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The Vice President still stood behind his “podium,” but he was slumped over it, his arms draping over the seat back to hang lazily in front. “I am afraid you are correct, General Thomas, in your description of the situation as a coup.” Lambert felt a chill run down his spine, and the heads of the aides who sat or stood away from the table turned to one another to stare with jaws dropping as the Joint Chiefs focused on the Vice President. “But it will not be
extra
-constitutional. It will be entirely by the book, so to speak. It will be constitutional. The Congress will, of course, petition the Supreme Court for a writ demanding that the President prosecute the war, but no one imagines that route to be very promising.”

“And so you intend to impeach President Livingston,” Lambert asked, “and then prosecute Congress's Declaration of War?”

Everyone looked at the Vice President. “In a word,” he said anticlimactically, “yes.”

The assembled generals listened politely as the briefing droned on.

“One week basic skills and physical conditioning,” read General Abramov, former commander of the Far East Command's 24th Guards Army now reluctantly returned to Europe to assume command of the new Provisional Troops that were being raised. More significantly, he was an artfully engineered addition to General Razov's “camp” in
STAVKA
. Abramov went on with the training schedule for the citizens militia, the “Provisionals.” “Basic firearms, insignia recognition, hygiene . . . ”

A young captain walked into the room and headed for Razov, who listened to the training regimen for the Provisionals with dismay.
Construction troops—that's all they'll be good for, if that,
he thought. The captain leaned over to whisper in Razov's ear. “They're getting ready to vote, sir.”

“Second week: small unit tactics, arm and hand signals—”

“Excuse me, General Abramov,” Razov said, “but the American Congress is getting ready to vote.”

The aide turned on the television at the far end of the conference table. Half a world away, the latest prime-time American political drama was unfolding in the underground Congressional bunker, and the world, as always, was watching.

Before the tube warmed up, it was obvious that the vote was already under way. One of the older generals who didn't speak English asked what they were saying. General Razov said, for the benefit of all, that they were voting out loud, and that “aye” meant the same as “yes.”

“Cole?” a man called, and a distant “Aye” was heard. “Cole votes Aye. Collins?”

“Aye.”

“Collins votes Aye. Cooper?”

By now, the television had warmed up, and the CNN count was 138 for and 9 against.

“Chto znachit
‘for'?” the old general asked.

“ ‘For'
znachit golos
‘Aye'
Hi
‘Yes.' ‘Against'
znachit
‘No'—
protiv,”
Razov explained.

“Bozhe moi,”
the old man said laughing, putting his hand to his cheek. “How many ways can you say it—either yes or no?”

Several others laughed, but most watched the spectacle in silence. The old general was enjoying the program, turning to rib Razov good-naturedly. “And this is the system you wanted to copy, Yuri?”

Razov smiled politely. The man was his old mentor, the only one who spoke to him
na ti
—in the familiar—among the officers gathered there.

The old man's enjoyment diminished as the picture shifted to scenes obviously shot earlier in the day from several cities across the United States. While still maintaining the audio from the roll call and with the graphics of the vote count printed at the bottom of the screen, CNN showed the enormous crowds of demonstrators that had gathered in city after city.

The silence at the conference table grew thick as the images streamed in. Angry crowds pumping fists in the air, teeth bared. In Denver an effigy, a figure in a ghoulish mask wearing a military hat with a placard saying “Russia” hanging from its neck, held aloft by a noose dangling from a pole and set afire; the crowd stomped it to pieces. A sign in the window of a burned-out deli named Noviy Mir in Brighton Beach, New York, that read
AMERICAN OWNED
. A sign held aloft by a grim-faced grandmotherly woman in Seattle that showed the picture of a young girl looking out from behind blond curls that read
JESSICA, AGE
3,
KILLED BY RUSSIANS
. A shot from a helicopter showing a line, four or five abreast, of young men and women in Los Angeles that circled a huge city block. Standing on the street behind police cordons was an even larger crowd of people cheering wildly and continuously. Children were held aloft by parents, and the crowd waved signs and flags. As the camera zoomed in unsteadily on the building at the front of the line, the sign over the door said
U.S. ARMY RECRUITMENT DEPOT
. When the camera settled, a smaller handwritten poster taped to the wall at the side of the main door came into focus. It read
IT'S TIME TO SETTLE THE SCORE
, a line
Razov knew to be from a recently popular American superhero movie.

As the outcome of the vote became apparent and many of the generals looked away, clearly discomfited by the scenes, conversations switched to the practical.

“So what's going to happen now?” Air Force General Mishin asked.

“I don't know,” Razov said, shaking his head. “This is more confusing than if they kept everything secret.”

“This is ridiculous,” another general said, his hand held out palm up in the direction of the television. “First we're at war by mistake. Then we're not at war but still getting attacked. Then we're at war, but not getting attacked. Then we're not at war again, but they're deploying as if we are. And now this!”

“We've got to start taking more active measures to defend ourselves,” Admiral Verkhovensky said.

“I agree,” said the new commander of the Ukrainian Strategic Direction. “Regardless of what they say, regardless of their political charades,” he continued, also looking at the television on which was shown the cramped concrete chamber in which the vote in favor was growing to overwhelming proportions, “the fact is militarily simple. They have an army corps with two divisions on our western borders with another corps moving down the roads through eastern Germany and already into western Poland and the Czech Republic. We've had contact all up and down the line with them already. A battery of their multiple rocket launchers put over fifty rockets with cluster munitions onto one of my tank battalions in road formation as they pulled up on line. The devastation was almost complete: three vehicles left operational out of over a hundred.”

“They saw a battalion heading toward their lines less than four kilometers from the border,” Razov said, too tired to argue forcefully a position with which he no longer fully agreed.

“On
our
side of the border!”

“In Byelarus,” Abramov said calmly, “not Russia.”

“The point is,” Admiral Verkhovensky said, “that they're preparing for war. In a few weeks, they'll have three army corps in Europe and an entire marine expeditionary force in the Sea of Japan.”

“Which is committed to Korea,” Razov said. “I have a firm pledge from General Park that he will continue the attack into the South.”

“In the face of the Americans' nuclear threat?” Verkhovensky practically shouted. “Our forces in the Far East are having a hard
time just holding the Chinese at bay! What could we possibly ask them to do if . . . ?” He did not complete his question.

“You don't honestly believe the Americans will use nuclear weapons in Korea?” Mishin asked, the humor of it written across his face.

“I believe the point is,” Karyakin supplied with a smile, “that we have to begin to prepare for what is looking like the inevitable.”

“We
are
preparing,” Razov said. “We're raising General Abramov's Provisionals.”

The commander of the Ukrainian Strategic Direction said with as much tact as he could muster, “With all due respect to General Abramov, I think everyone here knows the risks involved should we come to blows with the Americans. If we allow them to stage one of their huge set-piece operations—a massively supplied, totally orchestrated multicorps extravaganza, which is the only thing they have ever been able to do right in the entire military history of their country—then we could well be looking at another ‘Barbarossa.' ”

“What are you suggesting?” Razov asked. “The submarines in the Bastion again?”

“No!” the army general said. “But we can't get caught flat-footed! We've got to start attriting their forces before they stage. We've got to start using our own forces before we degrade. Everyone here knows the equation! We've run model after model! They ship forces to Europe over open seas and through open skies. They disembark at seaports and airports and travel down highways and railways that are first class and were untouched in the nuclear exchange. Every week that goes by, their forces on the Continent grow stronger. But every week that goes by, our forces grow weaker as we have yet to even reestablish uncontaminated lines of communication to the troops in the field. Their supplies and readiness levels are already falling as a result.”

“But can the Americans sustain their forces over supply lines that stretch and stretch and stretch?” the old general in charge of Construction asked.

“This is not 1812,” Air Force General Mishin said, “or even 1941. Both Napoleon and Hitler depended primarily on the same method of transportation: horses! Good God! How can we possibly rely on beating the Americans by relying on shortcomings in their
logistics!
That's a martial art that they practically
invented!”

“What a landslide,” the anchorman on television said. “I guess you could say the American people have spoken here today. Four hundred and sixty-one in favor, twenty-eight opposed. It's been quite a historic day, hasn't it?”

The commentator, a former senior member of the Senate, shook
his head and said, “What a dramatic way to end what is surely the most historic single day in the history of Congress. I'm just . . . I'm just stunned by how rapidly Congress has moved on this.”

“Well, they're clearly galvanized by the polls,” a Washington political analyst said. “Over ninety-seven percent of the American people now believe that major concessions should have been extracted from the Russians before President Livingston called a cease-fire. Over eighty percent believe the Russians have shown such a level of irresponsibility that we should demand their complete nuclear disarmament
forever
.”

“Well, regardless,” the anchorman said as the camera focused in on his face, “what exactly the outcome of today's historic session will be remains in doubt. What has happened in this rapidly developing story, however, is this. This afternoon, at four fifty-five Eastern Daylight Time, Congress, sitting in special Joint Session, declared war on the Republic of Russia, the first declaration of war issued by this country since December 9th, 1941. The President responded immediately, declaring in a widely criticized national television address from Mount Weather within fifteen minutes of the vote that, as commander in chief, he would not prosecute that war. He had, sources tell CNN, just gotten off the phone with the Kremlin and assured them the same. And now, by our clock, minutes before three
A.M
. on this June sixteenth, just over five days after the Russian warheads rained down on our country, the first successful impeachment of the President of the United States in the House of Representatives since the 1868 impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. Now, it's on to the Senate, where the President will be tried and, if convicted, removed from office.”