William Prochnau - Trinity's Child

“The fucking computer.”

“The fucking computer programmed all the orders, sir.” Sedgwick hesitated. “You signed off on them. For the ICBM’s, the bombers… and the submarines. The ICBM’s are gone. The bombers… I don’t know. I assume they’re gone, but they go in only with confirming orders through the Looking Glass. By someone with National Command Authority. The subs are different. They operate on the reverse principle. They go with the original order unless the order is countermanded.”

“Countermanded? Good God, Sedgwick!” The President bolted upright in his bed again, ignoring the pain from his legs. “Communications are shot? Then we can’t countermand anything. We can’t talk to them.”

“I don’t believe so, Mr. President. Not at the moment.”

The President looked sightlessly into the ceiling. “What about the Soviets, Sedgwick?” he asked quietly. “What are they up to?”

Sedgwick glanced quickly at the civil-defense director. “I’m guessing, sir. From bits and pieces picked up on the radio here. Not too much seems to have happened since the first wave. Their bombers should have been in on top of us by now. We know they held back more than half their ICBM’s. They’ve got some subs left. There is absolutely nothing the Soviets can do about our submarines. I think they’re waiting. If our subs go, they’ll hit us with everything they’ve got.” Sedgwick closed his eyes. “I hate to say it, but I suppose that’s what I’d do.”

The nurses took a step backward, expressions of fascinated horror on their faces. The director shifted from foot to foot. The only sound in the room was the whir of the giant air purifiers. “When, Sedgwick?” the President asked with terrifying calm. “When are the submarines programmed to go?”

“We left the White House in a helluva hurry, sir.”

“When, Sedgwick?”

“I don’t know.” The young naval aide clipped his words. He looked at the clock. It read 1830 Zulu. He heaved a great sigh. “Five minutes? Couple of hours? The only people who know are in the subs. And in the command planes.”

The President slowly raised a hand to his face, causing the I.V. stand to teeter precariously. He rubbed his empty eyes. “How?” he whispered. “How could we create such an ungodly monster?”

Sedgwick sighed again. “There’s more, sir.”

“There can’t be much more, Sedgwick.” The President’s voice was raw with agony now. “Forty million dead? If the rest of those babies go, we’ll be lucky if there are forty million alive.” He stared into the blankness. “Very damned lucky.”

“I know that, sir,” Sedgwick resumed slowly. “The Olney radio operator is picking up some traffic. Bits and pieces, as I said. Some from Europe. He received a most peculiar call from the Soviet Union an hour ago. The speaker claimed he was the Soviet Premier.”

“The Premier?” The President’s mind was whirling now and he was sure it wasn’t the morphine.

The director cut in again. “I talked with him, sir. He wanted us to patch him through to the E-4.”

“The E-4?” The President sounded confused. “What goddamned E-4 ?”

“I’m sure he was an impostor. Naturally, I refused, as I would have done in any case.”

“Why the hell didn’t you let me decide that?”

“You were colder than yesterday’s turkey, Mr. President,” Sedgwick interrupted.

“Why the hell didn’t he get you?”

Sedgwick lifted his eyebrows, spread his palm toward the director, and let him have the floor. “He wanted the E-4,” the man sputtered.

“Jesus Christ, you two. The goddamned E-4 went with my eyes at Andrews!”

Sedgwick looked levelly at the director. “Are you going to tell him or aren’t you?” he demanded. The director shot an angry glance at the much younger man, but he said nothing. “According to the director,” Sedgwick continued bluntly, “an alternate E-4 made it out of Omaha and picked up a presidential successor in Baton Rouge. The man is aboard the E-4 at this time.”

“A successor?” The President’s voice was dumbfounded.

“Everyone thinks you’re dead, sir,” Sedgwick said. “Including the Soviet Premier, if the call was authentic. I’m inclined to believe it was.”

The President was becoming far more angry than confused. He waved both arms toward his unseen underlings, causing one of the the nurses to rush to the teetering I.V. stand. “Is anybody going to bother to tell me who the hell the new President is?”

“The director believes,” Sedgwick replied, “that the Secretary of the Interior has been sworn into office and is aboard the E-4 .”

“Jesus Christ.”

No one said anything.

“Jesus H. Christ.”

Sedgwick shifted uncomfortably.

“We got Alice in one plane and the Mad Hatter in the other.”

The silence lasted only seconds, but it seemed endless to all in the room.

“Okay,” the President said. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You’re telling me that everybody thinks I’m dead, that Wild Bill Hickok thinks he is President, that our submarines are about to destroy the Soviet Union, that the Soviet Union then will destroy us, that we can’t talk to our own people, but somebody claiming to be the Soviet Premier just called and we told the guy to take a hike. Is that about right? Or is that the morphine talking?”

“I’m afraid that’s about right,” Sedgwick said.

“Baskin?”

“Bascomb, sir,” the director replied.

“What the hell makes you think you were not talking to the Premier?”

“Most improbable, sir,” the director replied nervously. “Really, most improbable.”

“Improbable,” the President said in exasperation.

“He was too rude, sir,” the director flustered, “far too rude for a national leader attempting to negotiate with a foreign power.”

“Rude,” the President said quietly. “We’re nuking the be-Jesus out of each other and you think he was rude.” Suddenly the President thundered, “You want to see a national leader get rude, you blathering nincompoop? What the hell did he say to you?”

The director started to stammer a reply and then froze.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Sedgwick said. “The Russian said the director couldn’t find his ass with both hands and a hunting dog.”

One of the nurses tittered nervously. The President started to laugh, first in a low rumble, then in a slowly escalating roar, until the pain forced him to stop. “Baskin, off that information alone, I’d bet this little rabbit hole of yours that you had the Soviet Premier on the phone.” He paused, then added very calmly, “Now get your ass, assuming you can find it, into the radio room and try to get him back. Please.”

The President could hear the man moving briskly out of the room.

“Sedgwick?”

“Sir?”

“You think we have a chance?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“It’s harder than hell to get through to submerged submarines, isn’t it?”

“We often had trouble in peacetime, Mr. President.”

Sedgwick looked long and sadly at the unseeing President. “You have one other problem, sir.” The President rolled his head toward the naval aide, as if to look at him. “Your authenticator card is missing.”

The President took a long, deep breath. “Nurse,” he said, “roll me into the radio room, will you please?”

On the bridge of the Ticonderoga, the captain grimaced as he sucked on a cup of unusually foul coffee. He watched a young ensign stride toward him. “Sir!” The young officer snapped a salute and handed him a brief message.

“Victor?” the fatigued captain asked, his mind never straying from the Soviet submarine silently hounding them.