Джанет Моррис - The 40-Minute War

Beck almost wept for joy when he saw Nye’s espresso maker; as it was, he bent down and rested his cheek against the brass: “I should have known I could count on you,” he murmured with ersatz passion.

“Brioche, too. I can get anything I want—except what I need.”

“What’s that? Come on, Sam, don’t play me. Just tell me what the SOS was about.”

“You almost blew it back there—’talk math.’ Shit, didn’t you realize that that’s exactly what I want to do—that we’re about it … all that’s left of 159?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Beck took the can of espresso Sam handed him and began filling the strainer.

“Ask me that when you’ve analyzed the real damage reports and when we’ve estimated the probability of follow-up strikes or unrelated detonations in the Middle East and elsewhere. Since we’re never going to get a chance to build a Ballistic Missile Defense now, and when we could those cheap sons of bitches in Congress wouldn’t let us, 159’s about the only hope we’ve got left.”

“What are you saying, Sam? You’re not seriously considering reactivating 159? We couldn’t send a paper clip back through time when I left the project.”

“That’s right, we couldn’t. When you left the project. Marc, forgive me if I change the subject—we’ll have plenty of time to come back to it later, but there’s something you’ve got to know… and I might as well tell you before somebody you don’t know does: Muffy and the kids were with Jeanie at my house.”

Beck dropped the strainer full of espresso on the floor. Ignoring it, he put both hands on the counter of Nye’s little pullman kitchen and leaned there, vertigo threatening to topple him, his stomach lurching.

Nye put a steadying hand on Beck’s shoulder. “It’s fine if you want to fall apart here. I did.”

But he didn’t: “In Georgetown. You’re sure?”

“Wish I wasn’t. I’ve already checked fringe-area hospitals. They didn’t make it to any. But we can go there, if you want.”

“Is that what you want?”

“It is.”

“Just to collect the ashes?”

“No.” Sam Nye’s square jaw quivered. “I want to go down under Langley with you and see if any of that equipment from 159 is salvageable.”

“Are you crazy? We wouldn’t last a day. It’s red hot there; even McGrath’s maps, the ones you say are sanitized, showed that whole area as a red zone.”

“When you’ve seen what I’ve got to show you, or seen some of what I’ve seen, it won’t matter.”

“I don’t believe this. Sam, everybody dies.”

“For something or because of something, yes—I mean, that’s acceptable. Look, I didn’t mean to do it this way. If I can’t convince you, then…” Nye shrugged and Beck, watching his face closely, began to notice signs of strain: deep webbed lines around Nye’s eyes, pinned pupils, bloodless lips.

Concerned that his friend was going to commit suicide trying to resurrect a dead project for no better reason than a delusion that the project might in turn resurrect his incinerated family, Beck said, “Sure thing, Sam. You tell me and we’ll go over the numbers. The least I can do is brainstorm it with you.”

Then he got down on his hands and knees and began scooping up the spilled espresso grounds with his hands.

Sam Nye crouched down beside him, dustpan and whisk broom in hand: “You think I’m crazy, flipped. You won’t. I’ve got time… as much as anybody else, at any rate. Here.”

Beck took the whisk broom and the dustpan and realized that Nye was shaking worse than he was.

But he had to ask: “What I saw in the situation room, that’s not it , is it—what’s left of the Cabinet?”

Sam Nye laughed a trifle hysterically. “I wish it were. We’re the sane ones. Old Beggs doesn’t trust anybody much, not since his Vice President hijacked Air Force Two to Brazil and the next guy in line tried to kill Beggs. We’ve got plenty of people spread out at the different sites, but there’s too much trauma in the ranks. We need time and we haven’t got it. We’ve got martial law and riots over paper masks that you used to be able to buy by the boxful—I told you, the whole damned country’s falling apart.”

“But what about the clean zones? Even if the percentage is smaller, there’s bound to be some stable areas.”

“Sure, but the people in them are all armed to the teeth and protecting their year’s worth of food—remember the survivalist movement?”

“So what are we going to show the IMF and—”

“You heard McGrath—mostly overflights. Those damned diplomats of yours are bound and determined to see the worst, not the best, we’ve got. We’ll try to reason with them, but the UN in Syd ney has forwarded explicit instructions—they don’t want clean zones, they want America on her knees… you know how the UN loves us.” Nye smiled sourly. “At least Prick McGrath will be going with them himself—he’ll make the best of it. He’s a good man. You can trust him.”

“And Watkins?” Beck asked, testing the waters.

“The National Intelligence Officer? He’s—”

“ What! ” Beck was horrified. “NIO in charge of what?”

“Soviet Union and Domestic Affairs—everybody’s had to double up.”

Beck just stood up and resumed the process of making espresso. If Sam was telling him the truth, then the United States was in the hands of one shell-shocked bureaucrat too many; Beggs and Watkins added up to a disaster Beck wasn’t capable of contemplating objectively.

But then Sam Nye, who’d given him a coded cigarette and thought that the answer to all their problems lay under tons of radioactive rubble in the old 159 lab at CIA headquarters in Langley, might be unwittingly giving Beck tweaked data: for all Beck knew, Nye could be certifiably non compos mentis. He’d been under a terrible strain.

But then, who hadn’t?

Dick McGrath, the Navy SEAL commander, could have been Supreme Allied Commander–Europe by now if he’d wanted the job, Ashmead knew; the fact that he’d sidestepped promotion to stay in his operational berth accounted for his youthful appearance, his behind-the-back nickname of Prick, and Ashmead’s recognition of him as a kindred soul.

Mac was forty-odd and a straight arrow; even though Ashmead had leveraged Thoreau away from him five years before, McGrath qualified as the single person in the above-ground Houston White House—or below it for that matter—that Ashmead knew he could trust implicitly.

“What say we rescue Patrick and qualify her with a serious handgun? I can’t have one of my people running around with a pea-shooter, especially if I’m not going to be there to back her up,” Ashmead said to him once he’d mashed his Eggs Benedict sufficiently that it would seem as if he’d eaten some.

Mac put a linen napkin to his lips. “Sounds good to me. We’ve got some new ammo you might like—depleted uranium instead of lead shot as an upgrade—that gets the density back up where it ought to be. Bring your boys and we’ll see if any of them can hit the paper with it.”

Real casual, real nice. Ashmead collected Slick, Thoreau and Patrick, telling Chris to put her watch on transmit as soon as they saw daylight in case anything transpired he’d later like Beck to hear, and they all trailed along behind Mac into an elevator which took them back underground to a RESTRICTED—REQUISITIONS BY PERMIT ONLY warehouse full of everything from armored personnel carriers to miniaturized microwave-surveillance shotgun mikes until they stopped before a counter under a stenciled sign that said ORDNANCE where Mac rang a bell to summon the duty officer.