He turned back to Clancy, who was staring at the buzz of activity surrounding the two F-14 Tomcats on the catapults. Behind the retractable blast-fence two more Tomcats waited for their turn on the catapults, and eight more were lined up waiting to taxi behind them. The number-three elevator was bringing still another Tomcat up out of the hangar deck to take its place in line. The flight deck was noisy and smelly, and cold rain began to pelt the lookout deck surrounding the bridge of the Nimitz — but Clancy was in his element as he watched his sailors do their stuff.
A messenger ran up to Edgewater and handed him a sheet of computer paper. "Message from the Mississippi, Admiral," Edgewater called out. When Clancy did not reply, Edgewater went out to him on the catwalk. "The Mississippi intercepted a Soviet AS-6 cruise missile launched from the north Arabian Sea."
"What about the Backfires? Did the Tomcats…?"
"All six down," Edgewater said, allowing a smile. "The Tomcats took out five of them. A sixth went out of control."
Clancy raised his eyes skyward, letting pellets of cold rain hit his face.
Thank you, Silver Tower…
The night of the abortive Backfire bomber attack in the Arabian Sea a uniformed man appeared at Govorov's home at the Space Defense base at Tyuratam. The banging on the apartment door startled Govorov's wife and caused their five-year-old daughter to wake up, asking if the apartment was on fire. Govorov opened the door and found an aide of the Minister of Defense with a sealed letter in his hand. The letter told him there was a MiG-31 waiting for him at Tyuratam Aerodrome; he was to report to the Kremlin immediately. The letter stated the exact time of his appointment with the Stavka.
Govorov was irritated but hid it from Czilikov's aide. There was no way he could arrive at the designated time, even aboard one of the world's fastest jet fighters. But that was intended, an obvious ploy to show how displeased the Stavka was with him.
Telling the aide to give him a few minutes, he went back to the tiny bathroom in his master bedroom and without a light began to run hot water to shave. His wife propped herself up on one elbow in their bed. "Who was it, Alesander?"
"A messenger from Moscow. They want me there."
"And you were going to shave in the dark?" She got up from bed and snapped on the bathroom light. "I'd better check on Katrina. The messenger scared her."
He could hear his wife's soothing voice trying to calm their daughter and had to steady his razor hand to keep from nicking himself. If one of the august members of the Stavka were roused out of bed as he had been, heads would roll. He didn't really stand much on ceremony or rank, but they were still treating him like a squadron commander.
He knew why, of course… It was because of the American space station Armstrong's not being destroyed as he'd thought at first…
He shaved, quickly washed, dressed in a space defense command flight suit and a pair of boots. His wife was waiting at the door with his flying jacket, an insulated bottle of coffee and an egg-and-sausage sandwich wrapped in a napkin.
He took her face in both his hands and kissed her on the lips. "I do not deserve you," he said. "Oh, I think you do," she said, helping him on with his jacket, "but I deserve you as well." She zipped up his jacket for him and returned his kiss with a long, warm one of her own. "Will you call me before you launch?"
Her question had been unexpected. "I won't ask how you knew that I might be flying today. If I could conquer the mysteries of a woman, I could conquer outer space, maybe even the Stavka members." She smiled, but it was strained. "Yes," he said quickly, "I will try to call."
"I love you, Alesander."
Her tone held him. He searched her round eyes looked away. What he saw bothered him… "I'll call you," he said, and hurried out. He nearly stumbled over the aide in his rush toward the stairway. The man ran ahead to open the door for him as they emerged into the cold darkness. Govorov snatched up the telephone in the rear of the car as the driver hustled behind the wheel and sped off.
Govorov punched four digits into the dialing keypad. "Marshal Govorov here. Duty officer. Gulaev? Put him on. Nikolai. I've been ordered to Moscow. Call dispatch at the aerodrome and take whoever is the pilot of the MiG-31 off the flight orders. I'll fly myself to Moscow. Have life-support put my gear on the plane, then put me on the flight orders for Elektron One effective upon my return to Glowing Star. Shift Colonel Kozhedub to Elektron Two and Litvyak to Three. Put Vorozheykin on the flight orders of Elektron One until I get back. He will drop back to standby with Pokryshkin when I take command of Elektron One."
Govorov dropped the phone back onto its cradle and leaned toward the front seat. "Drive faster." A vivid image of his wife and daughter came to him and he forced it away. He had seen something in his wife's eyes back in the apartment that he badly wanted to change. She was scared, too scared for her own good… or his.
"Faster."
CHAPTER 35
It was the first time in months that any member of the Stavka VGK, the Armed Forces Supreme High Command, had been in the Soviet military's alternate command post located one hundred sixty kilometers south of Moscow. This particular post was never involved in any preparedness exercises or drills, was manned by only a small staff of hand-picked technicians and soldiers and did not have a major military airfield associated with it — Stavka members from Moscow were flown in to Novomoskovsk by helicopter. The other well-known "high-value" alternate command posts under the Kremlin and in Pushkino received all the attention and publicity and, it was assumed, were the ones targeted by the West in the event of a thermonuclear exchange. Novomoskovsk, well away from military targets, factories, rail depots and most important — publicity, was designed to escape all but a direct hit. Unless an attack had already been launched against the Soviet Union and time was running out, the eleven men of the Stavka and their aides and assistants knew that the Novomoskovsk command post was far safer and more secure than any in Moscow.
In fact, the Novomoskovsk command post was probably the most secure place in eastern Europe. When the Soviet Union perfected the technique of welding ultra-thick pieces of metal they had immediately applied that technology to the walls of the three-thousand-square-foot underground facility. The main construction of the bunker consisted of four-foot-thick walls of steel welded by small nuclear detonations in industrial reactors. The steel chamber rode on huge shock absorbers that would cushion the chamber from the terrific overpressures of a nearby nuclear explosion. Two dozen men and women could live and work there in reasonable comfort for at least a month. No question, Novomoskovsk was the place to be if there were ever a nuclear war.
But at the moment the command post was not the place to be if one wanted to be safe from the stinging disapproval of the general secretary of the Soviet Union. The Soviet leader sat at the apex of a large triangular table, listening with growing irritation to First Deputy Minister Khromeyev as he stood before an electronic briefing board, reviewing the progress of Operation Feather. The Stavka members were arranged on either side of the general secretary, each with a communications terminal and a telephone at his side.
Yesterday, when the first of the massive air attacks on the Nimitz carrier group had begun, the general secretary had postponed all his appearances and appointments to take personal command of the Arabian Sea conflict. The breaking of the American blockade around the mouth of the Persian Gulf was now the major focus of his attention, and he was growing progressively angrier as he realized nothing was working as planned. And who could blame him? He also had a rather complex domestic economy to run. His military people were supposed to handle their end once the goals and strategies had been spelled out.