Finally, he ran through the timings and other coordinating instructions quickly, in order to give the groups as much time as possible to do their recces and get into position.

All was set and Vronsky knew it was likely to be a long night. But he’d had plenty of those and waiting in an easy chair, drinking coffee with the radio watchkeepers in the Ops Room, was infinitely better than lying in a damp forest, as he’d had to do last time he was on the trail of these terrorists. Anyway, he needed to be close to the team monitoring the seismic and passive infrared images transmitted from the unattended ground sensors. He also needed to hear what was happening on the “all-informed” Guard radio net. When things kicked off, as he expected them to either tonight or tomorrow night, he’d be able to run from the Ops Room and up the steps into the watchtower with the Korda. That commanded a clear view of the killing area and the two cut-off positions. It was from there he’d direct the operation.

As he walked back into the Ops Room, he saw instantly that something was very wrong. The images on the closed-circuit TV screens covering the Iskander site were alternately freezing, then breaking up into small squares and then crashing completely. Computer screens were disintegrating into wavy lines with psychedelic patterns and crazy colors. From the radio loudspeaker came only loud mush and white noise. Signalers were desperately checking their radio sets. Only the team monitoring the unattended ground sensors, which operated on a different waveband from the signals radios, reported no interference.

“Anatoly Nikolayevich,” reported Razhumikin, “we’ve got a real problem here. All radio communications have suddenly gone down. The CCTV coverage of the Iskander site has gone crazy and computers in the command network appear to be closing down without reason. Worse, we’ve just heard from the nuclear command bunker downstairs that the Kazbek nuclear C2 system has crashed and that Perimetr, the back-up ‘fail-safe’ system, is not responding to commands. They’re reporting that it seems as if their systems have been taken over by an alien command net. What’s just as worrying, as the systems are down we cannot tell headquarters what is happening. They don’t even know we’ve got a problem.”

“Can’t you use a landline to warn them?” Vronsky demanded.

“No,” said one of the Guard Force watchkeepers. “We don’t have one as that would be a breach of nuclear protocols. The only way information can come into or out of this compound is through the nuclear command and control net.”

“Which is now malfunctioning . . .”

“Correct, Sir.”