Seas of Crisis (12 page)

“Granted.”

The motivation of those rogues in 1968 was to trigger nuclear war between the USSR and the U.S., perhaps because they felt the Kremlin at that time wasn’t hawkish enough. It couldn’t be known positively, since they all died. The U.S. was pretty sure they died because they failed to bypass all the range-safety devices—the booby traps installed to prevent an unauthorized launch. American intelligence did know that Moscow was often more afraid of an in-country splinter group hijacking a missile and aiming it their way than they were ever afraid of a sneak attack by America. The liquid fuel in one of those ballistic missiles exploded thanks to the booby traps, and the Golf sank with all hands in three-plus miles of the Pacific Ocean, with a big hole gaping in her side.

“Some of this is beginning to come together for me,” Jeffrey said. “The Russians are aware they had a rogue faction attempt a nuclear launch once before.”

“At least once before that we know of,” Kurzin interjected.

“There might have been
others
?”

“Our intelligence services have their suspicions. Some of the Soviet accidents with rockets, that blew up on the launchpad or went off course and were self-destructed or crashed. Traces of plutonium that might have come from a nuke warhead destroyed on the ground or in midair.”

What other Cold War secret history has yet to be revealed?
“So the plan is that the Kremlin will believe it plausible that some other rogue faction tries the same thing now, except with a land-based silo missile instead of using a submarine.”

“Precisely, sir,” Nyurba said. “And the Germans are aware of all these things, so a scenario of them using their commandos to launch missiles and blame it on Russian rogues is also plausible. Russian governmental and military insiders are most likely to have the knowledge and resources to plan and then conduct the raid. They’re far more obvious culprits than Chechens or anarchists.”

Jeffrey held his head for a minute. “God, who dreamed this stuff up?”

“Some of our best and brightest, Commodore,” Kurzin said.

Jeffrey turned to Bell and Harley. “What do both of you make of this?”

Bell deferred to Harley. “It’s as we discussed among ourselves before, sir,” Harley said. “Our country has three choices. Apocalypse Soon, Apocalypse Later, and this mission if we can pull it off.”

“Which is still one hell of an ‘if,’ ” Jeffrey said. “Let me get to the other part that’s bothering me. Or
an
other part, because all sorts of things are bothering me. This bluff mentioned in my orders about a next-generation missile shield. Using supposed stealth satellites, ones that the Russians don’t know about and also can’t detect, so they have no way to judge their capabilities.”

“Stealth satellites are nothing new, sir,” Nyurba said. “The idea, and their actual existence, got leaked to the press ten years ago. Leaked, or officially announced.”

Jeffrey stared at the overhead, talking to himself. “A magical, mystical missile shield that can detonate an armed nuclear warhead outside the atmosphere, over the country that launched the ICBM. That part sounds great. I wish we really had something like that. But you and whoever planned this mission know damned well that we don’t. I want to go over again how we get the Russians to believe it.”

“We’ll program the warheads to go off exoatmospherically, over the European part of Russia. With trajectory mechanics as they are, given the Earth’s rotation and the Coriolis force and all of that, it’s why we need to launch from one of their new bases in Siberia. It puts the missiles beyond effective reach of the old ABM system that still rings Moscow, so the Russians can’t shoot their own rogue missiles down.” Nyurba was referring to the antiballistic missile system allowed by a 1970s treaty.

“And the exoatmospheric detonation is what causes the massive electromagnetic pulse that does a lot of damage between Moscow and the Urals. That part I get. Russia is really hurting, and it looks like she’s been deservedly punished for trying to nuke the U.S. Punished by this magical, mystical, mysterious missile shield. I remain extremely skeptical.”

“Remember, sir,” Nyurba answered, “the shield doesn’t need to exist. The Russians simply need to believe, or be convinced, that it exists.”

“But it has to be plausible. I can guarantee you, no matter how badly computers and communications are degraded in western Russia, there’ll be enough engineers and academicians in fine shape in other places to put together whatever the Russians call a tiger team. They’ll look really hard at how anything could make two or three separate SS-Twenty-seven warheads all go off simultaneously after third-stage booster separation, in the vacuum of space. Assuming you even manage to get the missiles to launch properly, with the proper programming. If you, like those Russkie rogues back in sixty-eight, goof and a booby trap goes off, this mission is a flop. What if you do manage somehow to actually achieve an unauthorized launch of several armed ICBMs, but your reprogramming is flawed and they
do,
for real, target the U.S. homeland?”

“In real life this launch won’t be a surprise. Commander, U.S. Strategic Command will be expecting it. He’ll know exactly where and when the missiles will launch, and he’ll be very well prepared to target and destroy them using our conventional ground- and sea-based missile shields.”

“Assuming they work reliably at the time.”

“Yes. But they only have to work if our reprogramming of the live warheads doesn’t work.”

“That’s one hell of a ‘but’!”

“That’s why we’re only launching three missiles.”

“That’s one hell of an ‘only’!”

“Allow me to address your other concern or question,” Kurzin interrupted. “Achieving successful launch of Russian ICBMs at all. Without going into details that you don’t need to know, suffice it to say that we have both human and electronic intelligence that provides us with a good deal of critical information about the SS-Twenty-seven missile and warhead-bus design. Including methods of arming the warhead and triggering detonation, and of bypassing range-safety devices.”

“Sorry, Colonel, I
do
need to know. If I’m not convinced this whole thing from A to Z makes total sense, there’s no way I’ll ever convince the Russians in a no-holds-barred confrontation somewhere in Siberia while
they
have every home-field advantage.”

Nyurba looked to Kurzin for direction. Kurzin reluctantly nodded, and Nyurba responded for both of them.

“It’s no secret that the U.S. recovered intact nuclear ballistic missiles from a Soviet Yankee-class SSBN that sank in the Atlantic a few hundred miles from Bermuda in nineteen-eighty-six.”

“I know.
K-Two-nineteen.”

“Specialists, aware of the earlier loss of the Golf-class, dissected the range safety devices carefully.”

“That’s twenty-five-year-old technology!”

“And the basis for all further Soviet and Russian thinking.”

“They know we grabbed some missiles. They’ll have changed everything!”

“Seeing how they thought at one time gives hints at what they’d change and how they’d change it. And we know that, to save money, some parts in the SS-Twenty-sevens are identical to those in earlier land-based missiles which because of arms reduction treaties were dismantled and destroyed in public. For many of these parts we gained illicit actual samples, or very good intel about their specs.”

“That’s still too much of a stretch.”

“On its own, yes. But we also have expatriate Russian missile engineers and nuclear scientists who worked on their weapons programs more recently. They emigrated to the U.S. over the years after the Berlin Wall fell. They were discreetly interviewed.”

“They might have been sleeper agents, giving you disinformation. That’s a favorite Russian gimmick.”

“Which of course the CIA and the Pentagon realize. There were methods to cross-validate what they told us.”

“Such as?”

“Other Russians with similar expertise, after the USSR collapsed and they found themselves unemployed, were less enthralled at the prospects of coming to America to wash dishes or drive a taxi. They put themselves up for grabs on the world underground arms market. During the Global War on Terror, some of them were captured. Let’s just say they were thoroughly interrogated.”

“This part, I truly don’t want to know.”

“You see, Commodore, we’re not entirely in the dark on what we’ll be trying to do. And before you ask, in this context it’s perfectly believable that the raiders were sent by Berlin. Germany had its own ample share of arrested rogue weapons scientists, and honest Russian emigrés too, especially ones with key technical skills. Germany was Russia’s largest import-export partner even before this war. Since the communist state imploded two decades ago, many Russians having the ways and means abandoned the dreary place with lasting bitterness. Some moved to Germany. Some are German citizens now. As we already covered once, immigrants can be passionately patriotic to their new homes.” Kurzin’s men nodded.

“Fine,” Jeffrey said. “But there’ll be computer passwords, now, today. Ones that are frequently altered, if their procedures are anything like ours. You won’t have those passwords, will you?”

“Some things we can sort of hotwire,” Nyurba said, “if we can’t intercept the couriers or overhear the new passwords as they’re conveyed by electronic means.”

“You’re taking far too much for granted.”

“No we aren’t,” Kurzin stepped in firmly. “If any set of circuitry requires a certain password to unlock any protective device in real time, that circuitry itself must know the password. Correct?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“If the password is anywhere in such circuitry, and that circuitry falls into our hands on this raid, we have ways to force it to reveal the password to us.”

“Who’s this ‘we’?”

“Among my squadron officers are experts who were stationed in American missile silos, and others who have great talents at computer hacking. We brought with us devices, designed in the U.S., mimicking German high-end hacker styles, and constructed using Russian and German or neutral components and tools, which will assist us in attempting to crack the codes.”

“You said ‘attempting.’ ”

“Total success is never guaranteed.”

“All right, let’s be optimists on that for now. I have a good cover story for why
Challenger
is where she is when the warheads go off. I’m on my way to blockade the next Eight-six-eight-U-class submarine that the Russians are selling to Germany. And
Carter
will emit the acoustic signature of a German Amethyste-Two if she faces any risk of detection. Those parts work for me, in and of themselves. But how do you get into a silo bunker to begin with? They’re hardened against attack by nuclear bombs.”

“The bunkers and silos are hardened, but their locations are permanently fixed. We know exactly where they are, which is a significant plus. Russia’s road-mobile nuclear missiles are far too elusive to preplan a hijacking with any surety. Their carrier vehicles can move much faster than we’d ever be able to keep up with on foot. Their crews, out in the open, if they see they’re losing an ambush, can sabotage their own ICBMs too easily. Ditto for rail-mobile units. The same is
not
the case for missiles in silos. And
yes,
the control bunkers are hardened, but the people on duty inside them are not. The humans must rotate in and out periodically, for recreation and rest, the same as U.S. Air Force silo crews. This is their Achilles’ heel.”

“Which they’ll take severe precautions to protect.”

“Once
Carter
drops us off where we’ll sneak ashore through toxic coastal waters, our five-day overland hike will be timed to reach a particular missile base just before a regular silo personnel shift change. We intend to commandeer the approaching trucks bringing in replacement crews, and penetrate the installation that way. We’ll then take over the control bunkers for half a dozen ICBMs.”

“Horribly chancy.”

“We anticipate that our silo entry phase may become extremely violent. We are fully prepared for this.”

Jeffrey glanced around the room at Kurzin’s commando force. Their faces were blank, inscrutable. “You’re telling me you’re going on a one-way mission.”

“We understand the meaning of service and sacrifice.”

“Come back to how we’re supposed to make Russian latest-generation warheads go off prematurely.”

“That part is in the script included in your orders.”

“If I’d tried to learn the whole script in one sitting, I’d’ve been in that stateroom for forty-eight hours or more.”

“That’s why you still have a week-plus to memorize everything,” Nyurba said.

“What I did see, or skim, I’m not so sure about. Gamma-ray lasers and microwave lasers and proton particle beams in the vacuum of space, plus radar spoofers tuned perfectly, all making a nuclear warhead think it’s reentered the atmosphere, that it feels the heat and the rising air pressure and the deceleration, and its radar altimeter, if it has one, detects the ground coming up. Zapping timers and blinding celestial-navigation sensors, without ruining the warheads altogether. . . . You’re counting on too many things going just right.”

“Again,” Kurzin told him, “you’re so caught up you forget that this is all bluff. It does not actually have to exist, let alone work correctly. The Russians just have to believe that it’s plausible, and see the evidence with their own eyes that tells them it’s real and it did work.”

“The exoatmospheric blasts.”

“Yes.”

“Which fry so many satellites and ground systems instantly that the Russians have no telemetry to prove that there never was a gamma-ray laser firing, a particle beam gun discharging, a radar spoofer radar broadcasting. All deployed from supposed nuclear-powered stealth satellites that they can’t detect, not because they’re too stealthy to detect, but because in fact they never existed.”

“An excellent summary, Commodore. Remember, it’s the President’s job, on the Hot Line, to convey all this to the Kremlin. A deep-black DARPA project, now unveiled. You wouldn’t have known about something so secret in advance. You know what you do know, supposedly, because of a radio message received only after the warheads explode. The same long message that orders you to Siberia as your commander in chief’s personal, on-site, back-channel mouthpiece. Your role in this part of the act is a supporting one. You merely need to believe what you were told.”