"Oh, shit, conn, sonar, we have an active low-frequency sonar bearing one-nine-zero."

"Warm up the weapons!"

"Sir, if we deploy the outboard, we'll get another two or three knots," Claggett said.

"Too noisy!" Ricks snapped back.

"Sir, we're up in the surface noise. The high-freqs from the outboard motor won't matter much up here. His active sonar is low-freq, and that active stuff's liable to detect us whether we're noisy or not. What we need now is distance, sir, if he gets too close, the Orion can't engage to support us."

"We have to take him out."

"Bad move, sir. We're on SNAPCOUNT status now, if we have to shoot, that takes priority. Putting a unit in the water will tell us just where to look. Captain, we need distance to keep out of his active sonar, and we can't risk a shot."

"No." Weapons officer, set it up!"

"Aye, sir."

"Communications, tell the Orion to get us some help!"

"Here's the last one, Colonel."

"Well, that was fast enough," the regimental commander said.

"The boys are getting lots of practice," the major standing next to him observed, as the tenth and final RV was lifted off the SS-18 at Alyesk. "Be careful there, sergeant."

It was ice that did it. A few minutes earlier, some snow had blown into the missile capsule. The shuffling of boots had crushed and melted it, but then the sub-zero temperatures had refrozen it into an invisible, paper-thin skim of ice. The sergeant was in the process of stepping back off the fold-down catwalk when he slipped, and his wrench went flying. It bounced off the railing, twirling like a baton for a moment. The sergeant grabbed for it, but missed, and it went down.

"RUN!" the colonel screamed. The sergeant needed no encouragement. The corporal on the crane swung the warhead clear and himself jumped from the vehicle. They all knew to go upwind.

The wrench nearly made it all the way down, but it struck an interior fitting and went sideways, gouging the skin of the first stage in two places. The missile skin was also the missile tankage, and both the fuel and oxidizer were released. The two chemicals formed small clouds - only a few grams of each were leaking - but the chemicals were hypergolic. They ignited on contact. That happened two minutes after the wrench began its fall.

The explosion was a powerful one. It knocked the colonel down, over two hundred meters from the silo. He instinctively rolled behind a thick pine-tree as the crushing overpressure wave swept by. He looked a moment later to see the silo topped by a pillar of flame. His men had all made it - a miracle, he thought. His next thought reflected the humor that so often accompanies an escape from death: Well, that's one less missile for the Americans to bother us about!

The Defense Support Program Satellite already had its sensor focused on the Russian missile fields. The energy bloom was unmistakable. The signal was down-linked to Alice Springs in Australia, and from there back up to a USAF communications satellite, which relayed it to North America. It took just over half a second. "Possible launch - possible launch at Alyesk!" In that moment, everything changed for Major General Joe Borstein. His eyes focused on the real-time display and his first thought was that it had happened, despite everything, all the changes, all the progress, all the treaties, somehow it had happened, and he was watching it and he would be there to watch it all happen until the SS-18 with his name on it landed on Cheyenne Mountain This wasn't dropping bombs on the Paul Doumer Bridge, or hassling fighters over Germany. This was the end of life.