Seas of Crisis

“Which were?…”

“Suppose we continue the war, with the aim to unseat the Axis leadership. How do we do it, and what happens when we try? A D-day-like assault across the English Channel, after a big buildup in Great Britain, is out of the question with tactical nukes in play. Ditto for an amphibious push from North Africa using the Med. And a land- route invasion of Germany, through the Middle East or Asia, will certainly cause the German regime to introduce widespread tactical nuclear weapons on land to defeat our oncoming offensive, no matter how broad the front along which we and our allies attack, and no matter how severe the collateral damage and civilian deaths.”

“Lord.”

“Worse. Following a period of armistice with America if one is indeed arranged, their second wave of aggression would be just as murderous. The juiciest prizes left for grabs, with Russia continuing as Germany’s pseudo-neutral friend, would be the big countries in the Middle East and Asia. With a whole different lineup of targets and objectives then, cross-ocean sea lanes wouldn’t have today’s significance. Tactical nuclear weapons would come into use offensively and defensively, unlimited, on land…. In either of the two potential scenarios, continuing to prosecute the war or granting an armistice, according to our planners the ultimate outcome remains the same. With so many countries getting involved and so much destruction and slaughter in main population centers, the conflict is certain to escalate into wholesale thermonuclear war. The U.S., Russia, China, Israel, Japan, everybody else. Hundreds of millions dead right away, maybe billions, and billions more not long after that if there’s a nuclear winter. The end of modern civilization, maybe the end of humanity.” Jeffrey tapped his orders again to emphasize the reality of what he’d been told in such harsh terms in writing.

“So what do we do?” Harley asked. “Why doesn’t the Pentagon glass Germany right now? Preempt?”

“Because Russia brought Germany under her own thermonuclear umbrella. Even if Russia broke that promise and held her fire, us glassing Germany would kill tens of millions of innocents outside German borders from fallout alone. Because Russia’s command-and-control systems are so gimpy, they might think our missiles were coming at them, and launch a massive retaliatory strike… at America. Because Germany has cruise missiles with fission warheads hiding at sea, which would come in low and fast and nuke the whole U.S. East Coast, and Gulf Coast, and reach inland past the Mississippi. Tens of millions more dead.”

“So what do we do?” Bell repeated Harley’s question.

“We perform our mission. There is a third scenario. One and only one alternative to Apocalypse Soon or Apocalypse Later. We take Kurzin and his men to Siberia, where they pretend to be Germans pretending to be Russians, infiltrate a missile silo field, take control of several brand-new SS-Twenty-seven ICBMs with one-megaton warheads, and launch them at the United States.”

Chapter 11

Bell and Harley were horrified. “What?” Meltzer blurted.

“I have documentation, Captains Harley and Bell, which you can authenticate with your own emergency- action-message codes. This way you can satisfy yourselves that these are valid, legal orders from our commander in chief…. The goal is to appear to try to start a nuclear exchange between Russia and the U.S., and leave ironclad forensic clues that German operatives, disguised as Russian extremists, did it.”

Harley fidgeted nervously. Bell squirmed in his seat. Meltzer chewed his lip so hard that Jeffrey thought his teeth might break the skin.

“There’s finely reasoned method in this madness. If the commando squadron, and I, succeed in our assigned roles, and Carter’s stealth holds up, the missiles that take off from Siberian silos, fully armed by technicians from Kurzin’s team, will detonate long before they actually land on American soil. Instead, the warheads will be set to go off outside the atmosphere over Russia. The radiation from the blasts will dissipate into the already-radioactive Van Allen belts surrounding our planet, and from there be blown by the solar wind safely away into deep space. The Greater Moscow area will be blanketed by a nonlethal but extremely damaging electromagnetic pulse. This much we know from tests performed in the late nineteen-fifties and early sixties…. Russia, hurting, panic-stricken at the thought of American vengeance and outraged at German treachery, will at a minimum withdraw all support from the Axis, and she might well, of sheer necessity, join the Allied side. That would leave Berlin isolated, cut off from strategic sustenance. On the ropes, with the Boers withering on the vine at the far southern tip of Africa. The Axis leaders, knowing that they’re not at fault but being unable to prove to Russia that we so cold-bloodedly framed them, would also have been sent a stinging message. One with plausible deniability, but unmistakable, about what ruthless risk-takers Americans are once sufficiently provoked, thus destroying the Axis sense of control and undermining their power. An amnesty, if the oligarchs step down at that juncture, could neatly wrap up the war.”

Harley sputtered. “Would we give those sons of bitches an amnesty after all this? Let them walk, after starting a premeditated tactical nuclear war?”

Jeffrey smiled sweetly. “Oh, I suppose the amnesty might be broken eventually, maybe by hit squads from Israel’s Mossad.”

“I like that part,” Meltzer said.

“For one stage I’ll need to go to a base in Siberia, as a back-door emissary to convey America’s extreme displeasure by making certain deadly threats, and also pretend to test Russia’s good faith, since most of Moscow will be knocked out of the loop by the EMP, including our somewhat ineffective diplomats stationed there. By then the President will be on the Hot Line to Russia’s president, assuming the Hot Line isn’t knocked out too. And if it is still working, Washington will cause temporary outages at crucial times, for ‘technical reasons,’ to help underscore my discussions and suitably tweak and tune the psychological chaos likely in the Kremlin by then. Part of my job will also be to quickly get inside Moscow’s reaction and decision time scale, to keep them from doing something precipitate, something irrevocably disastrous for the world.”

“And if you can’t?” Harley demanded.

“If things backfire? If Kurzin’s team can’t sneak and fight their way into a highly restricted area, then bypass booby traps and override software safeguards properly, or their and our strike group’s subterfuges are seen through or my bluffs are called, or we get sunk and identified, then Russia will surely become a wholehearted member of the Axis. Our commandos might even by accident nuke a few U.S. or Russian cities for real.”

“But—” Bell tried to object.

“Then the only way out of apocalypse isn’t even a negotiated armistice, it’s fast and abject Allied surrender. We kiss good-bye to the American way of life, confront enslavement instead, and learn to speak German or Russian or Afrikaans. That’s if we’re lucky. If we’re unlucky, the missiles Kurzin launches are only the first of many, and then more, and more, from Russia, the U.S., and other places. You could call that outcome, the worst-case mission failure result, Apocalypse Now.”

Jeffrey knew how his subordinates felt, because his own head was swirling with unanswered questions and troubling what-ifs. “Captain Harley, I think we ought to be getting to the briefing session.” Bell stood, and Meltzer let his seniors precede him.

Harley, not so crisp and detached as when Jeffrey first met him, led the way, around sharp corners and down steep ladders, then through a long, straight corridor. He said, with pride, that this was the wasp waist in Carter’s Multi-Mission Platform. The pressure hull narrowed to eighteen feet, creating ample garage space inside the forty-two-foot-diameter outer hull.

They came to the full-width aft part of this specially added pressure hull section. Some doors here held security warnings, and were protected by electronic and mechanical combination locks. They went up a ladder and came to another door, open. Inside was a briefing room. Jeffrey did a double take.

Except for officers and chiefs from Challenger and Carter, who wore khakis or jumpsuit blue, several dozen men were dressed in Russian Army uniforms — mostly urban- or forest-pattern camouflage fatigues — and they talked in small groups in fluent Russian. Their short haircuts, the set of their features, the ways they moved, were subtly foreign, not American. Some had shirtsleeves rolled above elbows, and even their forearm tattoos — the motifs, the colors, the alphabet used for the words — bore an alien look. Jeffrey also saw battle scars, from shrapnel, bayonets, or bullets.