Fedotov continued to stare at the Tactical Screen. His face had become an unreadable mask, his eyes pale and dry. The seconds ticked by. General Nahaylo wiped a handkerchief over his stricken face and glanced at the young sergeant who sat with his hand poised on the button.
“Sir,” the sergeant pleaded. “What do you want me to do?” He wasn’t looking at Fedotov. He was staring at General Nahaylo. Sheer terror leapt from his eyes.
The command center was stone silent. Every head, every face, every eye, was turned toward Fedotov. No one spoke. No one breathed. No one moved.
Nahaylo grasped the back of President Fedotov’s chair. “Sir! Thousands of people… maybe millions of people… are within seconds of losing their lives. No one will win. It is madness! You must do something. Now!”
Fedotov swung around in his chair and lifted a fist toward Nahaylo. “No! No, General Nahaylo! They started this fight. Not you. And not I. They arc the ones who attacked us! But now I’m calling—”
“Sixty seconds, sir!” the sergeant cried out.
“—their bluff. They are cowards, and I will not back down. So, General Nahaylo, don’t tell me what I must or mustn’t do. Unless you are in charge here. Don’t tell me what to—”
“Forty-five seconds, sir!”
Nahaylo grabbed Fedotov by the shoulders and pulled him around, staring him straight in the eyes. “President Fedotov, you must kill the missile!” he cried. “We must stop while we can! This isn’t some kind of game here! This is life! This is death! This is war!” Fedotov pushed him away. Nahaylo held on. Fedotov pushed him back once again, then glanced at his guards in a panic.
One of Fedotov’s body guards drew his weapon and held it at the ready position.
“Thirty seconds, sir!” the sergeant cried out. Sir! What do you want me to do?”
“Captain Blenko!” Fedotov called to his guard. “Arrest this man! Get this coward out of my sight!”
As the Captain began to move forward, he shot a quick look at Nahaylo. It was clear he didn’t know what to do.
General Nahaylo glanced up at the approaching guard. He stared at his gun. He stared into his face. He glanced down at Fedotov, who was smiling.
Grabbing Fedotov by the ears and hair, he shook him like a rag doll, his eyes wild with frustration and fear.
“Vladimir! Vladimir! You must kill the missile!”
“You are a fool!” Fedotov choked.
“Fifteen seconds, sir!” the sergeant cried out. There were tears of fear in his eyes.
Nahaylo swung around to the controller. “Kill it! Kill it!”
“No!” Fedotov shouted. Nahaylo ignored him and lunged for the console. Fedotov grabbed at him. “Shoot him! Shoot him!” he cried.
At that instant, General Nahaylo’s world came to a standstill. Every thought and emotion faded away as the cognitive process shut down. For half a second, his mind went completely blank. Then he saw them. His countrymen as they labored through life. What sin had they committed? How many would die? His wife and his children. Where were they? How could they survive? And finally he saw her, a tiny and blond-headed girl. She ran to him as she squealed out “Papa” and quickly climbed up on his lap. She was weightless and perfect and constantly smiling as she rested her head on his chest.
He only had one grandchild. But he wanted more.
“Ten seconds, sir!!” the sergeant cried out. “Nine… eight!”
General Nahaylo pulled out his pistol and shot Fedotov square in the chest, blowing him back in his chair.
“Kill the missile!” he cried again, while lurching for the self-destruct button.
The sergeant got to it first. He jammed it down with his finger so hard that he split the top of his nail. Half a second later, Nahaylo’s hand slapped down on the back of the sergeant’s pale wrist.
From a satellite high above the earth, a self-destruct command was sent to the SS-18 missile that was descending over the Virginia coast.
The missile immediately blew into a thousand tiny pieces. The warheads crumpled and burned and vaporized into powdery dust as searing-hot pieces of copper and steel began to fall to earth.
Inside the bunker, every man stood frozen in a horrified stupor. A heavy stillness hung in the air. The sergeant dropped his head on the console and buried it between shaking arms. General Nahaylo swallowed hard and lowered his head. The soft hum of computers seemed to fill the dead air. Crying, Nahaylo turned his back on Fedotov, tiny specks of blood dotting his face. He didn’t try to wipe them away.
Richard Ammon watched the fireball fade and disappear, a yellow explosion in the clear night sky. Only seconds before had he pulled up on his ejection seat handles. Just as his chute had deployed, he felt the jolt of overpressure as Reaper’s Shadow had exploded in the air. Tiny pieces of burning debris and small chunks of metal shot outward, carried forward on a rolling wave of shock and heat. Pea-size fragments of wreckage pelted against his body and tore tiny holes in his nylon parachute.
He was safely out of the plane. But he was not uninjured. Both of his arms dangled uselessly to his side. A searing pain originated at his elbows and made its way up his shoulders, then down his spine. He had no feeling at all in either of his hands. As he dangled in his chute in the darkness, he tried in vain to raise either one of his arms. No good. They were both gone. Identical breaks, just above the elbow.
As he descended through the bitter darkness, he began to shiver uncontrollably. Shock was beginning to set in. His body heaved and shook as the muscles rubbed themselves together in a vain effort to generate some life-giving heat. The veins in his calves and thighs constricted to force the warm blood back up to the internal organs that lay protected in his chest.
He hit the ground with a solid thump, jarring his broken arms and sending piercing jolts of pain down his spine. He fell in a heap onto the shallow snowbank. His parachute descended around him. For a moment he lay there and shivered. He didn’t move. He couldn’t move. It simply was too painful. He willed himself to roll over and stand up. But the exhaustion was too great. He needed some time. Some time to rest. Then he would pull himself together.
He looked down at his arms, which hung at his sides. He tried once again to move his hands, staring at his fingers, willing them to bend, willing them even to twitch. But whether from the cold, or the fractures, or a painful combination of both, he couldn’t move his hands. He knew that frostbite was now a serious possibility, and would lead to amputated fingers.
He lay on top of a shallow bank of snow and listened to the night. In his mind he said a little prayer. He felt so tired. So hopeless and alone.
Above his head, he could hear more fast-moving fighters. They appeared to be circling, at about 5,000 feet, maybe four miles to the west. He listened to the sound of their engines until they faded away in the wind. Then he listened to the breeze in the forest.
And wondered what he could do.
He had two broken arms. It was almost eight hundred miles to the Turkish border. He had little food. He had no warm clothes. He didn’t have a map. The only items of any value were stuffed in the survival pack attached to his parachute. And with his broken arms, he had serious doubts that he could even get the survival pack open.
With enormous effort, he forced himself to roll over and propped himself into a sitting position. He felt dizzy and extremely lightheaded, but surprisingly, the pain in his arms was beginning to fade, although it was replaced by a tight and burning sensation. But even that seemed so far way, almost as if his arms were detached from his body.