“We did it. Orders from Washington,” the agent explained.
“What fucking idiot ordered that?”
“The President.”
“Outstanding. I gotta get a call out.”
“Wait.” The agent took the phone and called his own office.
“Hoskins.”
“This is Larry Parsons, NEST team leader, can you relay something to Washington?”
“Sure.”
“The bomb was a ground-burst, less than fifteen kilotons. We have samples of the residue, and it's on the way to Rocky Flats for spectroscopy. You know how to get that out?”
“Yes, I can do that.”
“Okay.” Parsons hung up.
“You have pieces from the bomb?” the FBI agent asked incredulously.
“Sounds crazy, doesn't it? That's what fallout is, bomb residue that gets attached to dirt particles.”
“So what?”
“So, we can figure out a lot from that. Come on,” he told the agent. Both men ran back across the street towards the hospital. An FBI agent, Parsons decided, was a useful fellow to have around.
“Jack, got something from Denver, came in through Walt Hoskins. The bomb was a ground burst, fifty or so kilotons. The NEST guys have residue, and they're going to test it.”
Ryan took his notes. “Casualty count?”
“Didn't say.”
“Fifty kilotons,” the S&.T man observed. “Low for what the satellites said, but possible. Still, too goddamned big for an IND.”
The F-16C wasn't exactly ideal for this mission, but it was fast. Four had left Ramstein only twenty minutes earlier. Put aloft by the initial DEFCON-THREE alert, they'd come east to what they still referred to as the inter-German border. They'd not even arrived there when new orders had sent them towards the southern end of Berlin to get a look at what was happening at the Berlin Brigade's kazerne. Four F-15s from Bitburg joined for top-cover. All eight USAF fighters were loaded for air-to-air missions only, with two extra fuel tanks each in the place of bombs for the F-16s, and conformal fuel cells for the Eagles. From ten thousand feet, they could see the flashes and explosions on the ground. The flight of four broke into two elements of two each, and went down for a closer look, while the Eagles orbited overhead. The problem, it was later decided, was two-fold. First, the pilots were simply too surprised at the turn of events to consider all the possibilities; adding to this was the fact that American aircraft losses over Iraq had been so minor as to make the pilots forget that this was a different place.
The Russian tank regiment had both SA-8 and SA-11 missiles, plus the normal complement of Shilka 23mm flak vehicles. The antiair company commander had waited for this moment, not illuminating his radars, playing it smart, as the Iraqis had singularly failed to do. He waited until the American aircraft were under a thousand meters before giving his order.
Barely had their threat receivers come on when a swarm of missiles rose from the eastern edge of the Russian encampment. The Eagles, high up, had a much better chance at evasion. The F-16 Fighting Falcons, descending right into the SAM trap, had almost none. Two were blotted out in a matter of seconds. The second pair dodged the first wave of SAMs, but one was caught in the frag pattern of second-wave SA-11 it almost but not quite evaded. That pilot ejected successfully, but died when he landed too hard on the roof of an apartment building. The fourth F-16 escaped by skimming the rooftops and screaming west on full burner. Two of the Eagles joined him. A total of five American aircraft crashed into the city. Only one of the pilots lived. The escaping aircraft radioed the news to Commander U.S. Air Forces Europe at Ramstein. Already, he had twelve F-16s arming up with heavy ordnance. The next wave would be different.
PRESIDENT NARMONOV:
WE SENT SOME AIRCRAFT INTO BERLIN TO INVESTIGATE THE SITUATION THERE. THEY WERE SHOT DOWN WITHOUT WARNING BY SOVIET MISSILES. WHY WAS THIS DONE?
“What does this mean?”
“'Shot down without warning'? There's a battle under way, and that's why the aircraft were sent there! The regiment has antiaircraft troops,” the Defense Minister explained. “They only have short-range, low-altitude rockets. If the Americans were just looking from a safe height — ten thousand meters — we couldn't even have touched them. They must have been lower, probably trying to support their troops with an air attack. That's the only way we could have gotten them.”
“But we have no information?”
“No, we have not established contact yet.”
“We will not answer this one.”
“That is a mistake,” Golovko said.
“This situation is dangerous enough already,” Narmonov said angrily. “We do not know what is going on there. How can I respond when he claims to have information which I do not?”
“If you do not respond, you appear to admit the incident.”
“We admit nothing!” the Defense Minister shouted. “We could not even have done this unless they were attacking us, and we don't know whether it really happened or not.”
“So, tell them that,” Golovko suggested. “Perhaps if they understand that we are as confused as they, they will also understand that—”
“But they won't understand, and they won't believe. They've already accused us of launching this attack, and they won't believe that we have no control over the area.”
Narmonov retreated to a corner table and poured himself a cup of tea, while the intelligence and defense advisors traded — arguments? Was that the right word? The Soviet President looked up at the ceiling. This command center dated back to Stalin. A spur off one of the Moscow subway lines built by Lazar Kaganovich, Stalin's pet Jewish anti-Semite and his most trusted henchman, it was fully a hundred meters down, but now his people told him that it was not truly a place of safety after all.
What was Fowler thinking? Narmonov asked himself. The man was undoubtedly shaken by the murder of so many American citizens, but how could it be possible that he was thinking that the Soviets were responsible? And what was actually happening? A battle in Berlin, a possible clash between naval forces in the Mediterranean, all unrelated — or were they?
Did it matter? Narmonov stared at a picture on the wall and realized that, no, it did not matter. He and Fowler were both politicians for whom appearances had more weight than reality, and perceptions more importance than facts. The American had lied to him in Rome over a trivial matter. Was he lying now? If he were, then none of the past ten years of progress mattered at all, did they? It had all been for nothing.
“How do wars begin?” Narmonov asked himself quietly in the corner. In history, wars of conquest were started by strong men who wished to grow stronger still. But the time for men of imperial ambition had passed. The last such criminal had died not so long before. All that had changed in the twentieth century. The First World War had been started — how? A tubercular assassin had killed a buffoon so unloved that his own family had ignored the funeral. An overbearing diplomatic note had prompted Czar Nikolay II to leap to the defense of people he hadn't loved, and then the timetables had begun. Nikolay had the last chance, Narmonov remembered. The last of the Czars had held in his hand the chance to stop it all, but hadn't. If only he'd known what his decision for war would mean he might have found the strength to stop it, but in his fear and his weakness he'd signed the mobilization order that had ended one age and begun another. That war had begun because small, frightened men feared war less than showing weakness.
Fowler is such a man, Narmonov told himself. Proud, arrogant, a man who lied in a small thing lest I think less of him. He will be angered by the deaths. He will fear additional deaths, but he will fear displaying weakness even more. My country is at the mercy of such a man.