Seas of Crisis (24 page)

The SA-16s near Nyurba launched. Three of them struck the Mi-24 at once, around the machine’s transmission at the base of its rotor shaft. It couldn’t take such concentrated punishment. The shaft snapped. The rotors continued to spin in midair. The body of the Mi-24 dropped like a stone, inside the complex.

Other men, furious that their commander had had to sacrifice himself, fired RPG-27s at the downed Mi-24. They intentionally aimed at the pilot and gunner compartments. Nyurba could see both men frantically trying to get out of their stricken aircraft. The RPG warheads struck, hitting below the cockpit windows. When the flashes and smoke of their detonations cleared, Nyurba watched both crewmen burn alive.

The commando group was still spread out in disorder, pinned down—and now leaderless. Nyurba was second in command.

“Rocketeers!” he ordered. “Hyperbaric rounds, target the nearest guard tower. Snipers, concentrate on the more distant towers.” Only two of the snipers acknowledged.
The other two must be dead.
“Missileers, watch for additional aircraft!”

Two men had reloaded their RPG-27 launchers with the new fuel-air explosive hyperbaric rounds. These were designed for troops in foxholes with overhead cover. The commandos fired them at the guard tower.

The rockets soared away from Nyurba toward the tower. His perspective foreshortened, he could see their exhaust flames and smoke trails from behind as if in slow motion. But by now there was smoke and flame everywhere, and wafts of other trails from missiles and rockets and tracers filled the sky.

The hyperbaric warheads impacted the front of the concrete guard tower, below the lip from which the machine gun was shooting. They dispersed their fuel aerosol into a cloud, and a split second later the igniters set off the cloud. The guard tower was engulfed in a blinding red flash that created an overpressure so strong Nyurba felt as if he’d been hit by a hundred-pound bomb. When he pulled himself together, his ears hurt worse than ever and the guard tower was a wreck, chunks of concrete and bodies landing and bouncing on the torn-up asphalt.

Other hyperbaric rounds took out the remaining guard towers.

Suddenly, all firing stopped. The commando team had no targets. Medics were busy treating the wounded.

Secondary explosions from the Hinds and armored cars continued as more ammunition cooked off. Above them, Nyurba heard a deep
thud
in the distance. Smoke and flame rose anew, this time near the mines in the lane through the trees for the power pylons. More forces from the support base or the town of Srednekolymsk were probing this way.

Air began to whistle as it was sucked into bunker ventilator shafts. Filtered for contaminants, that air was feeding emergency diesel generators down below. The mine going off by the power lines toppled a pylon, shorting out or snapping the cables—main power to the base complex was dead. The proof was that seconds later, gray smoke belched out of the diesel exhaust shafts. This vividly reminded Nyurba that there were Russians, and SS-27 ICBMs, alive and intact in the underground chambers.

He stood, examining the battlefield. About a third of his men were killed or wounded, and another ten or twelve were occupied helping those who were hurt.

I’ve got barely forty effective combatants.

Timing was critical. Russian reinforcements would get here soon. The crews inside the silo bunkers probably heard and felt nothing of the assault, because they were behind such strong shock hardening and acoustic-vibration damping insulation. But the camera pods on the surface, aimed at the silo lids, fed into the bunkers so the crews could monitor each missile launch. They would have caught some glimpses of the fighting. And hardened, buried communications lines came in from the regimental command bunker at the support base. The silo crews would have been warned of a security alert hours earlier, since their normal rotation out had been postponed. Nyurba had no idea what the support base had told them since then, if anything, because he had no idea what the support base itself yet understood about what was going on amid the silo field.

Nyurba made a difficult choice. In this situation, he had to divide his forces. The only underground cover inside the entire fenced-in complex was the entryways to the three control bunkers. Occupying all three entries meant the company could give each other covering cross-fire against the impending Russian counterattack. The team had brought enough specialists to go after two bunkers at once; such redundancy was built in from the very start of planning, in case some Air Force missile experts or SERT Seabees were wounded or killed. But headquarters-platoon casualties so far were unexpectedly light; its role had been to take cover and save ammo, not draw fire. Going after two bunkers simultaneously gave the highest likelihood of achieving the ultimate goal—liftoff of at least two properly armed ICBMs.

“Let’s go, let’s go,
let’s go
!” Nyurba shouted into his lip mike, projecting his voice so the nearest men could hear him directly. “First headquarters squad, take control bunker one! Second headquarters squad, go for control bunker two! Medics, use control bunker three entryway as a dugout to shelter the wounded! . . . Snipers, remain in position and feed me situation reports on the surface! . . . Everyone else, take ammo and explosive charges from the wounded and dead with you, and form up at bunkers one and two! Even number squads take two! Odd numbered squads head for bunker one! Five men closest to bunker three, proceed there to defend the wounded!
Forward!
”

Chapter 23

N
yurba, leading a squad of men, stooped under the concrete overhang that sheltered the entrance to control bunker one. The entryway was deserted, emphasizing the eerie lull in the aftermath of the violent open-air firefight. He quickly took the stairway down, and followed it as four long flights made sharp right-angle turns. He knew these turns were designed to help weaken surface blast overpressures and stop flying debris; he was almost one hundred feet underground. The next turn led to a flat area, not stairs. After a quick check for enemy microphones, he quietly verified on his special ops radio that the commandos going after bunker two could hear him. They responded, five-by-five. He told them to listen on his open mike, and follow the deception gambits he would use.

The man in charge of that group, a Marine Recon major, acknowledged the order. He was now second-in-command of the company, and would take over from Nyurba if necessary—the same way Nyurba took over when Kurzin died.

Nyurba had one of his men, a Delta Force sergeant, use a tiny mirror to peek around the final corner. There was a surveillance camera, in a vestibule, all as expected.

Nyurba whispered his deception plan, parts rehearsed for most of a year and parts made up as he went.

His Seabee chief and a SERT petty officer pretended to be loyal defenders, retreating before an overwhelming assault. They removed their packs, then backed down the steps until they were visible to the camera, with their weapons aimed up the stairway. Someone near the top of the stairs, part of the entryway’s rear guard, fired into the air, in case the camera had a microphone. To the echoing sound of these shots, Nyurba’s men flopped over dramatically, facedown, as if they were dead.

The men guarding the top of the stairs fired several more rounds. Two Delta Force corporals fell into the vestibule—more supposedly loyal Spetsnaz, giving their lives protecting the Motherland’s missiles. They landed faceup, writhing in agony from mortal wounds. In reality, they were unhurt, busy inspecting for a second, hidden camera or microphone.

There was none.

The sergeant reached his arm around the corner and shot out the camera with his pistol. The bullet ricocheted, but he’d aimed so the spent slug was unlikely to hit the men on the floor.

Soon all the commandos with Nyurba were inside the vestibule at the bottom of the stairs. The slain Spetsnaz came back to life and got up to join their comrades.

The stark and stuffy vestibule was lit by bare fluorescents hung on springs. In front of them loomed the outer steel blast door, the first of two that protected and led into the control bunker. It was painted an ugly military-institutional shade of dark green. Signs on the walls gave security warnings and instructions about radioactive decontamination. Just in case, Nyurba took measurements. He found no leakage coming from the H-bombs in the silos. In a full-scale thermonuclear war, these decontamination instructions would take on significance, but he wondered who might be alive out here to read them. He reminded himself that his mission, if something went wrong, might itself be the cause of that war.

Nyurba harnessed the ugly mixture of angst and determination these thoughts brought up, to bring more power into his acting performance. He started to put into play the next moves in an intricate, preplanned con job, one that he’d never have needed if they’d been able to properly waylay fresh silo crews at their intended roadblock this morning after all. He figured enough time had gone by for an imaginary counterattack by nonexistent additional loyal troops to have trapped and slain the pretend traitors—the ones who’d “killed” four Spetsnaz in front of the camera and then shown an arm with a pistol from around the corner of the stairs. He picked up the intercom handset that hung on the wall, so he could speak to the men in the bunker. The intercom undoubtedly was used for crew changeover procedures, but he had something else in mind. The crew still on duty would not be gullible. He needed to trick them, but what he said had to sound unquestionably true.

“Hello!” he said into the handset. “Hello!”

Someone answered, the junior officer who led the crew.
“Kto eto? Tcho takoye?”
Who is this? What’s going on? The voice was husky, under stress. The accent suggested its owner was an ethnic Russian who’d spent his youth in what was now Ukraine, before moving to Russia proper after the Soviet Union collapsed.

“Slyshi khorosho.”
Listen carefully. “This is Lieutenant Colonel Nyurba, Army Spetsnaz counterterror. A nationwide coup is occurring.” He felt safe using his real last name. It was common enough, and he didn’t expect this silo crew to survive.

“A coup?” The young man sounded worried, but not surprised—there’d been failed reactionary coups against Gorbachev in 1991, and Yeltsin in 1993.

“Yes. Listen to me. Rebel forces have taken over the support base, and penetrated the command bunker there. We were able to overpower them here, so the missile complex itself remains in friendly hands.”

“Was that what went on just now in the vestibule, sir?”

“Four good men died. My men. I feel responsible.”

“What do you want us to do?”

“The rebels in the command bunker will try to convince you to make an unauthorized launch, or, much worse, use their electronic link to the silos to permanently disable the missiles. That would leave Russia defenseless against a nuclear attack.”

“Mother of God.”

“Yes. The situation is that serious. So you must do three things immediately.”

“Tell us what they are, Colonel.”

“Sever all fiber optics from the command bunker.”

“We can’t, sir. They’re hardened.”

“Don’t you have tools for maintenance? For firefighting? Axes, metal saws, so on?”

“Yes.”

“Use them. But first send men through the tunnels into each silo. Protect the missiles from interference by the rebels at the support base the same way you defend your control bunker systems. Cut all connections from the command bunker simultaneously.
Simultaneously.
Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Second, ignore any radio messages you receive about either harming
or
launching the missiles, even if they’re in valid codes and have the proper passwords.”

“Ignore them?” ICBM bunkers had multiple communication backups, to assure absolute and constant control by the Kremlin.

“Do
not
use any radios or telephones, or intercoms other than this one, and do
not
respond to any calls other than mine. We don’t know how far the coup’s infiltration extends. Hurry!”

“You said there were three things, sir?”

It was time for Nyurba to build more credibility, to support the big lies about isolating the bunker from the support base and higher officials. He had to keep the junior officer from thinking too much, calling the support base to see what they said, or talking things over with the rest of his silo crew or the men in the other two bunkers.

“On no account let anyone into your bunker. We will defend the entrance from out here. More rebel forces will arrive soon. Stay where you are, you’ll be safe. You can hold out for weeks if you have to, longer if you ration your food and parcel using electricity. When the rebellion is suppressed, the government will find some way to give you an unambiguous all-clear.”

“What about you, sir?”

“We’re Spetsnaz! Oo-rah for the Motherland!” He hung up.

Echoing down the concrete steps, above the roaring and crackling of the burning Mi-24s and armored cars, Nyurba could hear the heavy beating of more military helicopters.

“Missileers up,” he ordered, to those with him and over the radio. Assigned men rushed up the stairs and opened the three dozen backpacks arrayed there—some of which had belonged to the wounded or dead. They went through this improvised ammo dump until their arms cradled bundles of SA-16s. Situations like this were why they’d worked out six hours a day while on
Carter
; each loaded missile launcher weighed twenty-five pounds, and the staircase was ten stories high.

Nyurba told his two SERT Seabees and three of the Delta Force to stay with him, and sent the rest of the men up the stairs; two SERT Seabees and their Delta Force teammates were with the group assigned to enter bunker two. The remainder of the commandos, he’d decided, were most valuable for defense against the superior forces about to arrive. The ICBM launch specialists would crouch halfway up the staircase for now.

Several men, minor wounds bandaged, darted from bunker three to strengthen the teams at each of the other two entryways. As this was reported by radio, Nyurba felt proud of their devotion, but knew full well how vital every man with a weapon would be very soon. Listening on his radio, seeing his commandos on the stairs or in the vestibule, he sensed their fidgety hyperalertness as they awaited the next phase of combat.

His own immediate task was getting inside bunker one—whose crew he’d just told to admit nobody whatsoever.

The outer blast door measured about eight feet on a side. It would be several feet thick, weighing tons. It opened outward, so that the overpressure from a nuclear blast would shut it more tightly against the massive steel and reinforced concrete frame. As a result, the door hinges had to be on the outside.

This was the whole design’s weakness. Proof against the widely distributed force of a nuclear blast, those hinges could be attacked by a pinpoint placement of custom-shaped charges. There were four hinges from top to bottom; the armored steel of each was a foot wide and four inches thick.

“What do you think?” Nyurba asked the Delta Force sergeant, an expert in forced entry and hostage rescue.

“Three or four charges in sequence per hinge, sir. We need to chip away at stuff this thick.”

The SERT Seabee chief, experienced at sizing up and taking apart all sorts of structures, eyed the hinges and agreed.

“Let’s get to it,” Nyurba told them.

They discussed the weight of C-4 plastic explosive to use in each charge. Too much at once would be wasteful, and dangerous.

They molded the first set of charges to the hinges. They carefully inserted blasting caps to obtain the optimal cutting effect and connected the caps with wires so that they’d go off at the same instant. They led a master wire and a backup through the vestibule, well into the staircase. The sergeant connected these to a detonator control box. Nyurba opened his mouth, covered his ears, and braced himself. The sharp, hard
vroom
that came up the stairs was deafening. The concussive force of it punished his insides. Dust and fumes drifted up the stairs.

“Time for gas masks,” Nyurba ordered. Everyone pulled theirs on before running back down the stairs. The hinges had grooves cut partway in. They cooled the red-hot metal with water from their canteens, so they could install more C-4 quickly. Then they began the methodical process of molding and placing another set of shaped charges, inserting all the blasting caps, and connecting all the wires.

Three more times, they ran up the stairs, set off the charges, and ran back down.

The last time, the echoing explosion felt and sounded different. When they reentered the vestibule, the hinges at last were severed through. Lacking their support, the multi-ton door had come off the retractable pins, on the side opposite the hinges, that held it locked closed. It lay flat on the floor in the vestibule. The sergeant eased around the edge of the vestibule and used his mirror to look into the gap where the door had been. He fired his pistol, taking out another TV camera.

Nyurba and the other explosives handlers moved in. Beyond the now-empty door frame was the inside of the blast interlock, and at its far end was another, identical door. A mechanism made sure that, without special steps to override it—such as for installing large pieces of new equipment—the outer and inner door were never open at the same time. On the walls and ceiling of the interlock were shower heads, hoses, and other items needed for decontamination. Nyurba ignored these, and his crew went to work on the inner blast door.

“Nyurba, Sniper Two,” crackled in his headphones, now worn over his gas mask and under his Russian-style helmet.

“Sniper Two, Nyurba.”

“Mi-Twenty-six transport helicopters are landing on the road near the complex. Two Mi-Twenty-four Hind-Ds are approaching the complex.”

Nyurba acknowledged. He needed to hurry up.

The Mi-26s could carry dozens of soldiers with full battle gear. The Hind-D version of the Mi-24 lacked the Gatling cannon, but still carried rockets and missiles—and the fuselage had a passenger compartment for squads of air-mobile troops.

Soon, from up the stairwell, he heard shouting and shooting. Russian reinforcements had arrived; his men were engaging them.

His team repeated their painstaking actions with C-4, placed on the inner door hinges. They once again laid wire and worked their way far up the stairs.

A very real Russian counterattack was in full swing. Nyurba’s men in each of the three bunker entryways had their hands full, firing hyperbaric grenades, antiarmor grenades, and antiaircraft missiles, and expending magazine after magazine of AN-94 rounds. The steps around Nyurba’s boots were littered more and more with bouncing spent brass and discarded grenade packaging, and he noticed backpacks and bloody load-bearing vests emptied of every bit of ammo of any kind. Fumes from bullet propellant and rocket propellant grew thicker and thicker near the top of the stairs, obscuring visibility through his gas mask.

A roaring noise outside rose to a booming crescendo—a rippling salvo of helicopter rockets impacted near the entryway. Nyurba saw the flashes and felt the heat, an instant before he was almost knocked backward down the stairs by the blasts.

Incoming bullets smacked into concrete, or screeched as they ricocheted.

The SEAL chief worked the detonator box. A blast of a different sort pounded Nyurba from underground.

He and his demolition team rushed down. The decontamination showers were damaged, the hoses were torn to shreds, and water poured from broken mains in the ceiling. They refilled their empty canteens and used them to cool the sizzling-hot hinges, to be able to set the next charges.