The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

'This is Roger Durling. Hello, Ryan.'
'Hello, Mr Vice President. We have a problem here,' Jack announced.
'What went wrong? We've been copying the Hot Line messages. They were kinda
tense but okay until about twenty minutes ago. What the hell went wrong?'
'Sir, the President is convinced that there has been a coup d'état in the Soviet
Union.'
'What? Whose fault is that?'
'Mine, sir,' Ryan admitted. 'I'm the jerk who delivered the information. Please
set that aside. The President isn't listening to me.'
Jack was amazed to hear a brief, bitter laugh. 'Yeah, Bob doesn't listen to me
very much either.'
'Sir, we have to get to him. We now have information that this may have been a
terrorist incident.'
'What information is that?' Jack ran it down in about a minute. 'That's thin,'
Durling observed.
'It may be thin, sir, but it's all we got, and it's a goddamned sight better
than anything else we've got in.'
'Okay, stop for a minute. Right now I want your evaluation of the situation.'
'Sir, my best read is that the President is wrong, it is Andrey Il'ych Narmonov
over there. It's approaching dawn in Moscow. President Narmonov is suffering
from sleep-deprivation, he's just as scared as we are – and from that last
message he's wondering if President Fowler is crazy or not. That is a bad
combination. We have reports of isolated contact between Soviet and American
forces. Christ knows what really happened, but both sides are reading it as
aggressive acts. What's really happening is simple chaos – forward-deployed
forces bumping, but they're shooting because of alert levels on both sides. It's
cascading on itself.'
'Agreed, I agree with all of that. Go on.'
'Somebody has to back down and do it very fast. Sir, you have to talk to the
President. He won't even take my calls now. Talbot and Bunker are both dead, and
there's nobody else he'll listen to.'
'What about Arnie van Damm?'
'Fuck!' Ryan snarled. How had he forgotten Arnie? 'Where is he?'
'I don't know. I can have the Secret Service find out real fast. What about
Liz?'
'She's the one who came up with the brilliant idea that Narmonov isn't there.'
'Bitch,' Durling observed. He'd worked so hard and wasted so much political
capital to get Charlie Alden into that job. 'Okay, I'll try to get through to
him. Stand by.'
'Right.'
***
'The Vice President is calling, Sir. Line Six.'
Fowler punched the button. 'Make it fast, Roger.'
'Bob, you need to get this thing back under control.'
'What do you think I've been trying to do!'
Durling was sitting in a high-backed leather chair. He closed his eyes. The tone
of the answer said it all. 'Bob, you have made things worse instead of better.