Ballistic

by Paul Levine

  “All of them,” Corrigan says. “Their response will be nuclear. Baghdad, Tripoli, Tehran, the oil fields of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.”

  “A flamboyant acting out on a grand scale,” Dr. Rosen says, disapprovingly.

  “Can’t we talk the Israelis into just taking the hit?” Farris asks. “Hell, we’ll help them rebuild.”

  “Apparently, they feel their people have taken one hit this century, and that was quite enough,” General Corrigan says.

  “Jesus,” the Farris mutters. “Looks like the professor’s going to get his wish.”

  General Corrigan turns toward Lionel Morton, who is making a series of mathematical calculations on his wheelchair computer. “Lionel, why don’t you tell everyone what would happen if the Israelis make good on their threat.”

  “Assuming they use all their warheads, and there’s no reason not to, radioactive clouds of sand and oil will reach the stratosphere,” he says, still studying his computer monitor. “Fires in the fields will be too hot – in every sense of the word – to put out. They’ll burn for fifty years to seventy-five years. The clouds will superheat the atmosphere, changing the climate. It will be warm at first, but then, the sun will be blocked for several decades. It will snow in Miami, and the polar ice cap will extend as far south as say, Virginia.”

  “Nuclear winter,” Colonel Farris says, shaking his head.

  “I always thought that was an overly dramatic term,” the professor says, “but you’ve got the idea.”

  “Lionel,” the general says, “if there’s any chance that you still can influence your son, you’ve got an obligation to your country to try.”

  The professor seems to think about it, and Dr. Rosen, the shrink, pipes up, “General, I must advise against another session of paternal brow-beating. Overt hostility will only provoke the young man. This rivalry between father and son can only exacerbate—”

  “Shut up, you fleabag Freudian,” the professor snarls. He turns to the general. “Okay, Hugh. Get the son-of-a-bitch on the phone.”

  -46-

  Postponing the Inevitable

  “I knew you’d call again, pater,” David says, when they get him on the line. He speaks into the old black, rotary telephone and smiles at Susan. Proud they’re coming to him.

  “Mistakes were made, I’ll admit that,” Lionel Morton says, softly.

  David smiles again and hits a button, turning on the speaker. Letting his audience enjoy his handiwork, admire his repartee. “Is that an apology, that sotto voce, passive voce, mealy-mouthed evasion?”

  “Yes, goddamit! I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t the father you wanted.”

  “Apology not accepted,” David says, gleefully. “And for the record, I’m not a bit sorry I wasn’t the son you wanted, assuming you wanted a son at all.”

  “I did the best I could.”

  David barks out a bitter laugh. “What do you think of that, Dr. Burns? Dear old Dad did the best he could.”

  “It’s a shopworn cliché,” she answers. “It’s what virtually every parent in a dysfunctional family says.”

  “Did you hear that, Daddy? You’re just a worn out cliché. Come on, Dr. Burns, tell us more. Daddy never had the benefit of therapy and doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

  “Your father was remote and demanding. Nothing you did was ever good enough for him.”

  “No, no, no. Nothing I ever did was bad enough.”

  “Godammit, David,” the professor’s voice rumbles through the speaker. “What do you want? Do you want to kill me?”

  “Heavens, no. I already tried that. I prefer you alive and crippled. But that isn’t politically correct, is it? Alive and ambulatorily disadvantaged, that’s my Daddy. Do you still need medication for the pain? I’ll bet the dosage has increased over the years. I’ll bet you’re so strung out most every night, you wouldn’t know if someone broke into your house and rifled through your study.”

  “David, I swear to Christ I never knew what made you tick. You were always a weird kid, and now…and now…”

  “I had powers! I had visions!”

  “Yes, you did. In another age, you would have been burned at the stake. Righteous folk would have considered you the devil.”

  “Or his misbegotten son.”

  “Go ahead,” the professor says. “Have your fun. Crucify me.”

  “What a delicious thought.”

  “Look, I admit it. I didn’t know how to be a father. I was in love with my work.”

  David’s tone is mocking as he mimics his father’s voice, “Not that I loved my son less, but that I loved the bomb more.”

  “Damn you, David. What do you want?”

  “Salvation, Daddy. Salvation for all eternity.” He clicks off the phone, then dials another number.

  * * *

  Jack Jericho is deep in the sump when the cellular phone rings. “Yeah, asshole. Talk to me.”

  “Sergeant, in the game of chess, do you know what it’s called when you sacrifice your queen to save the king?” David asks him.

  From his perch on a web of pipes in the drainage sump, Jericho speaks into the cellular phone. “I dunno, the Heimlich Maneuver?”

  “It’s called postponing the inevitable.”

  “Yeah, but I can wait.”

  “Unfortunately, I cannot.”

  “I understand,” Jericho says. “So many psychoses, so little time.”

  “We’re going to launch the missile, sergeant. You can’t stop it. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t stop it.”

  “So why are you concerned with me?”

  “I want you here in the capsule. I want you here with me, Jack.”

  The sound of his name runs a shiver through Jericho. He checks the clip on the Uzi, snaps it into place. “Why? Aren’t your half-wit apostles interesting company?”

  “Jack, don’t you know our fates are intertwined?”

  “Then I want a new fortune teller.”

  “I can give you the peace you’ve never known. I can give you the power of which you’ve dreamed.”

  “You don’t know anything of my dreams.”

  “You have nightmares, don’t you Jack? I knew it the moment I saw your muddied aura. But I didn’t know then what haunted your nights. You dream of the mine, the deep, dark, scary mine.”

  Jericho slumps against an electrical conduit. He doesn’t want to listen, but he does not click off. For the briefest second, Jericho wonders if he enjoys the pain, wonders if he might not deserve it.

  “Jack, your ran from your destiny while I pursued mine…with a vengeance.”

  Jericho’s voice is weak, his eyes hollow. “If I’d gone back in, I would have slowed the evacuation of men coming out.”

  “Fate gave you one chance for glory, and you ran the other way. I’m offering you a second chance.”

  “I did the right thing. I would have caused others to die.”

  “You could have saved your father and your brother!”

  “I followed orders, dammit!”

  “And look where it got you.” David turns to Susan Burns. “Tell him. Tell him who he is, for the fool does not know.”

  Susan remains silent. David slaps her hard across the cheek, then drags her to the phone. His face is red, his mood swinging wildly into rage. “Tell him, mindfucker! Tell him, you mother of harlots, you Jezebel!”

  Blinking back tears, Susan says, “Survivor’s guilt. You want to be killed, Jack. You want to die now to repent for living then.”

  David’s voice drops into a whisper. “That makes you a very dangerous man, and I want the dangerous men on my side.”

  Jericho’s grief turns to anger. Images of his wasted years flash by. Thoughts of his family collide with fury at this madman who would destroy so much. “You’re right, I’m dangerous. I’m your nightmare because I’m just as damaged as you are. You want to die, and I just don’t give a shit. But if I die, I’m going to take you with me.”

  “Words! Emp
ty words! So long, sergeant.”

  David clicks off the phone and smiles with cruel satisfaction. Susan Burns turns away so that David will not see her tears.

  * * *

  In the drainage sump, Jack Jericho stares into space. He is numb, detached, unfocused. The channel is lit only by dim yellow bulbs, and Jericho sits deep in the shadows. He is in a nook in the wall of the channel, a location that offers the illusion of protection. A closet in a haunted house. The phone rings again, and Jericho angrily punches a button and yells, “Go fuck yourself!”

  The voice on the other end of the line seems genuinely startled. “Sergeant Jericho, must I remind you of the proper method of addressing an officer?”

  “Sir, I’m sorry sir. I thought—”

  “You thought nothing,” Colonel Zwick says. “Now, did I order you off the missile base?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then get the hell out of there. I swear, if Morning Star doesn’t kill you…”

  A noise startles Jericho.

  “…I will!”

  Jericho pulls the phone away from his ear and listens. Nothing but the thumping pumps. What was that noise, like the clank of a rifle barrel against a pipe? The colonel’s distant voice grows angrier. “Sergeant, are you there? Dammit, sergeant!” There is a soft splash in the water, and Jericho hangs up.

  * * *

  Thirty yards from Jericho, around a bend in the channel, four commandos with weapons drawn are on the prowl, hunched over in the low sump. They use hand signals to communicate and slow their steps to prevent splashing. A low-hanging conduit pipe from a generator blocks their path. The commando on point reaches up to brace himself. He does not see that the insulated rubber covering has been sliced open, a clean incision from a Jimmy Lile survival knife, and his hand slips into a mass of exposed wires as the insulation slides off.

  Sparks explode from the opening. High voltage surges through the commando’s body, which convulses wildly, the electricity amplified by the knee-deep water, which seems to boil at his feet. Smoke billows from the open collar of his field jacket, and the channel is filled with the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh. As he sinks to the floor of the sump, floating face down in the grimy water, a second commando races to him.

  “Judd! Judd!”

  But poor Judd is dead. The other three commandos splash past him, rifles raised, looking for someone to shoot.

  Ahead of them in the channel, hidden in the womb of the generator piping, Jericho closes his eyes and listens. Judging from the noise, he knows there are at least two more commandos, perhaps a third. He hits a switch in the nook, killing the yellow lights and plunging the sump into total darkness.

  The commandos slip on infrared goggles and keep coming. They are within ten yards of Jericho’s hiding place when he grabs a handful of steel bolts from a tool tray and tosses them down the sump away from the approaching men. He ducks back into his nook, and the bolts rattle off the piping. A second later, the noise of the automatic weapons is deafening. Before the echoes have completely died out, Jericho tosses another handful of bolts in the other direction, behind the oncoming commandos. He can hear the men splashing in the water as they turn to shoot. Another volley of gunfire reverberates through the channel. Then, a scream, “Adam! You shot me! Adam…”

  The commando named Adam slogs through the water toward his friend, crying out, “No! No! No!”

  Then, in the darkness, Jericho says. “Nice shooting, Adam.”

  Adam whirls and fires. The bullets ricochet off metal and reverberate in the narrow channel.

  “You killed him,” Jack Jericho says, “but you missed me. I’m behind you.”

  Adam turns the other way and fires on full automatic, letting a burst go until, click, he’s out of ammo. He fumbles with another clip.

  Jericho hits the switch again, and the yellow lights flicker on. Another switch, and stronger spotlights fill the sump with a white glare. Blinded, Adam tears off his night goggles and through squinting eyes sees a figure six feet in front of him. A man holding something. An Uzi! The three-shot burst to the chest is mercifully on target. Adam is dead before he splashes to the floor.

  Jericho turns to head the other way, wanting to duck back into cover, still not knowing if there is a fourth commando in the sump. He never sees the rifle butt swinging at his head, and it catches him squarely on the chin.

  Jericho’s world explodes into a galaxy of shooting stars.

  He hears himself grunt, feels a jolt that rockets from his spine down through his fingertips and his toes.

  The pain lasts just a second, because a moment later, he is tumbling backward, unconscious, never feeling the cold, dark water that envelops him.

  BOOK SIX

  Fire and Water

  -47-

  Overkill

  Green sodium vapor lights cast an eerie glow over Base Camp Alpha as the Army prepares for battle. The base is a symphony of competing sounds, the crunch of M60A3 tanks with bulldozer blades and the diesel roar of M1A2 Abrams battle tanks moving to front-line positions. On the flanks, M2/3 Bradley fighting vehicles with cannons and missile launchers pound over the rough terrain. HUMVEES grind their gears, and Armored Personnel Carriers rev their engines. Orders are shouted over loudspeakers. The tracked equipment kicks up clouds of dust that float in the breeze. On the horizon, the half-moon provides a sliver of light on the cloudless night.

  Delta Force soldiers darken their faces with camouflage grease. Army Night Stalkers and Navy Seal Team-6 clean their weapons and load their rucksacks with flash-bang grenades, bolt cutters, harnesses, nylon ropes and rappelling gear. The FBI’s Hostage Response unit studies maps and the latest satellite photos. In a compromise that satisfies no one, virtually all the Special Ops Forces will play some role in the assault.

  In front of the command tent, Kimberly Crawford, the media’s pool reporter, tags along after Colonel Henry Zwick, whose cold pipe is clamped in his teeth. A short, husky cameraman walks backward in front of them, keeping the colonel in focus. Nearby, a CNN truck festooned with antennae and dishes, up-links the signal to a satellite. “Colonel, colonel,” Kimberly Crawford implores him, jamming a microphone into his face. “Can you verify reports that the missile base has been overrun by Palestinian terrorists?”

  “I’m not at liberty to comment on the identity of the enemy,” he says.

  “Can you tell us where the missile is targeted?”

  “No comment.”

  “Has the Army been in contact with the terrorists?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “What about the report that the terrorists have the ability to launch the missile?”

  Zwick has held her off as long as he can. Looking straight into the camera, he says, “Absolutely untrue. The launch system is fail-safe.”

  “Then what’s all this?” she asks, sweeping an arm over toward a pair of Bradley Fighting Vehicles, with their 25 mm cannon and TOW missile launchers pointed toward the missile base. “Isn’t this overkill?”

  Colonel Zwick studies her a moment. Not a day over thirty, a blonde with gold-green eyes, she’s wearing a khaki jumpsuit with epaulets and a sky-blue silk scarf. Some sort of journalists’ war couture, he supposes. The colonel would like to tell her that ‘overkill’ is the best kind of kill there is, that he’d like to outnumber, out-weigh, and out-caliber every enemy he’s supposed to destroy. He wants better training, better food, and warmer boots than the opposition. He wants more iron, more ammo, and a bigger dick than the guy on the other side. But he doesn’t say these things because the media types would probably make him sound like a cross between Ivan the Terrible and General Jack Ripper. Nothing on television ever comes out right. “Precautions. Just precautions,” he says, after a moment.

  At that moment, in the launch control capsule, David watches a television set where an attractive young woman chases after a colonel whose jaw muscles are working overtime on a cold pipe. In the corner of the screen is the logo, “CNN L
IVE.”

  “So, Colonel Zwick,” the woman says, “are you denying that an assault on the missile silo is imminent?”

  “That’s correct. It’s unnecessary. There is no risk of the missile being launched, and our primary concern is the safety of the foreign ambassadors as well as the American airmen who are being held hostage. As I said before, these are just precautions. We expect reason to prevail and the incident to end without further violence.”

  The message, David knows, is for him. “They must think I’m an idiot,” he says aloud. He punches a button on the console and speaks into a microphone. “Full alert! No one sleeps! And find that maintenance man!”

  * * *

  The world is dark and shadowy.

  And spinning. Jack Jericho is the center of a universe that revolves out of control around him.

  There is no color except black, which dissolves into an ashen gray. Then, in the corner of his eye, there comes a sick, pale yellowy light. Somewhere in his head, there is a roar. A freight train rumbles over the tracks, toots its horn, and keeps going. Around and around in his skull.

  Jack Jericho rubs his aching jaw. Which tells him he is conscious. Then the throbbing pain comes, and he would prefer to be unconscious. He rotates his neck. His head is a bucket of sand, but nothing seems to be broken. He opens his eyes one at a time. It would be easier with tire jacks. A figure stands above him, saying something, but what?

  “You have…” and then the words are swallowed into the black hole.

  “What? Who are you?” Jericho hears himself say, the words echoing from a tunnel.

  “Don’t you remember me?”

  Jericho squints into the yellowy light. The universe slows. The young man is familiar. So is the M-16 pointed at Jericho’s head. “Yeah. Your name is Daniel. Daniel Boone, for all I know. About a million years ago, you tried to shoot me in the L.E.R., but your rifle jammed.”