William Prochnau - Trinity's Child

Alice slumped again over the phone. The submarines. Jesus. “I’m sorry, Harpoon,” he finally said. “Bad night.”

“Yes, bad night,” the admiral’s voice huzzed back. “I want him as much as you do, Alice.” Then the two officers disconnected, the Looking Glass continuing its slow orbit over the plains, the E-4 moving over the Mississippi River north of Baton Route.

“Radar contact!”

“Ready, Tyler?” Kazakhs asked.

“Hell, yes. Let’s get this refueling done right.” Tyler sounded aggressive and blasé at the same time. “Then we can move on to the low-level and get this harebrained stunt over.”

Moreau looked over at Kazakhs. The pilot stared back, his eyes saying nothing. He reached into his flight bag for a big red bandanna, the kind he once wore in the Oregon woods. Moreau’s skin prickled again.

“We have to open the flash curtains,” he said.

“I know,” Moreau said. She also knew that, at night, a nuclear explosion fifty miles in front of them could take her other eye. She also knew that, once again, Kazakhs was playing percentage baseball. Odds were the Russians would not come at them now. But the planes were sitting ducks and Kazakhs was covering his bet. He wrapped the red bandanna, doubled and redoubled in tight folds, over his left eye and tied the kerchief behind his head. If the odds were wrong, there would be one good eye left of the four in the cockpit of Polar Bear One.

Kazakhs reached across and pulled the dirty-gray curtain. So did Moreau. The night light streamed in and the white radiance of endless snows reflected fluorescently up at them. Moreau blinked at the brightness. It was a wonderland—and very threatening.

“Helmets!” Kazakhs said into the intercom. “Okay, Elsie, sweetheart, we are at one nautical mile and starting our climb,” Kazakhs drawled into the radio. “You look beautiful up there, baby, just beautiful.”

The tanker did look beautiful, Moreau thought, hypnotically beautiful. By rote she helped Kazakhs maneuver the bomber up toward the illuminated underside of the KC-135. Her good eye was frozen on the tanker. In reality the two huge aircraft warily closed on each other at near-identical speeds of five hundred miles an hour, the bomber climbing steadily. But the illusion was far different. The tanker, framed in white night lights, seemed slowly to descend on them like a space platform, the glare of its lights blotting out the Arctic stars.

“Looking good. Stand by for half-mile.”

Still, it was the breakaways that took your breath. Suddenly your stomach was falling up. But in the illusion, only the surreal white platform moved, taking off straight up, escape-velocity-rapid in the mind’s eye, like a Star Wars mother ship accelerating into inky space. Tonight it wouldn’t be that way. The tanker might do anything. Barrel roll, snapping off a wing. Sag back into their faces. Nose over on top of them. Moreau shuddered.

“All crew on oxygen.”

Moreau turned away from the descending lights. Beyond Kazakhs, out the left window, the moon was setting below them now, a giant yellowish ball perched between two white crags in the faroff Mackenzie Mountains. She flinched, her last moon vision suddenly invading her memory, and snapped her head right. In the crystalline night, she could see forever. Below her, snow and ice, glowing in the Arctic moon-set, stretched flat and endlessly to the horizon. The southernmost arm of Great Bear Lake, clearly outlined, snaked off to the northeast toward the main body of the great frozen lake. Below them the tundra, unmarked by a hint of civilization, ebbed and flowed softly, Sahara-like, in windblown snow dunes and rippling white eddies. Suddenly lights flared far off the wingtip. Moreau lurched toward the flash screen, then slowly pulled her hand back. For God’s sake, she told herself, calm down. Even the northern lights are spooking you.

Kazakhs appeared not to notice. “Closing now,” he said. “Nudge it right. Nudge!”

Moreau snapped her full attention to the front of the aircraft. The platform was almost on top of them, the immense refueling probe hanging from the tanker’s midsection, the probe’s green-lit nozzle hovering no more than a dozen feet in front of the windshield. It swayed—inches right, inches left—like a snake’s head poised for the strike. Moreau flinched again.

“Doing just fine. Little left. Little down. Careful, now. Careful! Up a bit!”

The snake passed over their helmets.

“Now!”

Clunk! Moreau felt the angry wrenching of metal, heard the grinding steel teeth lock onto the huge phallic probe just inches behind her head. The great plane heaved, its wings shuddering, and then it began a slow, groaning undulation up and down in rhythm with the tanker. Kazakhs felt the tendons in his arms stretch to the ripping point. Moreau watched her knuckles turn dead white on the wheel as, together, they fought to mate the Buff to the bulbous plane above. The tanker’s tail loomed almost directly over their heads, visible and threatening through the overhead windows. But behind them the probe settled into place and the JP-4 jet fuel, lifeblood, began to surge from the tanker into the B-52. Kazakhs relaxed somewhat, took one hand off the wheel, and looked at his watch. It showed 0852, twenty-three minutes since they talked with Klickitat. Good. It was damned good.

“Beee-yootiful!” Kazakhs radioed above. “Elsie, baby, you did great!”

“Yeah,” Elsie responded. “Not bad for a dame, huh?”

Kazakhs turned toward Moreau and winked a grotesque wink, made even more bizarre by the Sinbad look of a pilot with a red bandanna wrapped diagonally over the other eye. He grinned. How the hell did he ever get surrounded by women, working women, in this business?

“Not bad for a dame, Elsie,” he acknowledged. “Not bad at all.”

“You looking up at me, commander?”

“Right up your…” Kazakhs paused. “Right up your lovely frame, Elsie.”

“Yeah, I know, you dirty old man. Look a little farther up. You see that red on my belly?”

Kazaklis moved his eyes up the white undercarriage of the tanker until they fixed on the blinking red beacon.

“Looks like it’s working fine, Elsie, ” Kazaklis said, puzzled why the pilot would be worried about her beacons.

“That’s what I’m worried about, ace. I’m a black widow tonight. Don’t you forget that. A red-bellied black widow. You know about black widows, mate?” Elsie placed an extra edge on the last word.

“Run across ’em, Elsie. Deadliest of your species.”

“Gender,” she corrected him. “A little black lady spider, with a red spot on her belly. Known for killing the daddy.”

“Right after screwin’,” Kazaklis said flatly.

“Right after screwin’, mate.”

Moreau tightened her grip on the wheel. This was certain death for the crew of Elsie. And for Polar Bear One? A midair collision, at worst. For a few extra hours, at best. Assuming something else didn’t get them. Which was a big assumption. What did that add to the chances of a suicide mission? One percent? Doubtful. Training was driving them now. Moreau wasn’t sure this was percentage baseball. Neither, apparently, was Kazaklis.

“You sure you want to go down to the last drop?” the pilot asked Elsie.

“Nervous?” Elsie asked.

“Serious.”

“What are your chances of getting in now?”

“Next to zero.”

“What are your chances of getting out?”

“Zero.”

“What are your chances of getting in with more fuel?”

“Next to zero.”

“And out?”

“Next to zero.”