Hell, he thought, sitting down. They’d be crippled if they started a nuclear exchange with Britain.
“There’s little time for formality,” he said. The Secret Service had yanked him out of the Oval Office as soon as the warning had come in from Cheyenne Mountain. “Did we have a genuine nuclear detonation?”
“Two of them,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. “One north of Warsaw, one south; both precisely in place to blunt Berlin’s offensive against Germanica.”
“Preliminary analysis indicates that the devices were prepositioned,” NSA added. “They must have kept it a closely-guarded secret. We didn’t pick up any indications they were about to use nuclear weapons until the first detonation.”
John nodded, curtly. “Can they fire the ballistic missiles?”
“I think we have to assume they can,” NSA said. Beside him, the CIA Director nodded in grim agreement. “They certainly managed to detonate a pair of tactical nuclear warheads.”
And Edward was right, John thought. They are crazy.
He studied the world map for a long moment, thinking hard. He’d been in his early twenties when Japan had bombed Pearl Harbour; he’d served in the army during the advance on Japan, then the long march to Tokyo that had ended the war. The Japanese had been odd… their soldiers had been fanatical, but many of their civilians had surrendered, once they realised it was safe to surrender. He still recalled, with a smile, a pretty young Japanese girl who had been his mistress during the occupation…
But the Germans? He’d thought they were fundamentally rational. They might be evil little shits — he loathed their government with a passion — but they weren’t stupid. He’d assumed he’d be dealing with the Third Reich until his term ended, then his successor would be in the same boat. Instead, the Reich was tearing itself apart and threatening to drag the entire world into the fire.
From a coldly logical point of view, he’d been assured, there was something to be said for encouraging the Nazi Civil War to continue as long as possible. Whichever side won would be weakened — considerably weakened — by the fighting, allowing the various subject nations to slip out of their grasp without a fight. The world would be a safer place if the Third Reich was badly weakened. And yet, a nuclear exchange — even a relatively small nuclear exchange — would be devastating. Hell, two nukes had already been devastating.
“Right,” he said, feeling out of his depth. “Do we know how much damage they did?”
“Nothing certain,” CIA admitted, after a glance at NSA. “All we really have to go on is orbital imagery and radio intercepts.”
“And very few of the latter,” NSA warned. “We badly underestimated the effects of an EMP on their radio sets.”
John nodded, curtly. There would be time for gloating — later — over just how far America had advanced over her mortal rival. Now, he needed to contain the situation and decide what to do before something worse happened.
“Understood,” he said. “What do you know?”
“Basically, we think two of their panzer divisions — and infantry support — were destroyed,” CIA said. “Other units probably took a beating too. We don’t know — yet — just how badly they were hit, but I would be astonished if they can retake the offensive anytime soon.”
“Particularly given how many corners they had to cut to launch the offensive before winter,” the Chairman put in. “We should be worried by how quickly they threw the operation together.”
CIA nodded. “Long-term, there will be major consequences,” he added. “Anyone close to the blast zones would be at risk of radiation poisoning. Our weather forecasts suggest that the fallout might well be blown towards Berlin, threatening the entire population. There’s no way to minimise the risk beyond what the Germans are already doing.”
“Telling the entire population to stay indoors and keep all doors and windows closed,” NSA said. “It might be enough to save them from the deadliest isotopes in the fallout.”
“I hope so,” John said.
He pressed his fingertips together. “Is there anything we can do to help?”
“We can ship supplies of medicine and protective gear to Berlin,” CIA said. “But that will cause… problems.”
John scowled. The risk of nuclear war hadn’t been so high since the Missile Crisis. He hated to think what his political enemies would say, if they discovered that he’d shipped vast quantities of expensive medicine to the Reich. If a single warhead detonated on American soil, the medicine — and protective garb — would be needed at home. And even if it didn’t, there were vast numbers of American voters who would be against providing any help to the Third Reich.
“Let me worry about that,” he said, finally. “Is there anything else we can do?”
“Not unless we commit American forces directly,” CIA said. “And that would be a nightmare.”
“It would certainly be chancy,” the Chairman agreed. “Mr. President, even getting a rapid reaction force over to Berlin would be tricky.”
John met his eyes. “Is there anything we can do about the ballistic missiles?”
“I’ve had people considering possible options ever since the civil war broke out,” the Chairman said. “They’ve looked at a number of ideas, but none of them guarantee success when there are just too many variables.”
“I remember the briefing,” John said. Getting American Special Forces to the Siberian Missile Fields would be hard enough, but destroying all the missiles before they could be launched would be harder. “We might wind up giving the ABM system its first real test.”
He frowned. “What about stealth bombers? We could go nuclear ourselves.”
“I don’t know how Berlin would react,” CIA said, “but we couldn’t guarantee taking out all the warheads.”
“Berlin would not be pleased,” NSA warned. “And neither would London.”
John nodded, shortly. The Third Reich had only a limited supply of missiles capable of reaching America, but literally thousands of missiles capable of reaching Britain. London would be less than pleased if John’s decision unleashed a holocaust on Great Britain. And the Germanica Government could unleash hell on Berlin too… they’d just proved that they had no compunctions about deploying tactical atomic bombs against their fellow countrymen. John doubted that he could order a nuclear release if America split into two and started a second civil war…
But the Easterners have been moving away from the Westerners for a long time, John reminded himself. They may not see each other as fellow countrymen any longer.
It was a sobering thought. He’d just been entering politics when Truman had decided to smash racial segregation, once and for all. It hadn’t been easy, even though Truman had been tough and he’d had a majority of the country behind him. Even now, there were parts of America that were purely white — and Japan, an American territory, had been used to resettle countless blacks. The political fight over Japanese statehood had been nasty; he dreaded to think what it would be like in the Third Reich, where the gulf between east and west had grown into an unbridgeable chasm…