"Four, he brings up the KGB for the first time. I wonder why. What if they actually have a cover plan… after intimidating us — beautiful, after intimidating us, they offer us their cover plan, and we have to buy it.
“Five, now he's warning us not to provoke him. They're in a 'defensive posture,' eh? Some posture.” Liz paused. “Robert, this is spin-control pure and simple. He's trying to take us out.”
“That's the way I read it, too. Comments, anyone?”
“The non-provocation statement is troubling,” CINC-SAC replied. General Fremont was watching his status boards. He now had ninety-six bombers in the air, and over a hundred tankers. His missile fields were on line. The Defense Support Program satellites had their Cassegrain-focus telescopic cameras zoomed in on the Soviet missile fields instead of on wide-field scanning mode. “Mr. President, there is something we need to discuss right about now.”
“What is that, General?”
Fremont spoke in his best calm-professional voice. "Sir, the builddown of the respective strategic-missile forces on both sides has affected the calculus of a nuclear strike. Before, when we had over a thousand ICBMs, neither we nor the Soviets ever expected that a disarming first-strike was a real strategic possibility. It just demanded too much. Things are different now. Improvements in missile technology plus the reduction in the number of fixed high-value targets now means that such a strike is a theoretical possibility. Add to that Soviet delays in deactivating their older SS-18s to comply with the strategic-arms treaty, and we have what may well be a strategic posture on their part in which such a strike may be an attractive option. Remember that we've been reducing our missile stocks faster than they. Now, I know that Narmonov gave you a personal assurance that he'd be fully in compliance with the treaty in four more weeks, but those missile regiments are still active as far as we can tell.
“Now,” Fremont went on, “if that intelligence you have that Narmonov was being threatened by his military is correct — well, sir, the situation is pretty clear, isn't it?”
“Make it clearer, General,” Fowler said, so quietly that CINC-SAC barely heard him.
“Sir, what if Dr. Elliot is right, what if they really expected you to be at the game? Along with Secretary Bunker, I mean. The way our command-and-control works, that would have severely crippled us. I'm not saying they would have attacked, but certainly they would have been in a position, while denying responsibility for the Denver explosion, to — well, to announce their change in government in such a way as to prevent us, by simple intimidation, from acting against them. That's bad enough. But they've missed their target, so to speak, haven't they? Okay, now what are they thinking? They may be thinking that you suspect that they've done this thing, and that you're angry enough to retaliate in one way or another. If they're thinking that, sir, they might also be thinking that their best way of protecting themselves is to disarm us quickly. Mr. President, I'm not saying that they are thinking that way, but that they might be.” And a cold evening grew colder still.
“And how do we stop them from launching, General?” Fowler asked.
“Sir, the only thing that will keep them from launching is the certainty that the strike will not work. That's particularly true if we're dealing with their military. They're good. They're smart. They're rational. They think before they act, like all good soldiers. If they know we're ready to shoot at the first hint of an attack, then that attack becomes militarily futile, and it will not be initiated.”
“That's good advice, Robert,” Elliot said.
“What's NORAD think?” Fowler asked. The President didn't think to consider that he was asking a two-star general to evaluate the opinion of a four-star.
“Mr. President, if we are to get some rationality back into this situation, that would appear to be the way to do it.”
“Very well. General Fremont, what do you propose?”
“Sir, at this point, we can advance our strategic-forces readiness to DEFCON-ONE. The codeword for that is SNAPCOUNT. At that point we are at maximum readiness.”
“Won't that provoke them?”
“Mr. President, no, it should not. Two reasons. First, we are already at a high state of alert, they know it, and while they are clearly concerned, they have not objected in any way. That's the one sign of rationality we've seen to this point. Second, they won't know until we tell them that we've upped things a notch. We don't have to tell them until they do something provocative.”
Fowler sipped at his newest cup of coffee. He'd have to visit the bathroom soon, he realized.
“General, I'm going to hold off on that. Let me think that one over for a few minutes.”
“Very well, sir.” Fremont 's voice did not reveal any overt disappointment, but a thousand miles from Camp David, CINC-SAC turned to look at his Deputy Chief of Staff (Operations).
“What is it?” Parsons asked. There was nothing more for him to do at the moment. Having made his urgent phone call, and having decided to let his fellow NEST team members handle the lab work, he'd decided to assist the doctors. He'd brought instruments to evaluate the radiation exposure to the firefighters and handful of survivors, something in which the average physician has little expertise. The situation was not especially cheerful. Of the seven people who had survived the explosion at the stadium, five already showed signs of extreme radiation sickness. Parsons evaluated their exposures at anywhere from four hundred to over a thousand Rems. Six hundred was the maximum exposure normally compatible with survival, though, with heroic treatment, higher exposures had been survived. If one called living another year or two with three or four varieties of cancer breaking out in one's body “survival.” The last one, fortunately, seemed to have the least. He was still cold, though his hands and face were badly burned, but he hadn't vomited yet. He was also quite deaf.
It was a young man, Parsons saw. The clothing in the bag next to his bed included a handgun and a badge — a cop. He also held something in his hand, and when the boy looked up, he saw the FBI agent standing next to the NEST leader.
Officer Pete Dawkins was deep in shock, nearly insensate. His shaking came both from being cold and wet, and from the aftermath of more terror than any man had ever faced and survived. His mind had divided itself into three or four separate areas, all of which were operating along different paths and at different speeds, and none of them were particularly sane or coherent. What held part of one such area together was training. While Parsons ran some sort of instrument over the clothing he'd worn only a short time before, Dawkins' damaged eyes saw standing next to him another man in a blue plastic wind-breaker. On the sleeves and over the chest were printed “FBI.” The young officer sprang upwards, disconnecting himself from the IV line. That caused both a doctor and a nurse to push him back down, but Dawkins fought them with the strength of madness, holding out his hand to the agent.
Special Agent Bill Clinton was also badly shaken. Only the vagaries of scheduling had saved his life. He, too, had had a ticket for the game, but he'd had to give it to another member of his squad. From that misfortune, which had enraged the young agent only four days earlier, his life had been spared. What he'd seen at the stadium had stunned him. His exposure to radiation — only forty Rems, according to Parsons — terrified him, but Clinton, too, was a cop, and he took the paper from Dawkins' hand.
It was, he saw, a list of cars. One was circled and had a question-mark scribbled next to the license plate.
“What's this mean?” Clinton asked, leaning past a nurse who was trying to restart Dawkins' IV line.