The sum of all fears - Tom Clancy [406]
"They're even closer to Libya, and our friend the colonel has a hundred of the same aircraft."
"Flying over water at midnight?" Painter asked. "When's the last time you heard of the Libyans doing that - and twenty-some miles from one of our battlegroups!"
"What about Berlin?" Liz Elliot asked.
"We don't know!" Ryan stopped and took a deep breath. "Remember that we just don't know much."
"Ryan, what if SPINNAKER was right?" Elliot asked.
"What do you mean?"
"What if there is a military coup going on right now over there, and they set a bomb off over here to keep us from interfering, to decapitate us?"
"That's totally crazy," Jack answered. "Risk a war? Why do it? What would we do if there were a coup? Attack at once?"
"Their military might expect us to," Elliot pointed out.
"Disagree. I think SPINNAKER might have been lying to us from the beginning on this issue."
"Are you making this up?" Fowler asked. It was coming home to the President now that he might actually have been the real target of the bomb, that Elizabeth's theoretical model for the Russian plan was the only thing that made sense.
"No, sir!" Ryan snapped back indignantly. "I'm the hawk here, remember? The Russian military is too smart to pull something like this. It's too big a gamble."
"Then explain the attacks on our forces!" Elliot said.
"We don't know for sure that there have been attacks on our forces."
"So, now you think our people are lying?" Fowler asked.
"Mr President, you are not thinking this through. Okay, let's assume that there is an on-going coup in the Soviet Union - I don't accept that hypothesis, but let's assume it, okay? The purpose, you say, for exploding the bomb over here is to keep us from interfering. Fine. Then why attack our military forces if they want us to sit on our hands?"
"To show that they're serious," Elliot fired back.
"That's crazy! It's tantamount to telling us they did explode the bomb here. Do you think they would expect us not to respond to a nuclear attack?" Ryan demanded, then answered his own question: "It does not make sense!"
"Then give me something that does," Fowler said.
"Mr President, we are in the very earliest stages of a crisis. The information we have coming in now is scattered and confused. Until we know more, trying to put a spin on it is dangerous."
Fowler's face bore down on the speaker phone. "Your job is to tell me what's going on, not to give me lessons in crisis-management. When you have something I can use, get back to me!"
"What in the hell are they thinking?" Ryan asked.
"Is there something I don't know here?" Goodley asked. The young academic looked as alarmed as Ryan felt.
"Why should you be any different from the rest of us?" Jack snapped back, and regretted it. "Welcome to crisis-management. Nobody knows crap, and you're expected to make good decisions anyway. Except it's not possible, it just isn't."
"The thing with the carrier scares me," the S&T man observed.
"Wrong. If we only splashed four aircraft, it's only a handful of people," Ryan pointed out. "Land combat is something else. If we really have a battle going on in Berlin, that's the scary one, almost as bad as an attack on some of our strategic assets. Let's see if we can get hold of SACEUR."
The nine surviving M1A1 tanks were racing north along a Berlin avenue, along with a platoon of Bradley fighting vehicles. Street lights were on, heads sticking out windows and it was instantly apparent to the few onlookers that whatever was happening wasn't a drill. All the tanks had the speed governors removed from their engines, and they could all have been arrested in America for violating the national interstate highway limit. One mile north of their car, they turned east. Leading the formation was a senior NCO who knew Berlin well - this was his third tour in the once-divided city - well enough that he had a perfect spot in mind, if the Russians hadn't got there first, Efjiere was