cold, stark, ultra-modern gray-and-white affair. He wore the tight, black uniform of synleather, emblazoned only on the collar with the insignia of his rank—five red stars and the KGB red death’s-head. That fat imbecile Zhabnov was probably raping one of those little American waifs right now instead of attending to business.
Am I the only one , the KGB commander asked himself for the hundredth time, who understands the real threat these American resistances forces pose and the only one who takes forceful action? Zhabnov and his general staff have all grown fat and complacent. Content to mount an offensive here and there once a year. An offensive, ha! Killov snickered. Sending out ten thousand troops surrounded by cranking vehicles. Why, the rebels could hear them coming a hundred miles away. So, of course, they never run into opposition. So, of course, there is no resistance.
And yet even I don’t know the full extent of the danger. I only suspect—based on disappearing ammunition, fuel, and medical supplies. Based on whole platoons of my men sent out on search-and-destroy being swallowed up in thin air out here in these mountains. He stared out the window at the mist-shrouded Rockies off in the distance. From the eightieth floor of his KGB command building in Denver he could see a good forty miles—when the day was clear of the duststorms or the mists. I get report after report hinting of a vast network of underground infestations of rebels armed to the teeth and trained to barely leave a trace. Americans who, until the Mind Breakers, would just recite nursery rhymes when captured, even when tortured. They seemed to have learned some sort of mental process—a hypnotic block that let them literally be murdered slowly by my expert interrogators rather than reveal a shred of information . That is, if he could even get them before they swallowed one of those damn cyanide capsules they always carried. That was something he found hard to fathom. The way they died, instantly, without hesitation, when his Blackshirts would have some surrounded and close in. And when they broke down the door or poured into some cave, guns blazing—just bodies, already turning cold, faces blue from the cyanide. Would he do that—for Russia? Give his life if captured? But then, of course, he would never be captured. Not with his precautions, his elite guard.
Killov glanced down at the request for the use of atomic weapons he had received back from Premier Vassily in Moscow, a big “NYET” stamped on it in red. The intellectual fool, always reading a book on Napoleon or Caesar or Nixon. Always quoting “what other great men have done before me,” to tight-mouthed underlings who had to sit and listen in total silence. Sometimes Killov thought that Vassily wanted the Americans to wipe out the Red forces in America. The premier of all the world was a fanatic about American lore and history. His respect for America and her past was too great for him to sanction effective countermeasures. Vassily and his books, Killov thought, like Nero and his fiddle . . . while Rome burned.
Is that how we won world domination? By waiting to be destroyed by the might of America? No! We acted before they would have the upper hand. Our scientists figured that quite accurately. By 1990 the military situation would start turning back in America’s favor. She would have nuclear superiority. It was all there in graphs and charts. There would be a war sooner or later so . . . then-Premier Antonin did it. Did it! Launched a pre-emptive strike—over the vehement objections of the party functionaries. And we had won. The Americans hadn’t known of the twenty killer satellites the Russians had managed to slip into space in the early 1980s. When they went to counterattack, the killer sats, using laser sighting and particle beam rays, had been able to knock 93.7 percent of the U.S. nuclear missiles right out of the sky. There was devastation it was true, but history
Am I the only one , the KGB commander asked himself for the hundredth time, who understands the real threat these American resistances forces pose and the only one who takes forceful action? Zhabnov and his general staff have all grown fat and complacent. Content to mount an offensive here and there once a year. An offensive, ha! Killov snickered. Sending out ten thousand troops surrounded by cranking vehicles. Why, the rebels could hear them coming a hundred miles away. So, of course, they never run into opposition. So, of course, there is no resistance.
And yet even I don’t know the full extent of the danger. I only suspect—based on disappearing ammunition, fuel, and medical supplies. Based on whole platoons of my men sent out on search-and-destroy being swallowed up in thin air out here in these mountains. He stared out the window at the mist-shrouded Rockies off in the distance. From the eightieth floor of his KGB command building in Denver he could see a good forty miles—when the day was clear of the duststorms or the mists. I get report after report hinting of a vast network of underground infestations of rebels armed to the teeth and trained to barely leave a trace. Americans who, until the Mind Breakers, would just recite nursery rhymes when captured, even when tortured. They seemed to have learned some sort of mental process—a hypnotic block that let them literally be murdered slowly by my expert interrogators rather than reveal a shred of information . That is, if he could even get them before they swallowed one of those damn cyanide capsules they always carried. That was something he found hard to fathom. The way they died, instantly, without hesitation, when his Blackshirts would have some surrounded and close in. And when they broke down the door or poured into some cave, guns blazing—just bodies, already turning cold, faces blue from the cyanide. Would he do that—for Russia? Give his life if captured? But then, of course, he would never be captured. Not with his precautions, his elite guard.
Killov glanced down at the request for the use of atomic weapons he had received back from Premier Vassily in Moscow, a big “NYET” stamped on it in red. The intellectual fool, always reading a book on Napoleon or Caesar or Nixon. Always quoting “what other great men have done before me,” to tight-mouthed underlings who had to sit and listen in total silence. Sometimes Killov thought that Vassily wanted the Americans to wipe out the Red forces in America. The premier of all the world was a fanatic about American lore and history. His respect for America and her past was too great for him to sanction effective countermeasures. Vassily and his books, Killov thought, like Nero and his fiddle . . . while Rome burned.
Is that how we won world domination? By waiting to be destroyed by the might of America? No! We acted before they would have the upper hand. Our scientists figured that quite accurately. By 1990 the military situation would start turning back in America’s favor. She would have nuclear superiority. It was all there in graphs and charts. There would be a war sooner or later so . . . then-Premier Antonin did it. Did it! Launched a pre-emptive strike—over the vehement objections of the party functionaries. And we had won. The Americans hadn’t known of the twenty killer satellites the Russians had managed to slip into space in the early 1980s. When they went to counterattack, the killer sats, using laser sighting and particle beam rays, had been able to knock 93.7 percent of the U.S. nuclear missiles right out of the sky. There was devastation it was true, but history
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