“Thanks very much for your opinions. To those of you who voted against using a nuclear weapon on the enemy, I appreciate your profound concern for the lives of millions. But we will go with General Roarke’s plan and pray to God that the Soviets stop this insane game.”
Nodding to Randall and Riordan, Stark hurried out to the Situation Room. There he picked up a red phone, spoke curtly to General Ellington at Incirclik Airbase, and hung up.
On the runway at Incirclik, the three-man crew of the SR-71 listened to Ellington on the intercom. Quickly the pilot cut in power to the jet engines, and the plane moved off down the field. In two minutes it was airborne.
In the control tower, General Ellington held the red phone in one hand and watched the atomic bomber disappear into a cloud bank. He was momentarily distracted by an aide who noted: “Thirty-seven minutes to drop.” Ellington nodded and held onto the phone in case Stark had any further word.
The clock in the Maryland Situation Room pointed to 10:48 P.M. Stark had just handed the text of a message for the hot line to Sergeant Arly Cooper, who had received the ultimatum message at 11:18 P.M., just seventy-one hours and thirty minutes before. Cooper had spent the last days in a terrible state of anxiety, for he among very few knew the entire truth behind the strange happenings in and around the capital. Cooper had not been able to confide anything to his wife. He had become irritable with his family and hated himself for behaving so badly. When the summons came to accompany the President into the mountain, Copper was almost relieved to be able to take the awful secret with him into the cave. He told his wife he would be back in several days, and she had smiled tightly and bid him a curt farewell. Now Cooper sat before the machine, preparing to relay Stark’s answer to the Soviet High Command.
The President’s mind was whirling as he considered last-minute details before the irrevocable commitment to his policy. He called the Samos and Midas tracking unit and heard the same report: No sign of detonation or damage to the laser. In addition, Samos had just begun to record the emergence of the laser from its lair.
Stark ran to the wall, and the television screen jumped to life. His heart pounded as he watched the silvery weapon protruding from the building eighty-seven miles below the stationary satellite. Stark felt he could almost glimpse figures moving about in the shadowy cavern beneath it. He called for Randall and Riordan to join him at the wall. General Steve Roarke moved up behind them and stared at the apparition:
“They’re getting ready. Just twenty-eight minutes.”
The entire cabinet now gathered around the giant wall screen. Secretary of Labor Bruce Hinton was weeping openly as he waited for the imminent deaths of millions in Los Angeles.
Robert Randall looked at him without comment. General Roarke snarled: “Stop sniveling, Hinton. For Christ’s sake, this is the time to be a man, not a mouse.”
Roarke made a mental note that Hinton had probably voted to surrender. He reminded himself to find the other two “peaceniks” in the coming days, if there were any days to come.
“OK, let them know about the SR-71.”
Cooper began typing.
ONE PLANE ENTERING YOUR AIRSPACE NOW TO VICINITY OF TASHKENT. IT WILL DESTROY LASER GUN AND RETURN TO BASE. NO OTHER WEAPONS WILL BE EMPLOYED AGAINST YOUR COUNTRY.
Stark kept his eyes fastened on the television screen.
In the scientists’ briefing room, a concrete blockhouse with one glass wall, Marshal Bakunin sat before a closed-circuit television screen linking him with Moskanko in the defense command headquarters northwest of Moscow.
Bruk was with Bakunin, giving both marshals an explanation of the inner workings of the atomic bomb, now laid bare on the table. Bruk had carefully pried loose the butt cover and snipped out of vial of acid with a pair of fingernail scissors. On the television monitor, Moskanko had listened in amazement as the white-smocked scientist extolled the sophistication of the device. He explained that when the two wires linking the battery to the nuclear mass were disconnected, the plastique cover would immediately implode onto the fissionable material. He estimated that it was capable of pulverizing a six-square-mile area.
Beside him, Marshal Bakunin listened impatiently to the recital and finally exploded.
“Viktor Semyonovich, you have seen this damned bomb, and how it works. But more important, I have just seen a copy of the order you sent to Serkin changing the target to Los Angeles. You very neatly bypassed me until I went to the signal center and found this transmission from you.”
On the wall, the face of Moskanko seemed to expand into a cherry-red bulge.
“I do not know what prompted you to do this,” Bakunin went on, “but you must rescind the order right now. I went along with the Israeli strike because I could justify it as a legitimate military requirement, but this, killing several million human beings… it’s not war, Viktor Semyonovich. It’s an abomination.”
Moskanko’s mouth moved on the screen, and his words thundered out from the wall.
“You are talking foolishness, Pavel Andreievich. You learned years ago that a civilian population in modern warfare is on the front lines as much as the foot soldier. The missiles you developed for a strike against an enemy will kill millions of people when you launch them. You have always known that.”
Bakunin cut him short. “But that was only in defense of the motherland. I never doubted I could send them out against someone who attacked us first, but what you propose to do is wanton murder of the innocent. For effect, you say.” Bakunin got up, strode to the glass wall, looked through it into the laser chamber, then returned to look at the television.
In the Moscow defense center, Marshal Moskanko studied his agitated brother-in-law on the wall screen. Patiently, he tried to reason with him. “Pavel Andreievich, please do not interfere any more with me. I am not a fool. I know who the enemy is and always has been, and I am taking the proper steps to eliminate them as a menace to us.”
“That is nonsense, Viktor Semyonovich. You are just trying to justify—”
An aide appeared at Moskanko’s elbow and handed him Stark’s hot-line message. The marshal read it and jumped up. “Nonsense, Pavel Andreievich? Well, they have just sent a bomber against us. And it is heading right for you. Wait there until I settle this.” As Moskanko rushed away to the hot-line machine to answer Stark’s challenge, the television screen went dead.
Marshal Bakunin sat in the briefing room in Tashkent and waited anxiously for the monitor to come to life again. It was his only link with the unfolding tragedy he had predicted.
In the Soviet defense command center north of Saratov, monitors locked in on the SR-71 as it approached the Soviet border at a speed of 1,980 miles an hour.
“Altitude?” asked a colonel at the control board.
“It’s at a hundred and two thousand feet, heading due east. Just crossing the Caspian Sea south of Baku.”
The colonel was at the phone talking to Marshal Moskanko.