declassified, or leaked, or whatever, in documents, books, available to the public since before the Global War on Terror began. And Russia and Germany know it too.”
“Granted.”
The motivation of those rogues in 1968 was to trigger nuclear war between the USSR and the U.S., perhaps because they felt the Kremlin at that time wasn’t hawkish enough. It couldn’t be known positively, since they all died. The U.S. was pretty sure they died because they failed to bypass all the range-safety devices — the booby traps installed to prevent an unauthorized launch. American intelligence did know that Moscow was often more afraid of an in-country splinter group hijacking a missile and aiming it their way than they were ever afraid of a sneak attack by America. The liquid fuel in one of those ballistic missiles exploded thanks to the booby traps, and the Golf sank with all hands in three-plus miles of the Pacific Ocean, with a big hole gaping in her side.
“Some of this is beginning to come together for me,” Jeffrey said. “The Russians are aware they had a rogue faction attempt a nuclear launch once before.”
“At least once before that we know of,” Kurzin interjected.
“There might have been
“Our intelligence services have their suspicions. Some of the Soviet accidents with rockets, that blew up on the launchpad or went off course and were self-destructed or crashed. Traces of plutonium that might have come from a nuke warhead destroyed on the ground or in midair.”
“Precisely, sir,” Nyurba said. “And the Germans are aware of all these things, so a scenario of them using their commandos to launch missiles and blame it on Russian rogues is also plausible. Russian governmental and military insiders are most likely to have the knowledge and resources to plan and then conduct the raid. They’re far more obvious culprits than Chechens or anarchists.”
Jeffrey held his head for a minute. “God, who dreamed this stuff up?”
“Some of our best and brightest, Commodore,” Kurzin said.
Jeffrey turned to Bell and Harley. “What do both of you make of this?”
Bell deferred to Harley. “It’s as we discussed among ourselves before, sir,” Harley said. “Our country has three choices. Apocalypse Soon, Apocalypse Later, and this mission if we can pull it off.”
“Which is still one hell of an ‘if,’ ” Jeffrey said. “Let me get to the other part that’s bothering me. Or
“Stealth satellites are nothing new, sir,” Nyurba said. “The idea, and their actual existence, got leaked to the press ten years ago. Leaked, or officially announced.”
Jeffrey stared at the overhead, talking to himself. “A magical, mystical missile shield that can detonate an armed nuclear warhead outside the atmosphere, over the country that launched the ICBM. That part sounds great. I wish we really had something like that. But you and whoever planned this mission know damned well that we don’t. I want to go over again how we get the Russians to believe it.”
“We’ll program the warheads to go off exoatmospherically, over the European part of Russia. With trajectory mechanics as they are, given the Earth’s rotation and the Coriolis force and all of that, it’s why we need to launch from one of their new bases in Siberia. It puts the missiles beyond effective reach of the old ABM system that still rings Moscow, so the Russians can’t shoot their own rogue missiles down.” Nyurba was referring to the antiballistic missile system allowed by a 1970s treaty.
“And the exoatmospheric detonation is what causes the massive electromagnetic pulse that does a lot of damage between Moscow and the Urals. That part I get. Russia is really hurting, and it looks like she’s been deservedly punished for trying to nuke the U.S. Punished by this magical, mystical, mysterious missile shield. I remain extremely skeptical.”
“Remember, sir,” Nyurba answered, “the shield doesn’t need to exist. The Russians simply need to believe, or be convinced, that it exists.”
“But it has to be plausible. I can guarantee you, no matter how badly computers and communications are degraded in western Russia, there’ll be enough engineers and academicians in fine shape in other places to put together whatever the Russians call a tiger team. They’ll look really hard at how anything could make two or three separate SS-Twenty-seven warheads all go off simultaneously after third-stage booster separation, in the vacuum of space. Assuming you even manage to get the missiles to launch properly, with the proper programming. If you, like those Russkie rogues back in sixty-eight, goof and a booby trap goes off, this mission is a flop. What if you do manage somehow to actually achieve an unauthorized launch of several armed ICBMs, but your reprogramming is flawed and they
“In real life this launch won’t be a surprise. Commander, U.S. Strategic Command will be expecting it. He’ll know exactly where and when the missiles will launch, and he’ll be very well prepared to target and destroy them using our conventional ground- and sea-based missile shields.”
“Assuming they work reliably at the time.”
“Yes. But they only have to work if our reprogramming of the live warheads doesn’t work.”
“That’s one hell of a ‘but’!”
“That’s why we’re only launching three missiles.”
“That’s one hell of an ‘only’!”
“Allow me to address your other concern or question,” Kurzin interrupted. “Achieving successful launch of Russian ICBMs at all. Without going into details that you don’t need to know, suffice it to say that we have both human and electronic intelligence that provides us with a good deal of critical information about the SS-Twenty- seven missile and warhead-bus design. Including methods of arming the warhead and triggering detonation, and of bypassing range-safety devices.”
“Sorry, Colonel, I
Nyurba looked to Kurzin for direction. Kurzin reluctantly nodded, and Nyurba responded for both of them.
“It’s no secret that the U.S. recovered intact nuclear ballistic missiles from a Soviet Yankee-class SSBN that sank in the Atlantic a few hundred miles from Bermuda in nineteen-eighty-six.”
“I know.
“Specialists, aware of the earlier loss of the Golf-class, dissected the range safety devices carefully.”
“That’s twenty-five-year-old technology!”
“And the basis for all further Soviet and Russian thinking.”
“They know we grabbed some missiles. They’ll have changed everything!”
“Seeing how they thought at one time gives hints at what they’d change and how they’d change it. And we know that, to save money, some parts in the SS-Twenty-sevens are identical to those in earlier land-based missiles which because of arms reduction treaties were dismantled and destroyed in public. For many of these parts we gained illicit actual samples, or very good intel about their specs.”
“That’s still too much of a stretch.”
“On its own, yes. But we also have expatriate Russian missile engineers and nuclear scientists who worked on their weapons programs more recently. They emigrated to the U.S. over the years after the Berlin Wall fell. They were discreetly interviewed.”
“They might have been sleeper agents, giving you disinformation. That’s a favorite Russian gimmick.”
“Which of course the CIA and the Pentagon realize. There were methods to cross-validate what they told us.”
“Such as?”
“Other Russians with similar expertise, after the USSR collapsed and they found themselves unemployed, were less enthralled at the prospects of coming to America to wash dishes or drive a taxi. They put themselves up for grabs on the world underground arms market. During the Global War on Terror, some of them were captured. Let’s just say they were thoroughly interrogated.”
“This part, I truly don’t want to know.”
