'It is time.'
He would have been happier if both of Admiral Marchenko's Typhoons had made it out to the open sea, but one should be enough. His principal concern was American attack submarines in the area. Russian naval planning for her nuclear missile boats called for placing them in so-called 'strategic bastions,' in secret regions of the Barents and White seas and in the Arctic Ocean where a few PLARBs could be protected by a large number of fast and powerful attack boats, the submarines the West called 'Alfas,'
'Akulas,' and 'Victors.'
Karelin hadn't dared work his Typhoons into regular Northern Fleet planning, however. If it had become known before the fact that Krasilnikov's faction was planning a nuclear strike against the Rodina herself, even if it was targeted against Leonov's rebels, there could have been mutiny throughout the fleet, perhaps even an attempt by dissidents to stop the Revolutsita before Dobrynin could carry out his orders. A Typhoon could be sunk by an Alfa as easily as by a Los Angeles. But Operation Curtain of Fire appeared to have been successful in blocking the Americans from the Kola Inlet approaches.
Dobrynin's message made no mention of unknown sonar contacts. He appeared to have reached his firing position midway between Spitsbergen and Nova Zemlya undetected.
Taking a notebook from his pocket, Karelin opened to a blank page and carefully printed the words 'Crimson Winter Fire,' tore the sheet out, and handed it to the aide. 'Transmit this to the Kremlin,' he said. 'Priority One-One, Urgent.'
Krasilnikov would receive it within minutes. Then the critical phase of Audacious Flame could truly begin.
Captain First Rank Vsevolod Nikolaevich Dobrynin leaned over Revolutsita's primary communications console, listening to the voice of Marshal Valentin Krasilnikov coming through the speakers.
'We fight for the future of our people, of our Motherland, of our revolution,' Krasilnikov's voice said, faint but discernible through the blasting white noise of static. This far north, atmospherics frequently played havoc with radio broadcasts.
'Sacrifices must be made if we are to secure our place in history as saviors of the Socialist Republic, even sacrifices made in fire and blood.'
Most holy God, Dobrynin thought… and he had to savagely repress the urge to cross himself. He's actually going to do it.
Dobrynin had not had a religious thought for years. He'd been a good Communist ever since his years in the Leningrad Komsomolets. He'd even been a good Communist during the hard, lean years of Yeltsin's treason, though he'd kept a low profile and been careful not to call undue attention to his beliefs.
But Krasilnikov's words had shaken him so badly that somehow the hated religious instruction pressed upon him in secret by his mother had surfaced like some broaching sea monster. He felt ashamed.
'Traitors have betrayed our Motherland, allowing her to be taken hostage and raped by foreigners and capitalist opportunists. They have taken up arms against the people and against the government which at long last offers hope and stability in a time of economic chaos and ruin. We offer you, who have taken up arms against our sovereign Motherland, one hour in which to recant your capitalist heresies, one hour to seize the traitors who have betrayed our country, Leonov and his cronies, and lay them and your weapons before the forces of the People's Red Army.
'If Leonov is not surrendered within the hour, if the forces of division and counterrevolution continue to defy the forces of lawful government, one SS-N-20 missile with six independently targeted warheads will be launched from a submarine at targets in rebellion against Moscow's authority.'
One hour. Krasilnikov was giving them one hour! It was as though he wanted to incinerate Chelyabinsk ? for that was the identity of the rebel city in the orders now locked in Dobrynin's personal safe. That city of a million people in the eastern fringes of the Urals had been chosen as a demonstration site, for there were several major rebel troop and armor concentrations in the area that could also be taken out by the same strike.
'If, after the first target is destroyed, the rebel forces do not surrender the traitor Leonov, a second target will be destroyed one hour after the first.'
Alma-Ata was the second target on the list, the capital of the sprawling republic of Kazakhstan. The revelation that Moscow was willing to sacrifice one of its own cities, like Chelyabinsk, would make the republics supporting Leonov eager to change sides. No one seriously believed that a second missile would need to be fired. While Chelyabinsk was still burning, Alma-Ata, Kiev, Minsk, and the rest would be scrambling to be the first to swear eternal loyalty to Moscow. Even the Baltic states might fall into line.
Just in case, though, Dobrynin's orders listed twenty targets, from Minsk in Belarus to Khabarovsk in the Far East.
For at least the hundredth time during the past sixty hours, Dobrynin examined his feelings about the orders he had sworn to carry out.
In a little over one hour, he would give an order and as a direct result, some one million of his countrymen would die, some in a single, searing instant, their shadows burned into the sidewalks and walls of their city, others in lingering pain ten years hence, as cancers rotted their bodies.
Could he possibly carry out such orders?
Even as he asked the question though, he knew ? for the hundredth time ? that he would. He believed in Krasilnikov's vision for a new Russia and had accepted the premise that suffering in the short term was needed to win a future security. Like Chelyag, his counterpart aboard the Pravda, he'd undergone countless meetings with Karelin before this mission ? and even one interview with Krasilnikov himself. They'd screened him carefully, gauging the depth and the conviction of his belief in Communism.
They knew him, he was convinced, better than he knew himself.
And besides, there was Strelbitski.
Kirill Borisovich Strelbitski was the Revolutsita's political commissar, a civilian assigned to the Revolutsita by Karelin 'to maintain the political fervor of the crew.' Maintaining political fervor, Dobrynin knew, meant keeping an eye on the Captain. If Dobrynin failed to carry out his orders precisely as they were written, he would be relieved of his command and Strelbitski would take his place, and there was no doubt at all that that mean-eyed, thin-lipped reptile would carry out the orders… and even enjoy doing so. As for Dobrynin, his wife Tanya, in Murmansk, his son fighting with the 12th Red Guards at Voronezh, his daughter, a thirty-year-old doctor working in Moscow, all would be rounded up within the hour. And then…
well, he didn't want to think about the ultimate cost of his defection.
Yes, when the time came, he would give the proper order.
It had been another long, working night. They'd reconvened here, in Room 208 of the Executive Office Building, sitting around a long, highly polished table that gleamed in the morning sunlight spilling through the huge windows along the east wall. It was a lot airier here than in the White House Situation Room, with more light and more space.
Hours before, the Sit Room had proved inadequate for the task, as more and more advisors, aides, and staffers had been brought in to ride herd on what clearly was becoming a crisis of mammoth proportions. This room, its nineteenth-century decor masking a wealth of hidden electronics, television monitors, and computers, was large enough to accommodate sixty people.
Some fifty men and women were gathered here at the moment.
Officially designated the Presidential Crisis Management Group, they weren't managing so much as they were floundering in a veritable sea of information coming through from the worsening Kola situation. At the moment, Admiral Scott had the podium at the front of the room, as he ran down the list of American and British assets in the region… and the possible Russian response.
Admiral Magruder leaned back in his chair, his attention less on Scott ? he'd helped the head of the Joint Chiefs prepare his briefing so he already knew its contents by heart ? than it was on the wall at Scott's back.
