Arc Light (79 page)

“Tampa-St. Petersburg, thirty-one warheads; Denver, thirty warheads,” Razov read as she hoisted the bag onto her shoulder for the walk upstairs to wake and dress the baby. “Cincinnati, twenty-seven warheads; Milwaukee, twenty-six warheads,” she heard as suddenly the windows rattled. “Kansas City, twenty-three warheads.” The draperies lit with flashes like lightning in the early evening and the glass shook again. “Sacramento, twenty-one warheads.”

Melissa ran out onto the back deck of their house and listened to the thunderous booms from over the hills. Bright flashes lit the wispy clouds above as the bombs—she was sure that was what they were—shook the air around her even at great distance. Off to her right, one of her new neighbors stood on his deck with a camcorder hoping, she assumed, to catch a shot of the Russian bombers. His wife came out and shouted, “What are you doing?”—her hands filled with an ice chest that she hoisted into his grip for hasty delivery around the side of the house, presumably to their car in front. She saw Melissa and waved once before running back inside.

Melissa went back in to get Matthew. “Orlando, eleven warheads; Salt Lake City, ten warheads.” A high-pitched beeping on the television caught Melissa's attention, and she stopped to look at the screen. “Rochester, ten warheads; Nashville, ten warheads.”

The text of a message, like a weather advisory when a storm threatened, rolled by on the bottom of the screen. “Memphis, ten warheads; Oklahoma City, nine warheads.”

Melissa read the text of the message as Razov's deep voice droned on. “Los Angeles Civil Defense authorities have advised Channel Five that a Russian air raid is currently under way. It is
not
a nuclear attack. To repeat, this is
not
a nuclear attack. Citizens are advised to remain calm and not to venture from their homes or use the telephone lines except in cases of emergency.”

Melissa shook her head in disbelief as she heard the
crump
of bombs and the rattle of the clock on her mantel. “Greensboro, nine warheads; Birmingham . . . ” The TV and all the lights went dead as
a boom rolled over the hills. In the darkness, she went upstairs to get her baby.

“I appeal to all Americans,” President Costanzo said as Lambert watched from behind the television camera, “to be calm in the face of such evil threats by our enemy. Our nation is at war, and that war requires a maximum effort by all Americans, soldier and civilian alike. It is the belief of many analysts that the threat issued by General Razov is merely a ploy to sap our productivity and weaken both our recovery from their perfidious attack and our support of our fighting forces.

“Already, our Gross Domestic Product has suffered in a manner disproportionate to the losses in the disaster sites as workers have chosen to remain away from their homes, away from their jobs, out of fear of renewed Russian attacks. For those of you who now join the ranks of the fearful, I beg you to consider your country and return to your jobs, and I also want to make this point perfectly clear.”

The director cued the man behind Camera 1, and the President waited for the zoom to complete the close-up shot and the director to cue him to continue. “The only people in whose hearts fear should rage are those few military dictators who preside from the Kremlin like terrible tsars of the past, for they are tempting the gods when they issue their threats. But if it is threats in which the commerce of our day traffics, let me add to that commerce one that all the world should heed.” Again he paused. “If Russian missiles should once again be launched at our nation, at any part of our great but bloodied country, let there be no doubt that I will, on warning of such attack alone, order the annihilation not just of Russia's military-industrial complex and its repressive military government but of Russia itself. Its cities, its culture, its economy, and, yes, with heavy heart, its people. Let there be no mistake, General Razov. You will lose Moscow one way or the other. It is up to you whether all of Russia is taken with it.”

“Well, obviously, sir,” General Thomas said, “I think we ought to reconsider our plans.”

“Solely because of Razov's
threat?”
the President asked as if
Thomas too were one more person to be convinced of the threat's hollowness.

“Mr. President,” Thomas said staring back at the President, who did not bat an eye, “if Razov is telling the truth . . . if he orders those subs to fire . . . ”

“And what would you have us do, General, at this point? Just stop? Stop, when the Russians have an entire army group being withdrawn from the Far East that is due to arrive in Europe in a few weeks? You said yourself that the introduction of those forces to the defense of the Moscow region could force us to halt our current drive until our European theater troops are reinforced. Reinforced from where, General? We have only a few National Guard and Reserve units left stateside to commit. Do we form the new draftees into units—just send them over instead of patching them into existing units and throw them against prepared defenses? Or do we wait, wait through the Russian winter, all the while under the threat of nuclear attack from those Russian subs?”

“It's a political question, sir,” Thomas said.

Costanzo nodded. “We're at that brick wall again, are we?” He looked down the table and began polling the civilians—the Secretary of Defense first. “What should we do, Arthur? We've known all along that those submarines were down there. Here we are maybe five or six weeks away from taking Moscow, fifty thousand killed and wounded in action to get here. Are we going to stop based on Razov's threat? Do we back down now?”

The Secretary of Defense shook his head. “It's a damn tough call.” He shook his head again. “If only we knew whether he was bluffing.”

“Well, we don't know,” the President said, angrily looking to the Secretary of State. “What do you say we do, Leonard?”

Again there was hesitation, anguish over the question, but the Secretary finally said, “I don't see how we could stop now.”

The President nodded, polling the director of the CIA, the head of the NSA, the director of White House Communications, others. By the time the President approached Lambert, the answers had fallen into a pattern: men and women telling the President what he wanted to hear. “They're bluffing,” the Vice President said just to Lambert's right. “They wouldn't dare fire those missiles. They know what we'd do to them.”

Lambert thought the President wasn't going to ask him as he looked at the Secretary of Defense, waiting for the man to jump onto the bandwagon. When the Secretary said nothing, the President said, “Greg,” without looking his way. “What do you think?”

“I think we should halt our advance and sue for peace.” A grin, more of a frown, broke out on the President's face as he stared at the table. Lambert prepared his arguments. It's too great a risk. Razov might just have no choice if the consensus on
STAVKA
developed to use nuclear weapons. But the President never looked his way.

“I've made my decision.” He looked over at General Thomas. “We will proceed with our plans to seize Moscow with two modifications. First, before breaching their ring-road defenses, you will complete the city's encirclement, or what was that word you used when we discussed the options last week?”

“Envelopment,” Thomas said.

“Right. You are to envelop Moscow prior to entering the city. How much time does that buy us?”

Thomas said, “About four or five days after we get to the outskirts of the city a month or so from now.”

“All right. Now I've got a meeting with the people at Labor and Congressional leaders,” the President said to his Chief of Staff as he rose. “We've got some major damage control to undertake to prevent production from coming to a standstill. That speech I just gave isn't going to do shit.”

“Mr. President,” the Secretary of Defense spoke up, “you said there were two modifications to our plans for attacking Moscow.”

“Oh, yes,” Costanzo said, turning to Admiral Dixon, the Chief of Naval Operations. “I want it timed so that when the army goes into Moscow, you go into the Bastion.”

“Los Angeles city authorities are pleading with its citizens to remain calm,” the radio announcer said as Melissa tried unsuccessfully to pull into the tiny space between two cars in the left lane. Interstate 210 heading up into the San Gabriel Mountains was jammed. “Their pleas don't seem to be working, however. We go now to our KRZY traffic helicopter.” A car horn blared, startling Melissa, who turned to see a family pull up next to her and pause to glare at her before continuing on.

They were gone before she could find her own horn so she gave the car's rear bumper the finger as it disappeared from view behind a large truck just ahead.

“This is Chopper Man aboard the Party Copter hi-i-igh over West L.A., man,” the familiar voice of the rock station's drug-addled
traffic reporter came over the sound of his helicopter, almost all of the dopey “Cheech and Chong” routine gone from his voice. “It looks like all of the freeways leading out of Los Angeles are parking lots, man: 1-10 is backed up all the way from Pomona into town, man, and the same from 1-5 all the way out to Irvine.”

“Is there any route that you would say is better than others, Chopper Man?” the DJ asked.

“Well, for those of you who loaded the van up with, like, guns and liquor and soybean seeds, it looks like some of the roads heading north up to the San Gabriels are still clear.”

Melissa moved forward about two feet, barreling down the “clear” road and still trying to edge out into the left lane. Matthew stirred, and she held the bottle to his lips. He latched onto it without opening his eyes.

“Bats! Bats are attacking L.A., man! They're hu-u-uge! News flash! News flash! Radioactive bats from Riverside attack L.A.!”

Melissa wanted to change the radio station, but with one hand holding the bottle she saw a small opening between the two cars coming down the left lane. She turned the wheel in anticipation, edging the nose of her car to the left.

“All right, Chopper Man,” the DJ said, “just take a deep breath, man. It'll be over soon.” The bottle slipped from the sleeping Matthew's lips just in time for Melissa to put both hands on the wheel and begin her move into the open space. The car coming down the left lane slammed on the brakes and then edged forward to cut her off—a family station wagon with gear strapped down to their roof and covered with a tarp. They weren't going to let her in, and Melissa began to cry—the nipple spilling milk as she held onto the steering wheel with the bottle turned on its side. The woman in the passenger seat said something to her husband, and the man waved her over.

“Thank you,” she said, squeezing into the lane. “Thank you,” she waved, realizing that they had seen the bottle.
The bottle,
she thought, slipping it into the elastic pocket by the door for future use.

“And now, a blast from the past!” the DJ said. “The year was 1992. The song, ‘She's Unbelievable.' This is KRZY, your station for Golden Oldies!”

Up ahead Melissa saw the mountains as she crept along at five miles per hour. Between her and her refuge there stretched, bumper to bumper on the three outbound lanes for as far as the eye could see, ten thousand cars.

“I would like to ask everyone other than the principals to clear the room,” the director of the CIA said in a raised voice.

There was a brief commotion as papers were rustled. Because the clearing of all but the principals had never been requested before, the “Wallflowers”—senior aides and advisers both military and civilian—rose uncertainly, staring at their respective bosses to ensure that this request applied to them, then slowly streaming from the room.

As the door was closed behind the last of the departing aides, Lambert looked around the table at the “principals”: the secretaries of State and Defense, the directors of the CIA and NSA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the President and Vice President, all of whom sat in silence waiting for the CIA director to explain his request.

“In the early morning hours today, Moscow time,” he began, “a foreign-national operative whom we maintain in residence in Moscow picked up a package that our Seoul station had been informed would be left at a ‘dead drop.' The package contained a letter, in Russian, giving us the last known location of a stray Russian ballistic missile submarine that we had reported as a probable kill. I forwarded the list to the CNO.”

Admiral Dixon said, “So that's where you got that data.” He looked at the President. “A P-7 got a positive MAD, Magnetic Anomaly Detection, just west of Meighen Island in the Arctic Ocean and launched a torpedo attack. The submarine surfaced on fire with a massive reactor leak, broke up, and sank before we could get Search and Rescue to them. All hands died, including the twenty-four who made it to life rafts but were dead of radiation poisoning by the time of our arrival.”

“So we've got an agent on the inside?” the President said.

“We're not so sure,” the director of the CIA said, and the President waited while the director dialed the combination into a lock on a black leather pouch and pulled a thick red folder from it. “The main thrust of the letter—the whole point of it, in fact—was to tell us that the warning passed to us previously by Filipov about the submarines' fail-deadly orders was for real.”

“What do you mean ‘for real'?” the President asked.

“Let me read for you the English translation of one excerpt.” The director found the passage for which he was looking and grasped the edge of the page by it with his thumb. “ ‘The ultimatum that was broadcast to your country from
STAVKA
stated that the order to fire missiles from the Kara Sea Bastion
would be
given.' ” The
director looked up and said, “The ending putting the Russian verb into the future tense was underlined by the writer.” He resumed reading. “ ‘The orders have, in fact, already been given. Our ballistic missile submarines in the Kara Sea received nuclear control orders that your nuclear strategicians call “fail-deadly.” Unless recalled, those submarines will fire their missiles under either of two conditions. They will fire if so ordered, or they will fire if attacked.' ”