Fowler nearly exploded. It was like listening to a football game on the radio, and—“What does all this mean!”
“Sir, we can't tell… coming up to Uzhur now. Not much activity, Uzhur has the new mark of the -18, the Mod 5… no trucks, I can see sentries again. Mr. President, I would estimate that we have more than the usual number of sentries around. Gladkaya next… that'll take a couple of minutes… ”
“Why are the trucks there?” Fowler asked.
“Sir, all I can say is that they appear to be working on the birds.”
“God damn it! Doing what!” Fowler screamed into the speaker phone.
The reply was very different from the cool voice of a few minutes earlier. “Sir, there's no way we can tell that.”
“Then tell me what you do know!”
“Mr. President, as I already said, these missiles are old ones, they're maintenance-intensive, and they were scheduled for destruction, but they're overdue for that. We observed increased site security at all three SS-18 regiments, but at Alyesk every bird we saw had a truck and a maintenance crew there, and the silos were all open. That's all we can tell from these pictures, sir.”
“Mr. President,” General Borstein said, “Major Costello has told you everything he can.”
“General, you told me that we'd get something useful from this. What did we get?”
“Sir, it may be significant that there's all that work going on at Alyesk.”
“But you don't know what the work is!”
“No, sir, we don't,” Borstein admitted rather sheepishly.
“Could they be readying those missiles for launch?”
“Yes, sir, that is a possibility.”
“My God.”
“Robert,” the National Security Advisor said, “I am getting very frightened.”
“ Elizabeth, we don't have time for this.” Fowler collected himself. “We must maintain control of ourselves, and control the situation. We must. We must convince Narmonov—”
“Robert, don't you see! It's not him! That's the only thing that makes sense. We don't know who we're dealing with!”
“What can we do about it?”
“I don't know!”
“Well, whoever it is, they don't want a nuclear war. Nobody would. It's too crazy,” the President assured her, sounding almost like a parent.
“Are you sure of that? Robert, are you really sure? They tried to kill us!”
“Even if that's true, we have to set it aside.”
“But we can't. If they were willing to try once, they will be willing to try again! Don't you see?”
Just a few feet behind him, Helen D'Agustino realized that she'd read Liz Elliot correctly the previous summer. She was as much a coward as a bully. And now whom did the President have to advise him? Fowler rose from his chair and headed for the bathroom. Pete Connor trailed along as far as the door, because even Presidents are not allowed to make that trip alone. “Daga” looked down on Dr. Elliot. Her face was — what? the Secret Service agent asked herself. It was beyond fear. Agent D'Agustino was every bit as frightened herself, but she didn't — that was unfair, wasn't it? Nobody was asking her for advice, nobody was asking her to make sense of this mess. Clearly, none of it made sense at all. It simply didn't. At least no one was asking her about it, but that wasn't her job. It was Liz Elliot's job.
“I got a contact here,” one of the sonar operators said aboard Sea Devil One-Three. “Buoy three, bearing two-one-five… blade count now… single screw — nuclear submarine contact! Not American, screw's not American.”
“Got him on four,” another sonarman said. “This dude's hauling ass, blade count shows over twenty, maybe twenty-five knots, bearing my buoy is three-zero-zero.”
“Okay,” the Tacco said, “I have a posit. Can you give me drift?”
“Bearing now two-one-zero!” the first one responded. “This guy is moving!”
Two minutes later, it was clear, the contact was heading straight for USS Maine.
“Is this possible?” Jim Rosselli asked. The radio message had gone from Kodiak straight to the NMCC. The commander of the patrol squadron didn't know what to do and was screaming for instructions. The report came in the form of a R ED R OCKET, copied off also to C IN CP AC, who would also be requesting direction from above.
“What do you mean?” Barnes asked.
“He's heading straight for where Maine is. How the hell could he know where she is?”
“How'd we find out?”
“SLOT buoy, radio — oh, no, that asshole hasn't maneuvered clear?”
“Kick this to the President?” Colonel Barnes asked.
“I guess.” Rosselli lifted the phone.
“This is the President.”
“Sir, this is Captain Jim Rosselli at the National Military Command Center. We have a disabled submarine in the Gulf of Alaska, USS Maine, an Ohio-class missile boat. Sir, she has prop damage and cannot maneuver. There is a Soviet attack submarine heading straight towards her, about ten miles out. We have a P-3C Orion ASW aircraft that is now tracking the Russian. Sir, he requests instructions.”
“I thought they can't track our missile submarines.”
“Sir, nobody can, but in this case they must have DF — I mean used direction-finders to locate the sub when she radioed for help. Maine is a missile submarine, part of SIOP, and is under DEFCON-TWO Rules of Engagement. Therefore, so is the Orion that's riding shotgun for her. Sir, they want to know what to do.”
“How important is Maine?” Fowler asked.
General Fremont took that. “Sir, that sub is part of the SIOP, a big part, over two hundred warheads, very accurate ones. If the Russians can take her out, they've hurt us badly.”
“How badly?”
“Sir, it makes one hell of a hole in our war plan. Maine carries the D-5 missile, and they are tasked counter- force. They're supposed to attack missile fields and selected command-and-control assets. If something happens to her, it would take literally hours to patch up that hole in the plan.”
“Captain Rosselli, you're Navy, right?”
“Yes, Mr. President — sir, I have to tell you that I was CO of Maine 's Gold Crew until a few months ago.”
“How soon before we have to make a decision?”
“Sir, the Akula is inbound at twenty-five knots, currently about twenty thousand yards from our boat. Technically speaking, they're within torpedo range right now.”
“What are my options?”
“You can order an attack or not order an attack,” Rosselli replied.
“General Fremont?”
“Mr. President — no, Captain Rosselli?”
“Yes, General?”
“How sure are you that the Russians are boring straight in on our boat?”
“The signal is quite positive on that, sir.”
“Mr. President, I think we have to protect our assets. The Russians won't be real pleased with an attack on one of their boats, but it's an attack boat, not a strategic asset. If they challenge us on this, we can explain it. What I want to know is why they ordered the boat in this way. They must know that it would alarm us.”
“Captain Rosselli, you have my authorization for the aircraft to engage and destroy the submarine.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Rosselli lifted the other phone. “GRAY BEAR, this is MARBLEHEAD ”—the current codename for the NMCC—“National Command Authority approves I repeat approves your request. Acknowledge.”
