William Prochnau - Trinity's Child

Outside the briefing room, the successor moved hurriedly down unfamiliar hallways till he found the staircase. He climbed it and reentered the presidential quarters. Inside his own compartment, he knelt quickly. He needed a briefing from a higher source than Harpoon. He prayed deeply and with a low burble that echoed eerily in the lonely room. The prayer lasted only a moment, and then, with a solemn amen, he rose confidently, the pallor gone from his face.

• 1100 Zulu

Kazakhs brought the B-52 back toward the North American coastline at one thousand feet, temporarily trading deception for speed. He was in a sprint now, with the unseen Foxbats looping high and around toward him, the old bomber screaming low and vulnerable over the last jagged crags of the ice-locked Beaufort Sea. The B-52 gulped gas ferociously, Elsie’s precious gift taking them in the wrong direction, the only direction. The pilot’s own fuel, adrenaline, pulsed rapidly through his body, deftly tucking questions and fear in some side pocket of his mind. He subconsciously reached for his groin, arranging his vitals for the crunch, and barely caught the urge to remind his copilot to do the same. Instead, he went to the all-channels intercom.

“Hokay, you guardians of democracy,” Kazakhs said, “secure the family jewels. We’re goin’ in for the ball-buster.”

The bravado sounded tinny over the tortured scream of the engines, eight jets pushed to their limit. The speed gauge read Mach point-nine-five, just over six hundred miles an hour, just under the speed of sound. The altimeter held briefly, then began to drop again precipitously. At the pilot’s right, Moreau helped Kazakhs control the creaking, bumping bomber, forgetting the navigational charts balanced on one knee. In front of them their red screens danced crazily, the night cameras in the Buffs nose picking up the last ice tangles of the sea and converting them into a maze of computer images. Just ahead lay the western mouth of the Mackenzie, where a winter that began in September had petrified the competing forces of the river and the sea, forcing them up into a rockhard barrier that loomed on the screen.

“Hard left!” Kazaklis barked. The ancient plane moaned as it banked, then leveled out again. “Landfall?”

“River delta,” Moreau replied. “Ice jams in the mouth. Broad outlets beyond. Flat tundra. No landmarks.” It was not an ideal place to do what Kazaklis needed to do.

The altimeter read three hundred feet and wobbled downward.

“Coming up on twenty seconds,” Moreau continued. “Ready…now.”

Kazaklis braced himself. The altimeter spun down from two hundred feet, bouncing as badly as the plane. The screen showed the ice barrier moving right.

“Five seconds. Hang on.”

The B-52 struck the roiling coastal winds like a flat rock on water, bellying up, then sagging down precariously, old rivets and younger bones jolted and complaining under the strain. “Jesus!” Moreau blurted involuntarily. “Fifty feet!” Kazaklis said. “Get it up!” The charts bounced unnoticed off Moreau’s knee as she helped the pilot tug frantically at the flailing bomber. At fifty feet, she knew well, they were in severe peril. The long, sleek wings flapped like a seagull’s, drooping so much on a routine takeoff the designers had given them wingtip wheels. This was not routine, the ice jam still menacing on their right, the Foxbats menacing somewhere unseen. Moreau agonizingly helped Kazaklis nudge the balky plane back up to one hundred feet. He held it there.

“Cut it a little close,” Moreau said brittlely. Then she removed the edge from her voice. “Nicely done, Captain Shazam.”

“Umm,” Kazaklis responded, preoccupied. “What’s ahead?’

Moreau reached for the charts. The plane bumped violently again.

“Hands on wheel!” Kazaklis said urgently. “Forget the charts. That’s why we got the boys in the loony bin.” He glanced quickly to make certain he had switched to private.

“Flat as a pancake. Dozen arms of the Mackenzie.”

They both knew Arctic rivers were so wide and shallow that radar couldn’t pick up their banks.

“Great place to hide,” Kazakhs said sardonically.

“Be lucky to hide a snowball down there.”

“Wanta park it on the river and toss snowballs at ’em?”

Moreau said nothing.

“What about the mountains?”

“Richardsons. We got better charts of the Verkhoyansk.”

“Figures.”

“Maybe twenty miles to the foothills. Low, treeless. Not much better.”

“Book say Foxbats got look-down radar?”

“Says maybe. They were working on it.”

“Shit. Anybody tell the spooks at Langley about eternal vigilance?”

“Foxbats were designed to go after other fighters, not look down on us.”

“That’s our edge.”

“Not much.”

Kazakhs eased the speed back to Mach point-eight-five. The Buff was rattling like his pa’s old Ford truck. Last flight of the Polar Bear, he thought. Still, he didn’t want the rivets popping just yet. He switched to all channels.

“Anybody talkin’ soprano down in the basement?”

Downstairs, in the navigation compartment, Radnor was on private. He was sweating and bleeding, and he held hard eyes on Tyler. “Don’t fuck this one up, Tyler,” he said menacingly. “I want these bastards. For Laura. You got that, buddy boy? For Laura.”

Tyler stared back at his crewmate. The navigator’s face twisted grotesquely, but it wore a look of vague understanding. “Yeah, I got it, Radnor. For Laura.” Tyler had tears in his eyes. He brushed them away with a fireproof glove and switched radio channels. His voice squeaked in a forced falsetto, a forced joke. “Radnor says I ain’t gonna need my jewels anymore, commander.” Radnor swore at him silently, then felt the tears welling in his eyes, too.

“You okay down there, navigator?” The pilot’s voice was very concerned.

“He’s okay,” Radnor said flatly. The radio fell silent for a moment. Radnor’s eyes continued to lock on Tyler. Both men were crying.

“Well, give me a reading, fellas,” Kazakhs said blandly. “Come on.”

Tyler turned toward his screen, its rotating arm stretching out one hundred miles, far beyond the nose cameras available to the pilots. “High terrain sixteen miles,” he said professionally. “Dead ahead. Five hundred feet elevation, rising to fifteen hundred. Knobs rising eighty, a hundred feet along the way. Watch ’em.”

In the cockpit Kazakhs shook his head at Moreau. Tyler’s emotions were bobbing up and down like a weekend sailboat in a storm.

“Bandits?” the pilot asked.

“Not yet,” Tyler said firmly now. “Screen’s clear as a bell.”

Kazakhs relaxed briefly, even as the wheel tugged harshly at his forearms. Clear as a bell. Suddenly he drew bolt upright. “Gunner!” he yelled. “You got the jammer on?”

In the rear of the compartment the commander’s alarmed voice jolted Halupalai out of a morose daydream. He stared, panicky, at the confusion of unfamiliar switches in front of him. Briefly, he couldn’t find the right one. Then he flicked it, sending out the powerful beams that helped hide them. He turned to see Kazakhs craning his head toward him. Halupalai looked away quickly. Shit, Kazakhs thought. The whole damn place is a funny farm.

“Bandits,” Tyler broke in. “Southeast. Eighty miles. Just over Mach one.”

“Shit,” Kazakhs said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

The successor strode into the briefing room with a new certainty, and Harpoon, who had presided over the deathly silent group during the several minutes of the man’s absence, felt a sudden shiver of concern.