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By Root 1430 0

NATO codename of 'SATAN' - was an ill-tempered, pitiless bitch to maintain, and the crews were delighted to be rid of them. More than one Strategic Rocket Forces soldier had been killed in maintenance and training accidents, just as Americans had lost men with its counterpart U.S. missile, the Titan-II. All of the Alyesk birds were tagged for elimination, and that was the reason for the presence of the men and the transporter trucks. But first, the warheads had to be removed. The Americans could watch the missiles in the destruction process, but the warheads were still the most secret of artifacts. Under the watchful eyes of a colonel, the nose shroud was removed from Rocket Number 31 by a small crane, exposing the MIRVs. Each of the conically shaped multiple independently-targetable re-entry vehicles was about forty centimeters in width at the bottom, tapering to a needle point one hundred fifty centimeters above its base. Each also represented about half a megaton of three-stage thermonuclear device. The soldiers treated the MIRVs with all the respect they so clearly deserved.

"Okay, getting some pictures now," Fowler heard Major Costello say. "Not much activity sir, we're isolating on just a few of the silos, the ones that we can see the best - there's woods all over there, Mr President, but because of the angle of the satellite we know which ones we can see clearly okay, there's one, Tobe Silo Zero-Five nothing unusual the command bunker is right there I can see guards patrolling around more than usual I see five - seven people - we can get them real good in infrared, it's cold there, sir.

Nothing else. Nothing else unusual, sir good. Okay, coming up on Alyesk now - Jeez!"

"What is it?"

"Sir, we're looking at four silos on four different cameras "

"Those are service trucks," General Fremont said, from the SAC command center. "Service trucks at all four. Silo doors are open, Mr President."

"What does that mean?"

Costello took the question: "Mr President, these are all -18 Mod 2s, fairly old ones. They were supposed to be deactivated by now, but they haven't been. We now have five silos in sight, sir, and all five have service trucks there. I can see two with people standing around, doing something to the missiles."

"What's a service truck?" Liz Elliot asked.

"Those are the trucks they use to transport the missiles. They also have all the tools you use to work on them. There's one truck per bird - actually more than one. It's a big semi-truck, like a hook 'n' ladder truck, actually, with storage bins built in for all the tools and stuff - Jim, they look like they pulled the shroud - yeah! There are the warheads, it's lit up, and they're doing something to the MIRVs I wonder what?"

Fowler nearly exploded. It was like listening to a football game on the radio, and - "What does all this mean!"

"Sir, we can't tell coming up to Uzhur now. Not much activity, Uzhur has the new mark of the -18, the Mod 5 no trucks, I can see sentries again. Mr President, I would estimate that we have more than the usual number of sentries around. Gladkaya next that'll take a couple of minutes

"Why are the trucks there?" Fowler asked.

"Sir, all I can say is that they appear to be working on the birds."

"God damn it! Doing what,"' Fowler screamed into the speaker phone.

The reply was very different from the cool voice of a few minutes earlier. "Sir, there's no way we can tell that."

"Then tell me what you do know!"

"Mr President, as I already said, these missiles are old ones, they're maintenance-intensive, and they were scheduled for destruction, but they're overdue for that. We observed increased site security at all three SS-18 regiments, but at Alyesk every bird we saw had a truck and a maintenance crew there, and the silos were all open. That's all we can tell from these pictures, sir."

"Mr President," General Borstein said, "Major Costello has told you everything he can."

"General, you told me that we'd get something useful from this. What did we get?"

"Sir, it may be significant