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There was less than five minutes until the horrific holocaust began.
Richardson had no more time to concern himself with the wounded. He’d leave that task to the others. The M-1 roared onto the roadway. They had to hurry if they wanted to live.
He knew they were far enough away from the target areas to survive the nuclear detonations. That wasn’t his concern. Of the three elements of the approaching nightmare, he was certain they’d live through the first. The immense heat from the twenty-megaton blasts wasn’t going to consume them. At their impact points, the exploding nuclear fireballs were going to be as hot as the center of the sun. But the range of these small tactical devices would be limited. Only those unfortunate souls who found themselves within a half mile, a mile at most, from the middle of one of the countless detonations would die instantly from the searing heat of the imploding atom.
The second stage of the nuclear storm was a far-more-serious problem for the Americans. An instant after each explosion, a blast wave of unbelievable intensity would rush out for many miles in every direction. Like Thor’s mighty hammer, the hot winds would roar from the center of the detonations at incredible speed. The voracious winds would devour everything in their path for great distances. The strongest houses within a mile or two of the explosions would disappear in the nuclear assault. Entire forests would topple for three or four miles beyond that. An uncontrollable firestorm of insatiable intensity would sweep through the toppled trees. In the next hour, it was possible the fleeing soldiers would find themselves enveloped in a raging inferno of such magnitude that nothing could possibly escape.
Yet even that wasn’t Richardson’s greatest concern. For with each tick of the clock, the Americans were distancing themselves from the second lethal element of the nuclear blast.
It was the third phase of the impending attack the tank commander truly feared.
While the tank careened around another unpredictable corner, Richardson’s primary worry was receiving a heavy dose of radiation poisoning.
Fallout. Even the name struck terror in the tank commander’s heart.
Although, as they moved farther away from the target areas, he suspected they were going to find themselves distant enough to endure the initial intense fallout levels from the concurrent explosions in the east. After the initial blast wave and its accompanying radiation reached them, the heavens would still once more. With the night calm, a quick-acting, lethal dose of radiation was probably not their fate.
The question still to be answered, however, was what level of radiation they’d receive. If the amounts were significant, their end would be rapid. Flu-like symptoms, followed by hair loss, bleeding, open sores, and finally death within a few days. The results would be irreversible. Not one of them would be alive a month from now.
Richardson ripped the monster around a sharp curve deep within the black night’s all-enveloping mantle. The snowy asphalt continued to pass beneath the tank’s spinning treads. Their lives rested in the steady hands locked onto the M-1’s steering controls.
The Abrams raced west. They needed to get as far away as they possibly could. Just a little farther. A few minutes more. Another mile might make all the difference. All the difference in the world. Just a little additional time was the only thing Richardson wanted.
But time had run out.
Behind them, the eastern sky turned brighter than the brightest day. One after another, frightening explosions crushed the deplorable night. In great numbers, billowing mushroom clouds shattered the darkness.
“Tell everyone to avoid looking directly at them,” Richardson said to the nearest soldier, reminding him of their training.
Temporary, even permanent, blindness awaited anyone failing to heed that lesson. For as far away as seventy miles distant, those observers unaware of the effects the fireballs in the night sky were having would be blinded for days to come.
Despite the debased events happening all around them, Richardson knew he couldn’t panic. While he urged the tank forward, the Abrams commander began counting. The all-powerful blast wave, down to a modest fifty miles an hour by the time it reached their location, passed the speeding tank in just over forty seconds. They were somewhere between five and eight miles from the center of the nearest explosion. The hair on Richardson’s arms stood straight up. Run. Run as fast as you can. The next hour’s fallout would determine if they lived or died.
For thirty minutes, remorseless mushroom clouds appeared at regular intervals on the horizon.
From high-flying fighters and bombers, from nuclear-tipped artillery shells and missiles, the unspeakable death, the death that had been poised on man’s lips for the past eighty-three years, spewed forth. They’d whispered about it. They’d prayed it would never happen. But their efforts to stop it had been of no use. They’d unleashed the power of the fearful atom upon their fellow man, and the results would be forever irreversible.
To stop the Russians, the Americans would explode every tactical nuclear weapon they had. In all, the barrage would number more than two hundred. When it was over, a wide swath of central Germany would become an uninhabitable no-man’s-land.
Beneath the exploding twenty-kiloton nuclear devices and the one-kiloton neutron bombs, the most unspeakable cruelties occurred. Those caught by the airbursts simply disappeared.
Vaporized by the atom’s power, they vanished into the universe’s nothingness.
Those a little farther away had their skin burned from their bodies. Their lungs ruptured and bled. The intense fallout at such a close range would shortly end these tortured souls’ abject suffering.
Those unprotected and close to the detonations died within the first hours from the destructive doses of heat, blast, and radiation.
Others a little farther away or a little more protected would survive for a few more days. By the time it was over, however, they’d be horribly ill and begging for the end to come.
More distant, still others were caught by the power of the blast. Crushed by its irresistible winds or buried alive, they’d never be rescued from the fallen forests and shattered houses of the killing zone. Thousands more were trapped within the raging fires that swiftly ensued. They were engulfed by its ferocious flames and quickly devoured.
Like the nerve gas that had preceded it, the nuclear storm falling upon Germany killed indiscriminately. It cared nothing about age, gender, rac
e, creed, religion, or nationality. The young and the old, the virtuous and the evil, the rich and the poor, all died within the unforgiving attack. Over a million, Russian and German alike, were gone before the long-term effects of the radiation’s poisoning fell upon the earth’s frail creatures.
On the fringes of the nuclear circle, those receiving a small dose of radiation would survive for years to come before the effects of the man-made cancers would finally cut them down.
Into which category the soldiers clinging to Richardson’s tank were going to fall would remain, for the moment, unresolved.
• • •
The last M-1 would arrive in Heilbronn three hours later minus a wounded soldier who’d failed to survive the tyrannical journey. Having lost significant amounts of blood, Tony Warrick’s breathing was labored and unsteady. Jamie Pierson was in shock.
Still, under Richardson’s leadership, most of his battle-scarred passengers had survived to see the coming day. Whether the radiation their pliant skins had absorbed would allow them to live much longer was anybody’s guess.
Richardson waited in the driver’s seat while the others were carried away. Far behind the final soldier to leave the battered tank, perdition’s fires continued to burn.
• • •
There was no doubt they’d staggered the Russians. But the question that remained was whether it had been enough to allow the Americans to go forward with their daring attempt to emerge victorious.
CHAPTER 57
February 1—4:00 a.m.
Inside the Kremlin
Moscow
General Yovanovich and his second-in-command, Colonel Antonin Zulin, handed their pistols to the guards outside the Premier’s office. No one except Cheninko’s personal bodyguards would ever be allowed inside the magnificent room while armed.
Yovanovich grabbed the weighty door handle, took a deep breath, and entered. The shorter Zulin was right behind. Cheninko waited behind his desk. Having been awakened at this early hour with the horrendous news of the American tactical nuclear attack, the Russian leader was in a particularly foul state.
