Ian Slater: World in Flames

In President Mayne’s mind, the Russians had no doubt chosen Seattle as a “technically correct” counterforce, or military, target, as his adviser Schuman had told him, because of the massive Boeing works. It was a lawyer’s point, Mayne’s advisers aboard both Kneecap and Looking Glass telling him that though Seattle was the most populous northwestern city in the continguous United States, this could not be used as a “countervalue” argument against the Soviets, who would no doubt, correctly, claim that because of Boeing, Seattle was a bona fide “counterforce” military target. Mayne, though in no mood for lawyers’ points, nevertheless had to confront the cold logic of their reasoning in a nuclear world. But cold logic also told him the Russians, who had started the nuclear “exchange,” might well be lying through their teeth in claiming they could not contact their subs. Was it Chernko’s test of U.S. will? It was only a second in his mind’s eye, but in that second, the long memory of what America had forfeited because of Russian lies and subterfuge at the end of World War II lay heavily upon him. And what were the Russians planning? Were they moving their SLBM fleet closer, to attack should America weaken?

He decided that for the sake of everyone, and not just the United States, there must be absolutely no question — no doubt left in the Russians’ minds. He would not order the four retaliatory strikes, and as they had not taken out Washington, he would leave Moscow standing, but ordered Leningrad taken out as payment in kind for the millions who he now knew had died in Seattle and would the in the weeks to come.

As the MX warheads came down over Leningrad, the overpressure caused the Neva to burst its banks, flooding Nevsky Prospekt. The rubble that moments before had been a golden glory of imperial architecture housing the general staff headquarters in Palace Square mixed in a sludge with the ashes of what had been the burnished gold of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, its vaporized frescoes infusing the sludge with speckles of gold. The entire Hermitage was razed to the ground, Rembrandt’s Flora and millions of other exhibits vaporized. The docks, where only minutes before, battle cruisers and missile-carrying destroyers were setting out to sea, were now infernos, the huge dockside cranes tumbling into the Neva, boiling it with their heat. The fires from the air burst cremated over a million — and there would have been many more were it not for the extensive underground shelters in the outlying suburbs.

Now even Chernko knew the war was over — that America could no longer be resisted. In the crude measure of body counts, no doubt America had suffered millions more dead than the Soviet Union because of her lack of nuclear shelters and evacuation schemes, but her technology and, now it was clear, her will, were indomitable.

For his part in detecting the presence of the two Russian ballistic missile subs, which, had it not been for his prescience, would have surely increased America’s dreadful losses of over six million dead into more than forty and would have turned the radioactive-dead zones of several midwestern states and north Washington State into an entire country of dead zones, poisoned for decades, Ray Brentwood had become an overnight hero — celebrated not only in every state of the union but all over the Allied world.

But even at this moment, when Chernko, “on behalf of the Politburo and STAVKA,” delivered Russia — despite the threat of the Siberian Republic to secede — into “unconditional surrender to the United States of America,” it would take hours in some places — days in others — before the word was out, and in those places men would continue to the as if there had been no surrender. And despite the euphoria embracing the return of Ray Brentwood’s “fleet,” he stood alone at the ship’s stern, disturbingly hypnotized by the ship’s wake. At one moment it was a sea alive, its effervescence catching the morning sun like an ice cream cloud in summer, yet at the same time it seemed to him a massive and ever-moving grave, its vastness taking him into itself, making him feel insignificant and lost.

“What the hell’s gotten into him?” asked a jubilant third officer. “Christ, he’s won the—”

“Quiet now,” said Cameron, who was still officer of the deck. “His wife and children live — lived in Seattle.”

As in all modern wars, it was one in which the civilian casualties far outnumbered those of the combatants.

In Khabarovsk, Alexsandra was hysterical. Her three brothers had come home, released by Nefski, who had apologized, saying that there had been a “grievous error” committed by his second in command, that the three brothers’ arrest had been nothing more and nothing less than a case of “mistaken identity.” He very much hoped the family would understand, and as a sign of his sincerity, he would be “most honored” if they would be his guests at The Bear Restaurant— kosher, of course. What he meant, as they well knew, was that the Allies would go easier on him, given his apology and his subsequent treatment of the family. But Alexsandra didn’t hear a word of what he said, still crying hysterically at the sight of Ivan, her oldest brother, whom she had seen shot in the courtyard of the KGB prison. She kept hugging him, pushing him away to see that it was really him, pulling at his beard like a small child, hugging him again and crying and laughing and weeping as she hadn’t done in years. Ivan had been told, Alexander explained, to fall in the snow when he heard shots — blanks or, more likely, said Alexander, live ammunition but aimed at the wall, away from Ivan, Nefski not wanting to shoot a source of information before he had to, hoping to terrify the girl enough before he moved to more drastic measures.

They did not accept his invitation to the Bear, for apart from it never having entered their heads that they would do so, it would only confirm the suspicions of others in the Oblast that what Nefski had said about them being turncoats and opportunists was true.

In the pale light of Moscow’s dawn, the sun’s rays grew brighter by the second, and despite the air being filled with dust from the rubble of the COM, the colors within Assumption Cathedral grew richer, David hearing the SPETS moving outside, their boots crunching the tightly packed snow, their commanding officer obviously having decided to wait for more light to aid him in rooting out the last of the SAS holdouts. Cheek-Dawson was in great pain again, his left foot so swollen that the boot looked like it was about to split. From his position behind the pillar to the left of the altar and from David’s position behind the pillar to the right, they had the entrance well covered, but both knew they could not realistically hold out for any more than a few minutes once the final rush came, both of them having donned their masks for what they were sure would be a tear gas attack.

Then they heard the tolling of the bell tower in St. Nicholas, and the very beauty of the sound, muted by the snow-laden roofs, was hardly over when the attack began, not with tear gas canisters — which would have obliged the attackers to have the encumbrances of gas masks as well — but a cluster of smoke grenades, which rolled into the cathedral, their thick, spuming white smoke churning sunbeams and obscuring the cathedral’s chandeliers.

Neither Cheek-Dawson nor Brentwood fell for the trap of firing to give away their positions but instead quickly rolled four “flash-bangs” into the smoke, immediately cupping their ears and pressing their helmets hard up against the pillars. There was a purple flash, a splintering of glass, the sound of someone running, off to David’s left. David wheeled about the pillar, saw denser white on white — the SPETS’s overlay in the smoke — and fired a quick, three-round burst. The SPETS’s feet shot from under him as if he’d slipped on ice, and he was dead the moment he struck the floor. There was a series of shouted orders and now they all came in, Cheek-Dawson throwing two more grenades and David three in quick succession. The cathedral erupted in machine-gun fire, orange tongues darting in the thick smoke, a man screaming somewhere down by the entrance, David knowing he had only four or five good bursts left.