It was a perfect match.
“I’ve got a SPOTLIGHT!” Pond called out as he finished. He raised his head and looked across the room at his boss. She was still decoding her message. He waited for her to respond.
“Confirm item twelve,” she yelled over to Lt Pond. Pond looked down at his binder to block number twelve. “Five,” he called back.
Capt Leaven scribbled the number in her binder. She read through the coded message once again, reading every word, comparing every letter. Lt Pond glanced up at the clock. It had been almost three minutes since they had received the message. They didn’t have very much time.
Finally Capt Leaven replied, “I confirm SPOTLIGHT.” A long moment’s hesitation. The room fell silent. The air stirred around them as the air conditioner kicked itself on. Capt Leaven didn’t move.
Lt Pond waited. His right hand unconsciously dropped to the 9mm handgun that was strapped to his side.
Suddenly the captain straightened up in her chair. Her voice was firm as she gave her command.
“Break the sealed switches. Select blue on my command.”
Lt Pond immediately broke open the red safety covers that protected a long row of switches that were set in the center of his console. He flipped each of the ten switches to “ARM,” then reached up and inserted his key into a multicolored lock.
“Two is ready. Selecting blue,” Pond announced in a raspy voice.
“Ready on my command,” Leaven replied. “Ready, ready, now!” Both officers turned their key to the first position. Immediately, all ten of the Minuteman III missiles which they commanded were activated and put onto hold.
Duane Marshall looked up from the fractured radiator that was now plaguing his tractor. It had frozen the night before, an early frost for central Texas, and the old tractor’s radiator had frozen through.
Duane’s farm was located just three miles from Dyess Air Force Base, home of the 7th Wing. His best piece of property, sixty acres of fertile red soil, was located directly underneath the departure end of the base’s runway.
As Duane stood back from his wounded tractor, he heard the familiar sound once again. Three miles to the north, a B-1 was just taking off. It would be overhead in a matter of seconds. Duane brushed off the tips of his fingers and prepared to insert them into his ears.
The B-1 approached the empty field, accelerating from the northern horizon. Much as he hated the noise, Duane couldn’t resist watching the aircraft as they flew overhead.
Even before Duane turned to look for the oncoming bomber, he knew the approaching sound was not the same. It sounded much lower and much more powerful.
He turned away from his tractor and looked to the north, squinting his eyes against the dry winter dust.
Then he saw them. Like geese raising from a corn field, they rose from the base. Taking off in six-second intervals, the bombers came, trailing one behind the other in a long, unbroken line.
The first bomber was nearly upon him. Duane stared in awe as it flew overhead. Even as he watched, three other B-1s chased after their leader and formed up on his wing. This formation was followed by six more. Screaming overhead they flew, sending thin contrails to blow in the wind. The bombers pierced the thick Texas air, pulling their dart-like noses skyward as they turned back to the north.
Duane Marshall watched until they had all disappeared. He had counted twenty-eight bombers in all. For twelve years Duane had been farming here in Caps, yet never had he seen so many aircraft take off all at once. And never so close together.
Duane wasn’t much for reading the papers, but even he had some idea what might be going on. “Must be that darn Russian thing,” Duane muttered to himself as he turned back to his tractor.
The U.S.S. Georgia broke through the ceiling of ice very easily, her back hunched against the pressure of the four-foot flow. The submarine’s thick steel hull crackled and popped as she emerged from the bitter cold waters of the Norwegian Sea. After breaking through the ice, the nuclear-powered submarine resubmerged to thirty fathoms. She had already pressurized her missile tubes with nitrogen to protect the missiles against the sea water when they were launched. Now all she had to do was wait.
Seventeen hundred miles to the southwest, a RC-135 command, control, and communication aircraft flew in a lazy orbit off the Newfoundland coast. Inside the aircraft, controllers sat at long rows of computers, radios, radars, and desks. They worked quietly as they concentrated on doing their job.
Under the belly of the aircraft was a round fiberglass pod. Trailed out behind the pod was a two-mile long strand of thick copper wire. Using an ultra-low frequency radio, the communication specialists that filled the interior of the RC-135 had been able to communicate with the U.S.S. Georgia as she sat under the ice.
Once Attack Option CONFINE had initiated, much of the responsibility for what followed was left up to the three-star general who commanded this aircraft. he would be the one who called all the shots.
Inside the aircraft was a small television monitor. The monitor was satellite data-linked to the radar site in Greenland and showed the flight of the incoming missile. Once Greenland began to lose its track on the missile, Headquarters Space Command, buried deep in the Cheyenne Mountains of Colorado, would accept responsibility for tracking. Space Command would track the warheads all the way to their targets.
Once the nuclear detonations were confirmed, the controllers aboard the RC-135 would broadcast a message, which would be relayed to units around the entire world. Within a very few minutes, all of the nuclear assets that were presently standing by would be commanded to launch their weapons.
As the RC-135 circled, it continued to receive messages and codes from various units, all of them associated in some way or another with Strategic Command. Most of the messages were meaningless garbage. Nothing but bogus message traffic whose only purpose was to assure that the command and communication systems were still in operation.
But as the controllers watched in terror as the missile on the radar screen descended through the air, they fully expected that to change. They anticipated that within the next ten minutes, damage reports would begin to flood in as the warheads detonated over their targets.
FORTY-ONE
“Sir, what do we do?” General Nahaylo’S voice was desperate. He stood beside President Fedotov’s chair, his back toward the Tactical Display Screen, his eyes intense with emotion as he stared down at him. “We still have time,” he continued. “We can destroy the missile. But we only have seconds. Once the missile opens up and the warheads have separated from their housing, it will be too late.”
The general paused, waiting for the president to answer. Fedotov did not reply.
“Two minutes, sir!” the sergeant sitting at the missile control desk announced. He moved his right hand and flipped up a protective cover, exposing the small, red, self-destruct button that was housed underneath.
“Mr. President, I need your permission to destroy the missile,” General Nahaylo insisted.
“Are you certain the bomber has been destroyed?” Fedotov asked once again.
“Yes! Yes! Yes! For the fifth time, sir, the bomber has been destroyed. It is gone! Our own fighters and the Mainstay have both confirmed the kill.”
“And all of the missiles?”
“Yes! You know they are gone, sir. You saw them yourself as they disappeared from our screen. The Americans destroyed them. Everything’s gone! Including the bomber! Now we just can’t sit here. You simply must act! Only you can order the SS-18 destroyed!”