Brigadier General Dimitri now decided to leave Yevgeni alone to his self-recrimination. He turned to the submarine commander, and the two naval officers started a navy-related conversation, while Yevgeni remained sitting in his position with his thoughts and calculations.
The five team members sat in the briefing room at the Intelligence Section. It was their first meeting following the sea test, from which they had returned just a few minutes before. Most of them did not yet know the test results. Colonel Yevgeni decided to open the discussion by addressing the Kazakh colonel.
“Let’s start with you, Colonel Nazarbayev. How did the test go from your point of view?”
“There were no unexpected incidents. Once the bomb was released from the crane, it sank very quickly, and most importantly, the improvised fuse mechanism and its protective shield worked perfectly.”
“Excellent”, said Yevgeni, and shifted his gaze to General Okhramenko. The General did not wait for Yevgeni to call on him.
“On my part, everybody was actually passive. We only checked that the systems are working. We manned the new position for listening to submarine communications and the operator managed to receive some distant communication traffic from American submarines. That is all, really.”
Yevgeni pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his coat pocket and lit one. He exhaled some smoke from the corner of his mouth and turned to Brigadier General Dimitri.
“Please report to our comrades the events that we witnessed in the submarine.”
Dimitri described the test results to his teammates. He was very careful not to call the outcome a failure, but rather a situation in which several unknowns of an equation would be problematic to solve. Dimitri shared the dilemma with his teammates — that he was not at all sure that detonating the charge on the seabed was the right way to go, saying that the outcome could be better if the explosion happened on the water’s surface. In conclusion, Dimitri said that he thought that the plan was viable, and estimated the likelihood of success at about fifty percent.
When Dimitri finished his account, the team members noticed that Colonel Yevgeni, unlike his recently acquired authoritarian fashion, was not inclined to speak further, and this resulted in informal chats among the team members.
“Colonel Yevgeni!” Colonel Nazarbayev suddenly called out in a loud voice, and the other three team members fell silent.
“Yes, Comrade”, Yevgeni replied.
“I’ve just had a totally insane idea. Why not go for the real thing?” “And what is the real thing?”
“Instead of simulating a nuclear blast and communication blocks etc. etc., why not detonate an actual nuclear artillery shell that fit our requirements exactly”, explained Colonel Nazarbayev.
The room turned eerily silent in an instant. Dimitri, the experienced naval officer and intelligence analyst, combed his cropped hair with his fingers, considering this bizarre idea without dismissing it out of hand, and formulating a careful answer. He turned to Colonel Nazarbayev.
“My dear colleague, I think you have defined your idea yourself. It really is insane!”
General Okhramenko cleared his throat, and Dimitri looked at him with respect.
“My friend, Nazarbayev, I think your idea is insane but also extraordinarily clever. At first glance, I find it lacking in one component, and that is that we cannot carry out any preliminary experiment. The experiment is the idea, executed in real time on the day of the operation. Of course, we can’t do this without getting prior approval from the Minister of Defense, Marshal Budarenko, but I can take care of that.”
Yevgeni drew on the cigarette again and turned to Colonel Nazarbayev.
“Please give us some background. What is this nuclear shell?”
“Our Armed Forces have nuclear artillery shells. They are tactical weapons that were developed to destroy headquarters and troop concentrations the size of brigades and armored divisions. A 152- millimeter shell of this kind, that can be fired from a self-propelled gun, has the power of zero point one megaton, which is equivalent to one hundred thousand tons of TNT. It’s the smallest tactical nuclear shell available in our Armed Forces.”
Yevgeni interrupted him.
“This little shell is pretty big. To the best of my knowledge, it is about six times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Is that right?”
“It is true, Colonel, but we would fire the shell into an empty area in the ocean. I estimate the kill radius is in the range of a few kilometers. Four-five kilometers, maybe a little more. In the worst case, some fishermen will die.”
“And how are we going to fire this shell?”
“Firing is done from a standard 152 mm self-propelled gun. In my opinion, although it is very preliminary, we have two options. One, to install the gun on the bow of the boat. This may cause difficulties in operating the gun, especially because of sea motion, waves et cetera. The other option may necessitate reinforcing the area where the gun is deployed. We simply take the Akatsiya, as it is, and place it on the deck with a large pier crane, right in position on the deck.”
“Pardon my ignorance, but what is this Akatsiya thing?”
“It’s a standard Red Army Artillery Corps self-propelled gun, and we have several thousands of them. If we resolve the issue of weight and loads, the gun will be ready to fire ten minutes after the crane places it on the deck.”
“And how much does this Akatsiya weigh?” Yevgeni asked
“Twenty-six tons.”
Yevgeni again paused to think, before turning back to Dimitri.
“Brigadier General Dimitri, why are you so quiet? It’s important that I get your opinion on this dramatic twist of the plot.”
Dimitri sat up in his seat and shot another question at Colonel Nazarbayev.
“Some details are lacking for me to form an opinion. For example, what is the range of this gun?” “Twenty-four kilometers.”
“That means that we should let the submarine pass underneath us to the east and wait until it is several tens of kilometers away and only then shoot the shell. I have another question to ask you. Does this shell have a fuse that can detonate at a certain altitude above the surface, or in our case, above water?”
“Yes of course. It is called a shell with a barometric fuse.”
Colonel Nazarbayev now seemed encouraged, even enthusiastic, to carry out the idea that he had come up with only a few minutes before.
“If you give me the green light, I can get such a gun and its crew of four within several hours. As for the shell, that would require a personal order from the Minister of Defense, Marshal Budarenko, but that would be your baby, Colonel Yevgeni.”
Dimitri expected Yevgeni to reply to the Kazakh Colonel, but Yevgeni turned to him instead.
“Dimitri, you haven’t given us your opinion of the new plan. So, please, tell us what you think. I’m anxious to hear it.”
“As I see it, we can all agree on this insane, bizarre plan. We should distribute the tasks between us, as I think that within twenty-four hours, we’ll have to go for the real thing.
“Yevgeni, you contact the Minister of Defense. I think that your winning argument with him is that with this nuclear shell, we can be ready and on our way as early as tomorrow. Of course, he should issue the order immediately, for the nuclear command to provide us with this shell. Colonel Nazarbayev, you activate your people to deliver the Akatsiya here without delay. We need to take a structural engineer to the trawler. I want him to check the boat’s blueprints and tell us exactly where to place these twenty-six tons. Ask Commander Vitaly, the boat’s captain, to procure a large tarpaulin to conceal the gun, but not a military one. If they don’t have one in stock, they should buy a colorful one in town.”