“Correct.”
“And they're adding to their submarine missile force also?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Do you have any good news?”
“Sir, the news is that there is no real news right now, and you're—”
“Listen, Ryan. One last time: I want information from you and nothing else. You brought me that Kadishev stuff and now you're saying it was all wrong. So, why should I believe you now?”
“Sir, when I gave it to you I told you it was not confirmed!”
“I think we may have confirmation now,” Liz pointed out. “General Borstein, if they're fully on line, what exactly is the threat?”
“The fastest thing they can get to us is an ICBM. Figure one regiment of SS-18s targeted on the Washington area, and most of the others targeted on our missile fields in the Dakotas, plus the sub bases at Charleston, King's Bay, Bangor, and the rest. Warning time will be twenty-five minutes.”
“And we will be targets here?” Liz asked.
“That is a reasonable assumption, Dr. Elliot.”
“So, they will try to use SS-18s to finish what the first weapon missed?”
“If that was their work, yes.”
“General Fremont, how far out is the backup Kneecap?”
“Dr. Elliot, it took off about ten minutes ago. it'll be at Hagerstown in ninety-five minutes. They have some good tail winds.” CINC-SAC regretted that addition almost at once.
“So, if they are thinking about an attack, and they launch it within the next hour and a half, we're dead here?”
“Yes.”
“ Elizabeth, it's our job to prevent that, remember?” Fowler said quietly.
The National Security Advisor looked over at the President. Her face might have been made of glass, it looked so brittle. It wasn't supposed to be like this. She was the chief advisor to the most powerful man in the world, in a place of ultimate safety, guarded by dedicated servants, but less than thirty minutes from the time some faceless, nameless Russian made a decision, perhaps one made already, she'd be dead. Dead, a few ashes in the wind, certainly no more than that. Everything she'd worked for, all the books and classes and seminars would have ended in a blinding, annihilating flash.
“Robert, we don't even know who we're talking to,” she said in an uneven voice.
“Back to their message, Mr. President,” General Fre-mont said. “'Additional troops to investigate.' Sir, that sounds like reinforcements.”
A rookie fireman found the first survivor, crawling up the concrete ramp from the basement loading dock. It was amazing he'd made it. His hands had second-degree burns, and the crawl had ground bits of glass and concrete and Lord knew what into his injuries. The fire-fighter lifted the man — it was a cop — and carried him off to the evacuation point. The two remaining fire engines sprayed both men with water, then they were ordered to strip, and they were hosed again. The police officer was semi-conscious, but tore a sheet of paper off the clipboard he'd been holding, and all during the ambulance ride he was trying to tell the fireman something, but the firefighter was too cold, too tired, and much too scared to pay attention. He'd done his job, and might have lost his life in the process. It was altogether too much for a twenty-year-old who simply stared at the wet floor of the ambulance and shivered inside his blanket.
The entranceway had been topped with a pre-stressed concrete lintel. That had been shattered by the blast, with one piece blocking the way in. A soldier from the tank snaked a cable from the turret-mounted winch around the largest of the remaining blocks. As he did this, Chief Callaghan kept staring at his watch. It was too late to stop now in any case. He had to see this through if he died in the process.
The cable went taut, pulling the concrete fragment clear. Miraculously, the remainder of the entranceway did not collapse. Callaghan led the way through the rubbled opening, with Colonel Lyle behind him.
The emergency lights were on, and it seemed that every sprinkler head had gone off. This part of the stadium was where the main came into the structure, Callaghan remembered, and that explained the falling water. There were other sounds, the kind that came from people. Callaghan went into a men's room and found two women, both sitting in the water, both of their coats sprinkled with their own vomit.
“Get 'em out of here!” he shouted to his men. “Go both ways, give it a quick check, and get back here fast as you can!” Callaghan checked all the toilet stalls. They were unoccupied. Another look at the room showed nothing else. They'd come all this way for two women in the wrong bathroom. Just two. The chief looked at Colonel Lyle, but there really wasn't anything to say. Both men walked out into the concourse.
It took Callaghan a moment to realize it, even though it was right there, an entrance to the stadium's lower level. Whereas only a short time before the view would have been of the stadium south side, and the roof, what he now saw was the mountains, still outlined in orange by a distant setting sun. The opening called to him, and as though in a trance, he walked up the ramp.
It was a scene from hell. Somehow this section had been shielded one way or another from the blast. But not the thermal pulse. There were perhaps three hundred seats, still largely intact, still with people in them. What had once been people. They were burned black, charcoaled like overdone meat, worse than any fire victim he'd ever seen in nearly thirty years of fighting fires. At least three hundred, still sitting there, looking at where the field had been.
“Come on, Chief,” Major Lyle said, pulling him away. The man collapsed, and Lyle saw him vomiting inside his gas mask. The colonel got it off him, and pulled him clear. “Time to leave. It's all over here. You've done your job.” It turned out that four more people were still alive. The firemen loaded them on the engine deck of the tank, which drove off at once to the evacuation point. The remaining firefighters there washed everything off, and departed, too.
Perhaps the only good luck of the day, Larry Parsons thought, was the snow cover. It had attenuated the thermal damage to the adjacent buildings. Instead of hundreds of house fires, there were only a few. Better, the afternoon sun of the previous day had been just intense enough to form a crust on the yards and roofs around the stadium. Parsons was looking for material on that crust. He and his men searched with scintillometers. The almost incredible fact of the matter was that while a nuclear bomb converted much of its mass into energy, the total mass lost in the process was minuscule. Aside from that, matter is very hard to destroy, and he was searching for residue from the device. This was easier than one might have thought. The material was dark, on a flat white surface, and it was also highly radioactive. He had a choice of six very hot spots, two miles down-range of the stadium. Parsons had taken the hottest. Dressed in his lead-coated protective suit, he was trudging across a snow-covered lawn. Probably an elderly couple, he thought. No kids had built a snowman or lain down to make angels. The rippling sound of the counter grew larger… there.
The residue was hardly larger in size than dust particles, but there were many of them, probably pulverized gravel and paving material from the parking lot, Parsons thought. If he were very lucky, it had been sucked up through the center of the fireball, and bomb residue had affixed itself to it. If he were lucky. Parsons scooped up a trowel's worth and slid it into a plastic bag. This he tossed to his teammate, who dropped the bag into a lead bucket.
“Very hot stuff, Larry!”
“I know. Let me get one more.” He scooped up another sample and bagged it as well. Then he lifted his radio.
“Parsons here. You got anything?”
“Yeah, three nice ones, Larry. Enough, I think, for an assay.”
“Meet me at the chopper.”
“On the way.”
Parsons and his partner walked off, ignoring the wide eyes watching from behind windows. Those people were not his concern for the moment. Thank God, he thought, that they hadn't bothered him with questions. The helicopter sat in the middle of a street, its rotor still turning.
“Where to?” Andy Bowler asked.
