noise in disbelief.
“What's going on?” he managed to shout, before Keitel shot him in the back of the head.
Bock had already fired his second round into the engine box of another tank, and was loading a third. Seven M1A1s were burning before the first American gunner got a round loaded. The huge turret swung around while tank commanders screamed orders at their drivers and gunners. Bock saw the operating turret and swung towards it. His round missed wide to the left, but struck another Abrams behind the first. The American shot also missed high, because the gunner was excited. His second round was instantly loaded, and the American exploded a T-8o two down from Bock's. Gunther decided to leave this American alone.
“We're under attack — commence firing commence firing!” the “Soviet” tank commanders screamed into their own command circuits.
Keitel ran to the command vehicle. “I am Colonel Ivanenko. Your commander is dead — get moving! Take those crazy bastards out while we still have a regiment left!”
The operations officer hesitated, having not the slightest idea what was happening, only able to hear the gunfire. But the orders came from a colonel. He lifted his radio, dialed up the battalion command circuit and relayed the instruction.
There was the expected moment's hesitation. At least ten American tanks were now burning, but four were shooting back. Then the entire Soviet line opened fire, and three of the active American tanks were blown apart. Those shielded by the front row began firing off smoke and maneuvering, mainly backwards, as the Soviet tanks started to roll. Keitel watched in admiration as the Soviet T-8os moved out. Seven of them remained still, of which four were burning. Two more blew up before they crossed the line where once a wall had stood.
It was worth it, Keitel thought, just for this moment. Whatever Gunther had in mind, it was worth it to see the Russians and Americans killing each other.
Admiral Joshua Painter arrived at CINCLANT headquarters just in time to catch the dispatch from Theodore Roosevelt.
“Who's in command there?”
“Sir, the battlegroup commander flew into Naples. Senior officer in the group is Captain Richards,” Fleet Intelligence replied. “He said he had four MiGs inbound and armed, and since we're at DEFCON-TWO, he splashed them as a potential threat to the group.”
“Whose MiGs?”
“Could be from the Kuznetzov group, sir.”
“Wait a minute — you said DEFCON-TWO?”
“TR's east of Malta now, sir, SIOP applies,” Fleet Operations pointed out.
“Does anybody know what's going on?”
“I sure as hell don't,” the Fleet Intelligence Officer replied honestly.
“Get me Richards on a voice line.” Painter stopped. “What's the fleet status?”
“Everything alongside has orders to prepare to get underway, sir. That's automatic.”
“But why are we at DEFCON-THREE here?”
“Sir, they haven't told us that.”
“Fabulous.” Painter pulled the sweater over his head and yelled for coffee.
“ Roosevelt on line two, sir,” the intercom called. Painter punched the button and put the phone on speaker.
“This is CINCLANT.”
“Richards here, sir.”
“What's going on?”
“Sir, we're fifteen minutes into a DEFCON-TWO alert here. We had a flight of MiG-29s inbound, and I ordered them splashed.”
“Why?”
“They appeared to be armed, sir, and we copied a radio transmission about the explosion.”
Painter went instantly cold. “What explosion?”
“Sir, BBC reports a nuclear detonation in Denver. The local TV station that originated the report, they say, is now off the air. With that kind of information, I took the shot. I'm senior officer present. It's my battle group here. Sir, unless you have some more questions, I have things to do here.”
Painter knew he had to get out of the man's way. “Use your head, Ernie. Use your goddamned head.”
“Aye aye, sir. Out.” The line went dead.
“Nuclear explosion?” Fleet Intelligence asked.
Painter had a hot line to the National Military Command Center. He activated it. “This is CINCLANT.”
“Captain Rosselli, sir.”
“Have we had a nuclear explosion?”
“That's affirmative, sir. In the Denver area, NORAD estimates yield in the low hundreds and high casualties. That's all we know. We haven't got the word out to everyone yet.”
“Well, here's something else for you to know: Theodore Roosevelt just intercepted and splashed four MiG-29s inbound. Keep me posted. Unless otherwise directed, I'm putting everything to sea.”
Bob Fowler was into his third cup of coffee already. He was cursing himself for having drunk those four, strong German beers like he was Archie Bunker or something, and one of his fears was that the people here would notice the alcohol on his breath. Intellect told him that his thought processes might be somewhat affected by the alcohol intake, but he'd had the drinks over a period of hours, and natural processes plus the coffee either already had or soon would purge it from his system entirely.
For the first time, he was grateful for the death of his wife Marion. He'd been there at the bedside, had watched his beloved wife die. He knew what grief and tragedy were, and however dreadful the deaths of all those people in Denver might be, he told himself, he had to step back from it, had to set it aside, had to concentrate on preventing the death of anyone else.
So far, Fowler told himself, things had gone well. He had moved quickly to cut off the spread of the news. A nationwide panic was something that he didn't need. His military services were at a higher level of alert that would either prevent or deter an additional attack for some indefinite period of time.
“Okay,” he said on the conference line to NORAD and SAC. “Let's summarize what has happened to this point.”
NORAD answered: “Sir, we've had a single nuclear detonation in the hundred-kiloton range. There has as yet been no report from the scene. Our forces are moving to a high state of alert. Satellite communications are down —”
“Why?” Elizabeth Elliot asked in a voice more brittle than Fowler's. “What could have done that?”
'We don't know. A nuclear detonation in space might, from EMP effects — that's electromagnetic pulse. When a nuclear device explodes at high altitude, most of its energy is released in the form of electromagnetic radiation. The Russians know more about the practical effects of such explosions than we do; they have more empirical data from their tests at Novaya Zemlya back in the 1960s. But we have no evidence of such an explosion, and we should have noticed it. Therefore, a nuclear attack on satellites is most unlikely. Next possibility is a massive blast of electromagnetic energy from a ground source. Now, the Russians have pumped a lot of money into microwave weapons-research. They have a ship in the Eastern Pacific with lots of antennas aboard. It's the Yuri Gagarin. She's classed as a space-event-support ship, and she has four enormous high-gain antennas. That ship is currently three hundred miles off the coast of Peru, well within sight of the injured satellites. Supposedly, the ship is supporting operations for the Mir space station. Aside from that, we're out of guesses. I have an officer talking with Hughes Aerospace right now to see what their thinking is.
“Okay, we're still trying to get ATC tapes from Staple-ton to see if an aircraft might have delivered the bomb, and we are awaiting word from rescue and other teams dispatched to the site of the explosion. That's all I have.”
“We have two wings fully in the air, and more coming on line as we speak,” CINC-SAC said next. “All my missile wings are alerted. My Vice-C IN C is in the air in Looking Glass Auxiliary West, and another Kneecap is about to take off for where you are, sir.”
