of millions of lives later on. The calculus of war is abhorrent, but inescapable. May God forgive me.”
I doubt He will. There’s war fighting, and then there’s murder. Nyurba had to blink back tears. The squadron had trained together for a year. Every man felt like a brother. Their bonding was stronger than family.
Ildarov needed to clear his throat twice to be able to speak. He relayed the orders.
“Bunker two acknowledges…. Medics in bunker three vestibule acknowledge…. Squads at entryways to all bunkers acknowledge.” The major’s voice was dead and flat.
“Very well,” Nyurba said coldly. “Launch the missiles.”
His heart had been pounding. Now he took a deep breath, his throat painfully constricted with grief, waiting for something to explode — or for everything to simply go dark and useless, inert, which would be just as bad.
The men used their controls to select the first missile. To initiate the final launch sequence, Ildarov and one of his men inserted and turned their keys. Other lights started flashing. A camera showed the lid of the silo rise open by its hydraulic jacks in less than twenty seconds — it tapered toward its bottom, like a cork, to seal the silo top against incoming nukes. Nyurba felt disembodied as he watched, and became fascinated by trivial details: the bottom of the lid was painted dark green.
I’m an executioner, not a warrior. And I’m the first person in history to launch a hydrogen bomb in anger, not in a test.
The flame-deflector exhaust duct covers slid open, pushing debris and bits of burning fuel aside. The first-stage booster engine ignited. On TV, towers of searing flame shot through the surface exhaust ducts. Nyurba saw the missile’s nose cone emerge from the silo, followed by its sleek, silvery body. It seemed to barely move. Then the monster was out of the silo, seventy-five feet long and six feet in diameter, its engine nozzle giving off blinding yellow glare and a churning cloud of brownish smoke. The missile climbed faster and faster. Ildarov followed it with one camera, using a joystick. Soon the missile was too high to see anything but the incandescent glow from its engine, until that moved out of the camera’s field of view, around the solid curvature of the Earth. Nyurba prayed that the warhead actually detonated, and prayed even harder that it went off only where it was supposed to, in outer space above Moscow.
The team repeated this with the second missile, and a guilt-wracked Nyurba repeated his fervent prayers.
Then they launched the third. As it began to leave its silo, a scattering of Russian troops, still alive amid the surface inferno and fumes, managed to rally and rouse themselves.
They found their last reserves of drive and energy, knowing what was unfolding before their eyes.
Nyurba grabbed for the intercom to the interlock, to warn his commandos to rush to defend the missile. But it was too late. As he watched on the TV display, Russian soldiers aimed their rifles at the missile and fired. The engine nozzle came out of the silo and roasted them.
Nyurba waited to see what damage they’d inflicted. The missile soared into the sky like the others, but it headed in a different direction. It was off-course, its trajectory all wrong. He had no idea what its warhead would do, and had no way to disarm or self-destruct it.