SYNCHRONISING WITH SATELLITE…
“Oh, hurry the fuck up already!”
After what seemed like hours, it finally read: SATELLITE SYNCRONIZATION SUCCSESSFUL.
When he was prompted, he typed in DESPERADO and waited. He could hear voices getting closer, and he was sweating profusely. He wiped his eyes, and finally saw the prompt: NATIONAL COMMAND AUTHORITY CONFIRMED
The voices were even closer now, and they sounded more urgent.
“Will you hurry the fuck up?” he said to the computer. Finally, the Air Force bases began to pop up, one by one. He clicked on the first one he saw, Offutt Air Force Base.
TARGET? It queried. He quickly typed in the island’s GPS coordinates. He waited again for what seemed like hours, and finally it accepted his input with: TARGET COORDINATES ACCEPTED
A few seconds later it asked: YIELD?
“How the fuck should I know?” he said in exasperation. He typed in ‘20 kt.’
YIELD INPUT UNACCEPTABLE. YIELD?
“Oh, for fuck sake, I don’t know!” What Tim didn’t know, was that on the other end of the satellite connection he was inputting to was what they called a ‘Dial-A-Yield’ W87 thermonuclear device, that ranged from 300 kiloton to 20 megaton and could be preset to a detonation yield, depending on the target. The largest thing he’d ever called in was an artillery barrage on a target, and was way out of his league with this. By just a guess, what they’d call in the Army a ‘SWAG’, or ‘Scientific Wild Assed Guess’ he typed in ’1 MT’ and hit enter. He picked up his grease gun, peered around the corner, and there were two men standing not three feet from him. He brought the weapon to bear and let a long chattering burst go, and watching them crumple and fall, went back to the tablet.
YIELD ACCEPTED. LAUNCH CODE?
Breathlessly, he flipped through the binder, looking desperately for the codes for Offutt Air force base. Finding it, he ran his fingers down the page, stopping on the line. He typed in the code and waited for what seemed like an eternity, as time seemed to slow to a crawl.
INVALID LAUNCH CODE. LAUNCH CODE?
“Jesus jumping Christ Almighty!” he swore. He looked at the code again and realized he’d mistyped it. His hands shaking badly now, he slowly typed each number and letter in one at a time, and then, right before he hit enter, all the things his brother had said, Dawn Red Eagle and his prophesies, his dreams, Robyn’s ideas about him, came flooding to the forefront of his mind. Was this really what he was supposed to do? Was he really predestined to be here at this very moment and do this? Could he really make a difference, save the new world by doing this one little thing? Sweat was running in rivulets down his face and stinging his eyes as his finger hovered shakily over the ‘enter’ key. The thoughts kept crashing through the din of the gunfire, and in one final moment, he took a deep breath and hit ‘enter’.
LAUNCH CODE ACCEPTED. TARGETING MISSILE NOW
“Oh hurry the fuck up!” he said, in what was now a very panicky voice.
MISSILE TARGETED. MISSILE LAUNCH IN T-MINUS 10 MINUTES
“It’s about goddamn time!” he screamed, and slammed the top closed on the laptop. He stood and peered out from behind the bunker, and saw five more men standing close by. He trained the grease gun on them and let another long burst go, and the bolt locked back on an empty magazine. He turned and ran, changing magazines on the fly. Maybe he could still get away, catch up with the others if they aren’t already dead. Catch up with them and get far enough away before it gets here, he thought. He turned between two more bunkers and heard a burst from an AK behind him. A sharp pain hit him just above his right hip, and he spun like a top, hitting the ground like a sack of potatoes, knocking the wind from him. He couldn’t catch his breath for a moment, but ignoring the pain, got up and fired another burst, ran through the weeds and around coconut trees towards the ocean side beach and what he hoped was safety.
***
Back at the bunker Tim had just vacated, the smoke was clearing and Lt. Cmd. Winthorpe Wright approached a Pakistani man who was smiling and holding up the binder. There were several dead and wounded lying around on the ground, but he ignored them all, eyes on his prize. He was a sight to see, and if Tim had been there, he would have probably burst out laughing. Beard now blowing in the breeze, beads and seashells clattering like a wind chime suspended from his chin, his dress cap filthy but still perched on his head jauntily, dress white tunic with the shoulder boards and front unbuttoned and hanging open, bare chested with more gold chains and baubles than Mr. T ever wore. All he needed was the eye patch and a parrot.
“Keptin!” the Pakistani man screamed with glee. “I have the code you are seeking!”
“Good! Good!” he smiled, stepping heedlessly over a dead man towards the Pakistani holding the now battered ring binder.
“We go after them?” the man asked.
“No, let them go. They’ll probably die out there of exposure in a few days anyway. Here, let me see it!” he said, and grabbed the binder, flipping through the pages, giggling with laughter. Another man came up to him then, holding the computer.
“What do you want us to do with this, sir?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t know, does it work?” he asked. The man shrugged and opened it up.
“It is counting down something, sir!” he said and turned it towards their captain.
Wright took one look at it, blanched, and swore. “We must get back to the ship at once!”
“What is wrong, Bwana?” a Kenyan man asked.
“Just get back to the ship now!” he said, and took off in a dead run, beard flapping behind him over his shoulder comically, ring binder clutched under his arm like a schoolboy running to catch the bus.
***
Tim reached the beach, stripped down to the waist, and saw a nice hole in him about where his kidney would be, and coming out on his lower stomach in the front. Blood oozed from the wound, and he could hardly breathe. All the firing had stopped, and he was surprised when they didn’t come after him. He waded out into the water, but saw no signs of the others or a lifeboat. He looked to the derelict ship and saw the loose lines swinging in the late afternoon breeze from the empty davit, so he knew they must have gotten away. He waded out into the warm water, and when it got to waist deep, he sucked in a hard breath as the water hit the wound. The salt water burned the wound like no one’s business, and he almost passed out from the pain. He brushed it aside, and with all his strength, he started to wade through the water towards the reef. When he reached it, he put the sling for the grease gun around his neck and forced his way through the breakers until he was out into deep water. When he was well clear, he shucked his boots, and began to slowly swim away from the island, trying to make as much distance between it and him as possible. He was several yards out now, and took a break to tread water to catch his breath.
A gray dorsal fin broke the surface of the now calm, almost flat water, outside the reef and his bladder became weak. It wasn’t ten yards from him, circling all the way around before disappearing back underwater. He thought about the wound, and all the blood he must be losing, and cursed his luck.
“Wonderful. All this, and I’m going to be eaten by a shark,” he said to no one, as he looked around the empty sea.
Chapter 22: Rockets’ Red Glare
The coded information that Tim had typed into the laptop computer was digitally scrambled, and in a millisecond was transmitted to a geosynchronous satellite, then transmitted back down to Earth to a huge dish on Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. From the dish, it was relayed to a bank of computers powered by solar panels, which had sat dormant, hibernating, in a bombproof concrete sub-basement of a nondescript building near post headquarters. That computer came to life, then digested the information it had just received. The necessary information was then transmitted through armored cables buried deep underground to a missile silo twenty-five miles away that sat in the middle of an overgrown corn field. The data was then transferred to a secon
d computer via a slave-cable attached to the missile, which in this case was a Minuteman III ICBM encased in the thick hardened concrete silo to the missile’s internal navigation system. This process, from the time Tim hit ‘enter’, took approximately thirty seconds. When the computer in the silo had received the message back from the missile that it had accepted the targeting information and was now ready, it sent another message to fire the explosive bolts and open the five foot thick steel and concrete cover on the silo. The cover slammed back and exposed the opening, spraying dirt for yards where it stopped.
This is when the missile itself came to life. Sitting all these years in the hermetically sealed silo, it was almost as new as when it was lowered in place in the early 1990s, waiting for this information that its builders had hoped it would never receive. Its long-dead builders would be pleased that everything was performing optimally, and just as they had programmed it to. Seconds after the heavy steel and concrete reinforced cover that was designed to protect the buried missile— and could withstand a direct hit from a thermonuclear weapon—, was slammed aside, another order from the computer gave the launch order in the form of digital code. This order ignited the main engine on the first stage solid fuel booster in a huge fireball that, with nowhere to go, sped up the shiny, burnished aluminum sides of the missile and out the top, causing a huge smoke plume and perfect smoke ring. The rocket motor was so loud it rattled windows in vacant houses several miles away, and a small tremor was felt by the huge bison herd and the myriad prairie dog nests for several miles around, spooking the animals.
The missile, now free of its shackles, slowly rose out of the silo, and in three seconds was clear and gaining speed on its ascent. At four seconds, and at approximately two hundred feet, the missile made a pitch maneuver to aim it at its target to the southwest. It was now trailing a huge white smoke trail, and its tail was burning brightly, lighting up the pre-dawn sky for miles around. At ten seconds, it made its first roll maneuver, tilting forty-five degrees on its longitudinal axis.
***
Ten miles away, the deep, loud rumble and tremors of the missile’s launch woke two figures out of a deep sleep. The flap of the bison-skin teepee flipped open, and two people emerged. Dawn Red Eagle helped his pregnant partner, another Native American with the same round features and same long, dark hair. They stared out as the rocket rose and headed west, the noise still loud enough to spook the five horses he had tied to a line.
“What is it?” she asked, grabbing onto his arm with one hand, instinctively holding on to her round belly with the other, as if to protect her unborn child.
“The cleansing, I believe. A new world is about to begin, just like the Ancient Ones said,” he said, putting his arm around his partner, and holding her tightly.
“I see, but why?”
“It is the way of the Earth. The decision has been made, and cannot be taken back now.”
“But why do it, and who did it?”
“The ones I told you about, The Chosen Ones I met here on the prairie so many years ago. It needed to be done, and the decision has been made, and that is a decision I believe wasn’t made lightly,” he said. “Tim and Robyn, I truly wish you well.”
They stood together, watching the rocket rise until it completely disappeared. Standing on the open prairie, they stayed there motionless, holding hands tightly.
***
At nineteen seconds after clearing the silo, the Minuteman III was already travelling at over one thousand feet per second, was at eight thousand feet in altitude, and still gaining speed. At thirty-nine seconds, it was at Mach 3 and thirty eight thousand feet. Six seconds later, it made its second roll maneuver, and was at fifty thousand feet, still gaining speed. At one minute, two seconds, the first stage rocket booster depleted its solid fuel and burned out, separated, and fell away. It was now eighteen nautical miles downrange from the silo, and at one hundred thousand feet. Eighteen seconds later, the second stage rocket booster ignited, thrusting the missile higher and faster still. The now expended first stage dropped and fell to the Earth, no longer needed.
At two minutes after launch, now free of the Earth’s atmosphere, the rocket jettisoned the Reentry Vehicle Shroud at three hundred and fifteen thousand feet. Three seconds later, the second stage booster burned out and separated, and the third stage fired. It was now ninety nautical miles from the silo, and at an altitude of two hundred forty thousand feet.
***
At that exact moment, several thousand miles southwest, Tim was contemplating his fate. He was treading water and losing strength with every sweep of his arms as he watched the gray dorsal fin sink below the surface again. The water around him was turning a deep red from his blood, and he knew it had to be attracting them from all over. He was losing strength rapidly now, and could hardly catch his breath from the pain in his side, and wasn’t sure how much longer he could last.
“Is it a reef shark or a tiger shark, Timmy boy?” he said aloud. “It doesn’t really make a difference. I’m still chum.” He felt something swim by his leg, and he jumped. He gripped the grease gun tightly in one hand, even though the sling was around his neck. Maybe if he nailed one of the sharks, they’d go after it and leave him alone! He went to raise it, when the water broke right in front of him, and the narrow snout of a bottlenose dolphin popped up, looking like it was smiling at him. It squeaked a few times and bobbed its head, then just looked at him.
“You have got to be shitting me!” he said and laughed. “I think I’m the wrong Timmy, Flipper! You’d better get well clear of here now, buddy, or you’re going to be poached.”
***
Five minutes after the Minuteman III left the silo, the third stage booster burned out and separated, leaving only the post-boost flight vehicle and its payload, the reentry vehicle, a single pre-programmed to 1MT W87 thermonuclear weapon, travelling very fast just above the Earth’s atmosphere towards its target, the Atoll of Volivoli.
Back in the days of the Cold War, each post-boost vehicle would have had up to six warheads each, targeted for different areas inside the Soviet Union, and was called an MIRV, or Multiple Independently Targeted Reentry Vehicle. More bang for the buck, one might say. Now there was only one, but for its purpose this day, it was more than enough. This flight of the post-boost vehicle would now last only twenty more minutes. Again this, as with everything else since Tim hit enter, worked flawlessly.
***
Back on Volivoli, Lt. Cmd. Wright was met halfway down the runway by Petty Officer Stevens.
“Captain, those two fucks have jumped ship, and they’re on the island somewhere!” he said, and his captain ran right past him, trying to get back to the whaleboat and the ship as fast as he could, beard flowing behind him like a great woolen scarf. He was followed by the Pakistani man that had found the codes and the computer, who was struggling to keep up. Stevens stopped him and screamed at him, “What the fuck is going on? Why are you and Skipper running?”
“I do not know! I show him this and he scream run!” he said, breathlessly, handing the computer to Stevens.
He took it from the panting man, and opened it up. His eyes bugged and the blood ran out of his face. He threw the laptop into the lagoon and took off in a sprint towards the captain and the whaleboat. They had to skirt the still burning hulk of the destroyed Hercules, but Stevens caught up to him as he was untying the ropes that held the boat to the pier. The bodies of their dead comrades still littered the beach from where Williams had set off his wired artillery shells, and one stared back at them accusingly.
“Skipper, was that what I think it was?” he asked as he hopped in the boat and started the motor. There were several more men on the beach, running down the wooden pier, not sure why their captain was abandoning them.
“Yes! The damn fool launched something at us! Now we’ve got to get back on the ship, and get out of here as quickly as possible!” he screamed.
“I hope the fuck Alphabits can get her off the bottom!”
Stevens said, still not believing what was going through his mind. “Was it a nuke he launched?”
“Yes! And for both our sakes he’d better get the goddamn ship loose!”
“He couldn’t have really done it, Captain. I mean fuck, why launch a nuke at yourself? He’s gotta know he wouldn’t make it out himself!” Stevens said, as he steered the whaleboat alongside the ship.
“Yes! Only a lunatic would do that!” he said, grabbing onto the rope ladder hanging down over the side and starting to climb up.
The Indonesian officer, who they all called Alphabits, looked down over the wing bridge, and saw the captain’s urgency. He ducked inside the bridge, and Stevens, who was halfway up the ladder, could hear the turbines come to life with a large billow of black smoke out of the stack. By the time he got to the weather deck, the screws were turning at full power in reverse, churning up huge amounts of frothy water. When he entered a hatch to head to the bridge, he heard the bottom scrape loudly across the reef, as the ship was now slowly inching its way off of it. Then all the men on the beach started to run into the water, and swim frantically towards the slowly reversing ship. They didn’t know why they were leaving, but they surely didn’t want to be left marooned on the island.
***
Three miles south of the island, the lifeboat from the Nissan Maru was steadily motoring at ten knots on an almost glass-smooth sea. Robyn was in Holly’s arms, not making a sound, as the older woman brushed her hand over her hair and rocked her gently. The others were huddled together, silent and watching the island slowly disappear. They could see the smoke plume from the still burning Hercules and several other fires. Ensign Johnson walked over to Sergeant Williams.
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