The Kremlin Strike

Thirty-Nine

Colonel General Leonov sat alone on one side of the large conference table. His colleagues among Russia’s national security and foreign policy elite were crowded practically elbow to elbow around the other three sides. I have become a plague carrier, he thought with morbid humor. No one wanted to risk even the slightest association with someone who had become a focus of Gennadiy Gryzlov’s ire.

“You were an idiot, Leonov,” the president said icily. “How could you let yourself be duped by so obvious a ploy?”

Leonov kept his voice level. “Without knowing that one of the American astronauts survived reentry, we had no way to judge that their attack on our surface-to-air missile defenses was only a feint.”

“Your ignorance of yet one more important fact is hardly a persuasive defense,” Gryzlov snapped. “For days, the world has trembled before Russia’s power. But now you’ve allowed the Americans to rescue their downed astronaut and run rings around you.” His eyes were coldly furious. “And your failure threatens to make the Motherland a laughingstock.”

“This was a covert operation by the Americans,” Leonov pointed out carefully. “They aren’t likely to publicize its results.”

Gryzlov snorted. “You think not? Then you’re an even bigger fool than I believed. Washington will be only too happy to spread the news to its allies, if only to stiffen the backs of those who had been wavering. We just lost six of our best single-seat fighters and fired off more than a hundred sophisticated missiles… and for what? To kill a handful of cheap decoys!”

Angrily, he shoved back his chair, stood up, and began pacing around the table. He loomed over everyone else in the room like a bird of prey on the lookout for its next victim. “Of what value, Colonel General,” he sneered, “is your expensive military space station if our enemies can still violate Russia’s sovereignty with impunity?”

Leonov kept his mouth shut.

“Now you show some wisdom,” Gryzlov commented acidly. He stopped pacing. “Despite the dominance we have achieved in near-Earth orbit, the Americans still apparently believe they can act freely against us here on Earth itself. They must be made to regret this error.”

“In what way, Gennadiy?” Foreign Minister Daria Titeneva asked. Her eyes were watchful.

Gryzlov bared his teeth in a cold, cruel smile. “By the most logical means, Daria. We will carry out an immediate reprisal attack, employing one of Mars One’s Rapira hypersonic warheads.”

Leonov nodded to himself. That was the logical move. And it was one he had anticipated as soon as Gryzlov had summoned his senior officials to this emergency meeting.

Titeneva frowned. “Firing those space-based missiles still involves serious risk,” she said slowly. “And it would not be in our interest to trigger an uncontrolled escalation of this conflict.”

“Weapons that we are too afraid to use are not weapons at all,” Gryzlov said with contempt.

“I understand that, Mr. President,” the foreign minister said. She looked straight up at him. “Which is why I agree that we should launch one of the Rapiras—but only against an uninhabited area first. Doing so would demonstrate the power of this new weapons system quite convincingly, especially if we couple it with a clear warning that further attacks against us or our interests will be avenged with overwhelming force.”

Gryzlov waved away her suggestion with obvious scorn. “That is the counsel of cowardice, Daria. I thought better of you.” He shook his head. “Pulverizing a few hundred square meters of dirt and rock will not terrify anyone. Especially not the Americans.” He looked around the table with a challenging stare. “Did the Americans ‘demonstrate’ the power of their first atomic bomb to the Japanese by dropping it on empty ocean?”

No one answered his rhetorical question.

“Of course not,” he continued. “They set it off over an inhabited city — killing tens of thousands to make a point.” He smiled thinly. “Why should we fear to tread the same ground?”

Titeneva looked horrified.

“Oh, relax,” Gryzlov told her impatiently. “I am not contemplating an attack on a civilian city… yet.” He turned back to Leonov. “Instead, your cosmonauts aboard Mars One will attack a legitimate military target… the USS Ronald Reagan. After all, aircraft from that carrier were instrumental in your recent humiliation. Sinking it from orbit should prove to President Farrell the folly of continued resistance.”

Leonov felt his pulse speed up. Adrenaline flooded his system. This was the moment of maximum danger for him, and millions of years of evolution were now signaling the necessity of “fight or flight.” “Unfortunately, Mr. President,” he said quietly, “I must advise you that such an attack would almost certainly fail. Even at Mach twenty, a Rapira warhead falling from orbit takes around ninety-five seconds to reach its target.”

“So?” Gryzlov demanded.

“The ships of the American carrier strike group zigzag at irregular intervals as a matter of routine,” Leonov explained. “And under attack, they can maneuver even more violently and at higher speeds. A warhead aimed at the Reagan, or any of her escorts, could easily miss by a thousand meters or more.”

For a long moment, Gryzlov stared at him in brooding silence.

Leonov sensed the others around the table recoiling even farther into their seats. None of them would meet his eyes. Plainly, they expected, and dreaded, a temper tantrum by their leader that would end in his arrest and probable execution.

At last, Gryzlov’s thin, calculating smile returned. “You seem to have given this some thought, Leonov.”

“Yes, sir, I have,” he agreed calmly.

“Then do you have an alternative to offer me? Another military target whose destruction will make Farrell shit himself with fear?”

Leonov nodded. “I do.” He sent a series of black-and-white images from his tablet computer to the conference room’s large screen. “These pictures are being relayed from one of our reconnaissance satellites. The ship you see here is currently departing from the U.S. Navy base at Yokosuka, Japan.”

Gryzlov frowned. “If you can’t hit an aircraft carrier with a Rapira, how do you expect to succeed against another moving vessel?”

“Because this ship is steaming at a set speed and on a strictly prescribed course in one of the world’s busiest and most crowded shipping lanes,” Leonov said. “It cannot maneuver evasively without risking a fatal collision.” He tapped his tablet again. In response, text scrolled across the screen, identifying the U.S. Navy ship and its cargo.

“Ah, I see,” Gryzlov said in satisfaction. His mouth twisted into an exultant, vicious grin. “Yes, that is perfect, Mikhail! Let it be done.”

Colonel Vadim Strelkov looked across the command compartment. “Are we receiving good data, Georgy?”

Konnikov nodded. “Yes, sir. Our link to the Kondor satellite is solid.” He entered commands on his console. “Transferring tracking data to the Rapira fire-control computer now.”

“Tracking data received,” Major Viktor Filatyev announced over the intercom from his post in the space station’s aft weapons module. “The computer is calculating a firing solution.”

Seconds passed.

“I have a good solution,” Filatyev said. “Feeding it to Rapira One.” Moments later. “Rapira One has accepted the data. I am ready to launch the weapon.”

Strelkov turned his gaze to his own console. One of his displays showed a feed from one of their outside cameras. It was focused on the underside of the station’s central command module. “Very well, Major. Launch now.”

“Launching.”

On the colonel’s display, an armored hatch slid open. With a puff of gas, an elongated shape — the Rapira warhead with its attached rocket motor — drifted out into space, separating from Mars One at ten meters per second.

One minute later, now safely away from the Russian space platform, the rocket motor attached to the Rapira fired. It was aimed against the direction of orbit. One short burn slowed the weapon just enough to send it slanting down toward the earth on a precisely calculated vector.

As it fell out of orbit, maneuvering thrusters puffed, flipping the Rapira end over end, so that the warhead was nose first. Small explosive bolts popped, separating the rocket motor from the rest of the assembly. With its task complete, the little rocket engine drifted away… on course to burn up in reentry.

On its own now, the sleek, carefully shaped warhead crossed into the upper atmosphere and plunged onward, trailing a plume of white-hot plasma. As it fell, it tore a blinding streak of light across the night sky above the Pacific.

Ninety seconds later, the Rapira warhead slammed into the USNS Amelia Earhart at more than thirteen thousand miles per hour. Torn apart by a kinetic impact akin to more than two thousand tons of high explosive, the forty-thousand-ton naval stores ship suddenly vanished in an enormous ball of fire — obliterated by the sympathetic detonation of the hundreds of missiles and bombs in its cargo holds.

The huge white flash turned the night into day across Tokyo, just twenty-five miles to the north. Burning shards of metal rained down across the densely populated streets and crowded piers of Yokohama and Yokosuka — setting fires and damaging buildings and ships. More than one hundred American sailors on the Amelia Earhart and dozens of Japanese civilians on land were killed instantly. But the real death toll would rise for days, as those who were wounded by shrapnel or trapped amid the flames succumbed to their terrible injuries.