William Prochnau - Trinity's Child

Condor was furious. The abortive NATO conversations had been going on for an hour now. The E-4’s radio officers reported that whenever they broke through the garbles to a NATO facility, a clearly military voice would speak briefly in a NATO-country tongue and then the conversation would break off. The words were always the same, regardless of the language: “Sorry, sir, we are instructed to say nothing to you.”

Finally, at shortly after 1700 hours, Condor took to the radio himself in exasperation. A proper Italian voice babbled at him in a short sentence he didn’t understand. “You little wop bastard!” Condor exploded. “This is the President of the United States talkin’ to you! Who do you think bought your fancy fuckin’ uniform? You talk to me in English and put an American officer on! On the goddamned double!” The Italian did not hesitate, breaking from his native language into flawless un-alarmed English. “Your officers are not available, sir,” he said. Then the man disconnected.

Condor, his mouth gaping open and his face almost apoplectic, turned toward the Librarian. The Librarian’s face furrowed grimly. “Frankly, sir,” he said, “I believe the Europeans have our boys in the tank.” Condor continued to stare at him, his mouth still agape. “It was damned foolish of us to tie up NATO in a nuclear war,” the Librarian continued. “Now the Europeans seem to have it tied up for us. At least part of it.”

Condor seethed. He was fully committed now, and the frustration left him barely able to speak. “Those ingrates!” he finally flustered. “Don’t they remember the Marshall Plan?”

“They are playing their old game,” the Librarian said. ‘Trying to protect themselves by not provoking the Soviets. It is a sad, sad error. In the end the Soviets will obliterate them anyway.”

Condor stormed out of the compartment, convinced that he could trust no one, that the United States was utterly alone, and that he most certainly had made the correct decision.

In the gunner’s seat, Halupalai’s back remained to the cockpit window. He had felt the aircraft’s first maneuverings but had made no move to go up front. He felt no foreboding. Kazakhs felt the foreboding, but he couldn’t pinpoint the cause. Halupalai was neither suicidal nor maniacal. The foreboding had to come from anticipation of the grim new world they had decided they must approach.

The pilot gradually edged the aircraft lower, passing through fifteen thousand feet. The northern edge of Oahu, Kahuku Point, lay perhaps fifteen miles distant, slightly off Moreau’s side of the aircraft. Kauai, which Kazakhs was trying to ignore, sat shrouded in the rainy island’s usual clouds about seventy-five miles directly out Moreau’s side window. He did not like what he could see of Oahu, with Honolulu still forty miles away on the far side. The clouds ahead, usually billowing white playthings or dark gray rain pouches hanging over the leeward side of the island, blew brown and thick in the early-morning sun. They spread over most of the island and wafted high and far to the east, where the westerlies had carried them. Kazakhs looked at Moreau and shook his head. This promised to be one helluva mess. A moment later they passed over Kahuku at ten thousand feet, catching one quick glimpse of the splendid surf, and then they entered the clouds or smoke and began bumping badly. They came in due south, straight over the center of the island toward Pearl Harbor and Honolulu. The visibility was near zero. Moreau saw the first crater.

“Holy Mary, mother of God,” she said, and crossed herself.

Kazaklis banked the plane quickly in an attempt to catch a view. The radiation alarm squawked naggingly behind them. “Oxygen!” he ordered. “Vents closed!” By the time Kazaklis had looked again, they were past Moreau’s sighting and the clouds had closed again.

“What was it?”

“A hole in the ground,” she replied in clipped, brittle tones. “A very big hole.”

Kazaklis looked at her. She had paled.

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

They were almost on top of Pearl Harbor now. But even at 7,500 feet Kazaklis saw nothing through the murk. “Halupalai, if you’re coming up here, come up here now,” the pilot said, more tersely than he intended.

“I’m right behind you, commander,” Halupalai replied.

Kazaklis turned and saw the big Hawaiian, his helmet on, his mask strapped, his eyes glazed. He sat in the jump seat at the pilot’s back. Kazaklis reached around and patted him on the knee, then clenched it and squeezed. “Where are we?” the gunner asked.

Kazaklis lifted his shoulders in dismay. “I can’t see shit out there. We should be right over Pearl, coming up on Hickam and Honolulu International, Diamond Head on the left. Sure as hell hope we don’t have company coming in over two airfields in this muck.”

“That was Schofield,” Halupalai said evenly.

Kazaklis and Moreau exchanged quick and worried glances.

“The hole,” Halupalai said as blandly as a bored tour guide. “That was Schofield Barracks.”

Kazaklis ignored the alarm bells ringing in his head. The island was so small, the B-52 still moving so rapidly, there was no time to think. “I’m gonna take it out over Mamala Bay, bring it around, and come in lower from the south,” he said. “Anybody got problems with that?”

“Let’s skip it,” Moreau answered quickly. She sounded even more brittle and quite insistent.

“I’d like to go, captain.” Halupalai addressed Moreau, his voice so level and unemotional it spooked her. Moreau looked at Kazaklis and shook her head slightly.

“I think we all need to see it,” Kazaklis said.

Suddenly the B-52 broke into brilliant sunshine, and below them they caught a split-second view of the flowing Waikiki surf, missing any sighting of the shoreline, and then they were at sea again. “What kind of mountains you got on that rock, Halupalai?” Kazaklis asked. The plane banked hard left now, back toward Diamond Head, and Kazaklis strained for a look out the lefthand window.

“Kaala’s the big one, about four thousand feet.” The voice remained tour-guide monotone. “Don’t worry about it. It’s too far west.” In the distance Kazaklis could see Molokai, once the island of the lepers, perhaps thirty miles away. “Konahuanui about three thousand, Tantalus maybe two thousand, both should stay to your right coming over the top.” Light billowing clouds hovered over Molokai, making it postcard pretty.

The sight mesmerized Kazaklis as he replied, “Hokay, I’m taking it down just under two thousand so we can activate the terrain cameras.” Then, through the windows, he saw the debris in the water, enormous gobs of gunk floating toward the postcard image. “Jesus.” The stunned hush of his voice reverberated through all three helmets. Amid the crazy clutter of splintered wood and junk he saw tangled bodies, and an occasional arm seemed to wave out of the ocean at him. “Good Jesus.” They were halfway through the turn, the first computer images of Oahu dancing nonsensically on the green screens. Kazaklis, being in the lefthand seat, saw the real image first. “No,” he said, “no, no.”

Moreau moaned. “Get us out of here, Kazaklis,” she said, her voice sounding as if she were strangling in her mask.

Halupalai said nothing, his eyes transfixed just to the left of the pilot’s helmet as the panorama of Diamond Head, then Waikiki, then Honolulu swept slowly across the cockpit window, the aircraft leveling out and coming straight in, low, at the island’s edge.

Diamond Head still stood at the right, and the serene surf of Waikiki, its white curls starting almost a mile offshore, still rolled placidly toward the land. Not even gunk remained to spoil the waters. All else had changed. It was as if a great hand had sliced angrily at the manmade concrete jungle of towering beachfront hotels, creating a desert in its place. On the left, toward downtown Honolulu and Hickam Air Force Base, not even rubble remained. Toward the right and the majesty of the Head, the hand seemed to have grown weary of its task and left the litter in larger and larger mounds. At the end of the once magical Waikiki strip, and the foot of Diamond Head, the mounds were perhaps thirty feet high where thirty-story condominiums had stood. Behind it all, where the island rose toward the low Koolau Mountains dividing Oahu’s windward and leeward sides, the smoke and fires began, clouding the view of the interior.