The Seventh Angel

more, and they’ll start getting in each other’s way.”

The president nodded. “What’s your fall-back plan?”

“We’re going to try to figure out how Zhukov is communicating with his submarine. If we can interrupt his channel of communication, we can keep him from sending launch orders to the sub. That won’t necessarily help us kill the K-506, but it should prevent any more nuclear strikes while we track it down.”

“So you have to zero-in on their radio frequency, and break their encryption?” Secretary Solomon asked.

The admiral shook his head. “No, Madam Secretary. Ordinary radio waves only penetrate a few feet into water. A submerged submarine can’t transmit or receive radio unless it extends an antenna above the surface, or floats what we call a trailing wire. Neither one of those options works under ice. To transmit through water and ice, you have to use extremely low frequencies, with long enough wavelengths to penetrate. Our navy uses this method, and so do the Russians. We call our system ELF. They call their system Zevs. We use slightly different frequencies and transmission technologies, but the basic idea is the same. But Zhukov can’t access the Zevs system. There’s only one transmitter station, and it’s located near Murmansk. The Russian navy controls it, so there’s no chance that Zhukov is using it.”

The Secretary of State rested her elbows on the table. “Could he have built his own transmitter station? For Zevs, or ELF?”

‘No, Madam Secretary,” the admiral said. “The facilities are enormous, and far too expensive. The entire economy of Kamchatka for twenty years wouldn’t cover the cost. In any case, the antenna feed lines have to be about thirty miles long. You can’t hide a construction project that large. Not in the Congo, not in the arctic, not in the Sahara. Not even in Kamchatka. We don’t know what method they’re using, but do know that it’s not Zevs or ELF.”

“ONI is looking at this right now,” he said. “So are DARPA, and the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins. There’s got to be an answer. We’ll find it.” He faced the national security advisor. “With your permission, Mr. Brenthoven, I’d like to put the National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office on the problem as well. Those guys spend all their time peeking over fences and listening at keyholes. They might have some ideas about how Zhukov is talking to his sub.”

Gregory Brenthoven nodded. “I’ll put them on it.”

The president looked around the table. “We deploy the Tucson, Seawolf, and Bremerton into the Sea of Okhotsk to locate and destroy the K-506. We simultaneously investigate Zhukov’s method of communicating with his missile submarine. Does anyone have any objections to the plan, or any refinements to add?”

No one spoke.

The president pushed back his chair and stood up. “Go with it, Admiral. And keep me informed at every step.”

He paused, and was about to speak again when the door opened and a Secret Service agent walked in, escorting White House Communications Director Roger Chu.

The man crossed quickly to the head of the table. He was visibly trembling. “Please forgive the interruption, Mr. President, but there’s a breaking story on CNN that you need to see immediately, sir.” His eyes darted to the screen and then instantly back to the president. “My assistant is burning the clip onto disk right now. It should be here in a couple of minutes.”

“Thank you, Roger,” the president said. “While we’re waiting for the video, why don’t you give us the short version?”

Chu swallowed. “Yes, sir.” He looked around the table and saw that every face was turned in his direction. His voice wavered. “Mr. President, Governor Zhukov has just made another public statement to the media. Actually, it was a demand — issued to the United States, the Russian Federation, and Japan. He wants every submarine in our collective military inventories on the surface in the next three hours. He says he has agents in numerous countries, monitoring commercial imaging satellites. He says he knows exactly how many submarines we have at our disposal, and he wants every one of them out in the open, where he can see it. Attack subs, missile subs, all of them. Then he wants us to put them all in port, and keep them there. But first we have to bring them all to the surface, where he can see them.”

“That’s crazy,” the Secretary of Defense snapped. “Mr. President, we can’t do that.”

“The deadline is 6:00 AM, Greenwich Mean Time,” Roger Chu said. The man was close to tears. “Governor Zhukov says if a single submarine from any of our nations is not clearly visible on the surface, he’ll launch nuclear weapons against …” Chu looked down at a piece of paper in his hand. It was shaking so badly that he had trouble reading the list he had copied there. “Moscow, Vladivostok, Saint Petersburg, Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Denver.”

Chu lowered the paper, still clutched in his trembling hand. “Mr. President … Governor Zhukov said something about a surprise package, sir. He said he would also hit three cities that are not on the list. But he didn’t say which country those three cities were in.”

The room was utterly silent.

Roger Chu emitted a sound that might have been a sob.

“Mr. President, we can’t do that,” the Secretary of Defense said again. “I’m not just talking about our national policy against negotiating with terrorists, sir. I’m talking about strategic defense. Our attack subs would be bad enough, but we can’t reveal the locations of our missile submarines. The second we put those missile boats on the surface, our national security goes up in smoke. Our deterrence will be gone. Our second strike capability will be gone. We have to keep our missile submarines hidden. Otherwise, we can’t protect this country.”

The president looked at his Director of Communications. The normally rock-solid man was on the verge of breaking down.

“Does anyone see any alternatives?” the president said. “Any ideas at all, I don’t care how crazy.”

Gregory Brenthoven exhaled sharply. “We … My God, I can’t believe I’m saying this … We launch a pre- emptive nuclear strike against Kamchatka. We wipe out Zhukov before he can issue launch orders to his submarine.”

“That’s not going to work,” the Chief of Naval Operations said. “The Kamchatka peninsula is about 140,000 square miles. That’s nearly the size of California, and we don’t have any idea where — in all of that territory — Zhukov might be hiding. How do we know we can even hit him? And what happens if we don’t hit him?”

“I agree,” the president said. “If we launch nuclear strikes against Kamchatka and we don’t kill Zhukov, he’s going to incinerate every city and town west of the Rocky Mountains.”

“Then we hit it all,” Brenthoven said. “We turn the entire peninsula into a fucking parking lot.”

The Secretary of State shook her head. “No, Greg. They’re right. We don’t know what instructions Zhukov has given to the captain of his missile submarine. Maybe the guy’s got orders to nuke everything if he loses communication with Zhukov. We can’t take that chance. If we can’t take the submarine out of the equation, we can’t shoot at Zhukov.”

“Well, shit!” the president said. “Shit, shit, shit, and double-shit. What do we do now?”

“I hate to say this,” the CNO said. “But we’re going to have to put our subs on the surface.”

“We cannot knuckle under to a fucking madman,” Secretary of Defense Kilpatrick said. “We can’t do it. We just can’t.”

“We don’t have a choice,” the president said. “I’m not going to sacrifice six million American lives to protect our national prestige. If we have to kiss this guy’s ass, then we get on our knees and pucker up. Right up until the moment that we stick a knife in his heart.”

He turned his eyes to the Chief of Naval Operations. “Put the submarines on the surface Bob. All of them. Do it now.”

He shifted his gaze to his secretary of state. “Liz, we need to open immediate diplomatic dialogues with Japan and Russia. Make sure they intend to comply with Zhukov’s deadline. Hopefully, they’re smart enough to