Outside Moscow, in a bunker under sixty meters of concrete, is the national headquarters of Voyska PVO, the Soviet air-defense service. A new facility, it was designed much like its Western counterparts in the form of a theater, since this configuration allowed the maximum number of people to see the data displayed on the large wall that was required for the map displays which were needed for their duties. It was 03:00:13 local time, according to the digital clock over the display, 00:00:13 Zulu (Greenwich Mean) Time, 19:00:13 in Washington, D.C. On duty was Lieutenant General Ivan Grigoriyevich Kuropatkin, a former - he would have said 'current' - fighter pilot, now fifty-one years of age. The third-ranking man at this post, he was taking his place in the normal duty rotation. Though as a very senior officer he could have opted for more convenient hours, the new Soviet military was to be founded on professionalism, and professional officers, he thought, led by example. Arrayed around him were his usual battle staff, composed of colonels, majors, plus a leavening of captains and lieutenants for menial work.

The job of Voyska PVO was to defend the Soviet Union against attack. In the missile age and in the absence of an effective defense against ballistic missiles - both sides were still working on that - his duties were more to warn than defend. Kuropatkin didn't like that, but neither could he change it. In geo-synchronous orbit over the coast of Peru was a pair of satellites, called Eagle-I and -II, whose task it was to watch the United States and spot a missile launch just as soon as the missiles left their silos. The same satellites could also spot an SLBM launch from the Gulf of Alaska, though their coverage that far north was somewhat dependent on weather which, at the moment, was vile. The display from the orbiting Eagles was in the infrared spectrum, which mainly measured heat. The display was presented as the camera perceived it, without border lines or other computer-generated data which, the Russian designers thought, simply cluttered the display unnecessarily. Kuropatkin was not looking up, but rather at a junior officer who seemed to be doing a calculation of some sort, when something caught his eye. His gaze shifted automatically, entirely without conscious thought, and it took fully a second for him to realize why.

There was a white dot in the center of the display.

"Nichevo " He shook that off at once. "Isolate and zoom in!" he ordered loudly. The colonel working the controls was sitting right next to him, and was already doing just that.

"Central United States, General. Double-flash thermal signature, that is a probable nuclear detonation," the colonel said mechanically, his professional judgment overpowering his intellectual denial.

"Coordinates."

"Working, General." The distance from the Center to the satellite ensured a delay in getting things to happen. By the time the satellite's telescopic lens started moving in, the thermal signature from the fireball was expanding rapidly. Kuropatkin's immediate impression was that this could not possibly be a mistake, and as hot as that image was, what materialized in the pit of his stomach was a fist of ice.