Trinity's Child (25 page)

For the first time, Radnor thought Tyler sounded as if he were trying to convince himself. The thought made the radar operator still more nervous. He had to get away again. “Request permission to leave station, sir,” he radioed up to Kazaklis.

Why, Sarah Jean? Nothing is forever. Why not, Sarah Jean? “Pee in your frigging boot, Radnor!” Moreau looked at Kazaklis and thought his eyes glistened. But that, of course, couldn't be, and the commander quickly lowered his visor.

“Is the
E-4
down, Sam?”

“I think so, general.”

“No radio confirmation?”

“Christ no, sir. They sure as hell don't need to send up any beacons. We got one big sitting duck on the ground in Baton Rouge right now and there still are plenty of hunters around.”

“Subs.”

“We had no trouble taking out the ones they used in the first exchange. They were gone in minutes. We also caught a Delta-class sub in the harbor near Havana. The commander must have been sound asleep or chasing Cuban fanny in town. But we lost track of one Yankee-class boat a coupla days ago after he went silent off Haiti. And we know there were a couple more off Venezuela about the same time. We sure as hell can't find them now— or do anything about it if we could.”

“It's a damned risky landing.”

“I don't know if I would have taken the chance, general.”

“We've still got a little document called the Constitution, Sam.”

“Yeah, I know, sir. But are we even sure we got the right guy?”

“Sam, old friend, right now you are flying around in a world without an ionosphere. You are flying over a country that doesn't have fifty functioning computers. Nobody said nuclear war was going to be an exact science. The last word we got from the Presidential Successor Locator, two minutes before it and most of the successors went, said he was the highest-ranking likely survivor. The plan said don't fart around, get the most likely. And get him fast.” Alice paused. “Bird-watching in rural Louisiana was a pretty good place to be when the bubble burst.”

“Jesus, is that what he was doing?”

“He was on an inspection tour of a game-management area. Camping out overnight to please the nature-lovers.”

“You're kidding.”

“No. I'm not. That was his job, Sam.”

“God. A couple of hours ago his biggest problem was understanding the mating habits of the red-billed osprey. I wouldn't want to be the first guy to brief him on the forty thousand target options in SIOP.”

“The man's got a much bigger problem than understanding SIOP, Sam. And a decision to make.”

“Fast.”

“Very fast.”

“The Secretary of the Interior. Whew.”

“Eighth-ranking in the constitutional order of succession, Sam. President of the United States. Your Commander-in-Chief.”

“Okay, kids,” Kazaklis said jauntily. “We're at the dateline and I'm takin' her down.”

Moreau felt the adrenaline surge through her, washing away the lingering aches of the refueling. Below her, in her mind's eye, as she had a dozen times in mission drills on the ground at Fairchild, she could see the twisted crags and soulful spires of Arctic Ocean ice floes rising up toward them. She could almost feel the huge drooping wings of her bomber, her strategic penetrator, strain against heavier and heavier air as they dropped lower and lower, beneath the radar, beneath the eyes of their adversaries.

“Ready offense?” Kazaklis asked.

“Ready,” Tyler responded.

“Ready, defense?”

“Ready,” Halupalai answered.

“Position, nav?”

“One hundred eighty degrees longitude, seventy-seven degrees north.”

“Entry point?”

“Landfall, one hundred forty-six degrees east, seventy-five degrees thirty minutes north. Asian landmass, one hundred thirty degrees east, seventy-two degrees north.”

“Right on, nav,” Kazaklis acknowledged, his voice chipper. “Hokay, radar, we're at two hundred feet. In the weeds, pal, and whadda we got for obstacles?”

“Landfall, no problems, sir,” Radnor replied. “Straight in over Faddeevski Island, thread the needle past Kotelny. High point on Kotelny, 1,227-foot hill starboard. Approach the landmass over Laptev Sea, with a feint straight at Tiksi. Break it off, taking a heading due south over the gulf, and tiptoe through the foothills of the Verkhoyansk Mountains back toward the Lena.”

“Sound like you been here before, radar. Hokay, defense, the natives are a little restless down there. What you see?”

Halupalai fumbled briefly. In front of him lay O'Toole's charts, looking like a new set of plays for the Rose Bowl.

“Early-warning radar stacked throughout the islands,” he said, beginning slowly. “Jamming now. Missile batteries, Kotelny. Our problem. Decoys, chaff dispatched. SIOP says forty percent chance Tiksi destroyed in first wave. If not, our problem. Heavy radar concentrations, major SAM batteries. The feint will draw them out, unless they think we're a decoy for the others coming in behind us.”

“The others,” Kazaklis said. “Yeah. That would be nice.”

“If they see us,” Halupalai continued.

“That's what you got all those toys for, defense.”

“Yep. Tiksi is the biggest problem. Past the village, heading down the gulf, we got one more major battery of missiles near our entry point at Nyayba. Jamming. Decoys if necessary. Sharp eyes down below, please.”

“That's you two in the basement,” Kazaklis said.

“Got it,” Tyler said.

Halupalai paused again. He could see the gray shark of the SAM racing up at him. His hand involuntarily went to the Gatling-gun trigger. He shook his head. “Then we are in the mountains,” he continued, “and the threat is MIG's.”

“Also requiring sharp eyes down below,” Kazaklis added. “Got your eyes open down there, radar?”

“Wide, commander,” Radnor answered.

“Okay, sarge,” Kazaklis said to Halupalai. “Not bad, coming off the bench. We're in the mountains now, huggin' and hidin' for a while. Three hundred feet and eyes on the ridges, please. If we got anybody watchin' up above, assumin' our guys missed a satellite or two, we're headin' on a course for . . . ?”

“Vladivostok,” Tyler answered.

“Or maybe the Petropavlovsk submarine base on Kamchatka,” Kazaklis acknowledged. “Shifty little buggers, aren't we? So we pivot . . . ?”

“At one hundred twenty-six degrees east, sixty-five degrees north,” Tyler said. “Right, twenty degrees.”

“And we're into the wide-open spaces. Tundra. Down to one hundred fifty feet. You might let me know when we see the tree line. Larch scrub first, pine forests next. No pine needles in the intakes, please. Other obstacles?”

“Mountains about halfway,” Radnor replied. “High point, Mount Purpula. Five thousand, three hundred twenty-six feet. Eight-hundred-foot television transmitter at Vitim.”

“Then we're in the woods again,” Kazaklis continued, “and coming up on the lake.”

The lake. Moreau saw the frozen shore approaching, as she had in countless dreams. Holy Baikal, the Russians called it, the majestic ocean. They said it contained one-sixth of all the fresh water in the world—a saltless inland sea stretching four hundred miles long with barren nine-thousand-foot mountains jutting up from its western bank. She saw the lumbering bomber roar treetop level over the great lake's deserted northern shore, kicking up powder snow off the ice, and her pulsing adrenaline turned to clammy sweat.

“Decision time,” Kazaklis went on. “Who makes it?”

“SIOP,” Moreau said. “Hours ago.”

“If SIOP, in its computerized wisdom, said the dam at Bratsk is still standing, we get a little side trip,” Kazaklis said. “We hop over the Baikal Mountains, lay a SRAM down on it, and scoot. Question of American pride. The Russkies say it's the biggest dam in the world. We get to personally put Grand Coulee, right outside good ol' Cowpatch, back on top.”

Kazaklis paused for a second, a shudder passing through him.

The pilot's chin edged forward and he began whistling softly.
. . . for amber waves of grain . . .

Moreau looked at him curiously.

“Opposition?” he asked.

“Surrounded like Fort Knox,” Halupalai answered. “SAM's, MIG's, antiaircraft batteries. Unfriendly place.”

“Yeah. Let's hope we don't have to make the visit. Hokay. We're huggin' the foothills of the Baikals now. Still a long haul in.”

“One hour,” Moreau said.

“Almost one hour,” Kazaklis confirmed, “and then we make the turn up the Angara River and . . . ?”

“Irkutsk, forty miles,” Tyler responded.

“I got it in the weeds now. Ticklin' your rumps down there?” Kazaklis didn't expect an answer. “Targets, offense?”

“In the outskirts, we gotta loft a SRAM over the top at the oil refinery upriver at Angarsk,” Tyler said. “And then two more SRAM's at the oil fields.”

“Mobil will thank you eternally, nav,” Kazaklis said. He felt shaky. His chin edged farther forward to cover. . . .
for purple-mountained majesties . . .
“And Irkutsk. Targets?” . . .
above the fruited plain . . .

Tyler floundered. “Targets?” he asked. Irkutsk was the target. “Satellite-tracking station, heavy industry, machine-tooling plants, electronics, Trans-Siberian Railway . . .” Tyler's voice trailed off. He had never been asked that question before.

“Population?”

“Kazaklis!” Moreau protested.

“Just under a million,” Tyler responded. His voice was firm now, a game being a game. He felt better. His voice sounded better.

“Yep,” Kazaklis said. “Irkutsk gets the big banana. Gravity bomb. One megaton. Ground burst. Low level. Approaching. On the racetrack . . .”

Moreau began to protest. Then the adrenaline began pulsing again.

“On the racetrack,” Tyler repeated.

“Switch lights on,” Kazaklis said. “Pre Em lights on.”

“Entry plus two-niner-zero,” Tyler said. “Calibration, two-niner-zero. Midpoint two-four-zero. Exit two-eight-zero.”

“LP. two-two-two-six.”

“Winds, twenty knots.”

Moreau sat mesmerized.

“Coming up on sixty seconds,” Tyler said. “Ready . . . ready . . . Now!”

“Hokay,” Kazaklis said. “Heading into bomb run. Straight down Karl Marx Street.”

“Coming up on twenty seconds,” Tyler said. “Ready . . . ready . . . Now!”

To Moreau, the silence seemed to go on forever.

“And?” Kazaklis demanded.

Silence.

“And?!”

“PUP!” Moreau responded urgently, automatically leaning forward to begin the Pull Up Pushover procedure that would arch the hydrogen bomb up slightly on its departure, giving them a few extra seconds' escape time.

. . .
America! America!
. .
.
Kazaklis whistled.
“Bomb away,” he said serenely
. . . .
God shed his grace on thee . . .

Moreau saw the bulbous weapon hover briefly beneath the open bomb-bay doors, saw the drogue parachute unfold to slow it on its short descent, saw it land in Karl Marx Street where people could stare at it for the few seconds before the time release activated. Then she saw the moon burst again. She started to tug at the controls. Her eye caught on the bomb-release lights, which were out. Her gaze fixed on the altimeter, which read 46,000 feet. Then she settled back in her seat and returned to the reality that they still were high over Canadian tundra, rapidly approaching their control point. Practicing. A recital. Damn you, Kazaklis.

“Bye-bye, Irkutsk,” Kazaklis said in a strangely quiet voice. “Bye-bye, mamushka,” he added, his voice almost inaudible.

Moreau felt a sudden wave of unexpected sorrow. She turned toward the pilot, watching his shoulders sag, his left hand sliding limply off the red bomb lever, his right slipping disconsolately from the wheel onto the throttle control box between them. Instinctively she slowly placed her hand on his. Neither spoke and Kazaklis let the copilot's hand remain on his briefly. Then he pulled his hand away and began asking for the vectors for the course change that would take them to the other big-banana target, the city of Ulan-Ude.

“General, they're seventy-five miles from their PCP.”

Alice stared into the panoramic world map lining one wall of the battle-staff compartment of the
Looking Glass.
He did not look away.

“Sir, we don't want them wasting their fuel orbiting and waiting. Doesn't make sense. Certainly not now.”

When Alice first had come aboard the
Looking Glass,
as a young pilot twenty years ago, the map had jarred his senses—although not for the reason it caught the attention of most first-time visitors. He had examined it for minutes before realizing what was wrong. The Eurasian continent, not the Americas, occupied the center of the huge wall map. Every map he had seen since childhood placed the Americas in the middle of the world with Eurasia stretching to the right until it stopped abruptly and arbitrarily somewhere beyond the Urals. Then the eyes had to swing far left to pick up the great landmass of Asia as it moved eastward across Siberia and India and China toward the center, America. It was a year later, during a tour of the Far East, before he realized no one else in the world drew maps the way Americans did.