Martin Smith - Stallion Gate

"Get in here, Sergeant," Groves shouted. "Finished with the Apaches?"

"Yes, sir."

"Looks like you found them." Groves glanced at the tape on his brow as Joe slipped on to the rear seat with him. The car was small and steamy. The general's uniform seemed to be turning into towelling. "Yes, sir."

"The problem isn't wild Indians." Groves rubbed condensation off the window to see the three men at the box. "Dr Oppenheimer is, you understand, a highly-strung individual. Anything can set him off now. He has to decide whether to call off the test or not and all the crackpots at the base camp want him to. That's why I brought him here, so he could make a calm, rational decision."

Joe looked through the window at Captain Augustino, who had stayed in the jeep. Was this the moment to say, "General, your head of security wants to arrest your project director as Joe Stalin's secret agent?" No. Joe had figured it out. Augustine's whole plan depended on the test. There wasn't a chance in hell of the test being held in this weather. All he had to do tonight was stall. Tomorrow, when people were sane and dry, Joe would nail the captains's ass to a board.

"It is raining, sir."

"It will clear. Dr Oppenheimer doesn't need any more scientific cross-chatter, he needs some sensible advice. Fermi was talking about the end of the earth and we have GIs running all the way to Tularosa. Talk to him, he listens to you. Calm him down. Keep him away from pessimists."

As Joe left the car, the steel tower turned chalk white. Faded. Two seconds later, thunder rocked the valley floor. Close, he thought.

"All summer and all spring it hasn't rained." Oppy raised his face to the drops. "Here we are, four hours from Zero Hour, and it's pouring."

Inside the "privy", wet electrical tape unravelled in black curlicues from coaxial cable. While Jaworski cut loose strands, Foote wound the cable with fresh tape.

"Snakes and sunstroke we anticipated in the desert," Foote said. "Humidity took us by surprise."

"How about lightning?" Joe asked.

"I told you how lightning knocked out a rehearsal." Jaworski snipped away. "A power surge from lightning certainly could set off the high explosive."

"Nonsense." Foote wiped the tape with Kleenex. "The tower is grounded."

"Shut up!" Oppy said. "The bomb is a dud. You know and I know it, everybody knows it but the general. How can I think with you two nits picking at each other?"

The ladder leaned against the first landing of the tower. Oppy climbed the ladder and rose up the tower rungs towards the shed. Once past the second landing and the faint beams of the spotlights, he vanished into the dark. Foote silently finished the taping and checked that the cable firing switch was in the open position before shutting the "privy" door and padlocking it. Groves worked his way from the sedan while Augustino sauntered over from the jeep.

"Follow him," Groves told Joe.

"Sir, if I might suggest," the captain said, "why don't I assign Sergeant Pena to the security of the bomb itself. That will give the sergeant a plausible reason to be with Dr Oppenheimer."

"Whatever, get up there," Groves ordered.

Rain pulled at Joe and the cold steps swayed with him. At 100 feet, the tower seemed to be on a fixed tilt. The shed's sixty-watt bulb illuminated a floor of pulleys, cables and ropes, striped walls of corrugated steel and the bomb in its cradle. Since he had seen it last, the bomb had lost its lunar smoothness because two exterior detonator boxes had been bolted on. Cables connected the sphere's sixty-four detonator ports to the boxes, and out of the boxes' switchboard backs an equal number of cables hung down to the firing unit, a padlocked aluminium case between the cradle's feet. Out on the open platform, Oppy clung to the hoist with one hand and to his hat with the other. "You look like fucking Ahab in the rigging." Joe stepped out with him.

From the platform it appeared that lightning was striking everywhere, as if the low clouds, black as smoke from a fire, were launching a climactic attack. In every arc of the horizon a bolt was hitting. One report of thunder overlapped and muffled another. A mile off, the silver barrage balloon that had been earthbound before was now lifted by winds. The balloon was anchored to a jeep, which dangled below, only its rear wheels touching the ground. The two men were trying to save the jeep, but the lightning built static charges that ran down the steel cable and exploded like cannon under the bouncing wheels.

"General Groves has dismissed the meteorologists." Oppy wiped the rain from his face and grinned. "The general is the new weatherman of the Trinity shot."

"It's your decision, though, isn't it?"

"That's what the general tells me." Oppy twisted his eyes away from Joe. He bent his head and fumbled, and it wasn't until Joe saw the small flare that he realized Oppy was lighting a cigarette. "Thanks for coming back."

"Call it off," Joe watched the two men running from the jeep.

"It's not as if we could just do it tomorrow. To get to the same pitch, to ready the men and the equipment again would take a week at least."

"You said this bomb was a dud. You said you wanted an extra week, anyway."

"Like Ahab?" Oppy laughed.

"That's what you looked like."

"I did sail when I was a boy, you know. I had my own sloop and sailed all around Long Island." Oppy stared at the clouds. "This was the sort of weather I liked most, in fact. I'd run with the wind and go out on the tide race just to fight my way back in, one reach after another. There was one inlet in particular you had to clear. The riptide would curl around and try to take you into the breakers. It was the first time I knew I had courage. First time I proved it." Oppy cupped his cigarette from the rain. "It would take hours to clear the inlet and reach the bay. You see, it was the struggle that was important, the patience and the strength to find the right angle, Joe, the right piece of water and the right wind. As we're doing right now. Struggling."

A low, unbroken belly of clouds stretched from one end of the valley to the other, and the clouds seemed to be descending by their very weight, bringing a second, thicker night. Joe could see pinpoints of light on the ground where another party had abandoned another jeep and were running with flashlights.

"Did I ever tell you how I got out of Bataan?" Joe asked.

"No. You never told anyone. I thought it was a point of honour."

"No honour involved. It's a sailing story."

"On Bataan?"

"I got shot in the ass and in the back, then I caught some kind of jungle crud and a fever." Joe lit a cigarette from Oppy's.

"I had five Filipino scouts and we had a field piece we moved from hill to hill, holding the line though there wasn't any line to hold any more. When I got the fever and went off my head, the Filipinos ditched the piece to carry me. Problem was, there wasn't any place to take me. The last barges were gone to Corregidor and we were too far from the depots at Mariveles or Manila. They said the Japs would shoot me because I was too big. I knew the Japs would shoot me because I couldn't walk. So the scouts took me down to the water; there was no place left to go. They stole a fishing boat and put me in. I could just sit up and I was still trying to give orders. Like an officer, you know. It was low tide. I could see the shark net sticking out of the water, so I knew there were mines right below the surface of the water. There were mines off all the beaches." Joe let his voice drop the way Oppy did to make a listener lean forward. Oppy hunched closer. "As soon as it was dark, the Filipinos pushed me and the boat out. No motor, no oars. I couldn't believe my own scouts wanted to kill me, but that's what they seemed to be doing. I mean, if they wanted to kill me, I couldn't stop them. They could have brought my head in to the Japs and made some money. I tried to paddle back to shore because I could see ammo dumps going up in Mariveles, fuel dumps going up in Manila, and Long Toms, the 155mms, answering from Corregidor, the whole thing reflected in the water like the end of the world and I wanted to get back into it. Have you ever had dysentery? You pass out and you shit blood. I couldn't sit up any longer, no matter what was happening. I laid back in my own shit and piss in a drifting boat under the fireworks. There were holes in the shark net from when the Japs landed. We'd caught the Japs in the water when they first came and the sharks followed them and finished them off. Once the sharks were in, they didn't leave. They'd bump into the boat, give it a spin. It was a leaky boat. Sharks have an amazing sense of smell. I raised my head and there must have been fifty sharks around the boat, slowly swimming in a big circle. I did see the humour in the situation. I mean, how many New Mexico Indians get eaten by sharks? I kept thinking, if only I had a paddle, if only I had a gun, if only I had wings. If only I could kill myself, I thought, but I didn't have the strength to hold my breath. The main thing was to keep thinking, I told myself. Keep struggling. The problem was, every time I stirred so did the sharks. Those fucking Filipinos, they should have told me."