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able to secure the weaponry warehoused at the Russian camps, those in Colonel
White's team had the immediate responsibility of directing Israel's strategic
defense against a possible retaliatory nuclear strike from the Russians.
Scott Rosen estimated that Israel's strategic defense could eliminate
ninety-seven percent or more of anything the Russians might send at them in a
full scale attack. The throw-weight of the
Russian nuclear arsenal had been substantially reduced since the collapse of
the Soviet Union, but a full scale attack would still mean that several soft
targets  that is, cities  could be hit.
If the attack were of a lesser scale  a "limited" response  the strategic
defense could probably destroy all incoming warheads. The most likely scenario
was that the Russians would choose a strong but limited response in order to
reduce the possibility of a response from the West. What everyone
198 In His Image hoped for, however, was that the Russians  realizing that
Israel was once again in control of its own strategic defense  would see that
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a nuclear attack would ultimately prove futile, and therefore they would not
launch at all. There was no way to be certain how the Russians would respond
and each person in Colonel White's team understood that every warhead that got
through meant the deaths of tens of thousands of their countrymen.
This was not a game of siting targets and pulling triggers; the strategic
defense was fully automated. It had to be. Destroying the maximum number of
approaching missiles required a nearly instantaneous response to launch. There
was no room for 'man-in-the-loop.' Once the order was given to place the
Battle Management/Command, Control and Communications (BM/C3) computers on
'threat' status, the role of humans was reduced to support and repair. Some
argued that it was dangerous to turn the control of the system over to the
system itself, but as Joshua Rosen and his colleagues had successfully
countered, it was the best way to ensure survival.
The strategic defense was now initiated for immediate response to any sign of
launch from Russia, her allies, or from the sea.
Chapter 16
The Hand of God
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The Kremlin, Moscow
Eleven hundred miles and nearly due north of Tel Aviv, the Russian Security
Council was meeting to discuss the events in Israel. It was now 4:00 a.m. in
New York, and 11:00 a.m. in Moscow, which shares the same time zone as Israel.
At 86 years old, Defense Minister Vladimir Leon Josef Khromchenkov was the
oldest of the thirteen men assembled in the Kremlin's war-room. Khromchenkov
was born in 1917, sometime during the night of November 6-7, the same night
that the Bolsheviks had seized power. His father had missed the birth,
choosing instead to take part in the fighting in Petrograd. Throughout the
revolution and the years that followed, Khromchenkov's father somehow managed
to walk the fine line of being close to Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky and yet was
never so close to any one of them that he was considered a threat by the other
two. His ability to maneuver through politically treacherous waters had been
passed on to his son. After serving for nearly forty years in the Soviet Army,
Vladimir Khromchenkov first came to the Kremlin during the early days of
Gorbachev as a candidate of the hard-liners who opposed Gorbachev's reforms
and were afraid he might 'give away the store.'
199
200 In His Image
Boris Yeltzin had made several attempts to weaken Khromchenkov's political
power and even to remove him from the Security Council, but without success.
Khromchenkov knew the inner workings of everything and used this to his
advantage. Had he wanted it, he might well have become President, but
Khromchenkov preferred manipulating to being manipulated. It was said of
Khromchenkov that he believed that just as he had been born on the night the
revolution began, it was his destiny not to die until the Soviet Union had
been restored as a world power. And though he gave the credit to others, it
was Khromchenkov who had engineered the invasion of Israel as a key step
toward bringing about that destiny.
"Comrades," Defense Minister Khromchenkov began in old Soviet style, which
always irritated some of those around him but warmed the hearts of others,
"our intelligence reports have just confirmed that this morning's strike
against our international peacekeeping forces in Israel was conceived and
initiated by Israeli insurgents. We have very recently regained communications
with General
Serov, who is in charge of the Strategic Defense Control Facility at Mizpe
Ramon. He reports that the Israelis apparently took control of the nuclear
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forces from a remote facility, from which they launched this morning's attack.
At present, the insurgents are fighting our troops stationed in the cities,
and a small force of Israelis has set up camp outside the control facility.
General
Serov has sealed the blast doors so his forces are in no danger from the
insurgents outside.
Presently, he reports, he is working to isolate the breach in operations in
order to attempt to regain control. One other point," Khromchenkov said, as if
it were only an afterthought, though in reality it was the most significant
thing he would say, "in addition to having control of their launch facilities,
the Israelis have also taken control of their strategic defense."
"Damn!" said Foreign Minister Cherov, who recognized the importance of
Khromchenkov's final point.
If the Israeli resistance had control of the strategic defense then it greatly
limited Russia's options for response.
"Our damage estimates indicate that the warheads used were Gideon-class five
megaton neutron devices targeted for just outside the perimeter of each of our
six temporary installations. We believe the loss of personnel in the camps was
total."
The Hand of God 201
"What about the materiel?" asked the Minister of Finance, concerned more about
the stockpiles of weaponry than about the thousands of lives lost.
"At this moment we have no assessment of damage to our weaponry, but it is
likely that the equipment has survived the attack."
"What do you suggest?" President Perelyakin asked Defense Minister
Khromchenkov.
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