“General—”
The sudden burst of gunfire exploded through the trees and cascaded an avalanche of snow from the pines onto Caffey’s head. He fell backward, rolling several feet down the slope before he could stop himself. General Roberts lay facedown in the snow at the top of the ridge. His parka was shredded. The back of his hood was blown away from the exiting bullet.
Caffey scrambled down the slope, putting trees between him and the Soviet soldiers who kept up a barrage of fire from their positions farther up the ridge. Bullets splintered pine all around him. He dove behind the protection of a fallen tree and slid into Sgt. Parsons.
“Return fire!” Caffey screamed. “Return fire!”
Suddenly the ridge was a roar of gunfire. Snapped tree limbs and snow fell everywhere from the intense firepower. Caffey grabbed the M-16 and cartridge belt of a soldier who lay bleeding from a chest wound. “Move back,” he yelled at Parsons and his men. “Move back to the snowcat!”
Then the slope was engulfed in a swirling snowstorm as the helicopter’s blade sang at full pitch. Caffey dragged the screaming GI down the slope to the cat. He’d lost his goggles on the ridge and he fought to see against the missiles of snowflakes. The Soviets kept up their fire, but they were also blinded by the driving snow and couldn’t pick targets to shoot at.
Caffey rested against the side of the snowcat. He grabbed Parsons by the shoulder and screamed in his face to make himself heard. “Get the men in the chopper!”
“We’re the only ones not in it!” the Eskimo sergeant screamed back. “Where’s the general?”
“Dead!” Caffey grabbed Parsons’s hand and put it on the wounded soldier’s hood. “Get him in the chopper!”
“Okay!”
“Are the keys in the cat?” Caffey pointed at the driver’s door.
Parsons gave an exaggerated nod.
“Go!” Caffey yelled. “Take off in thirty seconds whether I’m there or not.”
“Colonel—”
“Go, goddamnit!”
Caffey pushed him toward the chopper. He opened the snowcat door and swung himself into the driver’s seat, propping the door open with his rifle. He switched on the ignition and pressed the starter.
The diesel engine turned, chugging for life. “Start, you fucking beast!”
He pressed again and it caught with a sputter, then roared. “Now… move!” He set the gear in low and the cat lurched forward. Caffey swung it around in a direction parallel to the ridge but toward the clearing away from the chopper. He was guessing where the clearing was. He couldn’t see a damn thing.
He shifted into high, then pointed the M-16 out the door in the general direction of where he thought the Soviets were positioned and emptied the clip. Within seconds they returned fire. Bullets pinged through the cat’s thin metal. The window splintered. Caffey jammed the rifle between the seat and the steering wheel and jumped clear. He was running as he hit the ground.
“Go!” Caffey screamed, scrambling at the side door of the chopper. “Go! Go! Keep below the ridge line! GO!”
Kate and Cordobes and Parsons pulled him in as the Jet Ranger lifted off the ground, swung west and accelerated. “Keep below the ridge line,” Caffey yelled toward the cockpit. “The rockets can’t track you below the ridge.”
“He knows,” Cordobes said.
“Where’s Roberts?” Kate said. She helped Caffey sit up. “What happened—”
“He’s dead.”
“Are you su—”
“They blew his head off,” Caffey said angrily. “Yes, I’m sure.”
Suddenly there was an explosion behind them. A plume of black smoke rose from the tiny battlefield in the snow.
“What was that!” Cordobes said.
“Scratch one US Army snowcat.” Caffey leaned back against the bulkhead. “I figured it was something they should shoot at instead of us. Helicopters are not known for their bulletproof characteristics.” He glanced around him. The bay was crowded with soldiers, some tending to their wounded comrades, others just staring mutely out the open door. “What’s the count?”
“Six wounded,” Kate said. “Two are serious. The copilot was also hit above the ear. Almost blew his helmet off, but he’ll be okay.”
Caffey looked at Cordobes. “Where’s Lieutenant Speck?”
The captain shook his head.
“Shit!”
“Ed did get the message off to TAG COM,” Cordobes said. “Washington knows.”
“Was there a response?”
The captain shrugged. “The bastard who killed Ed Speck also destroyed his radio. He just had time to get an acknowledgment before…” He wiped a sleeve over his face. “What’s going to happen now, Colonel?”
Caffey shook his head. He looked out at the blur of trees and snow as the helicopter rushed past them.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I don’t know. Washington will tell us something.”
One of the soldiers beside Caffey leaned toward him. “Are we at war, sir?” he said in a tow voice. He was barely twenty, Caffey thought. Someone else’s blood was smeared across the front of his parka.
“Are we, sir?”
“I hope not, son,” Caffey said, looking away at the snow and ice below. “God, I hope not.”
Col. Gen. Aleksey Rudenski was in the library of his home, sitting before an evening fire reading Chairman Gorny’s redevelopment plan for the Central Committee, when the call came. Major Suloff was brief.
“We’ve received a signal from Section Nine, comrade General.”
Rudenski set the report aside. “They are on schedule then?”
“One day earlier than anticipated.”
“Excellent.”
“They have made contact with a parallel group.”
Rudenski frowned. “Yes?”
“Patrol strength. An observation unit only. An hour ago.”
“I see. Then we can assume Washington has been informed?”
“Yes, comrade General. We expect they have been.”
Rudenski nodded to himself. “Good, Major. Very good. Thank you for calling.” He replaced the telephone and looked into the fire. “Now we see what the chairman is made of,” he said softly. “Bull or lamb…”
WHCR
1930 HRS
The White House Crisis Room was located in the subbasement of the presidential mansion, built in the days when it was believed crises were best handled deep underground, safe from atomic blasts and fallout. Crises were still discussed and argued there though, since the advent of relatively pinpoint-accurate megaton-hydrogen weapon systems, its effective life-supporting and safety characteristics were qualitatively reduced to those of a very deep tomb.
The Crisis Room was more than one room, of course, and it was staffed around the clock, generally with military communications specialists and NSC advisors, whether there was a current crisis to be resolved or not. The heart of the WHCR was the XCONSTRAT Room, an incomplete acronym for Executive Conference and Strategic Planning. XCONSTRAT was just what one might expect such a room to look like. It was large and had no windows and was illuminated by rows and rows of fluorescent lights. Its two main features were an enormous back-screen projection map on what was considered the “front” wall (the map could be made to show a flat version of the entire planet or any portion thereof, blown up) and a conference table with places for a dozen executive crisis-participants.
Usually this room was unused; the back-screen projection map was off and the lights were out except when a security-cleared maid came in to polish the table.
Tonight the lights were on and the table was cluttered with styrofoam coffee cups, brimming ashtrays and Xerox copies of contingency planning reports in gray folders marked TOP SECRET. Present were members of the JCS — General Max Schriff, Army Chief of Staff; Admiral Vernon Blanchard, Chief of Naval Operations; and Air Force General Phillip Olafson, JCS Chairman. The nonmilitary executives present were CIA Director Burton Tankersley, Acting FBI Director Naomi Glass, Secretary of Defense Dr. Alan Tennant, Secretary of the Threats Committee Elizabeth Rawley and National Security Advisor Dr. Jules Farber.