Steve Roarke thought of something else: “To guarantee success, we have to lull the Russians to sleep on this one. Let’s let them think we’re going to quit so that they’ll take their hand off the trigger. Then at the last minute, we can let the missiles go and get the few minutes lead time we need to hit the missiles in the silos. We always know where their subs are and we can use large-megaton warheads on them to cover the sea sector they’re in.”
President Stark had had enough. “General Roarke, it’s your kind of thinking that has caused too many Americans to belittle the military over the past ten years. Goddamnit, when will your people get over the idea that you can solve the world’s problems by blowing it up every now and then? Vietnam proved that a military solution is not necessarily the answer. The Pentagon is still trying to recover from that fiasco. You cheerfully enunciate that only twenty million Americans will die in a nuclear war and that’s acceptable to you!”
Roarke was furious. His eyes were slits burning into the Chief Executive’s.
Stark pointed his finger at him, “Well, it’s not acceptable to me.”
Stark was remembering his own past. “I was once a company commander in Korea. Headquarters ordered my regiment to go up Heartbreak Hill one more time. Everyone in the unit knew it was a crazy thing to do because the Chinese had not been bombed out of their holes and had gotten reinforcements while we bled on the slopes. But we went anyway, and it was the worst day of my life. I personally counted the casualties for over an hour. I saw my friends lying there without heads and with their stomachs scooped out. I counted a hundred and six bodies of men I had sent on a fool’s errand. Next day Headquarters sent in planes to soften the enemy up, and we took the hill in a matter of minutes. So when we talk about body counts I cannot be impervious to the sight of blood and the smell of putrefaction. I must have another answer to the problem we have here today.”
An uneasy silence followed. Roarke’s stubborn chin mirrored tenacious belief in his plan. But the general was now content to let others pursue the solution. His seeds had been planted.
Martin Manson tried to breach the gap. The Secretary of State felt that all possibilities in the Roarke proposal had not been fully aired. “Short of an all-out nuclear war, we do have another option, I believe. The laser is the difference between us. That threat is the only thing that alters the balance of power. If we can find some means to surgically excise that, it would neutralize Krylov’s ultimatum and make them back away for good.” Manson peered over his horn-rimmed glasses at General Roarke and asked: “In that case, General, what can you suggest to us?”
Roarke answered quickly, “We could send in an SR-71 reconnaissance plane fitted with a couple of megaton bombs, and, even with a near miss, that place near Tashkent will be leveled. The SR-71 flies over two thousand miles an hour at one hundred thousand feet and could be in and out of Russia before they knew it. As far as we know, they have nothing that can even come close in it.”
Stark continued: “But such a maneuver would probably lead to instant retaliation by the other side. When they record an overt trespass into their heartland, we have to figure they’ll think the United States has decided to fight. And God knows, when one or two hydrogen warheads detonate on their country, it would take a very cool head in Moscow to keep the beasts at bay.”
Roarke flushed badly at this remark, and Stark hastened to cover the affront.
“You couldn’t blame them for acting that way. By putting two and two together, they would have to believe the facts; an intruder plane had violated their airspace and within minutes dropped bombs on their country. The aggression would be too flagrant to confuse them, and their reactions would be, I would think, about what I would do if a Russian plane came down over Canada, was picked up on radar, and shortly thereafter blew up Chicago. I would mark it as a declaration of war.”
The President smiled wanly at Roarke and added: “It certainly would solve the problem of the laser, General, but we’d be right back to the discussion of a body count in the hundreds of millions.”
Robert Randall finally joined the dialogue. His incisive mind had picked something out of the confusion of ideas being sifted around the table.
“Mr. President, I think we have found the germ of a strategy. Roarke’s theory is fraught with danger only because it is blatant. What we need to do is take out the laser by a subtle approach, a clandestine operation. Sam here could tell us if that’s feasible.”
Riordan said: “You mean a ground operation?” When Randall nodded enthusiastically, Riordan said, “But how the hell can we get them in there? I don’t have anyone inside Russia capable of doing it, and if I did, I couldn’t get to them in time. Nor could I supply them with anything to make it work.”
Randall was excited. The boyish-looking advisor exclaimed, “We have the men right here in America down at Fort Bragg. The Green Berets have been practicing this kind of thing for years. It’s their meat.”
For the first time that morning, William Stark felt a surge of hope. Randall’s idea, though sketchy, offered some positive conditions lacking in Roarke’s strategy. He urged Randall on.
“A small group of men might be able to penetrate the Soviet border and make its way to the area of Tashkent,” Randall improvised, “There it would have to work out the best possible manner of destroying the laser. I can’t pretend to know the best way now, but if they succeed, we have eliminated the danger, and the Russians will be hard pressed to start a war since none of our planes and missiles will be coming at them. In fact, we can order all our strategic weapons to stand down from alert.”
Stark weighed the plusses and minuses. Roarke’s mouth was drawn into a grimace of distaste. Weinroth’s ulcer refused to quiet though its victim, like Stark, tried to analyze the chances of a coup by infiltrators. Sam Riordan was highly skeptical because he knew more than the others the odds against such a mission. Charlie Tarrant, at his right, fingered his Dacron summer suit and thought of the long list of men the CIA had sent into the Soviet Union who had never even performed one task before being discovered and killed.
Martin Manson had no opinion either way. He was only interested in exploring the issue to the fullest. “Mr. President, we ought to weigh the balance sheet on this one. As Bob has said, this strike would avoid directly confronting the Soviets and spare us the horror of precipitating a war, and I think if it was effective it would spare any Russian leader the decision to launch an attack on this country. It would pretty well immobilize them unless, and here we can’t be sure, they’ve gone crazy. However, what are the real percentages in favor of this mission succeeding?”
Sam Riordan had an answer. The director stood up and solemnly shook his head: “Gentlemen, I cannot imagine leaving the destiny of this nation to a band of men sent on a suicidal venture. Randall is not wrong to suggest it, for God knows, we have very little going for us. But they would be doomed from the start. The nearest point of penetration would be on the southern rim of Russia, and they would have to evade detection for hundreds of miles, then get access to what must be the most closely guarded region in the country. And they have to get there and accomplish the task within — what is it now? — about sixty-two hours. I can’t recommend it. To risk all on it would be madness on our part.”
President Stark had lost his initial enthusiasm. The enormous difficulties in the plan were sobering.
General Steve Roarke interrupted the President’s gloominess. “In Vietnam, our LURP teams went into North Vietnam regularly. Their mission was long-range reconnaissance of Charlie’s intentions. These teams went in by chopper and raised hell along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. They were very successful on the whole, but that was because they worked in their surroundings so well. The jungle became their ally, and, of course, they were able to use native forces who looked like the enemy and knew the countryside like the back of their hands. In this case, we would have men going in with no natural cover and unable to blend into the local population. Unless you fellows,” pointing to Riordan, “have a bunch of Russians holed up somewhere in Tashkent who love us more than Lenin.” Roarke shrugged his shoulders. “It’s just impossible to mount such an effort.”