Kuropatkin managed not to curse the woman for that irrelevancy. "I don't need that. Is there any civil unrest, any sort of disturbance or ongoing problem? A weapons-storage facility, a secret base of some sort that I don't know about?"

"General, everything we have on such subjects is available to you. What is the nature of your inquiry?"

"Woman, there has been a nuclear explosion there."

"In Denver?"

"Yes!"

"Where, exactly?" she asked, cooler than the General was.

"Stand by." Kuropatkin turned. "I need coordinates on the explosion and I need them now!"

"Thirty-nine degrees forty minutes north latitude, one hundred five degrees six minutes west longitude. Those numbers are approximate," the lieutenant on the satellite desk added. "Our resolution isn't very good in the infrared spectrum, General." Kuropatkin relayed the numbers.

"Wait," the woman's voice said. "I need to fetch a map."

Andrey Il'ych Narmonov was asleep. It was now three-ten in the morning in Moscow. The phone woke him, and an instant later his bedroom door opened. Narmonov nearly panicked at the second event. No one ever entered his bedroom without permission. It was KGB Major Pavel Khrulev, the assistant chief of the president's personal security detail.

"My President, there is an emergency. You must come with me at once."

"What is the matter, Pasha?"

"There has been a nuclear explosion in America."

"What-who?"

"That is all I know. We must go at once to the command bunker. The car is waiting. Don't bother getting dressed." Khrulev tossed him a robe.

Ryan stubbed out his cigarette, still annoyed at the Technical Difficulty - Please Stand By' sign that was keeping him from watching the game. Goodley came in with a couple cans of Coke. Dinner was already ordered. "What gives?" Goodley asked.

"Picture went out." Ryan took his Coke and popped it open.

At SAC Headquarters, a lieutenant-colonel at the far left side of the third row of battle-staff seats consulted the TV-controller card. The room had eight TV displays, arranged in two horizontal rows of four. One could call up more than fifty individual displays, and the woman was an intelligence officer whose first instinct was to check the new channels. A quick manipulation of her controller showed that both CNN and its subsidiary CNN Headline News were off the air. She knew that they used different satellite circuits, and that piqued her curiosity, perhaps the most important aspect of intelligence work. The system also allowed access to other cable channels, and she started going through them. HBO was off the air. Showtime was off the air. ESPN was off the air. She checked her directory and concluded that at least four satellites were not functioning. At that point, the colonel got up and walked over to CINC-SAC.

"Sir, there's something very odd here," she said.

"What's that?" CINC-SAC said without turning.

"At least four commercial satellites appear to be down. That includes a Telstar, an Intelsat, and a Hughes bird. They're all down, sir."

That notification caused CINC-SAC to turn. "What else can you tell me?"