special, yes? Easy to look at, as they say, and a dynamo in bed! I'll let you try her, if you like.'
The idea disgusted Karelin, who had already decided that Marchenko was too comfortable with this post, too willing to enjoy the perquisites of his position without exercising the responsibilities that went with them. Using his secretary as his personal whore…
Karelin knew that the practice was common enough in the higher ranks of the Red Army. Unlike the United States, where better than ten percent of its active military was composed of women, and contrary to the widespread myth of total equality for Russian women in every field of economic, military, and political life, only ten thousand of Russia's 4.4-million-member army were women, and the vast majority of them served in clerical and medical positions.
Women, especially compliant women willing to use their bodies to advance their own fortunes, were cherished throughout the upper ranks of the Soviet hierarchy, traded back and forth for favors, even assigned to officers as rewards for service well done, like a bigger office or apartment or a bump up to a higher pay grade.
Though he'd often tried to imagine it, Karelin could not picture what it must be like in the American military, where women were even now being actively integrated into front-line units. Several weeks earlier he'd read a report about female aviators assigned to American carriers and he'd laughed out loud. Women aboard ship? Flying combat aircraft? Absurd! The military was the domain of men, and women's roles there were and should be sharply restricted.
As for Marchenko, well, he'd about lived out his usefulness at the Third cavern. A younger, more aggressive man was needed here, one who would not let luxury interfere with good judgment. For the time being, though, Russia's ruling junta desperately needed the support of men like Marchenko's uncle.
The fat whoremaster would keep his command for a short time longer, at least until a way could be found to ease him up the ladder to some less sensitive command.
'Thank you, Comrade,' Karelin said. His eyes shifted toward a gleaming samovar in one corner of the office. 'But for now I would settle for some tea.'
'Of course. Of course. Have a seat, Comrade Admiral.' Marchenko spoke briefly over the intercom, directing Yelana to come in and pour tea. Karelin, meanwhile, snapped his fingers at his aide, who produced a key to unchain the briefcase from his wrist. The secretary strutted in a moment later and, as she poured tea for Karelin, bending far enough forward to allow him a glimpse down the front of her uniform blouse, she gave him a secret smile that nearly made him regret his refusal of her boss's offer. His earlier suspicions had been correct. She was not wearing a bra.
Later, with both the girl and the aide gone from the room, the door locked, and glasses of tea steaming on Marchenko's desk, Karelin opened the briefcase and extracted the heavy sheaf of folders, papers, and maps inside.
'You are to be congratulated, Comrade Rear Admiral,' he told Marchenko smoothly. 'Of the four caverns, yours is the only one even approximately on schedule.'
Marchenko glowed beneath the praise. 'We only do our duty for the Revolution, Comrade Admiral.'
'This means, however, that more will be expected of you. Kashirin and Golovanov report that their Typhoons will be another week in preparation at least.' Despite direct military rule of the nation's supply and transport nets, the inefficiencies of the old regime remained. Of the other six available Typhoon PLARBs, two were laid up in the yards at Severodvinsk, their repairs held up by shipments of parts that were already months overdue. Three more were at the other three Polyamyy Caverns, still waiting for the torpedoes, food supplies, and missiles that made them more than inert steel mountains tied uselessly to their docks. Knowing how the system worked, Karelin suspected that Marchenko had received his missiles and other supplies by mentioning his uncle's name.
The fleet's last Typhoon, Blestyashchiy Krasnyy Pabeda, was on station at her bastion beneath the Arctic ice, but Karelin could not use him. While it was possible to communicate with the vessel through ELF radio transmissions ? how else to give the order to fire? ? the Magnificent Red Victory's crew had not been screened against the possibility that they might be ordered to direct a nuclear attack against their own homeland.
The burden Of Derzkiy Plamya, Operation Audacious Flame, would of necessity rest entirely on Marchenko's blocky shoulders.
'This plan is certainly audacious,' Marchenko said, leafing through a binder filled with loose-leaf pages, each marked SOVERSHENNO SEKRETNO at top and bottom. He looked shaken. 'To deliver nuclear fire upon our own cities, our own people…'
'To deliver 'nuclear fire,' as you call it, on traitors, dissidents, and rebels. In war, especially in a war such as this that shall determine the character and heart and mind of this nation for the next thousand years, there is no room for half measures. Besides, if Leonov and his cronies take us seriously, there will be no need for an actual launch.'
Karelin was surprised at how calmly he could sit in this office, sipping tea as he discussed the use of nuclear weapons ? or at least the threat of nuclear weapons ? in Russia's worsening civil war.
As the battle lines were drawn between neo-Soviet forces in the north and the so-called democrats in the south, it had become increasingly clear that the bulk of the former Soviet Union's ICBMs, including the vast missile fields of Kazakhstan and Ukraine, would eventually fall into rebel hands. Most were still under the control of Strategic Rocket Force commanders loyal to Moscow, but they were isolated and under siege. Worse, the rebels now held the launch codes for the land-based, long-range ICBMs.
But Moscow still controlled a number of short- and intermediate-range missile batteries, and perhaps most telling of all, she controlled the Northern Fleet… including the eight Typhoon submarines based near Polyamyy.
Those eight Typhoons alone carried unimaginable potential firepower, 160 ICBMs, mounting a total of over twelve hundred warheads of one-hundred-kiloton yield apiece.
The deadly threat posed by a single Typhoon, Moscow believed, would be enough to cow the rebels. They would dare not launch a nuclear strike of their own, even if they had managed to come up with the necessary codes, not when a launch would devastate the entire country. The leaders of the military command in Moscow believed, frankly, that while they could afford to vaporize cities like Samara or Tashkent, Leonov could not possibly contemplate the destruction of Moscow or Leningrad, the combined heart and central nervous system of the entire Russian empire.
And if Leonov did not surrender, if it proved necessary to launch, then it would be 'Audacious Flame' indeed, an audacious, cleansing flame scouring the rebels from the earth, leaving a purified remnant once again under the order and discipline of a unified and central authority.
Everything depended on the Northern Submarine Fleet ? in particular upon the eight Typhoon submarines hidden in their shelters along the Polyamyy, Sayda, and Kola inlets. Nearly one hundred ballistic-missile submarines were deployed with the fleet, from the Typhoons themselves to thirteen aging, diesel-powered relics the West called Golf-IIs. Another seventy-odd attack submarines carried as their primary warloads cruise missiles mounting nuclear warheads. But of that entire number, perhaps a third were in Black Sea or Far East ports, and the loyalties of their captains and crews were suspect. Over half of those in the Northern Fleet were laid up for repairs or maintenance, or were waiting for deliveries of supplies. Many of the rest were at sea, maintaining Russia's posture of strategic defense.
Those in port and combat ready were standing by, but Karelin was convinced that a single Typhoon would be enough to do the job. Typhoon was the very image of the fleet's nuclear strength. The mere thought of one loosing its nuclear payload at the rebel forces would be enough to bring about their utter capitulation.
'Will it work?' Marchenko asked at last. 'Can it possibly work?'
'Moscow believes so, yes,' Karelin told him.
'But if their belief is wrong. If Leonov is able to arm even a few missiles and retaliate…'
'The rebels have everything to lose through a nuclear exchange. And nothing to win. We have only one immediate problem.'
'Yes. The possibility that Leonov is crazy enough to consider launching missiles of his own!'
'Leonov is a Politician, Comrade Rear Admiral, not a madman. He will not seriously contemplate the destruction of the Union's industrial and transportation infrastructure. No, our problem, Viktor Ivanovich, is the Americans. As always.'
