William Prochnau - Trinity's Child

Kazaklis felt every muscle, every tendon, turn rigid. “Look up ‘Henhouse,’” he said.

“No,” she said.

Kazaklis looked at her strangely. She stared straight ahead, not a muscle moving. He didn’t know what to do. He felt cornered, trapped in a mad maze from which escape was impossible. His voice turned raw with agony. “It won’t make any difference, Moreau.”

“I know.”

“Nothing will change. Somebody else will do it.”

“I know.”

“Cherepovets will go. Irkutsk will go. Ulan-Ude. Everything will go anyway.”

“I know.”

He paused. Her good eye seemed as distant as her bad. “New York, Coos Bay, everything in between,” he said slowly, pausing very briefly. “Steamboat Springs.”

The good eye glinted at the thought of her father. Then it glazed again. “I know,” she said quietly. “But I’m not going to do it. I can’t.”

“Can’t?”

“Won’t.”

Kazakhs turned away from her, staring into the dirty gray ripples of the flash curtain. “You weren’t going to Irkutsk, either,” he said, knowing that the decision had been forming well before the doomsday orders for the grand tour had arrived.

“They gave us too much time to think.”

“You’d have turned a Minuteman key in the first five minutes.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

“Bitch,” he said. The ripples mocked him. He saw for the first time that the folds of the curtain were rank with dirt and crud, trapped off years of sweaty and eternally vigilant hands. His soul ached, as if he were deserting all those who had come before him, all those who had kept this aircraft poised and ready, all those who had believed. “Cunt.” His voice carried no emotion. He flexed a fireproofed hand, then reached forward and ran a gloved index finger down the grime of a generation. “Damn you.”

Kazakhs sank back in his seat, tightening his glove slowly into the mailed fist he wore on his shoulder, and suddenly pounded it, over and over again, into the crud of the curtain and the Plexiglas behind it. He stopped and looked again into her unmovable face.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked. “Shoot you? Eject you? Put you down on the ice?”

She stared ahead.

He reached behind his seat for his gray-green alert bag, pulling it forward into his lap. He tugged at the soiled glove, removing it. He placed his bare hand inside the bag, rummaging past the candy bars, the Russian money, the Chinese money, the first-aid kit, and the .45. He withdrew a small canister, roughly the size of an aspirin tin, and snapped it open. He handed its singular content to Moreau. She took it, looking at the white capsule without curiosity. Melech hamafis. She shifted out of her seat to go downstairs with O’Toole. She felt a hard hand on her wrist, twisting. The cyanide pill popped loose and rolled innocently into the darkness of the cabin. She turned and looked at Kazakhs. “That’s one PRP violation too many, captain,” he said.

For a moment they were silent, the engines droning on, their drumbeat a drumroll now, Moreau poised halfway into the aisle way.

“I can’t go either,” Kazakhs finally said with neither passion nor sadness.

“I know,” Moreau said, and shifted back into her seat.

“Damn,” Kazakhs finally sobbed. “Damn, damn, damn.”

“So what’s next?” Moreau asked quietly.

“I dunno,” Kazakhs replied emptily.

Kazakhs rummaged again through the alert bag, extracting a roll of medical tape. He tore two strips and attached them to the glove. He taped the glove to the red screen in front of him. All fingers were folded down except one.

“Up theirs,” he said. “Let ’em do their own killing.”

Then he began banking the aircraft out of the endless circle in which they had been flying. Moreau helped him.

Down below, Radnor felt the first almost imperceptible turning of the aircraft. He should have found that more unusual, because he had heard no request for course corrections and had not observed Halupalai bringing down order changes for Tyler’s confirmation. But since the race with the MIG’s, in which he had played no significant role, Radnor had retreated so deeply within himself that he had observed almost nothing. He quickly glanced sideways at Tyler, catching a camera-flick image of his crewmate’s still-twisted face. Radnor just as quickly turned away. He did not want to see Tyler at all, so the young radar operator slipped easily back into the dismal swamp of his own private sadness. Had he looked closer he would have seen that Tyler’s face had changed somewhat, that it had taken on a look of brutally raw anger. He also would have seen that Tyler was listening intently to someone else’s conversation, his radio switch fixed to the private channel in use by someone upstairs.

The Looking Glass lurched left. Alice, who had been stretching in the aisle, lurched with it, his hand landing on Sam’s drooping shoulder. He could feel the wetness seeping through the rumpled blue cotton of the colonel’s shirt.

“Sorry, Sam,” he said. “Bumpy trip.”

Sam looked up, brushed his forehead, and nodded. “Smitty’s really threading the needle tonight, isn’t he? Ducking in and out of the clouds like a fighter pilot.”

“Let’s hope he’s just ducking.” The general smiled wanly. Sam said nothing. “All’s well up north?”

Sam shrugged. “They all got the orders, sir. We sure had ’em automated.”

The general looked at him inquisitively. “How’s that?”

“Only one asked for National Command Authority confirmation.”

“It’s not required.”

“No.”

“Who asked?”

“Polar Bear One.”

The general’s gaze drifted away from Sam, up the aisle of his wounded command plane. Kazakhs and Moreau. Figures.

“Would you have asked, Sam?”

The colonel thought for a second, probing back into the youthful days when he had flown B-52’s. “I don’t know, general. Probably not.”

“I don’t know either,” Alice said. “I’d sure as hell like to think I would.” The general clenched the colonel’s shoulder in camaraderie and started to move away. “Think I’ll take a look up front.”

“General,” the colonel called after him, “I think you were right about the Foxbats.”

“Sam?”

“We’re picking up confirmed Soviet bomber sightings. They’re coming in squadrons. Most of ’em are heading for the East Coast. But we got about fifteen Bisons coming straight at Polar Bear. The Foxbats had to be leading ’em in.”

Alice shook his head slightly. Small world. They can wave at each other on the way past. The bombers all had bigger fish to fry than each other. He moved up the aisle, patting shoulders as he went. He looked at his watch. The hands had moved past five a.m., Omaha time. But Omaha was a bit of an anachronism now, so his watch read 1110 Zulu. He wondered where they were. Knowing Smitty, he could make a pretty good guess. The pilot would have them over the safest place in the United States. And the last place any of them wanted to be. He pushed through the cockpit door, his eyes quickly adjusting to the red glow of the night lights. Smitty sat in the lefthand seat, staring at his radar screen. The copilot sat on the right. Unlike the B-52’s, the Looking Glass had flash panels that fitted snugly into the cockpit windows, a peel-back patch about one foot square in the center. The silver panels flashed almost disco magenta in the strange light.

“You’re handling this old 707 like an F-15, Smitty,” Alice said.

“Oh, hello, sir,” the pilot responded. “We’ve got some pretty hot clouds out there, general. How’re things in the back of the bus?”

“Sweaty.”