here.” Dr. Elliot turned to the speaker phone. “General Borstein, how hard is it to get a nuclear device into the United States?”
“With our border controls, it's child's play,” NORAD replied. “What are you saying, Dr. Elliot?”
“I'm saying that we've had hard intel for some time now that Narmonov is in political trouble — that his military is acting up, and that there's a nuclear dimension. Okay, what if they stage a coup? A Sunday evening — Monday morning — is good timing, because everyone's asleep. We always assumed that the nuclear element was for domestic blackmail — but what if the operation was more clever than that? What if they figured they could decapitate our government in order to prevent our interference with their coup? Okay, the bomb goes off, and Durling is on Kneecap — just like he is right now — and they're talking to him. They can predict what we're going to think, and they pre-plan their statements over the Hot Line. We go on automatic alert, and so do they — you see? We can't interfere with the coup in any way.”
“Mr. President, before you evaluate that possibility, I think you need some outside advice from the intelligence community,” CINC-SAC said.
Another phone lit up. The yeoman got it.
“For you, Mr. President, NMCC.”
“Who is this?” Fowler asked.
“Sir, this is Captain Jim Rosselli at the National Military Command Center. We have two reports of contact between U.S. and Soviet forces. USS Theodore Roosevelt reports that they have splashed — that means shot down, sir — a flight of four inbound Russian MiG-29 aircraft—”
“What? Why?”
“Sir, under the Rules of Engagement, the captain of a ship has the right to take defense action to protect his command. Theodore Roosevelt is now at DEFCON-TWO, and as the alert level changes, you get more latitude in what you can do, and when you can take action. Sir, the second is as follows: there is an unconfirmed report of shots being exchanged between Russian and American tanks in Berlin. SACEUR says the radio message stopped — I mean, it was cut off, sir. Before that, a U.S. Army captain reported that Soviet tanks were attacking the Berlin Brigade at its base in southern Berlin, and that a tank battalion of ours was just about wiped out, sir. They were attacked in their lager by Soviet forces stationed just across from them. Those two things — the reports, I mean, were almost simultaneous. The reported times were just two minutes apart, Mr. President. We're trying to reestablish contact with Berlin right now, going through SACEUR at Mons, Belgium.”
“Christ,” Fowler observed. “ Elizabeth, does this fit into your scenario?”
“It could show that they're not kidding, that they are serious about not being interfered with.”
Most of the American forces had escaped out of the lager. The senior officer on the scene had decided on the spot to turn and run for cover in the woods and residential streets around the brigade base. He was a lieutenant- colonel, the brigade executive officer. The colonel commanding the brigade was nowhere to be found, and the XO was now considering his options. The brigade had two mechanized infantry battalions, and one of tanks. From the last, only nine of fifty-two M1A1s had gotten away. He could see the glow from the rest of them, still burning in their lager.
A DEFCON-THREE alert out of nowhere, and then minutes later, this. Over forty tanks and a hundred men lost, shot down without warning. Well, he'd see about that.
The Berlin Brigade had been in place since long before his birth, and scattered throughout its encampment were defensive positions. The colonel dispatched his remaining tanks, and ordered his Bradley fighting vehicles to volley-fire their TOW-2, missiles.
The Russian tanks had overrun the tank lager and stopped. They had no further orders. Battalion commanders were not yet in control of their formations, left behind by the mad dash of the T-8os across the line, and the regimental commander was nowhere to be found. Without orders, the tank companies stopped, sitting still, looking for targets. The regimental executive officer was also missing, and when the senior battalion commander realized this, his tank dashed off to the headquarters vehicle, since he was the next-senior officer in the regiment. It was amazing, he thought. First the readiness drill, next the flash alert from Moscow, and then the Americans had started shooting. He hadn't a clue what was going on. Even the barracks and administrative buildings were still lit up, he realized. Someone would have to get those lights off. His T-8o was back-lit as though on a target range.
“Command tank, two o'clock, skylined, moving left to right,” a sergeant told a corporal.
“Identified,” the gunner replied over the intercom.
“Fire.”
“On the way.” The corporal squeezed his trigger. The seal-cap blew off the missile tube, and the TOW-2 blasted out, trailing behind a thin control wire. The target was about twenty-five hundred meters away. The gunner kept his cross-hairs on target, guiding the antitank missile to its target. It took eight seconds, and the gunner had the satisfaction of seeing detonation right in the center of the turret.
“Target,” the Bradley commander said, indicating a direct hit. “Cease fire. Now let's find another one of these fuckers… ten o'clock, tank, coming around the PX!”
The turret came left. “Identified!”
“Okay, what does CIA make of this?” Fowler asked.
“Sir, again, all we have is scattered and unconnected information,” Ryan replied.
“ Roosevelt has a Soviet carrier battle group a few hundred miles behind them, and they carry MiG-29s,” Admiral Painter said.
“They're even closer to Libya, and our friend the colonel has a hundred of the same aircraft.”
“Flying over water at midnight?” Painter asked. “When's the last time you heard of the Libyans doing that — and twenty-some miles from one of our battle groups!”
“What about Berlin?” Liz Elliot asked.
“We don't know!” Ryan stopped and took a deep breath. “Remember that we just don't know much.”
“Ryan, what if SPINNAKER was right?” Elliot asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What if there is a military coup going on right now over there, and they set a bomb off over here to keep us from interfering, to decapitate us?”
“That's totally crazy,” Jack answered. “Risk a war? Why do it? What would we do if there were a coup? Attack at once?”
“Their military might expect us to,” Elliot pointed out.
“Disagree. I think SPINNAKER might have been lying to us from the beginning on this issue.”
“Are you making this up?” Fowler asked. It was coming home to the President now that he might actually have been the real target of the bomb, that Elizabeth 's theoretical model for the Russian plan was the only thing that made sense.
“No, sir!” Ryan snapped back indignantly. “I'm the hawk here, remember? The Russian military is too smart to pull something like this. It's too big a gamble.”
“Then explain the attacks on our forces!” Elliot said.
“We don't know for sure that there have been attacks on our forces.”
“So, now you think our people are lying?” Fowler asked.
“Mr. President, you are not thinking this through. Okay, let's assume that there is an on-going coup in the Soviet Union — I don't accept that hypothesis, but let's assume it, okay? The purpose, you say, for exploding the bomb over here is to keep us from interfering. Fine. Then why attack our military forces if they want us to sit on our hands?”
“To show that they're serious,” Elliot fired back.
“That's crazy! It's tantamount to telling us they did explode the bomb here. Do you think they would expect us not to respond to a nuclear attack?” Ryan demanded, then answered his own question: “It does not make sense!”
“Then give me something that does,” Fowler said.
“Mr. President, we are in the very earliest stages of a crisis. The information we have coming in now is
