William Prochnau - Trinity's Child

The successor looked at him strangely. “Can’t all be dead.”

“No, sir. Not all. Our communications system is dead. You were out there. In a safe area. Nothing’s working.”

The successor stiffened. “That’s why I’m in here, admiral. We spent a billion dollars protectin’ these planes from nuclear effects.”

Harpoon stifled a sigh. “You looked in the window downstairs, sir,” he said. “We’ve got our gear back up to ten, maybe twenty years beyond Alexander Graham Bell. Doesn’t do us much good if there’s nobody at the other end of the phone.”

The plane swerved sharply, causing one of the Secret Service agents to stagger. His Uzi wobbled menacingly.

“Sir, those men must sit down,” Harpoon said in alarm. “If one of those weapons goes off inside this aircraft…”

The successor ignored him. “You tellin’ me the President of the United States is inside his command post and he can’t talk to his troops, can’t talk to his commanders?”

Harpoon glanced worriedly at the agents. “Right now, sir, we’re having more luck picking up a disc jockey in Walla Walla.”

“Don’t you be sarcastic with me, admiral,” the successor bristled.

“Sarcastic?” Harpoon forced himself to keep his voice calm. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m deadly serious. We’re picking up a few distress signals and some garbled messages. But communications? We’re getting primitive messages through to a handful of bombers. Through Alice.” He immediately knew he shouldn’t have slipped into the lingo yet. “That is it,” he added.

“Alice?”

“The Looking Glass plane, sir. The Strategic Air Command’s airborne command post. It’s a thousand miles north of us and our only tie to anything now.”

Harpoon thought he saw the first real flicker of fear cross the man’s face. The engines had stopped whining again. Jesus, get this plane out of here. The flicker faded.

“Harpoon they call you?”

“My code name, sir.”

“Well, Harpoon, you and Alice better get your act together fast.” The man sounded as if his television set had gone blank and the answer was to plug it in again. “If you think this President is going to let this stop at a relatively even exchange, you speared the wrong fish.”

“Let it stop?” Harpoon fought the exasperation out of his voice. “We don’t know how to stop it, sir. You have a damned tough decision to make. But it may be like the tree falling in the wilderness. If nobody hears it, did it make a sound?” He held a rockhard gaze on the man. ‘This war, sir, is completely out of control.”

Suddenly the plane turned hard left, then lurched to an abrupt stop. The man with the turquoise belt buckle moaned. The judge firmly closed his eyes. The younger of the two agents lost his footing, careened into the back of the admiral’s seat, and lost his grip on his Uzi. The small gray riot gun slithered over the admiral’s shoulder, bounced off his knee, and landed on the floor between the officer and the successor. Harpoon reached over, but the successor clamped his foot on the weapon. Pure fear finally gleamed in the man’s eyes. A small white light blinked urgently on the telephone console between them. Harpoon retreated from the weapon and lifted the phone, listening. “Crap,” he said after seconds. “The Looking Glass saw it? Then go, man, go!” He listened further, his craggy face rapidly contorting in anguish. “Oh, my God,” he breathed into the phone. After a moment he said bleakly, “Take it over the top of them.” He stared at shoes still polished to a duty-night sheen and slowly ground an errant bur into the rug. “Dammit, pilot, take it over the top of them!” Harpoon cradled the phone softly.

“Give the gun back.”

The engine rumble rose rapidly into its piercing takeoff whine, the plane edging forward, men rolling.

“Give the gun back, sir.”

Harpoon’s voice was patient but persistent, as if he were talking to a child. The successor stared at him numbly, holding the submachine gun loosely in his lap, then slowly handed it up to the agent, who stood precariously behind Harpoon.

“Do you understand what’s happening, sir?”

“Troops should’ve cleared the crud off the runway,” the successor said in a blank monotone.

“The crud on the runway…” Harpoon strained to keep his voice even over the engine roar. “My troops, sir. Your troops. They’re the crud on the runway. On their bellies. Shooting the animals. Clearing a path for this aircraft. They’re shooting their own people, sir. Your people. People so sweat-stinking scared I can smell the terror in here.” The plane bumped. “Thanks, marine.”

The nose of the giant plane lifted. It tilted left as one set of wheels left the ground. Whump! The plane tilted right. Whump! The admiral heard the flaps curl back into the wings as the E-4 climbed. “You’ve got a decision to make very soon, sir. Do you understand SIOP? Do you understand transattack deterrence theory? Do you know how to issue nuclear orders? Do you know who I am? Do you know who TACAMO is?” He stopped, feeling the weight press down on him as the plane reached for altitude. “Do you want to be briefed?”

The successor sighed. Harpoon felt uneasy. He knew that most of the military officers aboard this aircraft shared his views about the next steps. He also knew that not all of them did. His mind saw the colonel—the Librarian, they called him, a Russian expert whose bespectacled eyes were forever magnified in that if-you-knew-what-I-know look.

Harpoon looked at the successor. The man’s face was certain again. Crap. He shoved his own fear back down into the pit of his stomach. The little white light was blinking urgently at him again, and he reached over to pick up the phone.

“Hey, Radnor?”

Radnor ignored Tyler, staring instead into the flickering radar screen that showed the Canadian coastline giving way to the frozen reaches of the Beaufort Sea and then the Arctic Ocean as they moved north toward Russia again. “Radnor?” Keep the sonuvabitch out of your head, Radnor. He’s gonna drive you over the edge, take you with him. Blank him out. Focus on north, north toward the bastards who stole your dream. Stole Laura.

“Hey, Radnor. I’m serious. Really serious.”

Radnor’s eyes bored into his radar screen. His world narrowed to the edges of the scope. He had no peripheral vision. Tyler would be in his peripheral vision. O’Toole would be there. The world would be there. His wife. His dream. His future. “Radnor.” Keep out of my head, damn you, Tyler.

“I’ll go halfway with you, Radnor. I’ll say it happened. I will. I promise you. But you gotta go halfway with me.”

Block him. He’s the threat now. ‘Talk to me, buddy. Radnor. Talk to me. Please.” God damn you, Tyler. Shut up. Live in your own screwed world. Stay out of mine. “Radnor!”

“Shut up, Tyler,” Radnor said quietly, fingering the broken pencil.

“Radnor, go halfway with me. Just say Timmie isn’t dead. Forget my wife. Radnor, please.”

Radnor turned slowly and looked into Tyler’s grotesque and mournful face.

“Just Timmie. You don’t have to say anything about my wife, Radnor.”

Radnor felt dizzy. He forced the jagged edge of the broken pencil against his palm, hard, till it hurt, till the skin broke and blood appeared. “Forget my wife.” Radnor burst. Laura! The pencil became a dagger, the palm a fist. The fist rose high, then lunged downward.

Upstairs, the red of the flight panel throbbed hypnotically and Moreau stared into the glowing gauges as she mechanically completed a course correction. Her mind felt flooded with novocaine, half struggling with the aircraft, half struggling to untangle the befogged memory of her father’s schedule in semi-retirement. Thursday night. Friday morning. Was this a lecture day at the Academy in Colorado Springs? You’re dead then, Dad. Dead under the megatons that caved in Cheyenne Mountain and brushed the dust of the Academy up into the clefts of Pike’s Peak. Or are you home in Steamboat Springs, sheltered farther back in the mountains? The dancing red fallout clouds moving slowly east across the desert from the wasteland of San Francisco and Sacramento. The fog rolling south from the missile fields of Wyoming, sweeping over the white tops of the Medicine Bow Mountains, crossing the Continental Divide, oozing through the high cut of Rabbit Ear Pass. Be there, Dad. Please, Daddy. Be where you can fight, dig, run, hide, struggle to live. Don’t be dead…