The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

'The Americans have not done this,' Golovko said urgently, 'and that was almost
certainly a mistake. Please consider the state of mind of people suddenly taken
from ordinary peacetime operations to an elevated state of alert. It will only
require a few additional words. Those few words could be important.'
'Good idea,' Narmonov thought. 'Make it so,' he ordered Defense.
'We will soon hear from the Americans on the Hot Line,' Narmonov said. 'What
will they say?'
'That is hard to guess, but whatever it is, we should have a reply ready for
them, just to settle things down, to make sure they know we had nothing to do
with it.'
Narmonov nodded. That made good sense. 'Start working on it.'
The Soviet defense-communications agency operators grumbled at the signal they'd
been ordered to dispatch. For ease of transmission, the meat of the signal
should have been contained in a single five-letter code group that could be
transmitted, decrypted, and comprehended instantly by all recipients, but that
was not possible now. The additional sentences had to be edited down to keep the
transmission from being too long. A major did this, got it approved by his boss,
a Major General, and sent it out over no less than thirty communications links.
The message was further altered to apply to specific military services.
***
The Admiral Lunin had only been on her new course for five minutes when a second
ELF signal arrived. The communications officer fairly ran into the control room
with it.
GENERAL ALERT LEVEL TWO. THERE HAS BEEN A NUCLEAR DETONATION OF
UNKNOWN
ORIGIN IN THE UNITED STATES. AMERICAN STRATEGIC AND CONVENTIONAL FORCES
HAVE
BEEN ALERTED FOR POSSIBLE WAR. ALL NAVAL FORCES WILL SORTIE AT ONCE. TAKE
ALL
NECESSARY PROTECTIVE MEASURES.
'Has the world gone mad?' the captain asked the message. He got no reply.
'That's all?'
'That is all, no cueing to put the antenna up.'
'These are not proper instructions,' Dubinin objected. "'All necessary
protective measures"? What do they mean by that? Protecting ourselves,
protecting the Motherland – what the hell do they mean?'
'Captain,' the Starpom said, 'General Alert Two carries its own rules of
action.'
'I know that,' Dubinin said, 'but do they apply here?'
'Why else would the signal have been sent?'
A Level Two General Alert was something unprecedented for the Soviet Military.
It meant that the rules of action were not those of a war but not those of peace
either. Though Dubinin, like every other Soviet ship captain, fully understood
his duties, the implications of the order seemed far too frightening . . . The
thought passed, however. He was a naval officer. He had his orders. Whoever had
given those orders must have understood the situation better than he. The
commanding officer of the Admiral Lunin stood erect and turned to his