Seas of Crisis

All roadblocks were for vehicles approaching the complex — sealed off against spies and journalists — not for those leaving with troops who badly needed trauma care. Regional authorities were muddled, psychologically overwhelmed by the SS-27 liftoffs. They focused on rescue and recovery, and further site defense from outward, not on interdicting escapees. Perhaps someone in charge, from optimism or face-saving ego, made the assumption that the attackers had all been killed, or committed suicide.

The EMP hitting the Kremlin, plus rigid central control, is buying us getaway time — but for how long?

Civilian and military boats, ships, hydrofoils, and hovercraft were tied up in a hodgepodge at the Kolyma piers. Reinforcements were still arriving for a battle that no longer raged, while wounded, some with hideous burns, were being rushed to other hospitals downriver. Nyurba picked what he wanted: an old Skat-class air-cushion landing craft, official capacity two dozen troops. The six-man crew made no effort to refuse when the commandos demanded transportation. They climbed aboard the vessel, using the troop ladders at both sides of its blunt bow. The casualties, wheezing inside their masks due to lung problems from the missile fumes, moaned louder with this mishandling.

His fit men easily bound and gagged the crew. The enclosed, soundproof passenger area became overcrowded with commandos. The separate tiny control cabin’s fittings were worn and scuffed, but the small armored windshields on all four sides gave good views. A SEAL Chief knew how to operate the hovercraft — it wasn’t very different from the U.S. Navy’s LCACs, just smaller. An Army Ranger acted as radio man; a card by the transceiver gave their call sign of the day. He listened for news of pursuit or blockades downriver; static was extreme, but no cordon for rogues was set up. Nyurba’s medics had Red Cross flags, since these could give certain protections under recognized rules of war. He ordered two to be flown from staffs on the Skat. They’d help the vessel blend in now as a regular unit bringing injured men toward aid. When will the Russian dragnet gel? How far will it reach?

The Skat was powered by two turboprops and one gas-turbine lift fan. The turboprops, in cowlings on tall projections at the stern, drove giant propellers; rudders in those tails worked just like those on airplanes. The turbine provided high-pressure air to a rubbery skirt surrounding the vessel’s bottom. The fuel tanks were full; the crew had topped them off upon arriving.

With the lift engine pushed to full power, the Skat rose on a cushion of air. Mist blew out from under the skirt. The chief turned the Skat downriver, north, and shoved the throttles all the way forward. Soon they were making more than fifty knots.

Looking back at dumpy Srednekolymsk, Nyurba noticed something painted on one of the Skat’s twin tails, so faded with age he could barely make it out — a hammer and sickle.

Chapter 27

Rear Admiral Meredov was quickly responsive to Jeffrey’s request, and very efficient about it. His aide gave Jeffrey a course to steer at flank speed under the ice, to surface and meet a civilian icebreaker unaffected by the EMP in this far-eastern part of Siberia. She told him the ship had a helicopter pad — a common arrangement, to scout ahead for the best route through difficult ice conditions.

When Challenger rendezvoused, Jeffrey was surprised to see, on the photonics mast display screens, not a helo but a Yakovlev-38U, a two-seat trainer version of the Russian Navy vertical takeoff and landing plane. The old Yak-38 resembled a Harrier, except its fuselage was longer and thinner, and its wing and tail were distinctively Russian in styling. The helo pad had to have been reinforced to take its weight and withstand the force and heat of its lift jets. That and the fact that the Yak was being refueled on the pad implied that the so- called civilian ship was a naval auxiliary, thinly concealed. She flew the Russian Federation flag, three broad stripes, white over blue over red.

Lieutenant Bud Torelli, the Weps, noticed that her superstructure bore several long, thin rectangular boxes covered by tarpaulins. He said these were almost certainly antiship and antiaircraft missile launchers.

She’s an auxiliary cruiser, an outright warship, disguised.

The other photonics mast showed that same Tu-204, Sable Seven, circling both vessels at a polite distance. It was there, Jeffrey assumed, for two disparate reasons. One was to help make sure that the rendezvous went off okay. The other was to make sure Challenger was really Challenger—not an American SSBN who’d tricked the Russians and snuck in close to launch its two dozen MIRVed missiles on flat trajectories with very short transit times. From this location, they’d reach anywhere in Russia in ten or twelve minutes. I don’t blame them for being very, very cautious. They think we think they just tried to nuke the U.S.

Surfaced, her antenna masts exposed again, Challenger’s radio room received fragmentary updates for Jeffrey and Bell. The earth’s ionosphere and magnetic field were still distorted. The Van Allen belts were excited and swollen by nuclear gamma rays, X-rays, and ionized bomb debris. Several dozen unshielded satellites in low earth orbit had gone dead, and more would in the weeks to come from lingering radiation and energetic charged particles — although special methods of pumping high-frequency radio beams into space could ease this problem. Geosynchronous satellites and ones in high earth orbit were safe, as were ground stations outside the pancaked area. But reception was poor; transmissions via these satellites had to pierce the layers of persisting disruption from the exoatmospheric blasts.

The substantive news was that the Kremlin seemed harder hit by the EMP than expected. Jeffrey knew that shielding needed diligent maintenance or it wouldn’t hold up. The slightest bit of dirt or grease where it shouldn’t be, or one loose fitting, or a faulty backup battery, could cause even military-grade EMP protection to fail. Fiber- optic cables themselves might be immune to voltage surges, but their electrically powered signal amplifiers were vulnerable — and too many had been knocked out. It appeared that the Kremlin’s minions were sloppy.

Technicians were scrambling to get the Hot Line hot again; in the meantime Russia’s president was incommunicado, not by choice. Unfortunately, the American ambassador in Moscow, who wasn’t forewarned for security reasons, had taken the weekend off with his top aides at a dacha—country cabin — in the affected zone, and couldn’t be reached. Washington hoped that the German embassy was suffering similar problems. The U.S. and Russia were holding their H-bomb forces at DEFCON 2 or the equivalent, but the status quo of restraint was very volatile under the circumstances. The SS-27 warheads exploded in space at what had been 7 P.M. on a Saturday night in Moscow. Urban traffic there was at a standstill, gridlocked, the microchips essential to modern vehicles all destroyed. Aircraft near Greater Moscow had been rendered unflyable, their avionics cooked. Airports in the pancaked zone were unusable without the severest risks, their radios, radars, navigation aids, and landing guidance systems all inoperable. Most planes in the air at the time of the EMP had managed to make forced landings, but some had crashed — the death toll was already extending beyond the missile complex at Srednekolymsk. Berlin, ever opportunistic and ruthless, so far seemed to be treating events with a studious silence. Jeffrey hoped to deliver them a sucker punch very soon.

The opening act in this drama, now that the icebreaker was here, would be to keep the Russians waiting. Jeffrey went to the XO’s stateroom to pack an overnight bag. And he took his own sweet time about it.

More than once, Nyurba ordered the SEAL chief to steer the air-cushioned Skat on shortcuts over tundra or swamps, saving miles compared to the wide, island-studded Kolyma’s winding course in the Arctic lowlands. He, the chief, and the radio man kept coughing up thick phlegm that they spat on the vibrating deck. At least, here in cleaner air, the commandos were out of their gas masks. Other vessels rushed upstream; the Skat, one of the fastest things on the river, overtook many heading down. In the sky, planes and helicopters flew back and forth, but none approached the Skat, which could defend itself with machine guns and shoulder-fired missiles he intentionally left unmanned.

At a medic’s request, Nyurba gave two pints of blood for the wounded, standing with a needle in his arm in the control cabin. His blood flowed from a vein to refill expended plasma packs — the wounded needed whole blood desperately. Two pints after a hard week was a lot; he felt dizzy. He drank water and ate field rations to replenish himself. He visited the men to offer comfort, distressed by how maimed they were in body and mind.

Jeffrey said good-bye to Bell, and wished the crew good fortune. Lugging the overnight bag, he paraded from Challenger’s hull into the icebreaker, up the ramp of a brow the big ship lowered from a