Mishenka watched the approaching wave dispassionately through the Plexiglas window on the side of the cargo bay. It would either dissipate or kill them.
The chopper slammed into the edge of the runway, the shocks on the wheels absorbing only part of the impact. Mishenka was thrown against his seatbelt, which he rapidly unbuckled. He threw open the side door and stepped outside, facing directly into the wave.
But he already knew it was losing power. He’d seen films of nuclear blasts before, and this one wasn’t big. Somewhere under five kilotons, his mind calculated. By the time the wave hit him, it was like a strong, warm wind.
Mishenka also knew with that wind was a very unhealthy dosage of strontium 90, cesium 137, iodine 131, and carbon 14, the makeup of a nuclear weapon’s fallout having been drummed into him during the many training sessions he had gone through. He also knew that the pills in his antiradiation kit were placebos, designed to allow the soldier to keep fighting until he became incapacitated.
He looked at the runway. A Mig-1.42, the cutting edge of Russian aerospace technology, was waiting as he had ordered. It was shaped like a dart, with two large engines, each below a tall vertical tail. He could see the cockpit was open and the pilot was yelling at a ground crew man. Colonel Mishenka walked across the concrete runway to the plane.
The pilot looked down. “We cannot fly! No circuits. No radio. Nothing.”
“Do the engines work?” Mishenka asked.
The pilot stared at him. “Yes, but— ”
“If the engines work, you can fly, correct?”
“But I will have no instrumentation, Colonel!”
“Your compass works, correct?”
“My ball compass, yes, but my navigational computer is completely fried.”
Mishenka held up his briefcase. “I have a map. We can fly low and navigate by watching the ground beneath us. I also have a shielded satellite phone in here, so we will have communications.”
The pilot shook his head. “Flying low. It will be very dangerous, Colonel. Perhaps we should wait until— ” He stopped as Mishenka laughed. “What is it?”
“Dangerous?” Mishenka spread his arms wide. “Did you see that nuclear explosion?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you understand?” Mishenka didn’t wait for an answer. “We are all dead if we stay here. It will just take a day or two. So I would much rather die flying into a mountain than wasting away.” He pointed at the small packet on the man’s right shoulder. “Have you taken your pill?”
The pilot was still struggling to understand the impact of what he had just been told. He could only shake his head.
“Take your pill,” Mishenka said. “You’ll feel better and you’ll be all right as long as we get out of here in time.”
The pilot ripped open the packet and pulled out the pill, gulping it down without the benefit of water. He grabbed the inset ladder and flipped it down. “Let’s be on our way.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Dalton received word of the nuclear explosion outside of Moscow as the SR-75 crossed the north pole. He leaned back, uncomfortable in the hard jump seat, and closed his eyes. Lieutenant Jackson was tapped into the secure intelligence network and the extent of the devastation was still being assessed, but there was no doubt thousands were dead.
‘Jackson?”
“Yes?”
“Where is GRU headquarters in relation to the blast site?”
“Seismic readers have fixed the epicenter,” Jackson said. “GRU headquarters would roughly be right where they have triangulated the center of the blast.”
“Try to get in contact with Colonel Mishenka.”
“I have been trying to. There is no answer.”
Dalton ran a hand across his forehead. “Great.”
Oma listened to the sirens racing to the southwest. The mushroom cloud had loomed high in the sky for minutes after the explosion, then slowly dissipated. She had stared out her armored windows at it, before finally picking up the phone. She tried Barsk’s cell phone but she got no reply. She called on the secure fax line, overriding the fax signal when it came on, until someone on the other end picked it up. She told the man to get her grandson.
“Barsk!” she yelled when he finally answered.
“Yes, Oma? I have been trying to get a hold of you, but my phone has not been working. I think— ”
Oma cut him off. “What the hell have you done?”
“What are you talking about?”
“A nuclear weapon just exploded outside Moscow!”
There was no immediate answer.
“Did you use the generator? Did you fire a nuclear weapon?”
“It was Chyort, Oma. He said he had to take care of something. Test the weapon.”
“You let him activate the generator?”
“Let him! How would I stop him?”
Oma realized the futility of the conversation. “Put Leksi on.”
There was a short pause, then a gruff “Yes?”
“Do you have control of the situation?”
“No. Barsk is letting this monster run crazy.”
Oma rubbed her forehead. “All right. Listen to me. I am sending you a target list by the secure fax. I want you to make sure Vasilev targets all the sites listed in order. Is that clear?”
“Clear.”
“Put Barsk back on.”
“Yes?” Her grandson’s voice was petulant. Oma was tempted to simply hang up, but she knew she could not do that.
“Barsk, listen very carefully. I am sending a target list to Leksi. He will insure that it is carried out. I want you to leave there. Get as far away as possible as quickly as you can and meet me at my lake house.”
“But, Oma!” Barsk protested. “This is my responsibility here. I am in charge. If you do not trust me to accomplish this, then what— ”
“Shut up!” Oma yelled into the phone, silencing her grandson. “Do what I say or I wipe my hands of you.”
“Yes, Oma.”
She turned the phone off. Then she went to her desk and picked up the list Abd al-Bari had sent her. She went back to the fax and punched in the number for the fax in the hangar. When the tone screeched, she fed the target list in.
She watched as it disappeared into the machine, then reappeared in the feed tray. She took it back to her desk and sat down. She fed the list into the shredder.
Then she picked up the phone and punched in the number for the NATO representative.
Colonel Mishenka finally got the satellite radio working ten minutes after they were airborne. It took him another five minutes to punch through the jumbled calls of the Russian military reacting in shock to the nuclear detonation. The fact that since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the attempted coup against the President, the GRU had increased its stranglehold on the control of intelligence and the communications capability of the entire military, meant that destruction of GRU headquarters virtually decapitated the Russian military’s ability to act.
Listening to the confused chatter, Mishenka was aware that there were many officers who were convinced the nuclear attack had been a surgical strike by the Americans— a prelude to an all-out attack. Missile forces were going on alert and the strategic bomber forces were opening their hangars and unlocking the vaults on nuclear weapons that had been mothballed years ago.
The old ways died hard, and the only ones— other than the President’s office— who had known about SD8, Chyort, and the American cooperation in tracking down the twenty nuclear weapons, were all glowing ash in the Moscow countryside.