Ahern, Jerry - Total War

"How do you feel, Mikhail?" a voice said. He turned, saw the hand on his shoulder, looked into the icy blue eyes of the blonde-haired woman beside him, the white lab coat poorly concealing what he had found with her almost every night since they had first met when she'd just come to work on the project. "Your first test on multiple targets, and both missiles and planes. You should be proud, Mikhail Andreyevich, dushenko."

"Elizabeta," he whispered, "you know what this means. If my particle beam weapon passes this test, soon it will be operational, and then nuclear war will have become obsolete. Its threat will not hang over us anymore like a plague waiting to break. In just a few years, it will be these weapons that both our country and the Americans will rely upon! No more radiation, no mass murder"'

"You still see this as a road to peace, Mikhail, I know that," Elizabeta whispered.

"Odyin!" The technician shouted the final number. Then "Switch on, charging, one-quarter, one-half, three-quarter, full power. Boost on number three"'

"Myir," he found himself saying, "Peace. It is at hand, Elizabeta," he murmured, holding her small hands in his. "I must go down on the floor and fire the beam personally-I must."

Their eyes met, and she smiled. He leaned toward her and quickly kissed her cheek, then ran toward the steel ladder that led to the firing arena. He took the ladder rungs two at a time, jumping the last three to the stone floor, then raced toward the center console.

"Here-go, move aside," Vorovoi said to the technician. "I will take charge personally." His dark eyes focused on the instrument panel, the gauges, the indicators, the computer readout diodes.

"Boosting ionization twelve points," he shouted, twirling one of the nearer dials. Punching the button for visual via the polar orbit satellite link he anxiously searched the screen, spotting first the low-altitude dot that he knew was the first aircraft, then the second aircraft. Soon-he watched the screen intently-he would see the missiles.

"Capacitance function readout"' he called out.

From behind him, a voice called back, "Ten to the fifteenth capacitance, to the sixteenth, seventeenth-" there was a long pause-"ten to the eighteenth-"

"Hold at that," Vorovoi interrupted.

"Ten to the eighteenth and holding capacitance, zero flux," the voice called back.

His eyes scanning the monitor, Vorovoi saw what his instruments already confirmed-the two unarmed missiles were streaking through the sky toward the drone aircraft. "Designating targets-now! Grid 83, target alpha. Grid 19, target beta. Grid 48-correction, 49-target gamma. Grid 27, target theta-lock!"

He leaned back, waiting, wanting desperately for manual firing mode, but knowing that the true test of his particle beam weapon system and its potential for light-speed pinpoint accuracy lay in the computer firing mechanism as well as the weapon itself.

"Automatic target acquisition and destruction on my mark-six, five, four, three, ready, one. Mark!"

He closed his eyes, his hands fanned in front of them a moment. Then, ignoring the dials and gauges and digital computer readouts on the console, he fixed his eyes on the monitor. Target alpha, the nearest of the low-flying bomber aircraft, exploded in a burst of light and vaporized. Almost in the blink of an eye, target beta, the second drone aircraft, vaporized. Vorovoi started to search out the first missile, third target in the firing sequence, but before he could locate it, there was a bright flash. Quickly, he spotted target theta, the last of the four. The angle was right, and he could see the knife edge of the particle beam-it looked like something from an American space movie, he thought. He had seen several American films in Stockholm years earlier when he was there for a scientific conference.

"Deathray," he murmured. The second missile vaporized in a bright flash, the camera whiting out a moment from the light.

There was total silence in the firing control center, except for the incessant whirling and buzzing of the computers and the climate control system which latter was needed for the proper working of the machines. Vorovoi stood up, looked toward the mezzanine, and saw Elizabeta beaming at him. Her smile was something Mikhail could never forget. Locking his fists together over his head, he jumped into the air, screaming, laughing. And, suddenly, the technicians, the military guards-everyone around him-were applauding, shouting, laughing.

"We have entered the new age!" he cried. "Peace"'

Chapter Thirteen

"As you were, gentlemen," Rear Admiral Roger Corbin said absently as he entered the tiny briefing room. The dozen or so naval officers crowded together had started to rise.

"Admiral Corbin"'

Corbin turned around, pushed a bony hand through his graying blond hair, and said, "Yes, Commander," then, squinting to read the name plate, added, "Abramson."

"We've just had confirmation, sir, that-"

"I know, Commander. I'm the one who confirmed it." Then, raising his voice Corbin started toward the platform at the front of the room, saying, "All right, gentlemen, let's get this thing underway. I'm due at the White House"-and he glanced at his digital watch-"in fifteen minutes."

He lit a cigarette and waited as the room quieted. The gathering of high-ranking Naval intelligence personnel knew him, except for a few faces, like that of Commander Abramson. Corbin began, "The Nuclear Regulatory Commission just confirmed what our own satellite infrareds and other sensing devices already showed. A large-sized nuclear device was exploded just a few miles beyond the estimated perimeter of the polar icecap-just about where the Benjamin Franklin's position should have been, according to its last radio beacon relay via satellite. Also, there's a Soviet sub-what the hell's the name of that?" He turned to the lieutenant.

The young man consulted his notes, knit his brow a moment, then looked up. "The Volga, sir-it's a Potemkin class nuclear sub."

"Right," Corbin continued. "The Potemkin-I mean the Volga-well, it's off our tracking plots and missing. Could have been a collision, could have been the Russians attacking. There's no way to confirm without pulling another sub off position and going in to take a look-see. Can't do that now. I'll officially label it a nuclear accident, a collision, confer with the Russians, what-have-you. But my personal assessment-and it's just a gut level reaction-is that one of them lost their nerve and opened fire, then the other one returned. I knew Wilmer, commander of the Franklin. A little edgy about his job, but a good man. He wouldn't have opened fire first. I bet on the Ruskie commander. Intelligence put him down as a David-pronounce it Dahveed-Antonyevich Kosnuyevski. Kind of a new man, on his first line command. Could be the sort of thing a guy like that would do. They're on alert status, too."

"Sir," a lieutenant commander from the rear of the room shouted.

"I know your questions before you ask 'em-tell me if I'm wrong." Coughing and stomping out his cigarette, then pausing to light another, Corbin said, "About seventy megatons-means at least one of the reactors went up along with nearly all the warheads on both boats. U.S. Geological Survey, our own people, Oceanographic and Atmospheric Admin people-nobody knows what's going to happen. Should hike the tides, might loose a lot of ice into shipping lanes, could make some minor short-term climatic changes. Not too much crap in the atmosphere as best as we can tell at this time. Answer your question, Commander?" Admiral Corbin smiled, glancing back at the man.

The man only nodded.

Chapter Fourteen

"All right, guys, take off your coats, whatever. The president's on the hot line with the Soviet premier. Told me to get the briefing started."