David Golemon: Primeval

The pilot soon emerged from the restroom and was met by a navy doctor and medical corpsman. He was directed to a closed-off area where a catheter would be inserted into his bladder for the long flight awaiting him after his next fuel stop. That was where the pods would be fully loaded and the mysterious shroud would be removed from Solar Flare. The next stop for this most secret mission of October 1962, would be Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska. At that point, Solar Flare would become active upon the order of President John F. Kennedy, and then Solar Flare would vanish into the night sky, its destination — the Soviet Union, its mission — to advance beyond its fail-safe point and to destroy the top military leadership of not only the Soviet military, but the KGB and the high command of all Russian strategic rocket forces.

As the pilot cleared the medical area, he felt uncomfortable with the attention of everyone as they followed his every move. He didn't know if it was because of the mission he was chosen for or the fact that he just had two feet of plastic line shoved up his penis — he hoped it was the latter.

Commander John C. Phillips, fresh from the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, was preparing the largest strike package ever issued by the U.S. navy. The weapon was far beyond the scope of detonations delivered by the U.S. Army Air Corps at the end of World War II. An experimental device loaded upon the newest supersonic jet fighter in the American inventory, and with the aircraft loaded with so many secret and technical devices, Phillips knew he was more than likely to blow himself and half of either Washington State or Alaska into oblivion than he was the intended target, the head of the chicken, or as it was officially known — the Soviet high command.

As the commander was approached by two admirals, a general, and three men in civilian suits, he took advantage of the little time he had to wolf down a ham and cheese sandwich and a glass of energy orange drink.

"Commander, your final orders: You will unseal them ten klicks before you cross into Soviet airspace."

Phillips handed one of the flight crew the empty glass and wiped his mouth onto the sleeve of his flight suit. His eyes took in the admiral and didn't flinch.

"And the members of the high command targeted are going to be where they are supposed to be?" he asked, still not reaching for the orders. As he watched the brass before him, the rumor mill was being proven right, and all of the hard work and training was about to be realized if the negotiations in Washington and Moscow failed. Phillips knew he was the only member of the four horsemen of the apocalypse that really counted, and it made his stomach queasy.

"Assets inside the Soviet military apparatus have informed our intelligence services through the French DGSE that everyone from Khrushchev down to his valet will be there. Yelteli is your target, commander."

"And if they're not in Yelteli?" persisted the navy officer.

"They are, buried underneath five hundred feet of reinforced concrete and two hundred of clay, with nothing else but trees protecting them. They didn't think we knew about their little hiding spot, but thanks to the head of French intelligence, we do."

The commander had no doubt that he was carrying the payload to do the job. He knew it would create a crater the size of the meteor hole in the desert in Arizona, only deeper. He was just concerned about his mission being the one to initiate a full nuclear exchange.

"What if the president gets those stupid bastards in Moscow to back down?" he asked, almost, but not quite reaching for the plastic-covered orders.

"He won't," said a man in a black suit.

"Your name, sir?" Phillips asked.

The man remained silent as he looked from the commander to the admiral, and then turned and walked away.

"In that case, Commander, you'll receive the callback— Genghis . Are we clear? Everything is explained in your orders. Now, your mission will continue with no further communication from here on out. Your layover at Elmendorf is only fifteen minutes, so you will not even leave the cockpit. After the strike, if you successfully egress from Soviet soil, your training in ice landings will become perfectly clear to you. The coordinates for the ice-pack landing are included. Sorry that couldn't be explained to you during training."

Phillips finally nodded his head and took the offered orders, feeling them under his gloved hands and knowing the impossibility of it, and also knowing full well he would never make it past Soviet defenses after his bird laid its nuclear egg. There would be no ice landing, and he doubted very much if there was even a plan for him to do so.

"Will you gentlemen excuse the commander and me for a moment, please," the small rear admiral asked.

The men surrounding the pilot walked away when asked and didn't bother with protesting the time restraints they were under.

"Listen to me, Commander, the president has been backed into a corner here. Hell, he has Soviet merchants and armed combatants charging to the Cuban quarantine line, and he doesn't think those bastards are going to stop. If they don't, this may be the only chance we have if the Soviets strike in Germany or, God forbid, the U.S. You're the first option for stopping this before it really gets started." The admiral paused for the next words he would speak. "Commander, if you have any doubts, it's worse than we thought in Cuba. At least four sites there are fully operational, and the ranges of the missiles are not what have been reported. They can hit as far away as Seattle."

Phillips didn't respond to the admiral's pep talk because he knew the Soviet military, no matter how much of the command structure he destroyed, would strike back. It was what he would do, and he knew the Russian soldiers and airmen would feel the same.

"Yes, sir," Phillips said as he gave the admiral a salute, crisp and sharp. He didn't wait after he let his hand slip to his side; he stepped away and joined his ground team.

Ten minutes later, under cover of darkness, and no runways lights save for every thousand yards as an aiming point, Operation Solar Flare roared down the McChord runway. As the wheels lifted free of the concrete, Phillips felt a small pop from somewhere in the aircraft as it rose into the sky. Unbeknownst to the highly trained pilot, the restraining bolt holding the nose of Solar Flare to its hard point broke free and tumbled into the woods surrounding Fort Lewis and McChord.

Two hours later, the aircraft passed over the most desolate and unexplored region of British Columbia on its zigzag course in order to avoid the Russian trawlers off the coast toward Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska, when the nose of the most secret weapon in the American nuclear arsenal broke free and dropped three feet. Now its center and rear bolts were the only restraints keeping the weapon from tumbling into a large river that wound its way across the northern face of hills and mountains below.

Commander Phillips knew his aerodynamics were shot as the weapon hung, suspended half on and half off its hard points and was pulling the aircraft into a nose-down attitude. The problem started in the planning stages of the operation as the Canadian government knew nothing of the American flyover of their territory and airspace, so the commander was under orders to stay "in the weeds," below the Canadian radar. It was a good plan, but it doomed the mission and Phillips. He just didn't have the altitude to maneuver.

"Snowman, Snowman, this is Arrowhead, mayday, mayday," Phillips called out as calmly as he could as the Phantom rolled hard to the right side. He fought the control stick as hard as he could but knew he was losing the Phantom far more quickly with the heavy load. The design of the extreme aircraft was so radical, it naturally didn't want to stay in the air anyway, and he knew that. "My position is—"