The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

The target was about twenty-five hundred meters away. The gunner kept his
cross-hairs on target, guiding the antitank missile to its target. It took eight
seconds, and the gunner had the satisfaction of seeing detonation right in the
center of the turret.
'Target,' the Bradley commander said, indicating a direct hit. 'Cease fire. Now
let's find another one of these fuckers . . . ten o'clock, tank, coming around
the PX!'
The turret came left. 'Identified!'
***
'Okay, what does CIA make of this?' Fowler asked.
'Sir, again, all we have is scattered and unconnected information,' Ryan
replied.
'Roosevelt has a Soviet carrier battlegroup a few hundred miles behind them, and
they carry MiG-29s, Admiral Painter said.
'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