If Matt and the rest were to have any chance at all, the people in this room had to steer a careful course between the two extremes of not paying enough attention to the Kola crisis… and of paying it too much.
"At the moment," Admiral Scott was saying, "much of our attention is focused here, at the edge of the Arctic ice pack." The symbols marking the SSN Galveston and the Typhoon it had been tracking flashed obligingly on the DIDS. "The Russian sub appears to be running through a ballistic-missile launch drill, which in itself is provocative enough. Galveston's skipper was originally ordered to stick close, and to open fire if it appeared that the Typhoon was actually going to launch. There's a certain amount of guesswork involved, of course, and-"
At the back of the room, tall, double doors boomed open and an aide walked in, his footsteps echoing slightly in the high-ceilinged emptiness.
The man made his way swiftly to Robert Heideman's side, spoke to the Secretary in urgent whispers, then handed him a manila folder.
After glancing through the contents of the folder, the Secretary of State rose, his long face made longer by some ominous news.
"Mr. Secretary?" Scott said from the podium. "You look like a man with something important to say. You have news, sir?"
"Bad news, I'm afraid." He gestured with the paper in his hands. "I have here a translation of a speech just delivered by Marshal Krasilnikov at the Kremlin. My people are printing up copies for each of you, but I can summarize it now." Briefly, tersely, he told them of Krasilnikov's ultimatum, of the threat to destroy a rebel city within the hour if Leonov was not surrendered.
"Clearly," Heideman concluded, "the situation has changed, becoming more urgent. We cannot allow the Russians to launch that missile."
"Why not?" the White House Chief of Staff asked. "If it's just Russian against Russian…"
"Bob's right," Secretary of Defense Vane said. "If the civil war over there goes nuclear, we're going to have serious problems containing it."
"I might also point out something else," Duvall, the CIA head, said. "A nuclear war is going to affect everyone on this planet, not just the people fighting it."
"Nuclear winter?" someone asked.
"Possibly. And you'll recall that after the nuclear plant disaster at Chernobyl, radioactivity was detected in cow's milk as far away as Sweden.
There's also going to be the problem of vastly increased numbers of refugees fleeing across the border into Eastern Europe. Even one nuclear detonation in this war could set off repercussions that frankly, ladies and gentlemen, we're just not equipped to deal with."
"Admiral Scott? What do you recommend?" the National Security Advisor asked. He sounded subdued.
Scott extended a collapsible pointer, reached high, and tapped the DIDS screen twice, close by the graphic symbol marking the Galveston. "I think we have only one option open to us," he said. "But we're going to have to move damned fast to exercise it."
Commander Montgomery pressed his eyes against the rubber light shield of Galveston's number-one search periscope. The attack sub was at a depth of one hundred feet, creeping north toward the edge of the ice. Underwater visibility was superb. Though still submerged, the sub's periscope gave Montgomery a view of shifting lights and darks; he could see the white shimmer of the ice less than a mile ahead, brighter where it was thin, deeply shadowed where pressure ridges plunged into the aquamarine depths like inverted mountain ranges. The periscope view was repeated on a television monitor on the attack center's bulkhead, showing open water overhead giving way to a ceiling of ice.
"Captain, comm shack."
He reached for an intercom mike. "Captain here."
"Sir, we've just had an ELF ring the bell. Message decodes as 'Priority FLASH, stand by for VLF communications, comply immediate." That's the end of the transmission, sir."
"Very well." He turned from the periscope, catching the eye of Galveston's XO. "Mr. Harris, come about to one-eight-zero. As soon as we're well clear of the ice, come up to fifty feet."
"Course one-eight-zero, aye, sir," Harris repeated, following the correct control room procedure. "Come to five-zero feet when we're clear of the ice, aye, sir." He then turned and repeated the orders to the helmsman and diving planes operator, who sat side by side at the front of the control room.
As he listened to the litany of multiply repeated orders, Montgomery wondered what Washington was so anxious about. It was almost forty minutes past the last Sched-3 contact window.
It had been sheer luck Galveston was still trailing her ELF antenna and had been close enough to the surface to pick up that first priority flash.
Transmitted from enormous antennas at remote shore stations, extremely low-frequency signals, broadcast at from 300 hertz to 3 kilohertz, could penetrate the ocean to a depth of about three hundred feet, far deeper than any other form of radio communications. The drawback was that the laws of physics dictated that information could be transmitted on ELF channels only very slowly, at a rate of about ten bits per minute; it took fifteen minutes to transmit a three-letter code group, enough to, say, order the sub to the surface to receive new instructions according to a pre-arranged code, but not enough to transmit new and detailed orders. Such code groups were called "bell ringers."
Minutes later, Galveston was traveling slowly south away from the edge of the ice. Once the long ELF antenna wire had been reeled in, Montgomery ordered the shorter VLF antenna deployed, trailing it astern from the top of Galveston's sail. The very low-frequency band, broadcast at between 3 and 30 kilohertz, could only penetrate the top fifty feet or so of the ocean. By rising to such a shallow depth, Galveston was dangerously exposed to any Soviet ASW aircraft that might be in the area.
"Captain, comm shack."
"Yeah. Go ahead."
"Message coming through, sir. Code group Red-Charlie-One."
"On my way."
The message would be in code, of course. Red-Charlie-One was the current designation for a launch-condition message, flagged urgent.
Montgomery had a chilling premonition about what might be in such a message.
CHAPTER 18
Surfaced, the Revolutsita had no trouble picking up the satellite-relayed communication from Kandalaksha. Krasilnikov's address to the Russian people was still ringing in Dobrynin's ears when the call from Karelin had come through.
"Are all systems in readiness, Comrade Captain Dobrynin?"
Karelin's voice was curiously flattened after being scrambled at the fleet headquarters, then descrambled aboard the Glorious October Revolution.
"Yes, Comrade Admiral. All missile guidance systems have been programmed with the appropriate coordinates. We are ready to fire the first on two minutes' notice."
"Very well. In the name of the Ruling Council, I hereby direct you to fire missile number one at precisely 1530 hours, Moscow time."
"But, might not the rebels capitulate, Comrade Admiral? Surely-"
"They will not surrender, not so long as they assume we are bluffing.
Once a city dies, they will know that we are in deadly earnest. Frankly, I suspect that the surrender will come through within ten minutes of the destruction of the target… just long enough for Leonov's people to receive confirmation that the city is gone. Then they will come around."