World in Flames

rampant?”

Chernko shrugged. “Of course not. Move in the tanks.”

“What,” asked another Politburo member, “will the casualties be like for the Americans if the four missiles are fired from the two diesel submarines?”

“Millions,” answered a STAVKA member, “killed outright. More millions will the from the radiation dust — over a thousand rems for everyone, Comrade. No favorites. More, not in the immediate area, will the from the invisible radiation. I don’t mean that in the dust cloud, but in the food chain, water table. Bone marrow death, especially… Everyone in the whole country, Comrade, will become more susceptible to disease — their immune systems destroyed, you see.”

The comrade could not see. He could not imagine such disaster coming back tenfold upon the Soviet Union. But he knew it was true.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

If ever there was to be a Churchillian moment in Ray Brentwood’s life, it came the moment he, so recently of IX-44E, sludge removal, “propelled,” was appointed overall commander of the task force set out to find the two diesel-electrics his oil samples had determined must be close in to the American coast. And with his command came even more power once the Soviets had contacted Kneecap, giving the Americans the information that the two diesel-electric Golf-class submarines, though they did not know where they were on the western American seaboard, were carrying four SSN-8s, each of the four warheads carrying 750 kilotons.

Issuing orders so quickly that at times runners with their cellular phones, or at least those with phones that were still functioning, literally bumped into one another, Brentwood quickly assembled his antisubmarine warfare force of frigates, destroyers, MAD — magnetic anomaly detector — aircraft, and sonar-dunking choppers. He knew it was not only the most important race in his life, a race against time at the end of which lay either glory or utter defeat, but the most important race in American history. If the four American cities were hit, in addition to those already struck but explained away, like Omaha, as legitimate targets by the Soviets, the public pressure on the president to unleash countervalue strikes — against all major Soviet cities — would be enormous, and indeed, militarily, would be the only thing the United States could do unless it was to be annihilated.

But for military targets such as the Trident bases at Bangor, Washington State, and Kings Bay, Georgia, SAC HQ in Omaha, and NORAD control in Colorado Springs near Cheyenne Mountain, it was already over, the mushrooms from the impacts depressingly the same. Only over Bangor, Washington, and at Kings Bay in Georgia had the mushroom clouds looked different, their shape essentially the same, but on a bright, clear winter day the mushroom stalks above Bangor and Kings Bay were infused with millions of gallons of superheated water evaporated by the ten-million-degree-Fahrenheit heat at the center of the fireball. The wide V-shaped bottom of the stalk, before it rose and grew thin, had become blindingly white, the sun catching the vibrant iridescence of the countless billions of sea creatures that were sucked up in the whirlwinds of the explosion’s core, the radioactive cloud sweeping out to sea.

The sick and dying overflowed out on the lawns beneath makeshift tents as rain, caused by the hot air of the explosion meeting the cold mountain air of the Rockies and the Cascades, poured down, washing much of the radioactivity into the water table faster than it normally would have been absorbed. And as in the case of those who had tried to get to the children first in Omaha, would-be rescuers were thwarted by an almost complete lack of antiradiation, anticontamination suits, the hospital budgets having been slashed in the halcyon days of Gorbachev.

High above the midwestern states, the most dreadful thing that those aboard the ADS — antiradioactive- sheathed— Kneecap experienced was that here they were, safe, at least for the moment, high above the earth, supposedly in command of the situation while all the distant mushroom clouds told them how helpless they were to do anything for those people who were dying by the thousands, the unlucky ones who had not died outright.

* * *

Twenty miles off southern California’s coast, Ray Brentwood stood in the stiff breeze that had come up since they had left San Diego aboard his command ship, the USS John T. Munro, an Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate, a sister ship to his first, the USS Blaine.

On officers’ call, he instructed his department heads that they were to keep the mission short and simple when describing it to the men. “Our job is to search for and destroy a force of two Soviet Golf-Class V diesel-electric subs which are carrying two ICBMs apiece. The Golf’s surface speed is seventeen knots. And on battery power, gentlemen, they’re very quiet. I repeat, very quiet. We suspect they have anechoic soundproofing tiles on their hulls and enough battery power to run for seventy-two hours without recharge. Which is the reason why they’ve been able to sneak past our SOSUS network.”

“Torpedoes, sir?” asked the officer in charge of the two Mark-32 triple-tube torpedo launchers on the John T. Munro.

“Ten. Twenty-one-inch diameter. Six forward, four aft.”

“Radar, sir?”

“Snoop tray and sonars. Medium frequency. Now, my guess is that given they’re out of contact with their headquarters and their orders are to remain so — that is, to launch on their own initiative — and given the fact that there is no way they cannot know a nuclear exchange has been under way, I suspect that for the sake of coordinated action, they are likely to stick together in preparation for a short, simultaneous attack, because they know that if they send those four sons of bitches off together, we’re going to have twice as much trouble stopping them. It’s a pretty good bet that they won’t go it alone.” He paused. “We’ve got one thing working for us at the moment, and that is that the electromagnetic pulse from the strikes they’ve already made is going to scramble communications everywhere for a while.”

“You mean they’re going to wait a day or so until they can be sure of proper trajectories?”

“That’s what I’m hoping,” said Brentwood. “But we can’t rely on it. We’ll have to try to pin ‘em down faster than that.”

“How we going to do that, Captain?”

“That’s my job. What I want you guys to remember is that we’re going to have sonar pinging out there, magnetic anomaly detectors, and all the other ASW equipment. I don’t want anybody getting ‘signals mixed up.’ Navigators — you make sure where your ship is every second. Day and night. I don’t want any incoming noise from one of our own search ships to interfere with our sonar either, so the distance between ships’ll have to be watched closely. Should Munro be attacked, I expect the officer of the deck to bring her broadside immediately. This’ll present a bigger target to any incoming. It’ll free our radar masts and Phalanx defense system of upper-deck obstruction. Last thing — from now on, we’re Condition Four.” This meant that more than two hundred of the ship’s 453 complement of men would be on alert at all times, four hours on, eight off.

“That’s all,” said Brentwood. He took the salute and made his way to the John T. Munro’s combat information center, along with his tactical action officer, James Cameron, one of the young officers aboard USS Blaine whom he had requested along with several enlisted men who had served with him on the Blaine. It was to demonstrate that there was no grudge on his part about what had happened on the Blaine. Because he could not truly say how he had ended up in the water after the Blaine had been hit, he saw in the John T. Munro a chance to redeem himself.

“Can I speak freely, sir?” Lieutenant Cameron asked.

“Shoot,” said Brentwood.

“None of the men I know thought you jumped ship. Bosun reckons one of our boys picked you up, pulled the tab to inflate the preserver, and tossed you over. Then he got it.”

“Well, Cameron, for what it’s worth, I’ve gone over it a million times. I don’t know what the hell happened. All I remember is one minute I’m on the bridge, then bam, the lights go out. The next minute I’m floating. But thanks for the vote of confidence — appreciate it.”

“No problem, sir. Ah, Captain — if you think their subs are only going to wait a bit until all this electrical fuzz