The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

Ernie Richards, a former attack pilot, had a reputation as something of a
character. He'd reinstituted the traditional Navy practice of bugle calls to
announce drills. In this case, the 1-MC speaker system blared forth the opening
bars of John Williams' frantic call to arms in Star Wars, followed by the usual
electronic gonging.
'Let's go, Rob.' Both men started running down to the Combat Information Center.
***
'What can you tell me?' Andrey Il'ych Narmonov asked.
'The bomb had a force of nearly two hundred kilotons. That means a large device,
a hydrogen bomb,' General Kuropatkin said. 'The death count will be well over
one hundred thousand dead. We also have indications of a strong electromagnetic
pulse that struck one of our early-warning satellites.'
'What could account for that?' The questioner here was one of Narmonov's
military advisors.
'We do not know.'
'Do we have any nuclear weapons unaccounted for?' Kuropatkin heard his president
ask.
'Absolutely not,' a third voice replied.
'Anything else?'
'With your permission, I would like to order Voyska PVO to a higher alert level.
We already have a training exercise under way in Eastern Siberia.'
'Is that provocative?' Narmonov asked.
'No, it is totally defensive. Our interceptors cannot harm anyone more than a
few hundred kilometers from our own borders. For the moment, I will keep all my
aircraft within Soviet airspace.'
'Very well, you may proceed.'
In his underground control center, Kuropatkin merely pointed to another officer,
who lifted a phone. The Soviet air-defense system had already been prepped, of
course; inside a minute radio messages were being broadcast, and long-range
search radars came on all over the country's periphery. Both the messages and
the radar signals were immediately detected by National Security Agency assets,
both on the ground and in orbit.
'Anything else I should do?' Narmonov asked his advisors.
A Foreign Ministry official spoke for all of them. 'I think doing nothing is
probably best. When Fowler wishes to speak with us, he will do so. He has
trouble enough without our interfering.'
***
The American Airlines MD-80 landed at Miami International Airport and taxied
over to the terminal. Qati and Ghosn rose from their first-class seats and left
the aircraft. Their bags would be transferred automatically to the connecting
flight, not that either one particularly cared about that, of course. Both men
were nervous, but less so than one might have expected. Death was something both
had accepted as an overt possibility for this mission. If they survived, so much
the better. Ghosn didn't panic until he realized that there was no unusual
activity at all. There should have been some, he thought. He found a bar and
looked for the usual elevated television set. It was tuned to a local station.
There was no game coverage. He debated asking a question, but decided not to. It