PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
The cold, bundled-up tourists walking along Pennsylvania Avenue had not the slightest inkling their lives had been spared by a measure of seconds. Their futures would not end in thirty-five minutes. Washington, District of Columbia, would not become a smoldering mass of uninhabitable rubble.
Cameras clicked in the frosty air, children played in the snow, and businessmen bantered over martinis, oblivious in their naiveté.
Thus, on a cold day in February, the beginning of an end, as civilized people, had come precariously close. The unthinkable had almost happened.
Millions of innocent people, in Russia and North America, would continue to enjoy their lives on the planet Earth, unaware of the fragility of their existence.
The order to rescind the preemptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union halted all the major missile launches. However, preparatory measures to neutralize Russian submarines, fighter aircraft, bombers, surface ships, and early warning radar installations had commenced two minutes before the scheduled strike. A number of skirmishes escalated until the “cease-fire” order was communicated to on-site commanders.
The United States military, after assessing the damage reports, had lost three submarines and four surface ships. A final tally listed an additional thirty-one aircraft destroyed, including two B-2 Stealth bombers.
Soviet losses included seven submarines, two surface ships, and over sixty-five aircraft destroyed.
An extreme state of readiness remained in effect for seventy-two hours. The global tension rippled through every country, sending the economic balance into an upheaval.
Three weeks after the aborted nuclear strike, the Trident II submarine USS Tennessee, heavily damaged, limped into the port of San Diego, California. Three members of her crew had been buried at sea off the Hawaiian Islands.
The operative known as Dimitri, along with the crew of Scarecrow One, autorotated onto their rescue ship. The S-70 had run out of fuel as Buchanan slowed to flare the Night Hawk over the ship’s deck. The gunship was destroyed, but the crew, along with Dimitri and Steve Wickham, survived.
Wickham endured a lengthy and grueling recuperative process, aided by daily visits from his friend Dimitri, before returning to full duty with the Central Intelligence Agency.
The president of the United States worked tirelessly with the British prime minister, along with other heads of state, to reach meaningful agreements with the Soviet leaders. He convinced the new Communist party general secretary that it would be in everyone’s best interest to have semiannual summit meetings at alternate sites. The twice-a-year gatherings proved to be beneficial to all the participants, and helped establish the president’s tenure as one of strong, aggressive leadership.