16 - Last Moves/First Moves

The speaker had announced sunset two hours before, but Bob had to finish his work. Sunsets at sea far away from the polluted city air, with a sharp horizon for the sun to slide under, were always something he enjoyed watching. What he saw now was almost as good. He stood with his hands on the rail, first looking down at the foam alongside the carrier's sleek huff, then after a brief moment of preparation, up. Born and raised in Boston, Toland hadn't known what the Milky Way was until joining the Navy, and the discovery of the wide, bright belt of stars overhead was always a source of wonder to him. There were the stars he'd learned to navigate by, with sextant and trigonometric tables-largely replaced now by electronic aids like Omega and Loran-but they were still beautiful to behold. Arcturus, and Vega, and Altair, all blinking at him with their own colors, their own unique characteristics that made them benchmarks in the night sky.

A door opened, and a sailor dressed in what looked like a purple planeflueler's shirt joined him on the flight deck catwalk.

"Darkened ship, sailor. I'd dump that cigarette," Toland said sharply, more annoyed to have his precious solitude destroyed.

"Sorry, sir." The butt sailed over the side. The man was silent for a few minutes, then looked at Toland. "You know about the stars, sir?"

"What do you mean?"

"This is my first cruise, sir, an' I grew up in New York. Never saw the stars like this, but I don't even know what they are-the names, I mean. You officers know all that stuff, right?"

Toland laughed quietly. "I know what you mean. Same with my first time out. Pretty, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir. What's that one?" The boy's voice sounded tired. Small wonder, Toland thought, with all the flight operations they've been through today. The youngster pointed to the brightest dot in the eastern sky, and Bob had to think for a few seconds.

"That's Jupiter. A planet, not a star. With the quartermaster's spyglass, you can pick out her moons-some of them anyway." He went on to point out some of the stars used for navigation.

"How do you use 'em, sir?" the sailor asked.

"You take a sextant and plot their height above the horizon-sounds harder than it is, just takes some practice-and you check that against a book of star positions."

"Who does that, sir?"

"The book? Standard stuff. I imagine the book we use comes from the Naval Observatory in D.C., but people have been measuring the tracks of the stars and planets for three or four thousand years, long before telescopes were invented. Anyway, if you know the exact time, and you know where a particular star is, you can plot out where you are on the globe pretty accurately, within a few hundred yards if you really know your stuff. Same thing with the sun and the moon. That knowledge has been around for hundreds of years. The tricky part was inventing a clock that kept good time. That happened about two hundred and some years ago."

"I thought they used satellites and stuff like that."

"We do now, but the stars are just as pretty."

"Yeah." The sailor sat down, his head leaning way back to watch the curtain of white points. Beneath them the ship's hull churned the water to foam with the whispering sound of a continuously breaking wave. Somehow the sound and the sky matched each other perfectly. "Well, at least I learned something about the stars. When's it gonna start, sir?"

Toland looked up at the constellation of Sagittarius. The center of the galaxy was behind it. Some astrophysicists said there was a black hole in there. The most destructive force known to physics, it made the forces under man's control appear puny by comparison. But men were a lot easier to destroy.

"Soon."

USS CHICAGO

The submarine was far offshore now, west of the surging Soviet submarine and surface forces. They'd heard no explosions yet, but it couldn't be far off. The nearest Soviet ship was about thirty miles off to the east, and a dozen more were plotted. All were blasting the sea with their active sonars.

McCafferty was surprised by his Flash operational order. Chicago was being pulled out of the Barents Sea and shifted to a patrol area in the Norwegian Sea. Mission: to interdict Soviet submarines expected to head south toward the North Atlantic. A political decision had been made: It must not appear that NATO was forcing the Soviets into a war. In a stroke, the pre-war strategy of engaging the Soviet Fleet in its own backyard had been tossed away. Like every pre-war battle plan in this century, the sub skipper reflected, this one too was being torn up because the enemy wasn't going to cooperate and do what we thought he'd do. Of course. He was putting many more submarines in the Atlantic than had been expected-even worse, we were making it easier for him! McCafferty wondered what other surprises were in store. The submarine's torpedoes and missiles were now fully armed, her fire-control systems continuously manned, her crew standing Condition-3 wartime watch routine. But their orders at present were to run away. The captain swore to himself, angry with whoever had made this decision, yet still hoping in a quiet comer of his mind that somehow the war could be stopped.

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

"It's gotta happen soon," COMAIRCENT observed. "Shit, they got their troops as ready as I've ever seen. They can't wait until all our Reforger units are fully in place. They have to hit us soon."

"I know what you're saying, Charlie, but we can't move first."

"Any word on our visitors?" The Air Force general referred to Major Chemyavin's team of Spetznaz commandos.

"Still sitting tight." A unit of the elite GSG-9 German border guards had the safe house under continuous surveillance, with a second English ambush team between them and their supposed target in Lammersdorf Intelligence officers from most of the NATO countries were part of the surveillance team, each with a direct line to his government. "What if they're bait, trying to get us to strike first?"

"I know we can't do that, General. What I want is a green light to initiate Dreamland when we know it's all for-real. We have to get our licks in fast, boss."

SACEUR leaned back. Trapped by his duties in his underground command post, he hadn't been to his official residence in ten days. He wondered if any general officer in the whole world had gotten any sleep in the past two weeks.

"If you put the orders up, how fast can you react?"

"I have all the birds loaded and ready now. My crews are briefed. If I order them to stand to, I can have Dreamland running thirty minutes from your signal."

"Okay, Charlie. The President has given me authority to react to any attack. Tell your people to stand to."

"Right."

SACEUR's phone rang. He lifted it, listened briefly, and looked up. "Our visitors are moving," he told COMAIRCENT. To his operations officer, "The code word is Firelight." NATO forces would now go to maximum alert.