Dimitri shook his head, knowing full well it would be a long time before anyone returned…or would even want to after they discovered the probable toxic pollution in the air. His eyes glancing upwards as the speakers beeped once more, realising there was now less than one minute to go, his thoughts considering the sights all across eastern Russia and some of the forward mobile sites.
Loud claxons were resounding across the countryside, nearby residents running to their houses in alarm as startled animals bayed and ran from the noises, the local dogs barking furiously as the vibrations irritated their ears. In discreet forest clearings and in the Ural Mountain snow ranges, the noise seemed to pulse through the trees, becoming louder as the whirring of motors preceded reinforced steel ground hatches rising, steam and smoke billowing upwards from the openings as birds screeched and took flight in alarm.
Snow and brush debris fell from the risen thick steel cupolas, the camouflage netting in the surrounding trees stirring and flickering in the disturbed cold as engineers and electricians completed their final outer checks before withdrawing. In the forward areas nearer the Ukrainian and Belarus borders, large cumbersome trucks had been concealed in dense woodland for a couple of days, their crews pulling netting and selected foliage from their vehicles, the technicians and commanders retreating into the more distant command tents with remote wire operated military laptops.
Dimitri glanced at the clock before him on the laptop screen, the seconds ticking away as he drew a nervous breath, the control room falling into an ominous silence as the operators sat back in their chairs, several senior officers emerging from side rooms as they realised the time was near for an announcement.
The more senior commanders gathered in the Volgograd bunker to the south with the newly established covert cabled network crisscrossing Russia to bypass Moscow from Voronezh in the west to Murmansk in the north and Vladivostok to the far south east, including most of the remote missile and military stations in the north east and Siberia. Vladivostok was now home to the main communication network with China and North Korea, providing the Russians with up to date information from fighting on the peninsula and in the countries south of the Chinese mainland. After several hastily convened cabled video conferences, both superpowers were now of mutual opinion…there was limited time left to act.
Dimitri shook his head, glancing down at the numerous printed communiques from across the city and further afield from local towns, his role now reduced further as more senior officers had arrived at the bunker. A wry smile formed across his lips as he recalled their immediate insistence that he remained the main representative for conference calls with the western leaders, sustaining a superior rank in name only to present control and uniformity, but also appealing considerably to the dark Russian sense of humour.
The loud electronic beep sounded once more, this time beginning to count down the last fifteen seconds, alerting the security cleared staff to the limited time available to locate one of the covert speakers to listen to. All knew the instructions to listen in a sound proofed room, but had rarely experienced the actual process until recently, this being the fourth secure briefing in the last seven days, but the only one that had not been sourced from the Kremlin in Moscow.
The final beeped seconds ticked away as Dimitri settled in his chair, wiping his eyes as he leant sideways to reach for a bottle in the foot well beneath, his eyes scrutinising the clear liquid as he unscrewed the cap, the clink of glass against glass alerting the controllers below as he filled his tumbler. Lifting the glass up to the light as if in a toast, he stared through the strong vodka before sipping from it, his eyes straining in relish as he swilled the coarse liquid across his tongue, then swigging from it as the beeping stopped, the senior Intelligence commander in Volgograd going live across the nation’s secret bunker network.
The older voice spoke softly, almost reassuringly solemn, ‘People of the Russian Federation, it is with great regret that I announce the destruction of our historical capital. This aggressive and evil enemy has brought ultimate destruction to our nation and killed millions of innocent people…something that many of you will realise has occurred before in our history.’ The senior official drew breath, ‘We face a determined and vicious enemy…one that is resolved to not only destroy us, but also our allies and the people of the west. The United States of America has also suffered extensive casualties, with widespread destruction almost paralleled with our own…the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego apparently completely destroyed.’
There was a short silence, the voice rising in intensity, ‘We of the Russian Federation will not tolerate such naked aggression and have therefore decided to act with our neighbours, the People’s Republic of China, before it may become too late.’ The man drew a deep breath once more, ‘Within the next few minutes both our great countries will launch missiles at one of the orbiting ships as it emerges above. The assault will be timed precisely to impact on the enemy vessel as it passes overhead and the explosions will be outside the earth’s atmosphere, so there will be little risk to the population below.’ The tone seemed
