William Prochnau - Trinity's Child

The young agent unloaded his Uzi into the three vehicles. A wisp of smoke rose from the middle car. He heard groans. A rifle shot snapped back from the barricade, its bullet pinging off the top of the armored door.

“Okay, everybody open up,” the senior agent ordered.

The country road erupted in a thunder of automatic gunfire. The middle car broke into flames. The others began smoldering in the light rain of the Louisiana night. The thunder fell off into a brief silence and the senior agent bellowed. “Now! Move it!” The armored car gunned toward the barricade, then cut to the side and clipped the fender of one of the smoking cars before rumbling onward into the blackness.

Kool-Aid. In the cockpit of Polar Bear One, Kazakhs still was glaring at Moreau, who smiled back innocently, when the outside world clattered in at them for the first time in an hour.

“JIMA 14, JIMA 14.” The voice, laced with the raspy twang of western Canada, scratched its way into the cockpit. “This is Klickitat One. I see ya up there, Yank, but I don’t hear ya. Aincha got a few words for a cold and lonely Canuck?”

“Who the hell is Klickitat One?” Kazakhs asked Moreau.

“Beats me. Some rattled bush pilot?”

“No. He’s on our emergency frequency. He must be a radar-watcher at some fire base. He knows he shouldn’t be calling. Check the book. Fast.”

Moreau shuffled quickly past the reams of Siberian flight charts on her right and retrieved a two-inch-thich book. It was well-worn and marked in faded black letters: “Procedures—Top Secret.” She thumbed immediately to the right page. “Ask him ‘How’s fishing?’ she said.

Klickitat One replied immediately. “Through the ice. Grayling and northern pike.”

Kazakhs looked at Moreau and she nodded. “Reply: ‘Walleyes not biting, partner?’” she said. Kazakhs gave the acknowledgment.

“Oh, Yank, I’m glad it’s you,” the voice responded. “After two hours of this, and everybody gettin’ drunker’n a skunk over at Ruby’s in Yellowknife, I thought I was seein’ thangs. You’re a Buff? Just one of ya’s?”

“This is Polar Bear One,” Kazaklis replied, ignoring the rest.

“Out of?”

“Come on, Klickitat. What’s going on?” Kazaklis asked angrily. “We’re on an open channel.”

“Strange doin’s, Polar Bear. Sorry. But I need to know. Snow Bird or Cow Pasture?”

Kazaklis paused unhappily. The Canadian radar-watcher, sitting in some lonely outpost on the shores of Great Slave Lake, had just given him the code names for Minot and Fairchild. Shit, he thought. Forty years to plan this, and we’re playing British commando games.

“Cow Pasture,” Kazaklis spat into the radio.

“You’re it,” the voice crackled up out of the frozen tundra below.

“That’s nice, real nice,” Kazaklis said. “Wanta say bye-bye now?”

“Got a message for you, Polar Bear. Elsie’s had a change in plans. She’s been waiting for you at the corner of Ninth and Easy streets. Got that? Easy Nin-er.”

“Easy Nin-er,” Kazaklis repeated.

Moreau thumbed rapidly through the book again, tracing E down to nine, and nodded at Kazaklis. “Smack dab on the Arctic Circle, commander,” she said. “At 124 degrees west.”

“Funny way to make a date,” Kazaklis continued with Klickitat.

“Elsie’s choosy, Yank. She’s the only girl in town.”

“What made you the matchmaker, Klickitat?”

“Dunno for sure. Maybe you’re the only lad.”

“And Elsie’s too shy to call me herself?”

“Her phone’s not workin’ too well, Polar Bear.”

“Why didn’t her old man call?”

“Dunno. Lotta phone trouble tonight.”

Kazaklis drummed his fingers on the two upraised white throttles numbered four and five, finally hammering at them so hard the inboard engines gunned in acceleration. Moreau grabbed at the knobs and quickly pulled them back into pitch.

“Goddammit!” Kazaklis roared at Klickitat. “I don’t think I believe you! This is so damned far down the contingency list it’s barely in the book.”

“Don’t Goddamn me, Yank,” Klickitat replied evenly. “This is your fuss. Your people planned it, not mine. Your people built all the toys, not mine. We just happen to be your friends, passin’ on a message. Take it or leave it, bucko. Then I’m gonna sit back and wait for the ash to start fallin’.”

Kazakhs took a deep breath. Then he spoke more calmly, breaking out of the lingo. “Klickitat,” the pilot said, “the book says you’re real. But you know the game. I gotta take my orders from command authorities.”

“Great theory, Yank. But their phone seems to be off the hook.”

“I just don’t believe the Russians took out everything, including the Looking Glass. It just isn’t possible.”

“Well, I’ll tell ya, Yank, on one of those middlin’ days, when you look up at the sky and can’t quite figure out which way the weather’s goin’, you got two choices. You can look up and say it’s partly cloudy. Or you can look up and say it’s partly sunny.”

The conversation paused briefly.

“Now, I can look back south, Yank, and try to figure that out,” Klickitat continued. “I can say there ain’t nothin’ left a-tall. Or I can say the Russians beat things up a bit but made damn sure they took out your communications. You don’t need to look up EMP in your book, do ya?”

“Nobody knew what it would do.”

“They had a pretty good idea, Yank. One big boom, maybe two, a hundred miles above the prairies would send out enough voltage to burn out damn near every vacuum tube and transistor in America.”

“The command plane was hardened against EMP,” Kazakhs said.

“Nobody knew what it would do,” Klickitat mimicked Kazakhs. “But take your own choice. I do know it ain’t all gone. My shortwave’s still pickin’ up radio stations. Odd places. Iowa. Oregon. West Virginia.”

“Well, what are they saying, for Christ’s sake?”

“Oh, not sayin’, Yank. Just playin’. Ballads. Blues. Lot of John Lennon. Got myself one of your Moral Majority preachers. Blamin’ it all on abortions. Kill and ye shall be killed. Appreciated that, I did. Surprised you ain’t listenin’. Disciplined bunch, you guardians of democracy.”

Kazakhs loosened up. “We switched off on a commercial for Oxy-5.”

“Excedrin Headache number seventy-nine didn’t do much for me, either.”

“Okay, Klickitat, I guess I got a date on Easy Street.”

“One more thing, Yank. Think I’d haul ass if I was you. Elsie’s motor is runnin’ and she’s low on gas.”

“The refueling plane is running out of fuel?” Kazakhs asked incredulously. “You got any more partly sunny news?”

“Oh, she’s got some in the tank for you, Polar Bear One. Just not enough for the both of you. She was cruisin’ around on a practice run when all this happened. That’s why she’s the only girl in town.”

“God. So when’s the date?”

“Twenty minutes. Like I said, think I’d haul ass.”

“Haul ass? She’s forty minutes away.”

“I got her headin’ south soon as I picked you up on the screen. Intersecting courses, assumin’ you know how to navigate that beast. Date’s on. Twenty minutes.”

Kazakhs shivered. Refueling in midair with a troubled tanker. It was bad enough on a normal mission. But he was out of choices. Partly sunny it was.

“Thanks, pal,” the pilot said. “Run on over to Ruby’s and have a drink on me. Jack Daniel’s.”

“Naw. I can use the overtime. Somebody’s gotta watch the Pole for you guys. Don’t think you need any Red Stars comin’ over the top just yet. Thumbs up, Yank.”