They particularly enjoyed hurting Russians for some reason, which was why they were so useful for internal security work. The AKM assault rifles they held were not carried slung or held at port arms. Instead, the weapons' muzzles seemed to probe restlessly in all directions about the tight-knit group, finding and tracking each potential threat.
Clasping his hands behind his back, Karelin let his eyes run the length of the nearest of two titanic mountains of steel rising like islands from the sea cave's oil-black water. "Excellent, excellent," he said. Despite being completely enclosed, the cavern air was cold, especially here by the water.
Karelin's words launched puffs of white vapor before his face. "And what is their current status, Comrade Captain?"
"Leninskiy Nesokrushimyy Pravda is ready for sea now," the officer replied. He gestured across the dark water toward a more distant island identical to the first. A hammerhead crane was positioned above it, a blunt-tipped, white cylinder sixteen meters long dangling from its tackle. A crew was positioned on the long deck beneath, guiding the cylinder past an open hatch in the deck. "As you can see, Comrade Admiral, Slavnyy Oktyabrskaya Revolutsita is still taking missiles aboard. It is his captain's intent to work through the night and have him ready to deploy to sea by this time tomorrow." As a Russian, he referred to ships with the masculine pronoun, rather than the feminine.
"They are true monsters," Karelin said. It never failed. Each time he saw these black-armored behemoths, especially within the confines of one of the caverns, he found himself a boy again, gaping up at their rounded flanks and towering sides like the greenest raw recruit. These were the centerpiece of the Motherland's defense, the very embodiment of her technical and nuclear might: Tyfun.
One hundred seventy-one meters long, an imposing twenty-four meters wide, with a submerged displacement of almost thirty thousand tons, Typhoon was by far the largest submarine in the world. There were eight in all, two home-based at each of four specially designed and constructed underground shelters along the Kola Inlet.
Quite apart from their size, Typhoons were unlike any other submarine in the world. They were designated as PLARBs ― Podvodnaya Lodka Atomnaya Raketnaya Ballisticheskaya ― a nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarine, what the Americans called a "boomer." Each carried twenty SS-N-20 missiles in two rows down the long, long deck forward of the squat, two-tiered sail. Each missile, in turn, mounted six to nine independently targeted MIRV warheads and had a range of 8300 kilometers. If her captain so ordered, Lenin's Invincible Truth could slip through the nuclear-proof blast doors at the west side of the cavern and into the Polyamyy Inlet beyond. From that spot, just a few kilometers north of Murmansk, he could reach across the pole to strike targets as far south as San Francisco or the Americans' big nuclear-missile sub base at Kings Bay, Georgia.
Or, with different orders, he could reach any target at all anywhere across the broad sweep of Asia. No renegade army, no traitorous city, no nationalist-minded republic in all the vast sweep of the neo-Soviet empire from Odessa to Dushanbe to Vladivostok was safe.
"You are Captain First Rank Anatoli Chelyag," Karelin said, as if he were speaking the name for the first time. He gestured toward the nearest black metal cliff rising by the concrete pier. "This is your vessel, is it not?"
"He is, Comrade Admiral." Chelyag stiffened with evident pride. "It is my great honor to command Lenin's Invincible Truth.
At thirty-nine, Chelyag was young for such an important command, but his father was Vice Admiral Gennadi V. Chelyag, a senior staff officer serving now with the Baltic Fleet and a personal friend of the Minister of Defense. Such was the time-honored way of patronage within the fleet.
"Hmm. Where are you from, Comrade Captain?" Karelin asked, suddenly curious. Having studied the dossiers of all command officers in the division, he knew precisely where Chelyag had been born and raised, but he wanted to hear what the man would say with his own ears.
"Kuybyshev, Comrade Admiral." The man sounded suddenly defensive, cautious, as though the question masked some unseen trap. His eyes turned private and flicked once to the KGB men and the MVD guards. "But… I've not been back there for a long time."
"Kuybyshev? I thought the city's name was now Samara."
"I still think of it as Kuybyshev, sir."
"Ah, I see." Kuybyshev, named in the 1930s for a leader of the October Revolution, was one of the hundreds of former Soviet cities and towns that had resumed their old, Czarist names during the Soviet collapse of the early 1990s. "The city is deep within rebel territory, Captain. And they persist in calling it Samara."
"Y-yes, Comrade Admiral. But I assure you that my total and complete loyalty is to-"
"Tell me, Captain. Were I to give you the order to incinerate Samara now, this moment, what would be your response?"
"I would instantly and without question carry out my orders, Comrade Admiral. I have trained all my life in the service of the Rodina. My home now is Party, Motherland, and Navy."
"The proper answer, Captain. But what would you feel about such an order, eh?"
Chelyag had difficulty meeting Karelin's eyes. "I… I would be unhappy about it, of course. Kuybyshev is a magnificent city, and an important port on the Volga. It has a population of almost a million and a half people, and I sincerely doubt that more than a fraction of them are Blue counter revolutionaries. I certainly would not want them all to die. But I would follow orders. Sir."
"And your family?"
"My wife and child," Chelyag said slowly, "live in Severomorsk. Both my parents are now in St. Petersburg… in Leningrad, I mean. There is nothing to tie me to Kuybyshev, or to any other rebel city."
Relenting at last, Karelin reached out to clap the young PLARB captain on the shoulder. "Relax, Anatoli Gennadevich. I was not doubting you."
Chelyag looked as though his knees were about to give way, and his face was pale. "Thank you, Admiral."
"Nor would such a terrible burden as the destruction of your own home be laid upon your shoulders. But the destruction of our enemies, of the Rodina's enemies, will demand the utmost in loyalty and dedication from every one of us."
Now it was Karelin's turn to glance briefly at the stolid, central Asian faces of his escort. Few Asians in the MVD even spoke Russian, but Karelin was not about to jeopardize the unit's morale with the information that their home cities were about to become nuclear targets.
Somehow, he did not think they would understand.
Chances were, they'd not even been told that Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and the other Asian republics had sided with the rebels… as had been inevitable from the beginning, of course. They were barbarians, fighting with one another incessantly, hating only the Great Russians more than they hated one another. If Moscow decided to loose nuclear-tipped missiles against her own territory, the Union would be well rid of dissidents' hives like Tashkent and Alma-Ata.
"So, Captain, if you will," he said, gesturing toward the back of the cavern. "Let us proceed to your Operations Building. I have important business to discuss with Rear Admiral Marchenko."
"At once, Comrade Admiral. This way, if you please."
The party made its way deeper into the cavern, leaving the waterfront and dock area, passing fenced-off clusters of machine shops, ordnance stores, foundries, and open buildings housing heavy industrial equipment. Everywhere he looked there were soldiers, overseeing the workers, standing guard on metal catwalks and before each building, marching in small groups along the macadam roadways that ringed the subterranean harbor. Many were MVD troops assigned to protect this and other PLARB bases. Others were regular army troops, or Soviet Naval Infantry with their flat caps and blue-and-white striped shirts showing beneath their uniform blouses. Some even, Karelin knew, were Spetsnaz, Russia's elite army special forces, though those units had originally been under the command of the GRU and so were now suspect. Those Spets forces that had remained loyal to Moscow were all carefully screened for Blue sympathizers, as carefully screened as Chelyag and his brother PLARB captains. In addition, each formation had its own secret cadre of KGB Third Directorate watchdogs, working undercover.