Ian Slater - World in Flames

Not so for Douglas Freeman. He wanted to press on.

“Give me a fuel dump, Lord,” Freeman declared, studying the headquarters map of the curving Polish front beyond Poznan, “and I’ll be in Warsaw in two weeks! In another week I’ll be over the River Bug into Russia.”

Without turning from the map, Freeman addressed his aide, Colonel Norton. “Jim, I’ve gotta have gas. By God, we’ll fly fuel in here by the pallet if we have to. Like we did it inside the DB pocket. Meanwhile I don’t want anybody digging in for Christmas. Get as much as we can as far forward as we can. We can’t stop. Attack! Attack! Attack! — that’s the strategy. That’s the only strategy. You start letting troops dig in, they start thinking it’s R and R. Start putting up pictures of the girl back home and their dog. Next thing you know, you have to stick a bayonet up their ass to get ‘em moving again. No, sir, now we’ve got the bastards on the ropes — finish them off. That’s the plan.”

“I needn’t tell you it’s a risk, General,” cautioned Norton anyway. “You could lose everything you’ve gained.”

“I know — I know. It’s against every military credo. But all we need is the gas, goddamn it! If we can get the gas up here, we can kick ass from here to Moscow.” Freeman paused, arms akimbo, looking up at the huge operations map, shaking his head. “We made one hell of a mistake, Jim — and I’ll be the first to admit it—” He paused. “Though I wouldn’t want that to get around.”

“What’s that, General?”

“That we — meaning everybody from the president down— screwed up royally when we thought that once we hit the Russian regulars, all their frappin’ republics would take advantage of it. Try like Siberia to break free of Moscow. Even help us. But—” the general sighed, his right-hand glove sweeping over the map beyond the Urals and the Caucasus. “—we should have known. Mother Russia isn’t politics. It’s an emotion. Republics’ll hang together to beat us, no matter they hate one another’s guts.” Freeman lifted a mug of coffee, holding it thoughtfully between his hands, still studying the map. “But I do believe the Baltics will be different. They’ll help us. Oh, not much — only a handful of troops compared to the Russians. But — look what Finland did in forty-one, Jim.” He put his coffee down, making short, skirting movements about the Russian Baltic seaports. “If they can harass the Russians, a week, ten days — long enough for us to drive a wedge here, into Lithuania, and out — we can do it, Jim. We can do it.”

“I hope so, General.”

“So do I.” It was such a shocking, unpredictable thing for the general to say — to concede even the slightest doubt — that it had the effect of jolting Norton.

“General.”

“No, no.” Freeman shook his head. “I have no doubt about my troops. About the ground war. What I’m alluding to, Colonel, is a matter of time. What I’m concerned about is that if we don’t hit hard, and fast enough…”He paused and took a sip of coffee.

“What, General?”

“That some bastard’ll push the button.”

Knowing the general as well as he did, what disturbed Norton most was that if the general had seemingly envisaged the possibility of the Russians going nuclear — then Freeman had probably thought of doing it himself.

In Atlanta CDC–Center for Disease Control — another skull-and-crossbones pin, this one for the state of New York, was stuck into the map of the United States. There were now twenty-three pins clustered along the eastern seaboard, near Chicago and the Midwest, the others sprinkled throughout California, the major clusters of “stings,” meaning five or more acts of sabotage, in Silicone Valley, the site of some of the country’s leading electronic defense system manufacturers.

What was first thought to be only a New York problem because of the sabotage of Croton, Hillsview, and the other main reservoirs for New York, affecting eleven million people, was now a national crisis, affecting seventy-two million. Over a thousand cases of “arson” had been reported — many of the fires impossible to extinguish by water from city reservoirs because the water, once evaporated, left lethal residues of airborne poison. All but two of the twenty-three cities, Salt Lake City and Portland, declared martial law and curfews in an effort to contain growing crowds clamoring for water supplies. In Norfolk, Virginia, and in Puget Sound, north of Seattle, at the Bangor Sub Base, several nuclear submarines in for maintenance were ordered to stay in port, their salt/freshwater converters providing emergency drinking water for households with a ration of two gallons of water per day for a family of four.

National Guard units throughout the country on “shoot-to-kill” orders surrounded distilleries and bottled water depots, and in Colorado, more Guard units were deployed to turn back ad hoc convoys of armed civilians heading for Aspen and other winter resorts where fresh snow had not yet melted down into the contaminated water tables. Atlanta CDC issued a national alert — so urgent that it could not wait for the chiefs of staff’s normal clearance and so was disseminated under President Mayne’s “Executive Order” signature. The CDC alert was a warning that because of the poisoning that by now had been conveyed via myriad underground aquifers into the major U.S. water tables, “no water other than rainwater directly trapped by uncontaminated vessels would be safe” for at least three months. When President Mayne realized the enormity of the problem, he knew he was confronted by a danger whose implications posed a greater threat to the public than that posed to Lincoln during the threat of disunion. Already looting and attendant crime were the worst they had ever been.

As the president moved from his White House work study around to the Oval Office to address the nation, the kleig lights seemed to stun him momentarily and he used his notes, with Xeroxes of the Atlanta CDC crisis map, to shield himself from the glare.

“How long have we got?” he asked Trainor, who was grumpily telling the CBS mobile crew to clear the hallway.

“Six minutes, Mr. President,” Trainor replied.

As he raised his cup of coffee seconds before going on national TV to try to calm the nation, Mayne looked at the black liquid and put the cup down.

“It’s been tested, Mr. President,” an aide informed him. “Washington’s supply hasn’t been affected — so far.”

“Why not?” he asked. “Surely the capital would be the prime target?”

“We think,” suggested Trainor, “it’s a message. U.S. leadership can survive if it comes to terms.”

“With what? Chemical warfare?” snapped Mayne.

“With their terms,” responded Trainor.

One of the TV crew stepped forward beneath the kleig lights and put a glass of water on the president’s desk. There were ten seconds to go. “Take it away,” said Mayne, indicating the glass. “Can’t show that on television. Cause a goddamn revolution!”

“Get it away!” hissed the TV producer. The red light turned green.

Unbeknownst to President Mayne as he began his speech, red lights all across the frozen tundra of northern Canada and Alaska came on in every one of NORAD’s — North American Air Defense — early-warning stations reporting “Bogeys, fifty plus.”

It was the third time that week that NORAD jets, engines constantly warmed in the hardened snow-white hangars, scrambled to meet the Soviet bombers who, with all Canadian and American F-18s airborne, turned back before they reached the BI — Baffin Island — circle. Duty officers were watching the operators as much as the big screens. This game of cat and mouse, constantly testing each other’s state of readiness, did much more than tell the other side whether you were ready or not, forcing the NORAD fighters to gulp thousands of gallons of precious fuel during each scramble. It also wore down the nerves of potential attackers and defenders alike, especially those of radar operators on the NORAD line, any one of whose “yea” or “nay” could inadvertently start the chain of events catapulting both sides into all-out nuclear war.