The Eskimo Invasion

by Hayden Howard

  "All they showed us was a turning point at the end of our fuel range." The Major opened his hand, then flattened it like a wing, and thrust! "Target a couple of hundred miles inland on the deck -- minimum altitude. The Chicoms are more apt to accidentally knock us down with a tree or a hut roof or a radio tower than with AA missiles," the Major laughed, his forehead beaded with sweat. "I need to know what's in the spray tank?" He unzipped the front of his flying suit, revealing an Air Force blue Lemay jacket.

  Dr. West's throat clicked, not much of a laugh. Here he was with an agricultural commune costume concealed under his flying suit, but the Major was in Air Force blues. He hoped this was only an oversight, a typical lack of coordination between Air Force and CIA as to escape dress. Their costumes didn't match. Obviously one man could not eject without the other. Aircraft this fast didn't carry parachutes --

  "What's in the spray -- ?"

  "If the plane is hit -- ?"

  The two men spoke simultaneously, but the Major proved to be the more courteous. He answered the Doctor's question.

  "If we're hit, blooie!" The Major's teeth flashed white.

  "I mean if we're only damaged."

  "They'll never touch us. You're not sitting in one of your black-painted CIA clunkers now. This is the real Air Force. The Chinks haven't upgraded their AA missiles in thirty years."

  Dr. West scratched his flea bites and supposed the Major probably was accurate. For the last forty years, the Chinese had been concentrating their lagging industrial capacity on gigantic million pound thrust solid fuel ICBMs with big dirty hundred megaton warheads. Their patient international strategy had been continuous political infiltration and minimum warfare. Their opportunistic expansions into Burma and India had been shielded from U.S. countermoves by the avowed Chinese policy of massive nuclear retaliation.

  The Chinese did not bother with modern antiaircraft or anti-ICBM systems. In the UN General Assembly, the Chinese representative alternately stated that no umbrella was needed for their two billion-plus population and that all umbrellas are futile. When he was in a benevolent mood, the Chinese representative would smile and state that huge countries like the United States and China were equally vulnerable.

  In the back of Dr. West's skull he realized, remembered, that this aircraft was aimed much deeper than a few hundred miles into China. It would be penetrating far beyond its fuel point of no return.

  "Major, rephrasing my question, what happens to us if the plane has, say, mechanical difficulties?"

  "Doc, you don't sound very confident about the maintenance procedures of your Air Force. Suppose we have a quadruple flameout right now over the Pacific," the Major laughed. "Forward in the control module, lonely old Colonel Meller pulls a lever. Blooie! His capsule ejects. Our sealed capsule ejects straight up, and at the top of the arc we get all loose and weightless like we're modern young guys in the Space Corps and not obsolete old manned aircraft personnel. Our drogue chute opens, then our big chute jerks open, and we come down to Earth. No sweat. We float in a whole Pacific Ocean of sweat. What I need to know is what's in our spray tank, Doc?"

  Dr. West sat rigid. The Major twice had addressed him as "Doc."

  "What dirty soup is in our spray tank, Doc," the Major's voice persisted.

  Dr. West couldn't speak. He was afraid in a moment the Major would say, cat to mouse: "Doc, is your last name West?"

  "You feel OK?" The Major's voice asked.

  Dr. West pointed at his mouth, made swallowing gestures, shook his head. He couldn't speak, nauseated, his memory roaring at him: Dr. West. Dr. West. Murderer. Genocidal murderer.

  The ramjet bomber howled and shuddered, and Dr. West realized it was slanting down into the denser atmosphere. Already the bomber was more than half way across the Pacific. The viewplate between his boots was black as the night beneath, mirroring his eyes.

  "What's in the spray tank, Doc?" The Major sounded personally concerned. "You're too old to be a CIA biotechnician. I mean -- they're kids in their twenties, just knob twisters. You're someone big. When those CIA spooks shoved you into the aircraft, one of them slipped his tongue. I heard him call you 'Doc.' So I figured you got a Ph.D. Maybe you're even a member of the Harvard Circle in the CIA. You must know what we're flying into -- "

  To Dr. West's relief the Major was proceeding along the wrong track. He still had not recognized Dr. West.

  "That spray tank was airlifted into Edwards Air Force Base in a big old C-5," the Major persisted. "Word is the C-5 flew in from Arkansas. Pine Bluff, Arkansas. An arsenal there. Even I know that's where they breed the microbes. You're a top scientist or CIA or both." The Major slapped his pistol holster. "You're not expendable like me. I mean -- this mission must be crucial. Is this the beginning? The spray tank? Are we going to kill millions of Chicoms?"

  "No one will die."

  "No one will die -- my ass!" the Major exploded. "We'll he crossing the Chink coastline in a few minutes. In a few more minutes we'll reach our turn around point. We can't go any farther, and by that time something will happen, courtesy of you CIA spooks. I don't even think I want it to happen! The President said we would never be first to use germ warfare!"

  "What do you want?" The Doctor's fear and rage and frustration exploded against the Major. "You're damned hysterical for an obsolete military mind who has been eating out of the public trough for twenty years! What do you want? A nice clean antiseptic hydrogen bomb?"

  "Just tell me the mission, Doc." The Major's voice became surprisingly patient. "Colonel Meller and I got a right to know what we're risking our lives for. That spray tank may be warmed to 98.6 degrees but it's no nutrient solution for babies. There's no three-eyed Chink dragon monster swimming in that tank. I mean -- " the Major closed his eyes.

  Evidently the Major was listening to the Colonel through the intercom. He peered at Dr. West. "Instruments indicate we just crossed the Chinese coastline north of Canton."

  "Hey!" the Major exclaimed. "Less Than fifteen minutes and we got to turn around. Doc, what are your orders? You better start spraying!"

  Dr. West sat there. "When the red light comes on -- on this box, the sequence will begin." He remembered that much.

  The aircraft shuddered as it rammed through the thickening atmosphere. A fiery glow engulfed the view plate beneath the Doctor's feet. We must be down on the deck, the Doctor thought, imagining mountains and cliffs and radio towers looming ahead.

  The bomber was dependent upon the precise functioning of its terrain- following radar.

  "You'd better press that spray button! We're nearing our fuel point of no return," the Major shouted louder than was necessary. An excited smile began squirming across his face. "There's no time left. Do it. Give it to him. We're as low as we can fly. Dust Mao III's armpits. God help the Chinese and all of us!"

  Dr. West glanced at the trembling face. The Major's reactions seemed to be oscillating between excitement and revulsion.

  "We're gonna give it to 'em! What are we giving the Chinks? Q-fever?" the Major's voice raced on. "Pneumonic plague when you press that black box on your lap? Mutated scrub typhus? Terrific? Terrible! I can see the black box is set for fifteen minutes spray duration. God! That's a long time. Fifteen minutes! Flying slowed down to 2000 miles per hour, fifteen minutes makes a spray line 500 miles long!"

  "I'm not stupid," the Major shouted. "There's ten hours of night over South China. Ten hours before the sun dries out your aerosol microbes. Ten hours of damp night while the sleeping Chinese breathe. For ten hours the wind will blow. You CIA spooks always know which way the wind is blowing. Even if it's blowing only ten miles per hour across our spray line, that's a hundred miles the aerosol fog will sweep before the daylight comes. The Chinks! God! What's the incubation period?"

  Dr. West did not know what to answer.

  "I'm not stupid," the Major laughed excitedly. "We even studied arithmetic at the Air Academy. Five hundred miles of spray line multiplied by the wind carrying the fog a hundred m
iles across the line, covers five thousand square miles. No, that's fifty thousand square miles! How many sleeping Chinks in our fifty thousand square miles?"

  "Unfortunately, very few," Dr. West retorted, and immediately regretted it.

  "Very few? Like we're not really flying over China?" the Major laughed, and his face twisted in an agonized grin. "Wish the radar that's tracking us was our own. -- I wish this was an exercise over the Pacific. I mean -- like when I was in the last FB-111Zs and I was so young I was unkillable. -- Hey, Colonel," he laughed, pressing the throat button of his helmet mike. "Colonel, tell me this mission is an exercise."

  The Major stopped talking. Listening, he closed his eyes. He coughed. The Major coughed uncontrollably.

  The Major's huge face whirled. "You CIA bastard!" he yelled into Dr. West's face. "The aircraft's captured by its own autopilot. Colonel says he's smashed the cockpit portion of the autopilot and he still can't gain control. Hidden somewhere on this aircraft is an operating autopilot you bastards have wired in. His electric controls don't control anything anymore. For some reason, you bastards want to make sure we can't come home."

  Consciously, Dr. West had not known this. But he must have known this was a one-way flight because his organism experienced neither violent surprise nor additional fear.

  With disappointment, Dr. West wondered: After all the political trouble the Harvard Circle of the CIA had risked in stealing him from the Canadian prison's Cold Room, after all the valuable time the Harvard Circle had spent to rejuvenate him, to reeducate him and to carry out parapsychological preparations, after he had begun to think he was important again, they had decided he was no better than an expendable technician. Wasted. Expendable.

  On the black box on his lap, the red light flickered. Without thought, his thumb pressed the button as if it had been trained.

  "Drop the spray tank!" the Major was begging the Colonel through his throat mike. "Save fuel. Save minutes. Listen, Colonel, we're not working for the CIA -- "

  Abruptly the Major closed his mouth as if the Colonel had said something abrupt to him.

  From his holster, the Major hauled out the heavy .45 automatic pistol. At a range of six inches, its muzzle hole looked big enough to fall into. But Dr. West's thumb remained on the button. He ignored the gun.

  "I'm not going to blow your brains out," the Major gasped. "I wanted to see what you'd do, you bastard. Colonel thinks it's possible the Air Force brass agreed to let the CIA do this to us. If that's patriotism, then I'm a motherless child."

  The bomber howled and bucked through updrafts. Dr. West knew the aircraft was laying a trail of aerosol fog across the formerly desolate mountains of South Central China.

  "They should have told us," the Major blurted. "I'm a professional. I should have been given the chance to volunteer. The Colonel and me, we're going to complete this spray run on the chance that the Air Force did agree to -- sell us out. You CIA bastard, we've decided to complete the spraying mission."

  The Major waved the almost prehistoric .45 automatic ineffectually. "Now do you feel better, or worse, you bastard?"

  Dr. West surreptitiously had managed to raise his thumb from the button. At first his thumb had not wanted to release the button, as if it had an overtrained one-track mind of its own. The flickering red light stayed on, and Dr. West knew the spraying was continuing anyway. Probably, if he never had pressed the button, a backup mechanism would have initiated the spraying. Probably he was not only expendable; he was superfluous.

  Dr. West's mouth twisted with the quick pain of his thoughts. The Major had just stated that the Colonel and he had "decided" to complete the spraying mission. But the aircraft was flying itself, as predestined as a missile. It would be too cruel to point out to the Major that no room had been allowed for human decisions. Plainly, the Major needed to believe he had "decided." The Major still was clinging to his illusion of free decision.

  "I would like to blow your brains out," the Major repeated, and savagely hand-operated the slide mechanism, ejecting an unfired cartridge from the automatic pistol.

  Dr. West looked away. He wondered if other military personnel still wore .45 automatics. His own grandfather had kept one beneath his folded T-shirts in the top drawer. Way back in World War II, his grandfather had carried it at Kasserine Pass. He said he never fired it. Vaguely, Dr. West remembered that the .45 Colt Government automatic was -- had been Model 1911. 1911? Four generations of officers must have carried these hand-cannons. Before the First World War, this very heavy caliber automatic had been designed to knock down charging bolo-waving Moro tribesmen, or so his grandfather had said --

  The spraying aircraft bucked savagely, whether from an antiaircraft missile explosion or a mountain updraft Dr. West did not know. The Major cursed, and Dr. West smiled because it felt good to know that someone else was more frightened than he was. The Major was quite a character --

  The Major appeared to be about forty years old, and obsolete. He had picked the wrong armed service. There now were five armed services competing for younger men. The most clean-cut young men who wanted to completely leave this crowded world volunteered for the Space Corps, and made world-televised crash landings on the Martian craters. More subtle young men with a flair for foreign languages joined the CIA, which had acquired its own submarine navy and VTOL air force to deliver its armored vehicles and heavily armed guerilla war experts. The Navy still owned shoals of old nuclear subs and one hulking aircraft carrier and the arrogant Marines. The Army had enlarged its aerial cavalry, aggrandizing with its SST aerial delivery system the delivery of "iron" bombs, and triumphantly skimming its GEM tanks over BOTH land and sea, while politically seizing the Air Force's latest obsolete ground-launched antimissile system. The poor old Air Force was left with its BAMBI space-launched antimissile system, its vast seedbeds of ICBM silos, a few transport planes for senators, 900 triple-purpose VTOL swing-wing FBA-211 three-pilot interceptor-bombers, plus only a dozen of these big intercontinental SCRAMjet bombers, and the Major and his .45.

  "If by any chance you CIA turncoats have rigged the autopilot to deliver our aircraft to the Chinks," the Major blurted, "I will blow your brains out."

  "If we land anywhere, we'll be too lucky," Dr. West retorted. "Right now we're spraying across the interior of China. The people down there have been indoctrinated for three generations that we bring germ warfare. They'll greet us with yells and shrieks and fingernails and sharp hoes."

  At this, the Major showed his big teeth. "You're full of fun and games." He thudded his .45 automatic against his knee. "Chinks won't make me apologize and curse my country on international television. Your two CIA jerks, what were their names, Johnston and Mitsui? Pitiful performances. Doesn't the CIA issue cyanide capsules? Couldn't those two jerks swallow? In the Air Force we don't need cyanide capsules." He waved his .45 like a magic wand. "If we crash, I'll use the first five bullets on Chinks."

  Dr. West remembered that his grandfather's .45 automatic contained a seven-shot clip. The Major would be hoarding two final shots.

  Dr. West remembered the tortured face of Johnston replayed on TV tape.

  The televised faces of Johnston and Mitsui had been bounced off the Telstar satellite confessing to everything from dropping virulent hepatitus bombs to potato bugs. Their agonizing scenes had set record Nielsen Ratings for their nonpaying sponsor, the Chinese Federation of Nations, and sold American mothers on some advantages of isolationism.

  The aircraft quivered. The red light on the black box on Dr. West's lap flickered out. The spray run was complete. As if on cue, the bomber exploded.

  Dr. West, who had rejected life, who had willingly faced the mob, who had made the hard moral decision for Eskimo genocide, who had faced his conviction and the angry fist of world opinion, Dr. West screamed for life.

  In total darkness his body was whirled, slower and slower. He floated in his nylon safety harness, weightless as a drowned man.