William Prochnau - Trinity's Child

Tyler cut in. “You have significant terrain at ten o’clock. High terrain at three o’clock. High terrain seven miles dead ahead.” The valley was closing around them. Moreau faded off. Their Loony Tunes navigator finally sounded as if he were navigating, their gunner was silently defending them with gum wrappers, their pilot was buried, as ever, in boobs. But she liked them, all of them. Suddenly she became very angry.

“Goddammit, how we screwed up!”

The mood change jolted Kazakhs. “The odds were a hundred to one,” he said defensively.

“Not you,” she said. “The fucking world. All of us. Anybody could have seen this coming. Why the hell didn’t we see this coming?”

Kazakhs sighed. “The world’s always been a dangerous neighborhood, Moreau. It became a very small neighborhood when we started packin’ around zip guns that could snuff any city or cave in any mountain.”

“High terrain five miles ahead,” Tyler said.

Moreau froze.

“Or Tyler’s high terrain,” she thought aloud.

Kazakhs looked at her strangely.

“Arm the first bomb,” Moreau said slowly. Kazakhs did not respond. “Arm bomb number one, dammit!”

“That’s crazy.”

“Not as crazy as doing a loop, Waldo. Do it fast!”

The pilot’s mind began racing again. He did not need to tote up his weaponry—six Short Range Attack Missiles tucked under his wings, four one-megaton hydrogen bombs stashed in the bay just fifty feet behind him. He ruled out the SRAM’s immediately. He could make them turn circles, twist into figure eights, slip around a corner, and strike a target thirty-five miles behind him. But they were too difficult to reprogram quickly. The bombs were a different story.

Kazakhs had never seen inside the bulbous gray packages he carried, but he had a working knowledge of their innards.

They were a complicated piece of machinery, maybe too complicated now. They certainly were not designed for Moreau’s sudden brainstorm. The brutes were so powerful they required a nuclear explosion to set off the thermonuclear explosion. So they contained a plutonium trigger to set off a small nuclear bomb that ignited a Styrofoam explosive that finally detonated the thermonuclear explosion. The temperature inside reached twenty million degrees before the casing went. But the bombshells held far more than explosives. They contained altitude and velocity sensors, a drogue parachute to slow their descent, a delay fuse to give him a few extra seconds to escape. They also contained extraordinary safety devices. Hydrogen bombs had careened off the top of ICBM’s, fallen out of B-52’s, rolled off aircraft carriers, disintegrated in space launches. But none had ever exploded accidentally.

Briefly Kazakhs cursed the safeties—six coded interlocks known as the Permissive Action Link. The PAL was no pal now. He would be in one helluva hurry. Still, he had the codes. He did not think long. It was a long shot, but Moreau’s cockeyed plan was not that cockeyed. It would require exquisite skill, exquisite timing, and exquisite luck. And those self-assured Russian fighter pilots would have to be so cocky they’d hold off a few minutes longer. Would he be that cocky? Yeah, he answered himself. If he were given a little more bait, which he intended to give the Russians, Kazakhs the Great would be that cocky. He smiled.

“Moreau,” he said, “you’re too fucking smart to die so young.” Without pause, he continued: ‘Tyler, are the Russians flying in formation?”

“They’re closing fast, commander.” Tyler now sounded confused and scared.

“Are they flying in formation, dammit!”

“Yes, sir,” the navigator flustered.

Kazakhs smiled again.

“Hokay, you guardians of democracy,” he exulted into the intercom, “secure the family jewels again. Our buddy with no jewels to lose has come up with a real ball-buster!”

Kazakhs immediately banked the plane left toward the last ridge between him and the river delta. He punched the bomb code into the little cipher box next to him, unlocking the interlocks and arming one bomb. His mind sprinted through timing calculations. Thirty seconds from release to detonation.

They were a complicated piece of machinery, maybe too complicated now. They certainly were not designed for Moreau’s sudden brainstorm. The brutes were so powerful they required a nuclear explosion to set off the thermonuclear explosion. So they contained a plutonium trigger to set off a small nuclear bomb that ignited a Styrofoam explosive that finally detonated the thermonuclear explosion. The temperature inside reached twenty million degrees before the casing went. But the bombshells held far more than explosives. They contained altitude and velocity sensors, a drogue parachute to slow their descent, a delay fuse to give him a few extra seconds to escape. They also contained extraordinary safety devices. Hydrogen bombs had careened off the top of ICBM’s, fallen out of B-52’s, rolled off aircraft carriers, disintegrated in space launches. But none had ever exploded accidentally.

Briefly Kazakhs cursed the safeties—six coded interlocks known as the Permissive Action Link. The PAL was no pal now. He would be in one helluva hurry. Still, he had the codes. He did not think long. It was a long shot, but Moreau’s cockeyed plan was not that cockeyed. It would require exquisite skill, exquisite timing, and exquisite luck. And those self-assured Russian fighter pilots would have to be so cocky they’d hold off a few minutes longer. Would he be that cocky? Yeah, he answered himself. If he were given a little more bait, which he intended to give the Russians, Kazakhs the Great would be that cocky. He smiled.

“Moreau,” he said, “you’re too fucking smart to die so young.” Without pause, he continued: “Tyler, are the Russians flying in formation?”

“They’re closing fast, commander.” Tyler now sounded confused and scared.

“Are they flying in formation, dammit!”

“Yes, sir,” the navigator flustered.

Kazakhs smiled again.

“Hokay, you guardians of democracy,” he exulted into the intercom, “secure the family jewels again. Our buddy with no jewels to lose has come up with a real ball-buster!”

Kazakhs immediately banked the plane left toward the last ridge between him and the river delta. He punched the bomb code into the little cipher box next to him, unlocking the interlocks and arming one bomb. His mind sprinted through timing calculations. Thirty seconds from release to detonation.

Thirty seconds at six hundred miles an hour. Five miles. He would have to be damned lucky to catch the MIG’s roughly that distance behind him. He did not bother to ask if they had followed his banking left turn. He didn’t need to ask, feeling their lust for a crack at him in the wide-open Mackenzie flats. They’d wait for that shot. Just as he would, if he were on the chase.

“You may sit down, colonel,” Harpoon said evenly. “Mr. Burr will yield the floor in a moment.”

The colonel hesitated, fussily adjusting his glasses, and slowly seated himself. The others, with the exception of the admiral and the successor, shifted uncomfortably. The two men stared at each other wearily. The successor spoke first.

“Do you want to be remembered as an Aaron Burr, Harpoon?” he asked.

“Of course not, sir. I’ve devoted my life to my country. I love it. I will fight for it, as I am tonight, to the death.”

“You don’t seem to be sayin’ that.”

“Sir”—Harpoon felt an overwhelming sense of foreboding—“I’m not simply being asked to fight to my death tonight. I’m being asked to fight to the death of my country.”

“You sayin’ we’ve been wrong?”

Harpoon thought for a moment, not to resolve doubts but to find the proper words. He looked at the row of clocks. They had thirty, perhaps forty-five minutes.