but this was horribly time-consuming. It would take forever to get in to the stadium. And there were people in there. He was sure of it. There had to be. Callaghan just stood there, out of the water spray, guilty that he was warmer than his people. He turned when he heard the roar of a large diesel engine.
“Hello.” It was a man wearing the uniform of a U.S. Army colonel. The nametag on his parka read Lyle. “I hear you need heavy equipment.”
“What you got?”
“I have three engineer tanks, M728s, just rolling in now. Got something else, too.”
“What's that?”
“A hundred MOPP suits, you know, chemical warfare gear. It ain't perfect, but it's better than what your people got on. Warmer, too. Why don't you pull your people off and get them outfitted. Truck's over there.” The colonel pointed.
Callaghan hesitated for a moment, but decided that he couldn't turn this offer down. He called his people off and pulled them back to don the military gear. Colonel Lyle tossed him an outfit.
The water fog's a good idea, ought to keep dust and stuff down. So, what do you want us to do?'
“You can't tell from here, but there's still some structure in there. I think there might be survivors. I have to find out. Can you help us get through these cars?”
“Sure.” The colonel lifted his own radio and ordered the first vehicle in. The M728, Callaghan saw, was essentially a tank with a dozer blade on the front, and a big A-frame and winch on the back of the turret. There was even an odd-looking short-barrelled gun.
“This isn't going to be very neat. Can you live with that?”
“Screw neat — get in there!”
“Okay.” Lyle picked up the interphone at the left rear of the vehicle. “Make a hole,” he ordered.
The driver revved up the diesel just as the first firemen returned. He made a sincere effort to avoid the fire hoses — even so he split eight two-and-a-half-inch lines. The blade dropped, and the tank crashed into the mass of burning cars at twenty miles per hour. It made a hole, all right, about thirty feet deep. Then the tank backed off and started widening it.
“Jesus,” Callaghan observed. “What do you know about radiation stuff?”
“Not much. I checked with the NEST guys before I drove down. They ought to be here any time. Until then…” Lyle shrugged. “You really think there's live ones in there?”
“Part of the structure is still there. I saw it from the chopper.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah, I saw it.”
“But that's crazy. The NORAD guys say it was a big one.”
“What?” Callaghan shouted over the noise of the tank.
“The bomb, it was supposed to be a big one. There shouldn't even be a parking lot here.”
“You mean this was a little one?” Callaghan looked at the man as though he were crazy.
“Hell, yes!” Lyle stopped for a moment. “If there's people in there…” He ran to the back of the tank and grabbed the phone. A moment later, the M728 stopped.
“What's the matter?”
“If there are survivors, hell, we might squash one this way. I just told him to take it easier. God damn, you're right. And I thought you were crazy.”
“What do you mean?” Callaghan shouted again, waving his firefighters to put their spray on the tank also.
“There may be survivors in there. This bomb was a hell of a lot smaller than they told me on the phone.”
“ Maine, this is Sea Devil One-Three,” the P-3C Orion called. “We're about forty minutes out from your position. What seems to be the problem?”
“We have screw and shaft damage, and we have an Akula in the neighborhood, last fix five-zero thousand yards southwest,” Ricks answered.
“Roger that. We'll see if we can drive him off for you. We'll report when we get on station. Out.”
“Captain, we can do three knots, let's do that, north, open as much as we can,” Claggett said.
Ricks shook his head. “No, we'll stay quiet.”
“Sir, our friend out there must have copied the collision transient. He will be coming this way. We've lost our best sonar. Smart move is to evade as best we can.”
“No, the smart move is to stay covert.”
“Then at least launch a MOSS.”
“That makes sense, sir,” the weapons officer thought.
“Okay, program it to sound like we are now, and give it a southerly course.”
“Right.” Maine 's number-three torpedo tube was loaded with a MOSS, a Mobile Submarine Simulator. Essentially a modified torpedo itself, the MOSS contained a sonar transducer connected to a noise generator, instead of a warhead. It would radiate the sound of an Ohio-class submarine, and was designed to simulate a damaged one. Since shaft damage was one of the few reasons that an Ohio might make noise, that option was already programmed in. The weapons officer selected the proper noise track, and launched the weapon a few minutes later. The MOSS sped off to the south, and two thousand yards away, it began radiating.
The skies had cleared over Charleston, South Carolina. What had fallen as snow in Virginia and Maryland had been mainly sleet here. The afternoon sun had removed most of that, returning the antebellum city to its normally pristine state. As the Admiral commanding Submarine Group Six watched from the tender, two of his ballistic- missile submarines started down the Cooper River for the sea and safety. He wasn't the only one to watch. One hundred ninety miles over his head, a Soviet reconnaissance satellite made its pass, continuing up the coast to Norfolk, where the sky was also clearing. The satellite downlinked its pictures to the Russian intelligence center on Cuba 's western tip. From there it was immediately relayed by communications satellite. Most of the Russian satellites used high-polar orbits, and had not been affected by the BMP. The imagery was in Moscow in a matter of seconds.
“Yes?” the Defense Minister asked.
“We have imagery of three American naval bases. Missile submarines at Charleston and King's Bay are putting to sea.”
“Thank you.” The Defense Minister replaced the phone. Another threat. He relayed it at once to President Narmonov.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that the military action taken by the Americans is not merely defensive. Some of the submarines in question carry the Trident D-5 missile, which has first-strike capability. You'll recall how interested the Americans were in forcing us to eliminate our SS-18s?”
“Yes, and they are removing a large number of their Minutemen,” Narmonov said. “So?”
“So, they don't need land-based missiles to make a first-strike. They can do it from submarines. We cannot. We depend on our land-based ICBMs for that.”
“And what of our SS-18s?”
“We're removing the warheads from some of them even as we speak, and if they ever get that damned deactivation facility working, we'll be in full compliance with the treaty — we are now, in fact, just the damned Americans don't admit it.” The Defense Minister paused. Narmonov wasn't getting it. “In other words, while we have eliminated some of our most accurate missiles, the Americans still have theirs. We are at a strategic disadvantage.”
“I have not had much sleep, and my thinking is not at its best,” Narmonov said testily. “You agreed to this treaty document only a year ago, and now you're telling me that we are threatened by it?”
They're all the same, the Defense Minister thought. They never listen, they never really pay attention. Tell them something a hundred times and they just don't hear you!
“The elimination of so many missiles and warheads changes the correlation of forces—”
“Rubbish! We're still equal in every way!” President Narmonov objected.
