David's Sling (36 page)

Yurii jerked in his seat as Forstil used his name again. "We of America have now taken the first, largest step toward making our planet a safe place to live. I now ask General Secretary Klimov to join us in our casting aside of self-destroying weapons. In a few months, the Soviet Union will be the only country in the world able to bring down nuclear devastation upon Soviet land. Join us in protecting your own country." It seemed as though Forstil's eyes locked with Yurii's, despite the distance in both time and space. The weary shock of Russia's recent humiliation pressed upon Yurii with a desire to stop struggling, to do as the president suggested, to dismantle his own nuclear forces.

But that would mean throwing away a huge lever, even as it was put into his hands. Yurii grimaced. Such an abdication of advantage could not be considered.

Not all Soviet citizens would agree with his opinion. No doubt this broadcast was penetrating Soviet airspace, reaching his people despite the Army's efforts to jam it. Oh, well. The Pravda discussion of Forstil's speech would require careful editing. And perhaps it might make sense in the upcoming months to destroy a token number of Soviet missiles. They could eliminate a few obsolete weapons and thereby solidify American public opinion behind Forstil's new course. Yes, he could see considerable merit in that plan.

The tape ended. Yurii savored the victory for a moment, then reflected on his suspicions. Could this be some kind of hoax? With a quick phone call, he orbited a satellite to watch the Americans destroy their own missiles.

Two hours later, he knew without doubt the extent of the American insanity. The 120 missiles in exposed silos had been destroyed—utterly, unquestionably, and irrevocably.

It was funny how, in a quiet, darkened room, one could be crushed with a sense of terror. Hilan had lived several nights in an exact duplicate of this room in the Pentagon.

This war room where he now stood lay buried under Mount Weather, Virginia.

Though he had spent some time in that Pentagon war room, most of his mental images of this room came from trips made in dreams and nightmares—trips through thoughtworks, wherein he sweated his way across burning visions of Armageddon.

The reality now seemed inconsequential compared to those nightmares. Here, methodical discipline muffled the raw emotional undertone: the light and glare of the hotline telecomm with Moscow lay in the Current Actions Center, behind the glass-walled control area where technicians swarmed. Here, separated from the clatter, Hilan sat at the long table with the Joint Chiefs and a variety of aides. Of course, no windows broke the walls of this quiet place buried beneath a mountain; the wall-sized display screen at the far end supplied a more relevant contact with the external world.

Hilan looked up at the display again. He did not shiver. As calm as this setting seemed, he wondered how calm he himself appeared. Any calm he might project was pure facade: He felt like a self-contained nuclear burst, the detonation surging in his body, trapped within the authority of his black pinstripe suit.

The war room would have been a dangerous place to hold this meeting before the war for Europe, now known as the Flameout. Before the Flameout, Soviet submarines cruised within six minutes of an attack on Washington—six minutes from obliterating the war room in the Pentagon. Had the subs not been destroyed already, the fragile plan Hilan would now execute could not exist.

The long table held too many faces. Hilan picked out the key ones, unconsciously. Foremost was General Hansen of the Air Force, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was a tall man, prone to sudden-breaking smiles, with silver hair. He had been a fighter pilot, and he still wore the ostentatious watch that was once so popular among the flyers. He sat serenely at the far end of the table.

Soft light came from the ceiling, eliminating shadows. A couple of people smoked; the ventilation drew away the smoke with brisk efficiency.

The display wall was an oversized version of the screen used by the Zetetics to hold decision duels. The technology here was more primitive, Hilan realized: the software for the display did not allow such flexible zooming and windowing. The absence of powerful software explained why they needed the entire wall for this setup. Despite the huge display, however, the commander in chief had less access to useful information than did a second-year physics student probing the atom for the first time. Plenty of information would come across that display, but little of it would be useful.

What did Hansen think of the plan they had come here to execute? Hansen might be turning purple inside, but that was submerged here. He was a soldier's soldier, calmly competent. He had objected to the plan at first as too risky. But a day's reflection, and the weight of the ideas, had made him a believer. He would never bet everything on a single turn of the wheel, he had said. But here the alternative was to bet everything on the turn of the wheel, not once, but many times—every time a weak president confronted Yurii Klimov.

General Hansen evoked in Hilan a sense of security—a delusionary feeling, to be sure. But Hilan had by now listened to too many Zetetic lectures to deny the delusionary feeling:
those who refuse to admit their own prejudices will remain forever enslaved by them.

Hilan turned away from Hansen to look at the lower left-hand corner of the display. In that corner, photos of the Soviet Union flicked methodically from scene to scene. Over 300 SkyHunters were sending those pictures of critical targets. A checklist adjacent to the images marked off the targets as, SkyHunter by SkyHunter, they accounted for each and every one.

The photos showed the sites of deeply buried headquarters, and buildings cast with meters of reinforced concrete. They seemed impregnable. But the targets being assessed were not the buried and reinforced buildings. The targets were the thin, delicate antennae serving those mighty bunkers. The men would survive, and in a few hours, they would reestablish communication with the world. But for several precious hours, they would be blind and mute. By the time they recovered, there would be no missiles or bombers to command.

The words to begin a war seemed so simple. An Air Force captain announced: "Ready to dispense."

Hilan closed his eyes for a moment, then looked into the captain's. He held his breath, as if waiting for someone else to make the decision, knowing that no one else could.

In this last moment before sending humanity hurtling toward clear survival or clear destruction, Hilan did not think about the careful rope of logical thinking that had led him here. He had inspected it from every possible direction, examined every fiber, every mar in its surface, every kink in its depths. The rope had kinks; it could snap; the world could fall from it. But he had examined the other ropes at hand with equal care, and though the rope he had chosen
might
snap, the others were even more likely to break. The logic of the rope fibers rested in a corner of his mind, but did not command his attention.

Nor did he think of his wife in Washington, his children in New Haven, or his aunt in Cincinnati. Earlier, he had fantasized about moving them to places of safety in case the rope broke. But without the rope, no place could prove safe. If he would not risk his own family, what kind of fool would he be to risk all mankind? His family, he had decided in his earlier analysis, would be among the hostages he would hold over himself to make sure his decision was the right one. He had moved himself beneath the mountain mostly for the proximity to the hot line.

He did not think of the Zetetic Institute, or Nathan Pilstrom, who had devised this ingenious solution to the problem of thermonuclear missiles. Nathan had presented him with this dilemma. But he did not fall into the trap of laying all the blame for the future on the people who first saw that such a future was possible. Some of the blame—or some of the credit—did belong to them, but at this moment, neither blame nor credit seemed important.

He did not think of Yurii Klimov, or the possible outcomes of this evening's efforts. He had thought about the outcomes too much already, and he would need to think about them again soon anyway. Nothing could be gained by wrapping up his mind in a tight coil around the hideous possibilities that
might
ensue; he would need a clear mind to deal with whatever possibilities
did
materialize.

None of these people or events could capture his attention. Rather, a simple feeling held him, now that the decision-making was over, and only the actions to solidify the thought-stuff remained. It was a feeling of relief.

One way or another, the terrible uncertainty would end by morning. The terror that had hung over his whole life, over the lives of all the other people in America and Russia and the rest of the world, would fade into history. "Do it," he nodded to the officer.

They watched the display.

The HighHunter dispenser carried its own camera, and through this viewpoint, the roomful of generals, admirals, and presidential advisors saw a thousand tiny points of light come to life above the Soviet night sky. The points streaked along majestic arcs, with the grace granted by gravity's guiding hand.

The captain who had initiated the dispensing of the SiloHunters muttered in awe, "It's like snow—or maybe sleet."

General Hansen, boss of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs grunted. "A sleet of steel, falling through the night."

A murmur rose around the room. Admiral Jenson frowned, along with General Plunket of the Army. Neither of them liked today's mission, and Hilan agreed with their anxiety completely.

The camera view switched to an optically amplified image, which came from a reconnaissance satellite. It focused on the fate of a simple disc of concrete, thousands of miles away from both the satellite and the watchers.

The full thickness of the Earth's atmosphere shimmered above the disc, making it seem to waver, insubstantial and anemic. Its grayish-white substance seemed more like a ghost than an implacable enemy—something that would swish away with the wave of a hand.

A streak of light cut the image and struck the ghost, shattering the illusion of both. The streak disappeared as quickly as it had come, leaving a shallow, darkened pit in the platter, beneath a pale cloud of dusty shadows. A Crowbar had hit the silo cover.

Another streak of light cut the image, then disappeared from the far edge of the picture: a miss.

Another streak of light hurtled down, and dug a second pit into the disc's surface: a hit.

Another one missed.

Another struck, near midpoint between the other two hits. Now the whole surface of the disc disappeared under a rubble cloud that settled a moment later. The hair-thin fractures left by the first two hits, too fine to be seen even with the crystal-precise instruments of the recon satellite, now showed clearly in the chewed surface of the silo cover.

But that cover still held intact; no hole yet penetrated its full depth to the terror lurking beneath. This silo required at least two more hits to fulfill the mission—one to clear the broken shield, one to fall cleanly into the pit, to brush the monster missile with kinetic destruction. Only one more Crowbar fell toward that target, however. Helpless, Hilan watched as the last streak of light crossed, and missed.

They had allotted six shots of sleet for each silo—two to break the cover, one to break the missile, one to miss, and two more just for safety. Here three had missed, and four had been needed to break the cover. The failure was too painful to feel: the agony numbed the mind, rather than piercing it.

The room seemed silent because Hilan could no longer hear anything, beyond the pounding of his ears. His mind raced in the kind of circle he had most feared.
Destroyed
, he thought,
the whole world will be destroyed
.

The rushing sound of his own blood filled his ears. He focused his mind on his own breathing, and let his eyesight fade against the muted tones of the wood-paneled walls, cutting off his vision along with his hearing. He breathed.

After a long moment (he didn't know how long, and he dared not think about how few moments he had in which to think), he searched for alternatives to avert total destruction. Certainly, the Soviets would know that if they released their missiles at this juncture, Hilan would retaliate. Even now, a spasm launch of missiles was not in the Soviet interest. But if Hilan could not offer them an alternative—something that would satisfy the human need for revenge—they might choose a convulsive retaliation, despite their own interests.

What could he offer them? He had thought about this, along with Nathan and a dozen other men he respected, for hours on end. But none of the alternatives they had devised satisfied him. He could offer to dismantle more American missiles, and he could offer to do it faster, over the course of a couple of days, instead of months. He felt sure this would not satisfy them, however.

He could offer them a city: one free shot against a city of their choosing. He almost lost control of his panic as he thought of this.
Total destruction
. The thought cycled in his mind again. But he forced himself to examine this hideous option. He felt sure it would appease the Soviets. It was better than the destruction of all civilization. Yet when Hilan thought of the millions of innocent people, his mind rebelled. Those people were not responsible for Hilan's actions. Hilan would stand firm on simply disarming the U.S., and hope that the Soviets accepted it, before he would make an offer like that.

Of course, if the Soviets chose to undertake such an incremental punishment, by obliterating one city without Hilan's consent, what would he do? He agonized over this, and the alternatives they had collected for responding to
this
scenario, before admitting it was of secondary importance right now; he still needed to invent an adequate way to appease the Soviets. He needed a way to make sure that the Soviets knew the United States had been punished—a punishment great enough to make American presidents know never to try this stunt again, but one that did not require the murder of innocent people.