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“Goddammit!” the Minority Leader continued. “It's time to shit or get off the pot! We don't have to declare war; we're already in the middle of one!”

“Bob,” the President finally succeeded in getting in, “you should have been briefed already on what our response has been.
Hell,
Bob, we're putting it to the Russians even as we speak, nuclear weapons and all! What more would you have me do?”

The voices of several people erupted over the phone at once. “Nuclear disarmament! Nu-nu-
nu
-clear disarmament!”

“Do you think the Russians are just going to lay down their nuclear weapons?” the President shouted.

“Mr. President, Mr. President!” Lambert recognized the voice of the President's Chief of Staff, Irving Waller, who was with the Vice President at Mount Weather. “I'm sorry, but might I have a word with you on your private line for a second?”

The electronic gathering of Congressional leadership and the Cabinet on the secure conference call exploded into a cacophony of views as the President nodded at the air force technician who ran the show. The noise of the conference call was replaced with the calmer sounds of two people's voices, the Chief of Staff and the Vice President.

“Are you there?” the President asked.

“Yes,” the two men said in unison.

“Okay, Mr. President,” Waller said. “Here's the story. This thing is getting away from us and we've got to move. We've got to get out in front. The people out there are gonna go crazy—I can feel it. They're gonna demand blood. I mean that literally.”

“Look. Now's not the time to start thinking opinion polls and reelection.”

“Mr. President,” the White House Chief of Staff said, almost beside himself, “I'm not talking about your
popularity,
I'm talking about your
survival!
One flinch, one twitch, and this bandwagon is gonna roll right over you! Right now, you've got to be the brave leader, out in front, leading the charge. No more ‘time for healing' bullshit. I'm afraid the healing is going to have to wait. This thing has turned, and it's turned bad—you've got to trust me on this one. And you've got to get your face on television. I don't care what your military people say, you've got to go on the air and talk to the people. Who listens to radio anymore? CNN carried the radio address with a picture of a 747 flying over the map, and then shots inside Air Force One of your quarters and of the lounge bar, for Christ's sake! Made it look like a damn party plane!”

“There is no television broadcasting capability from up here,” the President said. “The Vice President is going to address the nation from Mount Weather.”

“Fine and dandy, just fine and dandy. But you better get in front of the cameras yourself. Good God, Walter, we're talking major damage control here!”

The President drew in a deep breath, letting it out with the word, “O-k-a-a-y. Let's get back on the line with the others,” he said, looking up at the technician.

The speaker exploded to life.

“You tell that . . . ” the Minority Leader of the Senate was shouting, being interrupted by, “You can't just . . . ” from his counterpart the Majority Leader. “You tell that to the fifty percent of my constituency that survives the radioactivity!”

“That's enough!” the President shouted, to the surprise of Lambert. “I've made my decision. We will entreat the Russians for a cease-fire, and begin negotiations with them for a mutual and more
stringently monitored reduction in our remaining arsenals of nuclear weapons.”

Several people shouted angrily at once, one of whom was the White House Chief of Staff, but the loud repetition of “Mr. President! Mr. President!” by the Minority Leader finally got him the floor. The silence that followed seemed to crackle with electricity. “Mr. President,” he said more quietly, “I am going to put before the Senate a resolution declaring war on Russia and directing the President of the United States to prosecute that war until he can certify to Congress that all their nuclear weapons have been turned over to the International Atomic Energy Agency or have been destroyed.” There was a long pause. “Will you, as commander in chief, implement such a declaration of war if passed by both houses?”

Lambert looked over at the President. He stared down at the table, his hands covering his mouth and nose. He dropped his hands. “I will not.”

The telephone was silent, even the majority leadership from the President's own party.

“In that case, Mr. President,” the Minority Leader said, “as cochairman of the Committee to Investigate the Nuclear War, I hereby subpoena Mr. Gregory Lambert to testify before our committee at Greenbriar two days from now at nine
A.M.”

President Livingston looked over at Lambert, and Lambert, a charge running through his nervous system like a jolt of electricity, forced himself to meet his gaze.

“What on earth for?” the President asked.

“To determine the exact sequence of events that led to the nuclear attack on the United States,” the Speaker of the House said gently. “I'm sorry, Walter, but more specifically to determine how it is that the Chinese got their missiles off, which led to the Russians' firing at us.”

“But, but . . . ” the President stammered.

“As your friend, Walter,” the Speaker said, “I'd advise you not to comment at this time until you've had the opportunity to confer with White House counsel.”

“Is there any evidence at all that the Americans are slackening the pace of their sorties?” General Razov asked the officers in the
room, still faintly smoky from the fighting that had preceded Zorin's arrest.

Air Force General Mishin shook his head. “There are three hundred and fifty plus radar contacts inbound right now, and the last nuclear detonation report was ten minutes ago.”

General Karyakin, the new commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces, slammed his hand down on the conference table. “How much of this do you plan on taking?” he shouted, turning then to look at each of the twenty or so senior officers gathered for the first full meeting of the new
STAVKA
. “All right, a mistake was made! Zorin has been arrested and is in custody. I'm sure he will be executed, after a proper trial, et cetera. And still the Americans come at us! I for one have had enough!”

“And what do you propose?” Razov asked.

Karyakin stared back at Razov, finally saying, “We still have the submarines in the Kara Bastion.”

“And you would like to do what with them?” the commander of Military Production asked in an incredulous voice. “Fire at the American cities?”

“They plan on reducing us to a Third World nation. President Livingston lied to us! He's just buying time for another wave of attacks.”

“There will be no missile firings from the Bastion,” Razov said. “I intend to issue the recall orders.”

There was silence, and from the averted gaze of several of his closest friends Razov sensed a lack of support. “We have less than an hour and a half,” he said. “Exactly twenty hours after firing—at zero seven two four hours Moscow time—all of the submarines in the Bastion will have the aerials on their periscope masts up for five minutes. It's risky to do even that, so those aerials won't be up for one second longer. Admiral Verkhovensky informs me that they will also take air samples and check for ordinary civilian radio and television broadcasts. The air samples will show inordinately high levels of radioactivity, and the radio and television stations for which they are looking will be off the air. If there is no recall during that five-minute window, the nuclear control orders Zorin issued will send those submarines to deep station. There will be no recall option then. As I understand it,” Razov said, looking at the commander of the Northern Fleet, “the only communications they would accept after the window passes would be a firing order, and they would remain on station until their stores ran so low that they were forced to return to port.”

“Which the Americans have destroyed,” the naval commander groused.

“But,” Razov said, pausing to look at each of the officers for effect, “but, after having each received valid control orders, then conducted their independent tests to confirm the occurrence of a nuclear exchange,
then
not received a recall at the twenty-hour mark and gone to deep station, those submarines' hammers will be cocked. It is a ‘fail-deadly' nuclear control policy. If—if they are attacked, if any
one
of the submarines' commanders determines that an attack on his vessel is under way, he is under standing orders to fire his missiles according to the preprogrammed firing plan initiated by Zorin's nuclear control orders. In addition, if any submarine fires its missiles, it will also broadcast an encrypted acoustic control code that will be detected by the seafloor sensors that lace the Kara Sea and relayed by cable to all the other sensors, which will themselves rebroadcast the acoustic control code directing all the other submarines in the Bastion to fire. Is that correct, Admiral?”

The naval officer nodded his head. “And,” the Admiral said, looking off into the distance, seeing the picture in his head, “the underwater sound of a launch to the other subs in the Bastion would be unmistakable. Even if the Americans disabled the seafloor relay system, the submarines would still launch. They would all blow ballast and fire on the sounds of any of them firing, especially if the sounds of an attack—torpedo splashes or detonations, depth charges, et cetera—were the obvious explanation for the launch.”

The tragedy of it came through in the sound of the older man's voice, in the physical effect the image of it had on his frame, posture, and visage.

Razov again gauged the faces of the men at the table. He was the acknowledged senior officer there, all clearly understood: commander of the Supreme High Command. But matters of this importance were a collective decision.
They're with me,
Razov decided.

“But the Americans are a peace-loving people,” General Karyakin said suddenly in a high and sarcastic voice, his hands held up in mock confusion as he addressed the group. “That's why we are not responding to their continued attacks on us. They'll stop incinerating our people when it seems the decent thing to do!” His hands slammed down on the table. “And if the war is not over, are we to take our only remaining deterrent out of service? If the Americans keep up their attacks, the submarines wouldn't even make it back to port!
Or
”—he paused, holding his index finger up into the air and looking from face to face—“or, do we leave them in the Bastion, where we can defend them with our conventional air and naval forces? They're our last, great remaining national asset. I vote for their safekeeping!”

The chiefs of the various branches of service represented
around the table nodded at the proposed “compromise”, and Razov sensed his consensus slipping away. “Is there any other way we can remove their firing authorization at a later date?” Air Force General Mishin asked Admiral Verkhovensky.

Razov scrutinized the admiral and then Karyakin, the two officers who commanded the nation's strategic nuclear arsenal. The admiral shook his head. Neither man appeared guarded, conspiratorial, and Razov himself relaxed. Neither man seemed to know what Razov knew—neither knew of his “ace in the hole,” as General Thomas would have called it. “Those submarines are on a war footing. Their commanders have each received valid launch orders with a built-in hold. None of them would have any direct evidence of the attack—detonation flashes, et cetera—but from the moment they opened their sealed war orders for Zorin's firing plan, they knew that those same orders included the firing of the entire land-based nuclear arsenal of the RVSN at the United States. And they would also know what would happen next. Their homes, their families . . . The planners who programmed the targeting options did not want to risk, in a protracted nuclear engagement, the potential that the Americans might issue false recall orders to the submarine fleet and then pick them off when they blew their ballasts. The submarines' computers will not even alert the crews that a message arrived unless the computers get either a recall at precisely twenty hours after receipt of the initial firing order or a valid preprogrammed nuclear firing order.”

“And we have no other means of communicating with the submarines?” Razov asked.

“They're at war, General, and will be for the next nine to twelve months, depending upon each boat's current provisioning. They are under orders to accept no communications. And even if they turned their extremely low frequency receivers back on, I have complete confidence that every last one of them would reject as an American artifice any recall orders received after the twenty-hour window has passed.”

“I propose,” General Karyakin said in a loud voice, leaning forward, “that we allow the submarines to remain on station. All those in favor?” he asked abruptly, raising his hand.

As hands slowly rose around the table and Razov saw that he had lost, he raised his own hand.
Better to stay with the majority,
he decided.
Choose your fights carefully and hang onto your “ace in the hole.”
He noticed the stare of Filipov from the wall next to the door, and lowered his hand a little more quickly than the others.

“Very well,” Razov said, turning the briefing book to the next item on the agenda.

“What are the preprogrammed targets?” Razov heard, and he looked up to see to his great surprise that the speaker had been Filipov. The generals and admirals craned their necks or turned to see just who it was along the back wall of the conference room.

“What?” the commander of the Northern Fleet asked.