Countdown c-6 Page 5

  Quite apart from their size, Typhoons were unlike any other submarine in the world. They were designated as PLARBs ― Podvodnaya Lodka Atomnaya Raketnaya Ballisticheskaya ― a nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarine, what the Americans called a "boomer." Each carried twenty SS-N-20 missiles in two rows down the long, long deck forward of the squat, two-tiered sail. Each missile, in turn, mounted six to nine independently targeted MIRV warheads and had a range of 8300 kilometers. If her captain so ordered, Lenin's Invincible Truth could slip through the nuclear-proof blast doors at the west side of the cavern and into the Polyamyy Inlet beyond. From that spot, just a few kilometers north of Murmansk, he could reach across the pole to strike targets as far south as San Francisco or the Americans' big nuclear-missile sub base at Kings Bay, Georgia.

  Or, with different orders, he could reach any target at all anywhere across the broad sweep of Asia. No renegade army, no traitorous city, no nationalist-minded republic in all the vast sweep of the neo-Soviet empire from Odessa to Dushanbe to Vladivostok was safe.

  "You are Captain First Rank Anatoli Chelyag," Karelin said, as if he were speaking the name for the first time. He gestured toward the nearest black metal cliff rising by the concrete pier. "This is your vessel, is it not?"

  "He is, Comrade Admiral." Chelyag stiffened with evident pride. "It is my great honor to command Lenin's Invincible Truth.

  At thirty-nine, Chelyag was young for such an important command, but his father was Vice Admiral Gennadi V. Chelyag, a senior staff officer serving now with the Baltic Fleet and a personal friend of the Minister of Defense. Such was the time-honored way of patronage within the fleet.

  "Hmm. Where are you from, Comrade Captain?" Karelin asked, suddenly curious. Having studied the dossiers of all command officers in the division, he knew precisely where Chelyag had been born and raised, but he wanted to hear what the man would say with his own ears.

  "Kuybyshev, Comrade Admiral." The man sounded suddenly defensive, cautious, as though the question masked some unseen trap. His eyes turned private and flicked once to the KGB men and the MVD guards. "But… I've not been back there for a long time."

  "Kuybyshev? I thought the city's name was now Samara."

  "I still think of it as Kuybyshev, sir."

  "Ah, I see." Kuybyshev, named in the 1930s for a leader of the October Revolution, was one of the hundreds of former Soviet cities and towns that had resumed their old, Czarist names during the Soviet collapse of the early 1990s. "The city is deep within rebel territory, Captain. And they persist in calling it Samara."

  "Y-yes, Comrade Admiral. But I assure you that my total and complete loyalty is to-"

  "Tell me, Captain. Were I to give you the order to incinerate Samara now, this moment, what would be your response?"

  "I would instantly and without question carry out my orders, Comrade Admiral. I have trained all my life in the service of the Rodina. My home now is Party, Motherland, and Navy."

  "The proper answer, Captain. But what would you feel about such an order, eh?"

  Chelyag had difficulty meeting Karelin's eyes. "I… I would be unhappy about it, of course. Kuybyshev is a magnificent city, and an important port on the Volga. It has a population of almost a million and a half people, and I sincerely doubt that more than a fraction of them are Blue counter revolutionaries. I certainly would not want them all to die. But I would follow orders. Sir."

  "And your family?"

  "My wife and child," Chelyag said slowly, "live in Severomorsk. Both my parents are now in St. Petersburg… in Leningrad, I mean. There is nothing to tie me to Kuybyshev, or to any other rebel city."

  Relenting at last, Karelin reached out to clap the young PLARB captain on the shoulder. "Relax, Anatoli Gennadevich. I was not doubting you."

  Chelyag looked as though his knees were about to give way, and his face was pale. "Thank you, Admiral."

  "Nor would such a terrible burden as the destruction of your own home be laid upon your shoulders. But the destruction of our enemies, of the Rodina's enemies, will demand the utmost in loyalty and dedication from every one of us."

  Now it was Karelin's turn to glance briefly at the stolid, central Asian faces of his escort. Few Asians in the MVD even spoke Russian, but Karelin was not about to jeopardize the unit's morale with the information that their home cities were about to become nuclear targets.

  Somehow, he did not think they would understand.

  Chances were, they'd not even been told that Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and the other Asian republics had sided with the rebels… as had been inevitable from the beginning, of course. They were barbarians, fighting with one another incessantly, hating only the Great Russians more than they hated one another. If Moscow decided to loose nuclear-tipped missiles against her own territory, the Union would be well rid of dissidents' hives like Tashkent and Alma-Ata.

  "So, Captain, if you will," he said, gesturing toward the back of the cavern. "Let us proceed to your Operations Building. I have important business to discuss with Rear Admiral Marchenko."

  "At once, Comrade Admiral. This way, if you please."

  The party made its way deeper into the cavern, leaving the waterfront and dock area, passing fenced-off clusters of machine shops, ordnance stores, foundries, and open buildings housing heavy industrial equipment. Everywhere he looked there were soldiers, overseeing the workers, standing guard on metal catwalks and before each building, marching in small groups along the macadam roadways that ringed the subterranean harbor. Many were MVD troops assigned to protect this and other PLARB bases. Others were regular army troops, or Soviet Naval Infantry with their flat caps and blue-and-white striped shirts showing beneath their uniform blouses. Some even, Karelin knew, were Spetsnaz, Russia's elite army special forces, though those units had originally been under the command of the GRU and so were now suspect. Those Spets forces that had remained loyal to Moscow were all carefully screened for Blue sympathizers, as carefully screened as Chelyag and his brother PLARB captains. In addition, each formation had its own secret cadre of KGB Third Directorate watchdogs, working undercover.

  The Operations Building was located clear to the back of the cavern opposite from the blast doors. It seemed to grow from the black rock, a blocky, four-story structure bearing the traditional emblems of Soviet might: five-pointed star, hammer and sickle, and an enormous bronze profile of Lenin.

  A banner above the door repeated Lenin's image, together with the Motto: PROGRESS, MIGHT, VICTORY THROUGH SOCIALISM. In many parts of the Russian military, the spirit and dedication of Communism had never died, even during the worst excesses of the democratic revolt.

  In fact, Communism was as dead now as it had been in 199 1, when the Congress of People's Deputies had first disbanded the Soviet Union. Today, Russia and her empire were ruled by the military, by tough, practical men who had both the courage to make hard decisions and the might to carry them out.

  Inside, the Operations Building was host to a bustling swirl of activity, gleaming, brightly lit, and modern in comparison with the scene in the cavern outside, which might have been lifted from some industrial center or major shipyard early in the century. In each open office, men leaned over computer terminals and keyboards, while in the Primary Command Center, wall-sized monitors displayed electronic maps of all the former Union, with color-coded symbols marking the units mobilizing now on one side or the other from Belarus to the Far East. Elevators in the back led up through fifty meters of solid rock to the surface. Armed MVD troops stood guard at every intersection, every checkpoint.

  Rear Admiral Viktor I. Marchenko occupied an enormous suite of offices on the fourth floor. Karelin announced himself to Marchenko's personal secretary, a young and pretty blond corporal who, Karelin decided when she smiled up at him, owed her formidable position to talents other than her skills at typing and stenography. Her uniform blouse was unbuttoned farther than regulations allowed, and as she moved behind her desk he suspected she was not wearing a bra.

  After a brief exchange with Marchenko over the intercom, the secretary ushered Karelin into the inner sanctum. Only Karelin's chief aide, a captain third rank with a leather briefcase chained to his wrist, accompanied him.

  The rest of the entourage, including Captain Chelyag, remained in the outer office.

  The inner office was luxuriously furnished, featuring a massive wooden desk the size of an aircraft carrier, and a broad window overlooking the cavern outside. Marchenko was a small, rotund man whose red-nosed, fleshy face looked more like that of a bartender or shopkeeper than the commander of one of Russia's most secret and most vital military installations. Like others, like Karelin himself, he owed his present power to connections in Moscow. His uncle was a member of the neo-Soviet Parliament, a man wielding considerable power.

  "So, Viktor Ivanovich," Karelin said cordially. "You still have an excellent eye for picking out efficient and highly motivated personnel, I see."

  Marchenko hesitated, then laughed, a booming, jolly sound. "Ah! You mean Yelana! She's something quite special, yes? Easy to look at, as they say, and a dynamo in bed! I'll let you try her, if you like."

  The idea disgusted Karelin, who had already decided that Marchenko was too comfortable with this post, too willing to enjoy the perquisites of his position without exercising the responsibilities that went with them. Using his secretary as his personal whore…

  Karelin knew that the practice was common enough in the higher ranks of the Red Army. Unlike the United States, where better than ten percent of its active military was composed of women, and contrary to the widespread myth of total equality for Russian women in every field of economic, military, and political life, only ten thousand of Russia's 4.4-million-member army were women, and the vast majority of them served in clerical and medical positions.

  Women, especially compliant women willing to use their bodies to advance their own fortunes, were cherished throughout the upper ranks of the Soviet hierarchy, traded back and forth for favors, even assigned to officers as rewards for service well done, like a bigger office or apartment or a bump up to a higher pay grade.

  Though he'd often tried to imagine it, Karelin could not picture what it must be like in the American military, where women were even now being actively integrated into front-line units. Several weeks earlier he'd read a report about female aviators assigned to American carriers and he'd laughed out loud. Women aboard ship? Flying combat aircraft? Absurd! The military was the domain of men, and women's roles there were and should be sharply restricted.

  As for Marchenko, well, he'd about lived out his usefulness at the Third cavern. A younger, more aggressive man was needed here, one who would not let luxury interfere with good judgment. For the time being, though, Russia's ruling junta desperately needed the support of men like Marchenko's uncle.

  The fat whoremaster would keep his command for a short time longer, at least until a way could be found to ease him up the ladder to some less sensitive command.

  "Thank you, Comrade," Karelin said. His eyes shifted toward a gleaming samovar in one corner of the office. "But for now I would settle for some tea."

  "Of course. Of course. Have a seat, Comrade Admiral." Marchenko spoke briefly over the intercom, directing Yelana to come in and pour tea. Karelin, meanwhile, snapped his fingers at his aide, who produced a key to unchain the briefcase from his wrist. The secretary strutted in a moment later and, as she poured tea for Karelin, bending far enough forward to allow him a glimpse down the front of her uniform blouse, she gave him a secret smile that nearly made him regret his refusal of her boss's offer. His earlier suspicions had been correct. She was not wearing a bra.

  Later, with both the girl and the aide gone from the room, the door locked, and glasses of tea steaming on Marchenko's desk, Karelin opened the briefcase and extracted the heavy sheaf of folders, papers, and maps inside.

  "You are to be congratulated, Comrade Rear Admiral," he told Marchenko smoothly. "Of the four caverns, yours is the only one even approximately on schedule."

  Marchenko glowed beneath the praise. "We only do our duty for the Revolution, Comrade Admiral."

  "This means, however, that more will be expected of you. Kashirin and Golovanov report that their Typhoons will be another week in preparation at least." Despite direct military rule of the nation's supply and transport nets, the inefficiencies of the old regime remained. Of the other six available Typhoon PLARBs, two were laid up in the yards at Severodvinsk, their repairs held up by shipments of parts that were already months overdue. Three more were at the other three Polyamyy Caverns, still waiting for the torpedoes, food supplies, and missiles that made them more than inert steel mountains tied uselessly to their docks. Knowing how the system worked, Karelin suspected that Marchenko had received his missiles and other supplies by mentioning his uncle's name.

  The fleet's last Typhoon, Blestyashchiy Krasnyy Pabeda, was on station at her bastion beneath the Arctic ice, but Karelin could not use him. While it was possible to communicate with the vessel through ELF radio transmissions ― how else to give the order to fire? ― the Magnificent Red Victory's crew had not been screened against the possibility that they might be ordered to direct a nuclear attack against their own homeland.

  The burden Of Derzkiy Plamya, Operation Audacious Flame, would of necessity rest entirely on Marchenko's blocky shoulders.

  "This plan is certainly audacious," Marchenko said, leafing through a binder filled with loose-leaf pages, each marked SOVERSHENNO SEKRETNO at top and bottom. He looked shaken. "To deliver nuclear fire upon our own cities, our own people…"

  "To deliver 'nuclear fire,' as you call it, on traitors, dissidents, and rebels. In war, especially in a war such as this that shall determine the character and heart and mind of this nation for the next thousand years, there is no room for half measures. Besides, if Leonov and his cronies take us seriously, there will be no need for an actual launch."

  Karelin was surprised at how calmly he could sit in this office, sipping tea as he discussed the use of nuclear weapons ― or at least the threat of nuclear weapons ― in Russia's worsening civil war.

  As the battle lines were drawn between neo-Soviet forces in the north and the so-called democrats in the south, it had become increasingly clear that the bulk of the former Soviet Union's ICBMs, including the vast missile fields of Kazakhstan and Ukraine, would eventually fall into rebel hands. Most were still under the control of Strategic Rocket Force commanders loyal to Moscow, but they were isolated and under siege. Worse, the rebels now held the launch codes for the land-based, long-range ICBMs.

  But Moscow still controlled a number of short- and intermediate-range missile batteries, and perhaps most telling of all, she controlled the Northern Fleet… including the eight Typhoon submarines based near Polyamyy.

  Those eight Typhoons alone carried unimaginable potential firepower, 160 ICBMs, mounting a total of over twelve hundred warheads of one-hundred-kiloton yield apiece.

  The deadly threat posed by a single Typhoon, Moscow believed, would be enough to cow the rebels. They would dare not launch a nuclear strike of their own, even if they had managed to come up with the necessary codes, not when a launch would devastate the entire country. The leaders of the military command in Moscow believed, frankly, that while they could afford to vaporize cities like Samara or Tashkent, Leonov could not possibly contemplate the destruction of Moscow or Leningrad, the combined heart and central nervous system of the entire Russian empire.

  And if Leonov did not surrender, if it proved necessary to launch, then it would be "Audacious Flame" indeed, an audacious, cleansing flame scouring the rebels from the earth, leaving a purified remnant once again under the order and discipline of a unified and central authority.

  Everything depended on the Northern Submarine Fleet ― in particular upon the eight Typhoon submarines hidden in their shelters along the Polyamyy, Sayda, and Kola inlets. Nearly one hundred ballistic-missile submarines were deployed with the fleet, from the Typhoons themselves to thirteen aging, diesel-powered relics the West called Golf-IIs. Another seventy-odd attack submarines carried as their primary warloads cruise missiles mounting nuclear warheads. But of that entire number, perhaps a third were in Black Sea or Far East ports, and the loyalties of their captains and crews were suspect. Over half of those in the Northern Fleet were laid up for repairs or maintenance, or were waiting for deliveries of supplies. Many of the rest were at sea, maintaining Russia's posture of strategic defense.

  Those in port and combat ready were standing by, but Karelin was convinced that a single Typhoon would be enough to do the job. Typhoon was the very image of the fleet's nuclear strength. The mere thought of one loosing its nuclear payload at the rebel forces would be enough to bring about their utter capitulation.

  "Will it work?" Marchenko asked at last. "Can it possibly work?"

  "Moscow believes so, yes," Karelin told him.

  "But if their belief is wrong. If Leonov is able to arm even a few missiles and retaliate…"

  "The rebels have everything to lose through a nuclear exchange. And nothing to win. We have only one immediate problem."

  "Yes. The possibility that Leonov is crazy enough to consider launching missiles of his own!"

  "Leonov is a Politician, Comrade Rear Admiral, not a madman. He will not seriously contemplate the destruction of the Union's industrial and transportation infrastructure. No, our problem, Viktor Ivanovich, is the Americans. As always."

  CHAPTER 5

  Wednesday, 11 March

  1000 hours (Zulu +2)

  Tretyevo Peschera

  Near Polyamyy, Russia

  "The Americans!" Marchenko looked up from the papers. "You believe they will interfere with Operation Audacious Flame?"