Seas of Crisis

needed to trick them, but what he said had to sound unquestionably true.

“Hello!” he said into the handset. “Hello!”

Someone answered, the junior officer who led the crew. “Kto eto? Tcho takoye?” Who is this? What’s going on? The voice was husky, under stress. The accent suggested its owner was an ethnic Russian who’d spent his youth in what was now Ukraine, before moving to Russia proper after the Soviet Union collapsed.

“Slyshi khorosho.” Listen carefully. “This is Lieutenant Colonel Nyurba, Army Spetsnaz counterterror. A nationwide coup is occurring.” He felt safe using his real last name. It was common enough, and he didn’t expect this silo crew to survive.

“A coup?” The young man sounded worried, but not surprised — there’d been failed reactionary coups against Gorbachev in 1991, and Yeltsin in 1993.

“Yes. Listen to me. Rebel forces have taken over the support base, and penetrated the command bunker there. We were able to overpower them here, so the missile complex itself remains in friendly hands.”

“Was that what went on just now in the vestibule, sir?”

“Four good men died. My men. I feel responsible.”

“What do you want us to do?”

“The rebels in the command bunker will try to convince you to make an unauthorized launch, or, much worse, use their electronic link to the silos to permanently disable the missiles. That would leave Russia defenseless against a nuclear attack.”

“Mother of God.”

“Yes. The situation is that serious. So you must do three things immediately.”

“Tell us what they are, Colonel.”

“Sever all fiber optics from the command bunker.”

“We can’t, sir. They’re hardened.”

“Don’t you have tools for maintenance? For firefighting? Axes, metal saws, so on?”

“Yes.”

“Use them. But first send men through the tunnels into each silo. Protect the missiles from interference by the rebels at the support base the same way you defend your control bunker systems. Cut all connections from the command bunker simultaneously. Simultaneously. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Second, ignore any radio messages you receive about either harming or launching the missiles, even if they’re in valid codes and have the proper passwords.”

“Ignore them?” ICBM bunkers had multiple communication backups, to assure absolute and constant control by the Kremlin.

“Do not use any radios or telephones, or intercoms other than this one, and do not respond to any calls other than mine. We don’t know how far the coup’s infiltration extends. Hurry!”

“You said there were three things, sir?”

It was time for Nyurba to build more credibility, to support the big lies about isolating the bunker from the support base and higher officials. He had to keep the junior officer from thinking too much, calling the support base to see what they said, or talking things over with the rest of his silo crew or the men in the other two bunkers.

“On no account let anyone into your bunker. We will defend the entrance from out here. More rebel forces will arrive soon. Stay where you are, you’ll be safe. You can hold out for weeks if you have to, longer if you ration your food and parcel using electricity. When the rebellion is suppressed, the government will find some way to give you an unambiguous all-clear.”

“What about you, sir?”

“We’re Spetsnaz! Oo-rah for the Motherland!” He hung up.

Echoing down the concrete steps, above the roaring and crackling of the burning Mi-24s and armored cars, Nyurba could hear the heavy beating of more military helicopters.

“Missileers up,” he ordered, to those with him and over the radio. Assigned men rushed up the stairs and opened the three dozen backpacks arrayed there — some of which had belonged to the wounded or dead. They went through this improvised ammo dump until their arms cradled bundles of SA-16s. Situations like this were why they’d worked out six hours a day while on Carter; each loaded missile launcher weighed twenty-five pounds, and the staircase was ten stories high.

Nyurba told his two SERT Seabees and three of the Delta Force to stay with him, and sent the rest of the men up the stairs; two SERT Seabees and their Delta Force teammates were with the group assigned to enter bunker two. The remainder of the commandos, he’d decided, were most valuable for defense against the superior forces about to arrive. The ICBM launch specialists would crouch halfway up the staircase for now.

Several men, minor wounds bandaged, darted from bunker three to strengthen the teams at each of the other two entryways. As this was reported by radio, Nyurba felt proud of their devotion, but knew full well how vital every man with a weapon would be very soon. Listening on his radio, seeing his commandos on the stairs or in the vestibule, he sensed their fidgety hyperalertness as they awaited the next phase of combat.

His own immediate task was getting inside bunker one — whose crew he’d just told to admit nobody whatsoever.

The outer blast door measured about eight feet on a side. It would be several feet thick, weighing tons. It opened outward, so that the overpressure from a nuclear blast would shut it more tightly against the massive steel and reinforced concrete frame. As a result, the door hinges had to be on the outside.

This was the whole design’s weakness. Proof against the widely distributed force of a nuclear blast, those hinges could be attacked by a pinpoint placement of custom-shaped charges. There were four hinges from top to bottom; the armored steel of each was a foot wide and four inches thick.

“What do you think?” Nyurba asked the Delta Force sergeant, an expert in forced entry and hostage rescue.

“Three or four charges in sequence per hinge, sir. We need to chip away at stuff this thick.”

The SERT Seabee chief, experienced at sizing up and taking apart all sorts of structures, eyed the hinges and agreed.

“Let’s get to it,” Nyurba told them.

They discussed the weight of C-4 plastic explosive to use in each charge. Too much at once would be wasteful, and dangerous.

They molded the first set of charges to the hinges. They carefully inserted blasting caps to obtain the optimal cutting effect and connected the caps with wires so that they’d go off at the same instant. They led a master wire and a backup through the vestibule, well into the staircase. The sergeant connected these to a detonator control box. Nyurba opened his mouth, covered his ears, and braced himself. The sharp, hard vroom that came up the stairs was deafening. The concussive force of it punished his insides. Dust and fumes drifted up the stairs.

“Time for gas masks,” Nyurba ordered. Everyone pulled theirs on before running back down the stairs. The hinges had grooves cut partway in. They cooled the red-hot metal with water from their canteens, so they could install more C-4 quickly. Then they began the methodical process of molding and placing another set of shaped charges, inserting all the blasting caps, and connecting all the wires.

Three more times, they ran up the stairs, set off the charges, and ran back down.

The last time, the echoing explosion felt and sounded different. When they reentered the vestibule, the hinges at last were severed through. Lacking their support, the multi-ton door had come off the retractable pins, on the side opposite the hinges, that held it locked closed. It lay flat on the floor in the vestibule. The sergeant eased around the edge of the vestibule and used his mirror to look into the gap where the door had been. He fired his pistol, taking out another TV camera.

Nyurba and the other explosives handlers moved in. Beyond the now-empty door frame was the inside of the blast interlock, and at its far end was another, identical door. A mechanism made sure that, without special steps to override it — such as for installing large pieces of new equipment — the outer and inner door were never open at the same time. On the walls and ceiling of the interlock were shower heads, hoses, and other items needed for decontamination. Nyurba ignored these, and his crew went to work on the inner blast door.