The November Network

This story is a continuation of "The Final Two Minutes" told from the opposing side and picking up where the events of the previous story leave off. While not necessary to enjoy "The November Network," you can read Part 1 for a fuller appreciation of the context of a world on the brink:

***

Major Yuri Ivanov presided over the bank of terminals that formed the crux of his existence. From here, the launch order would be carried out, catapulting the silo’s single R-36M rocket into space with its nuclear payload. A thousand times more powerful than the bomb the Americans had unleashed to incinerate Hiroshima, the missile stood as equal parts symbol of Soviet strength and deterrence.

The two duty officers sat at their stations, fully alert as the silo commander observed them. This kind of discipline was the exact reason Yuri liked to make random visits to the launch center.

Of course, the higher alert status had drawn him to this stuffy room as well. Yuri and the men who staffed this underground pod had known many drills in their time, passing the prescribed response times with flying colors in each simulated attack by the West. Still, higher alert status had never lasted this long before.

His news restricted only to orders received through underground landline to prevent the American signal intelligence sniffers from locating this camouflaged silo, Yuri could only guess at what was happening on the surface hundreds of miles away in Moscow. It had filled many hours of conversation among the men who inhabited this installation.

The inescapable conclusion was that the Americans must be on the war path. Ever since the Cuban misadventure the previous year, tensions between the West and the Eastern Bloc had remained high.

Besides, any number of things could have changed since their duty rotation in this remote corner of Ukraine began, effectively sealing Yuri and his men off from the world above. One potent possibility: another American U-2 spy plane had been blown from the sky over the motherland.

Whatever flare up between the superpowers had occurred, Strategic Rocket Forces’ mission remained the same: peace through power. The Soviets and Americans had aimed enough missiles at each other that neither would dream of sounding the bugles and lighting the rockets.

Even so, the Soviet command and control apparatus remained fixated on achieving greater and greater efficiency in coordination and execution of orders. As if an extra ten seconds from the go order to ignition meant the life or death of the motherland.

Now the major and his men found themselves part of the latest scheme in the expanding doctrine of assured destruction. Moscow, and by extension the Strategic Rocket Forces command, had become obsessed with decapitation. A preemptive attack by the United States could eliminate the General Secretary and the General Staff, leaving no one alive who could order the U.S.S.R.’s own nuclear response and rendering the great missile hordes inert.

Yuri and Silo 34B represented the counterstroke to the possibility of decapitation. In the event of a first strike by the West, this facility and others like it had been constructed in absolute secrecy. Codenamed the November Network, these intercontinental ballistic missiles would survive the initial strike that might knock out other missile sites.

The November Network missiles were the only ICBMs authorized for launch without direct orders from Communist Party leadership. Should signals to the national command bunkers be lost and seismic sensors detected nuclear detonations within the motherland’s borders, the code to launch would be transmitted through the dedicated hardlines to each silo hidden within the republics of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan.

Yuri had always paused a bit at this final thought. Should the system be so autonomous? What would happen in the event of a false positive? A fault in the wiring to the command centers combined with an earthquake? Or a nuclear test? Should the world die because of an unfortunate coincidence?

Even more troubling, the General Secretary and his Politburo had never made the November Network known to the Americans. Certainly, keep the exact parameters of the system and its missile sites a secret. But didn’t Yuri and his fellows represent the direct counter to any thoughts of a preemptive first strike?

Instead, Silo 34B and dozens more remained the proverbial second gun, held under the table while the two superpowers gestured with fully loaded pistols. But what good was a gun only intended to be fired should its wielder be hit?

All these swirling thoughts made him flinch as the phone awoke beside Captain Viktor Kuznetsov. The young officer lifted it in one fluid motion.

“Site 34B,” he answered. As the voice on the other end of the line spoke, Viktor’s spine straightened to ninety degrees. He pointed to Lieutenant Anatoli Yosin, gesturing toward the safe where the launch keys were kept.

“Sweet mother,” Yuri breathed. This was it. The day they had trained for, all while assuming it would never come. What madness had pushed them to this point?

“I authenticate ‘onion,’” Viktor replied, using that day’s countersign. Then he replaced the receiver in a mechanical motion.

As the first launch officer joined his counterpart at the arming safe, each entering a separate combination to secure their respective keys, Yuri fought to overcome the ice crawling down his spine.

Finally, he seized the phone at the commander’s station.

“Comrade Colonel Yenko,” a strained voice answered.

“This is Comrade Major Ivanov,” Yuri replied. “Confirm our orders.”

There was a slight edge in Yenko’s response. “You are to proceed with the mission, Comrade Major.”

Yuri fought to keep the shock out of his own voice. “What has happened, sir?”

“The Americans have gone mad, Ivanov. Our sensors have registered multiple nuclear detonations in the direction of Moscow and points west. Surviving units in the vicinity have reported bright flashes and mushroom clouds around the capital as well as Kiev and Minsk.”

“So this is our response?” Yuri no longer bothered to acknowledge the man’s rank.

“This is the response, Comrade Major. These are our orders. The West has struck first. We will ensure they do not escape the suffering they have unleashed. These are our orders,” Yenko repeated. “Follow them.”

The receiver shook in Yuri’s hand as he replaced it.

Then he raised his eyes to find the duty officers had paused while their commanding officer confirmed their orders. They looked at him now with the slightest hint of uncertainty even as their hands lay on the keys in their designated slots, one twist of the wrist and a five-second hold from launching the R-36M.

“Sir?” Viktor asked after several moments had elapsed. “Shall we proceed?”

Yuri couldn’t help a slight smile. These men, boys really, had been drilled time and again to follow this procedure without any hesitation, yet one sign of hesitation from their commanding officer had stayed their hands.

That they had reached this point represented a failure. A failure of sense. A failure of reason. Most of all, the failure of the system they embodied. A system meant as such a grievous threat that no one would ever contemplate seeing it unleashed. A system never intended to carry out its sole purpose.

If Yuri and his men had failed in their ultimate mission of peace through strength, what did it matter if they followed a single order?

“Stand down, boys,” Yuri finally spoke.

Viktor and Anatoli looked at each other, keys held in place. “Did command rescind the launch order?” Viktor asked.

Yuri shook his head. “No, Viktor, I am overriding it.”

“You do not have that authority,” Anatoli retorted.

For a moment, Yuri contemplated drawing his pistol and shooting the second launch officer. Without both keys turned in sync, the missile could not launch.

Yet, what did it matter if one less missile launched when dozens others would take its place?

Then Yuri had a new thought. As much as the November Network had removed the need for direct contravention from their flesh and blood leaders, it had left one decidedly human element in the mix: the men standing in launch centers like this one.

Perhaps their peers were having similar conversations, weighing whether these orders were truly worth following. Whether anyone could derive a victory from mutual destruction of the planet, or if this was merely the last gasp of an empire going up in flames?

If half the world was about to die, what good did it do to kill the other half?

At last, the true zero-sum gain of nuclear parity had revealed itself to Yuri. He had dedicated himself to a myth. Would he follow that myth to its logical conclusion and kill thousands in the process?

“The system as we know it is in the process of collapsing,” Yuri replied. “Millions of our countrymen have already died. The General Secretary and Politburo have been wiped out.”

“Then we must launch and take our vengeance, Comrade Major,” Anatoli cut in with steel in his voice.

“Perhaps,” Yuri said, settling into his chair. “But what does it truly achieve to avenge a handful of dead politicians when it means the end of the human race as we know it?”

The second launch officer flared, “This is—”

“—treason, yes, I know.” Yuri waved his hand in dismissal. “Report me to command, assuming they haven’t found themselves the target of an American second strike. Shoot me, even. None of it matters anymore.”

“But, sir, this is our duty,” Viktor replied in an almost pleading tone.

“I will not amend my own orders, Viktor, but I have no authority to override the higher command. Other than my agency as a human being and not a cog of the dying Soviet military.” Yuri swiveled his chair toward the opposite wall. “Do as you will, but I will not sign off on being part of this slaughter.”

Yuri waited. For several moments, quiet reigned over this bunker. Ironic considering the absolute cacophony on the surface, Yuri mused in the true spirit of gallows humor.

Then there was a metallic clatter.

“Coward,” Anatoli spat. “Give me your key, you spineless—”

A gunshot rocked the air, deafening in the enclosed space.

Moments later, Viktor shuffled past Yuri. He turned his head, meeting Yuri’s eyes with an ashen face as he let his still-smoking Makarov drop to the floor. Then he resumed his sullen walk to the ladder that led to the sleeping quarters.

Ears still ringing, Yuri had not heard any of the younger man’s slow steps or even the gun rattling on the metal floor.

Fitting, he concluded, given the Strategic Rocket Force’s motto:

After us, silence.

***

Author’s Note: First off, that is the honest-to-God motto of the then Soviet and now Russian Strategic Rocket Forces. I first heard it in a Dale Brown novel of all things, and it caught me so off guard I had to immediately wind the audiobook back. Then leap to Google to find out if that was real or an invention of fiction.

And here I thought the United States Strategic Air Command’s motto “Peace is our Profession” was cynical.

What’s even more surprising is that “After us, silence” was never brought up in the excellent book that reignited my fascination with nuclear proliferation and mutually assured destruction, The Dead Hand.

Named after the system the U.S.S.R. invented to ensure that decapitation of the Soviet leadership would not remove the possibility of a devastating retaliatory strike, the book details little-known facts of the late Cold War. This examination covers both nuclear and unconventional weapons of war, including the fact that the Soviets carried out a biological weapons program in complete secret. That will be the subject of another story in this series.

This story examines the obsession that the Soviets had with the idea of decapitation and features a fictional early version of Perimeter, the Soviets' designation for the Dead Hand system. Like the actual Perimeter, this system is semi-automated versus a fully automatic response to a perceived attack by the West.

The Dead Hand includes a quote from one of the Soviet military officers assigned to oversee Perimeter’s implementation, where he discusses the need to keep the human element in the scheme of nuclear command and control: “If half the world is about to be destroyed, what is the point in destroying the other half? If I were a silo commander, I wouldn’t launch.” (paraphrased)

The United States implemented its own version of the dead hand concept, but on a much smaller scale. B-52s were kept on constant alert in the 1960s during Operation Chrome Dome, ready to divert from assigned patrols to infiltrate Soviet airspace and drop their nuclear payload. At some point, it was decided the bombs should be given the ability to arm themselves. That way, if the crew that would normally arm the weapons was killed by fighters or ground fire and the B-52 was about to crash, the ordnance would not be “wasted.”

Never mind the fact that this line of thinking nearly resulted in us nuking ourselves in 1961.

As our Major Ivanov realized, nuclear proliferation truly is a zero-sum game. The best outcome is that these Earth-shattering weapons are never used. Anything else represents a failure of the system in its ultimate purpose of deterrence even as the gears turn exactly as designed. The trigger is never meant to be pulled.