The Seventh Angel - Страница 29

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The bleating of the machine became a continuous squeal, and the hospital room disappeared.

CHAPTER 23

OPERATIONS COMMAND POST #3

OUTSIDE PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKI, RUSSIA

SUNDAY; 03 MARCH

0822 hours (8:22 AM)

TIME ZONE +12 ‘MIKE’

Standing at the mouth of the cave, Sergiei Mikhailovich Zhukov looked down the snowy side of Koryaksky mountain toward Petropavlovsk, the capital city of his new nation. The missile attacks and naval bombardment had ceased — for the moment at least — and thick columns of smoke were rising from at least a dozen places in his city, to mingle with the slate gray clouds blowing in from Siberia.

Zhukov could not hear the sirens from this distance, but he was certain that they were in full-cry as emergency crews rushed to contain fires and rescue the injured. The distance also insulated him from the cries of the wounded and the dying. That was probably for the best. He could not allow his human instinct for compassion to influence his thoughts and actions. He must follow the example set by Lenin, and accept the fact that blood, and pain, and death were part of the cost of revolution.

Later, when the struggle was won and Russia had regained her rightful position as a world power, the people who died here would be properly honored. He would see to that. The history books would record this as the Siege of Petropavlovsk, and he would have the names of those who lost their lives here engraved on every monument in the new Russia. But those were thoughts for the future. If he was going to bring that future about, he needed to concentrate on the present.

He looked again at the columns of smoke. As he had expected, the majority of the damage appeared to be concentrated on the naval station at Rybachiy, and the Oblast government buildings at Ploshad Lenina. Those doddering old fools in Moscow were reacting exactly as he had predicted. By attacking the seat of his government and his largest military base, they hoped to cut off the head of his revolution and break its back in a single stroke. It obviously hadn’t occurred to them that he would not sit still and wait for their axe to fall.

The attacks had been brief, but surprisingly ferocious: an astonishing amount of firepower brought to bear in a very short period of time. The Ministry of Defense had taken a page from America’s book, and tried their own version of the infamous Shock and Awe tactic. But Zhukov had studied American tactics as well. More importantly, he had studied the tactics of America’s enemies. One of the best lessons had come from the mountains of Afghanistan … Your enemy cannot destroy what he cannot find.

Kamchatka was one of the most volcanic regions on the globe. Koryaksky, Avachinsky, and Kozelsky, the three dormant volcanic mountains closest to Petropavlovsk, were riddled with lava caves, and Zhukov had equipment, supplies, and men hidden in most of them. If the mighty United States military could not root Taliban fighters out of the mountains and caves of Afghanistan, the crumbling Russian army would have no better luck trying to pry Zhukov’s own forces out of the caverns and volcanoes of Kamchatka.

Not that they wouldn’t try, once they discovered that their clumsy attempt at a decapitation attack had failed. But he had no intention of letting things go that far.

Weapons were engines of power. The more terrible a weapon was, the greater its power. Lenin had understood that. So had Stalin and Khrushchev. But Brezhnev, with his love for expensive clothes and cars from America and Western Europe, had not understood. And the imbeciles who had stumbled along so blindly in Brezhnev’s footsteps had shown even less understanding of the simple logic of power.

The door to the command post opened behind him, and Zhukov turned to see one of his lieutenants walk between the pair of Chinese soldiers who guarded the entrance to the facility. The lieutenant strode briskly toward his new president, sparing not even a glance for the Chinese guards, as though even the act of looking at them was beneath him.

Zhukov understood the lieutenant’s feelings. Apart from the fact that Asians were ethnically classified as chernyee, or black, to the burgeoning groundswell of racism in Russia, these chernyee were mercenaries. They had come here to fight, not because they supported the reestablishment of communism in Russia, but because their politburo — the Central Committee of the People’s Republic of China — was willing to trade the lives of forty thousand combat troops for access to crucial nuclear missile technology.

Their black uniforms had been stripped of labels and insignia; they carried no identification or personal effects, and the serial numbers had been removed from their weapons. They had even been delivered by civilian automobile transport ships, with no traceable connection to the Chinese government. Their political masters in Beijing were taking every precaution to allow themselves maximum deniability if Zhukov’s plans for revolution went astray.

Of course, the Chinese soldiers had been told none of this. They had been told only that they were part of a covert combat action that was crucial to the defense of their country. They had all received bonuses equal to three years worth of pay, with the promise of a matching bonus upon successful completion of the mission. That, plus the rigid discipline of the Chinese military, was enough to ensure their functional loyalty for the moment at least.

Zhukov had no illusions that the chernyee bastards would stay bought, but he wouldn’t need them for very long. They were not the core of his revolution. They were merely the torch needed to light the fire.

The lieutenant halted, came to attention, and saluted. “Comrade President, there is news.”

Zhukov returned the salute and accepted a small bundle of papers from the lieutenant’s gloved left hand. “Thank you, Comrade Lieutenant.” He glanced down at the papers. “Give me a summary.”

The lieutenant dropped his salute, but remained at attention. “Comrade President, your staff is downloading press statements from Pravda, Izvestia, and several western news sources. They are all carrying essentially the same story. Moscow has issued a formal statement that the revolution has been put down. They claim to have wiped out our command and control infrastructure, and they are speculating that most of our senior officers and officials were killed by their cruise missile attacks. They confirm the destruction of your offices at Ploshad Lenina, and your private residence. You are listed as missing and presumed dead, Comrade President.”

Zhukov smiled and thumped himself on the chest. “I must admit that I feel pretty good for a walking corpse.”

The lieutenant returned his smile. “Yes, sir! The papers also report that the threat of nuclear action has passed, and that the Zelenograd is trapped under the ice pack, where it will be located and destroyed shortly.”

Zhukov felt his smile widen a fraction. This was the news he had been waiting for. He nodded toward the man. “Thank you, Comrade Lieutenant. You may return to your duties.”

The lieutenant saluted, did an about-face, and marched past the Chinese guards and into the command post.

When the door had closed behind the man, Zhukov looked down at the printouts from the newspaper websites. He’d read them later. For now, it was enough to feel them in his hand. Once again, Moscow was reacting as he had predicted.

He turned his eyes to the pillars of smoke rising from the city below him. He would let the story percolate through the various news medias for another couple of hours, to give most of the supposed experts an opportunity to weigh in on the swift destruction of his revolution. Then he would give the order for the next phase of the operation, and reveal to the world that so-called Russian government was populated by liars and fools.

CHAPTER 24

ICE PACK — NORTHERN SEA OF OKHOTSK

LATITUDE 58.29N / LONGITUDE 155.20E

SUNDAY; 03 MARCH

1001 hours (10:01 AM)

TIME ZONE +11 ‘LIMA’

The timing was precise. All six charges detonated at the same instant, and a circular stretch of the ice pack exploded into an expanding cloud of water vapor and ice fragments. When the rumble of the blast had faded to silence and the last of the scattered ejecta had fallen back to surface of the ice pack, a large opening — about thirty meters in diameter — remained in the ice. Between the displacement effect of the shockwave and the heat of the expanding gases, the hole was nearly clear of debris, leaving a sizeable circle of the Sea of Okhotsk open to the frigid Siberian sky.

Left alone, the newly-formed pocket of open sea would have begun to skin-over with new ice almost immediately. But it was not to be left alone, because the detonation of the shaped charges was only the tiniest precursor of the energies about to be channeled through this particular section of frozen ocean.

The water near the center of the opening began to foam, and the surrounding ice began to vibrate. An enormous bubble broke the surface of the water, followed a millisecond later by the blunt-nosed cylindrical shape of a Russian R-29R nuclear missile.

Still riding the supercavitating gas bubble of its submerged launch system, the 35-ton missile had barely cleared the surface of the water when the liquid-fueled rocket engines of its first stage ignited. Nitrogen tetroxide merged with unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine to feed the missile’s fiery exhaust. With a roar like an insanely-massive blowtorch, the weapon leapt toward the sky on a silver-white column of smoke and flame.