hemorrhaging stopped apparently.”
“Their air forces?” Mayne asked Air Force Chief Allet.
“Fifteen hundred tactical aircraft, including MiG 29E fighters and Backfire bombers. The Fulcrums — MiG 29Es — are faster and more maneuverable than our F-18s. To qualify for Siberian station you have to have had combat experience in western Europe. Only the best, Mr. President.” General Allet indicated airfields far to the northeast, near Siberia’s East Cape. “They clearly don’t intend letting us get across the Bering Strait from Alaska.”
The president was shaking his head. The vastness of the new threat had descended like sheet lightning upon what, until only moments ago, had been the promising dawn of the Russian surrender. Blindsided by Siberia — the essence of the awful Allied blunder the assumption that all the Soviets would automatically follow Moscow’s decree. It was so obvious now that Mayne wondered why they hadn’t thought of it before. The only comparable miscalculation he could think of was the CIA’s confident report, several months before the Shah of Iran’s fall, that no such overthrow was in the offing. But men, the more he thought about it, the more he understood how the seed of the blunder had taken root; for he, too, had always lumped Soviets and Russians together. Oh yes, he’d known how dissident the Baltic republics were, and some of the Asian republics, but Siberia— so far from Moscow, a place where Moscow sent dissidents — had never been thought of as a separate entity. But now the full impact of the differences between the two Russian republics — the United Soviet Socialist Republics and the newly declared United Siberian Soviet Republics — hit him as the CIA overlay, each color representing a different ethnic group in the mix that was the Siberyaka, covered the huge expanse of Siberia which, in turn, overlaid the map of the Americas on the same scale, completely obscuring the U.S. The region of the Yakut alone was three times the size of Texas. The other Siberian regions— the Tartar, Kalmyk, Komi, Bashykur and the Karelian autonomous republic — were all united in their common determination with Novosibirsk not to surrender.
“Won’t they deal?” asked the president.
“Why should they?” proffered the brigadier, realizing at once that he’d overstepped the line of deference accorded the president of the American republic. “With all due respect, Mr. President, our Allied forces in and around Moscow are, by all accounts, battle weary — quite simply worn out. Our supply lines through western Europe are overextended to say the least.” Soames glanced at the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, their glum faces evidence enough that they agreed. Then he turned back to address Mayne. “Holding Moscow might seem a compelling victory to the general public in the West, sir, but—” He turned toward the map, his hand making a small arc across the expanse of Siberia. “Capturing Moscow, I’m afraid, is nothing geographically or strategically speaking. And now, it seems, not even politically. Our troops have, as General Grey pointed out, another thousand miles to go before they even reach the Urals, the western border of Siberia. Then there’s the rest — almost four thousand miles of mountains, taiga, rivers and plains, deep in snow — thrown in for good measure. They’ve got the Ural Mountains on their western flank and the more mountainous Kamchatka Peninsula on the east. They could give away half of it and we’d still be in enormous difficulty. No, sir, I’m afraid the Siberian chiefs of staff in Novosibirsk have thought this one out rather carefully. It’s a very sticky wicket indeed.”
The president frowned, not because he didn’t know what “sticky wicket” meant — the tone conveyed all the meaning he needed — but because the Englishman was right. What in hell could the Allies do?
“Sticky wicket means being between a rock and a hard—” began Trainor.
“I know what it means,” snapped the president. “What I want someone to tell the is what in hell are we going to do about this mess?” He looked up at his CNO, the chief of naval operations, Admiral Horton. “Can we bracket them with our boomers, Dick?” He meant the Allies’ ICBM submarines.
“Already have, sir. The Trident subs can drop an ICBM on them anywhere, but they can do the same to us even without their subs. Most of their ICBM sites are now in Siberia. Especially on the eastern flank down Kamchatka Peninsula. It would mean all-out nuclear war. And one thing the Russians — including the Siberians — were always ahead of us in, Mr. President, is civil defense for such an eventuality. We’d come out much worse than they would.”
“Yes, yes, I know that. A nuclear strike’s no option.” Next he turned to the army chief of staff.
“Sir,” said General Grey, “Brigadier Soames is correct in his estimation. We’ve shot our wad for the time being in and around Moscow. It’d be another two months at the very least before we could muster enough men even to attack the Urals with any hope of breaking through. Best we can hope for there is to keep it at a stalemate.”
“What about their eastern flank?” shot back the president.
“If we could get enough men across the Bering Strait fast. Perhaps. But there’s still Kamchatka Peninsula further south. It’s heavily garrisoned. And now it looks as if the whole coast— from the East Cape all the way south to Vladivostok — is also well protected. They’ve even got Soviet forces on the Kuril Islands running down from Kamchatka — case the Japanese move to reclaim the islands they lost in the Second World War. But either way we’d have to get men across the strait — take command of their East Cape airfields. Once we did that we could hit them further south without constantly worrying about their East Cape planes.”
“How about our air force?” cut in the president. “General Allet, can you secure air cover over the Bering Strait so that we can get our boys across to their East Cape — secure a beachhead? What is it across there? Only fifty miles or so from Alaska?”
“Fifty-two miles, sir.”
“Well then?”
“Sir, before we could move anybody across there we’d have to have air supremacy. We’d have to take out the AA missile batteries, SAM sites, and the like on Big Diomede. It’s shallow around there, some places no more than twenty fathoms — not deep enough for our subs.”
“Big Diomede?” asked the president.
“Largest of two islands, sir. Little Diomede, ours, is the smallest — on our side of the international date line. Big Diomede is theirs. High and solid rock. Locked in by ice and covered in snow this time of year. It’s a fortress — five miles long, one-and-a-half to two miles wide, with deeply recessed and super-hardened AA missile and AA gun battery defenses. They’ve also got half a dozen long-range naval guns in place that can shell Alaska’s Cape Prince of Wales — our staging area for any invasion.”
“You telling the that they can shell us from over twenty miles away?”
Admiral Horton looked surprised that the president didn’t know this. “They’ve had the long-barrelled gun — got it from South Africa after that Canadian inventor Bull sold it to Iraq and—”
“Never mind the history lesson,” cut in Mayne. “I want to know what the hell we’re going to do. If the air force can’t guarantee it can take out this Big Diomede, can we try naval bombardment?”
“Too much ice for the battle wagons to get within range,” said the CNO. “But we can try carrier-borne aircraft from further south.”
“Then get ready to try, Dick, and while you’re doing that I want you,” he turned to General Grey, “to send this to the Siberians and all Allied commands.” As he began writing the message, he asked, “Our K-16 satellite still operational?”
“Far as I know, Mr. President. But with all that snow in Siberia and the Siberians’ camouflage, it’s going to be difficult even for our satellite to pinpoint their positions.”
“Maybe so, General,” said President Mayne, his writing hand moving with singular determination. “But I have a hunch the Siberians might just be bluffing. I don’t mean about what They’ve got to throw at us but whether this central committee or whatever it is in Novosibirsk has really been able to break free of Moscow’s political arm.” The president depressed the tip of his ballpoint, adroitly slipping it inside his suit jacket. “Has it occurred to you gentlemen that we might be getting all steamed up for nothing? Anyway—” He handed the message to General Grey. “—this’ll answer that.”
The president’s message to the Novosibirsk central Siberian command read, “You have twenty-four hours in which to surrender all your forces to Allied command. If you have not done so by 0800 tomorrow Washington time, the Allied armies will reengage with maximum force.”
“Mr. President,” asked General Grey, “you think there might be some confusion about what we mean by ‘maximum force’?”
The president smiled. “Yes. That’s for them to figure out, Jimmy.” He turned to Air Force General Allet. “Bill, I want ‘covers off’ at least a dozen. Midwest. And just in case the Siberians aren’t getting any satellite readings of their own, have our K-16 photographs of our MX silos when their lids are off beamed down to Siberian air space. Put
