IV
Jericho’s Walls
I am not proud of the part I’ve played in it…. I think we will probably destroy ourselves, so what difference does it make?
THIRTEEN
• 1700 Zulu
The fog of war blurs all human conflicts. It hangs in a heavy mist, clouding men’s minds and warping their judgments. It is a strange phenomenon, causing some men to vacillate disastrously, others to move with an equally disastrous certitude. It instantly transforms enemies into beasts and sadly human errors into methodically inhuman calculations. In a moment of desolate passion an infantryman, unable to cope with the horror surrounding him, mindlessly performs the machinegun stitching of women and children. The infantryman’s distant leaders view the mysteriously ruthless response of husbands and fathers and, through the fog of war, see the new act as that of a barbaric enemy requiring swift retribution. So goes it. And goes it.
At 1600 Zulu on this winter day, as the pilots of Polar Bear One watched the sun pop out of the deceptively undisturbed expanse of the Pacific, the fog of war hung heavy indeed over the rest of the battlefield. Just five hours remained before the American submarines would rise, attempt to penetrate the fog, and almost certainly deliver the penultimate retribution for lost wives and children. A few moments later the Soviet ICBM reserves would respond in kind. Remaining throughout the world, of course, would be thousands of additional weapons, the arsenals were so large and well dispersed. These weapons would be expended without any semblance of even semi-civilized restraint over the next days, weeks, months. Their use would be somewhat redundant.
Among the elite few who had even a lottery player’s chance of altering the events, the miscalculation, and confusion were almost total. They were making assumptions that were logical but wrong. They were treating truths as falsehoods and falsehoods as truths, and acting on both. In fact, in all the beleaguered world, not a single person had the access or the wisdom to understand the swirl of events engulfing them.
Nor did the events of the last several hours, since the bombers had turned, help lift the fog. In the Soviet Union two more cities had been destroyed. Pushkin, a medium-sized town just outside Leningrad, had been leveled by an American submarine cornered in the North Sea. Nakhodka, a Siberian port city, had been hit by a trapped outrider cruising beneath the Sea of Japan. In the United States the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina had been sprayed randomly, like Baton Rouge, by a Soviet submarine off the Outer Banks. All three attackers had been losing deadly chases by enemy hunter subs. They had unloaded on available targets, as their orders dictated. So goes it.
Limited communications gradually were returning. But as often as not, the sketchy information caused as many problems as it solved, creating as much fog as it dispelled. Nor did it help that in Cherepovets the Soviet Premier now had gone more than thirty-six hours without sleeping. Nor did it help that in Olney two frightened but dedicated young nurses, steeped in the sisterhood’s time-honored tradition of giving solace and relieving pain, were adding their own brand of fog to the intravenous solution they had begun feeding through the forearm of a hurting and semiconscious American President. Nor did it help that the American government appeared to have two Presidents and that only one man—a bureaucratic second-level civil-defense director—held that information.
In the massive underground labyrinth south of Cherepovets, the Soviet Premier popped another amphetamine. He had been taking the uppers most of the day to keep himself alert. He was taking an occasional vodka as well, to settle his racking anxiety. He glanced quickly about the sterile room to see if anyone had observed him taking the pill. Already today he had quelled the inevitable coup attempt, employing methods far more sweeping than those used in the cockpit of the E^t. Still, his political control was tenuous, at best. The loyalist advisers and military officers with him in the multilevel bunker were edgy and doubtful, even about him. Little wonder, he grumped. His grand plan—he had been completely honest with the American President—had lurched nightmarishly out of control. Had he been a fool to think it would not? But why? Why, after the Americans had reacted so rationally to an attack on their own territory, had they acted so irrationally to such a minor event in China? Were the Americans that protective of the fuck-their-mother Chinese? The little yellow devils had obliterated fifteen of his Red Army divisions! So the rebellious commanding general of the Rocket Forces had struck back at Peking and Wuhan. Against his orders. And starting the coup. Also starting, he presumed, and he shook his head in despair at the thought of it, the spasm launches of ICBM’s bursting out of the American prairies. Then the rebellious general’s response out of the steppes. Then the prairies again. Then the steppes again. He groaned, swallowing hard to get the amphetamine all the way down. Could he control anything now? Anyone? He glanced about the room. There were only three other persons here—a radio operator, a décrypter, and the new commanding general of the Rocket Forces, whom the Premier had appointed only hours ago after dealing directly—and finally—with the man’s predecessor. All seemed preoccupied except the general.
The Premier moved his eyes to a clock—1600 hours, Greenwich mean time, ten hours after he had begun this lunacy. How much longer could he hold it together? He had one newly rebellious ICBM wing commander in control of the isolated Zhangiztobe field in the south-central deserts. The man’s wife and children had been in Pushkin. The Premier shook his head wearily, fought to stifle a yawn, and felt a powerful hand land lightly on his shoulder.
“Comrade,” the general said, “why don’t you get some sleep? We will awaken you.”
“Sleep,” the Premier replied. “Sleep is for the innocent, comrade general.”
The general’s broad brow knitted in concern.
“Figure of speech.” The Premier smiled without conviction. “And the Rocket Forces? No change?”
The general shrugged. “They will go, if necessary.” He paused. “They will be somewhat more difficult to stop.” The general probed the Premier’s face for hidden messages. “If necessary,” the general added.
“Zhangiztobe?” the Premier asked bleakly.
The general shrugged again. “Even getting through to them is difficult, Comrade Premier. And threats have little effect tonight.”
The Premier sighed in acknowledgment, flicking his fingers to dismiss his military commander. He was having extraordinary difficulty communicating with the surviving Rocket Forces. He was having extraordinary difficulty communicating with anyone. Why couldn’t he get through to the Americans? He looked at the arched back of his radio operator and cursed silently.
The Premier brushed the wetness from his forehead and tried to review what he knew. The American President was dead, his command plane not having made it out of Andrews. The death was most unfortunate and unintended. He felt no love for his old antagonist and still blamed him, rightly or wrongly being irrelevant now, for pushing them both into this disaster. Still, the Premier was a practical man. He had not wanted to deal—if any dealing could be done—with a lead-erless country out of political control. Nor had he wanted to deal with an amateurish successor drawn out of the insignificant ranks of the American Congress or the President’s Cabinet. But a successor was in charge. The sketchy information intercepted from conversations between the E-4 and the Looking Glass was incomplete and incomprehensible. Still, orders of some kind were moving back and forth. And that confirmed it.