Second Horseman Out of Eden m-7

by George C. Chesbro

  "And yet you came up here looking for us," Garth said quietly.

  McCloskey shrugged, and seemed slightly embarrassed. "We came over on snowmobiles. I had a notion. I'd tried to call Nuvironment before the storm hit, so you might say that I had the two of you on my mind." He paused, looked hard at me, continued, "You're not the only one who was haunted by what was done to Kenecky, Frederickson. I admit I dragged my feet at the beginning; I was afraid of what could happen to me. But then I realized that what I was doing to myself was worse; I was letting you guys do my job for me, and I found I couldn't live with that. I was ashamed-and I wasn't about to keep being ashamed. After all the things you'd said to me, there was no way I was going to pass into retirement with the deaths of the Fredericksons on my conscience. I had to try to make up for lost time. Frank and the others volunteered to come with me."

  "You came up here on your own hook?"

  Again, McCloskey shrugged. "Kind of."

  "Well, Lieutenant, now there's even more to be afraid of. We have to get to the airport-JFK, not La Guardia."

  McCloskey stared at me in disbelief. "That's impossible," he said at last. "Even if there was enough gas in the snowmobiles to get us there-''

  Garth said, "We'll siphon the gas we need from stalled cars along the way."

  "Jesus Christ, Frederickson. Even if we could get out there, what good do you think it would do? Nothing — nothing — can fly out of there. I heard what you said about the transmitter and the other bombs, but making some insane gesture is no answer." He paused, shook his head in consternation, then pointed to me. "Your brother could die out there, Frederickson. Look at him; he hasn't even got any fucking shoes!"

  Garth moved closer to me and draped an arm across my shoulders. "I know I can't stop him, McCloskey," he said evenly, "and I'm not going to waste my time trying."

  "My brother's right, Lieutenant," I said, drawing myself up straight. I was glad Garth was next to me, because I felt very faint. "I'm not going to die of a cold, but a whole lot of people are going to die in nuclear blasts if somebody doesn't shut down that transmitter."

  "But you can't go anywhere, Frederickson. Don't you understand? Nothing can fly in this blizzard. We have no choice but to wait until communications are restored. Then you can make your call to Washington."

  One of the paramedics handed each of us a blanket. Garth draped his over his arm. My teeth had begun to chatter, and I wrapped my blanket around me. I had the distinct impression from the look on Garth's face that he was about to walk out, commandeer a snowmobile, and be on his way. But I felt we needed McCloskey, needed the official power he represented.

  "You're the one who doesn't understand, Lieutenant," I said, deciding that it was up to me to explain Garth's perfectly correct point. "Do you know when the phones are going to come back on line? You said you didn't. We have about twenty hours to work at getting that transmitter deactivated. It's essential that we keep moving, at all costs, toward that goal; when there's nothing else to be done, that movement has to be physical. We can keep checking on our way. If and when communications are restored in the city, and between here and Washington, then either Garth or I will make two calls. We can make direct contact with the president of the United States, probably, or with the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, for sure. Okay? You'll agree that nobody can get things moving faster than either one of those two gentlemen. As much force as is needed will be immediately directed at that site in Idaho, and the transmitter is long gone. But we need a second option in case the storm doesn't let up and we can't make those calls. If we can make it to the airport, and there's a break in the storm, it just might be possible to get into the air. Then somebody, at least, will be on the way to Idaho. The bombs are going off at midnight, Lieutenant. If there's even a chance that we-and maybe only we-can get to the transmitter, can you refuse to try? We've got to be on the move. Time is all-important. Would you like to be five seconds late? One second?"

  "Mongo and Garth are right, sir," Frank Palorino said quietly. "We've got to go for it, even if it does seem impossible. You coordinate the bomb deactivation here, and Harry and I will take off with these two guys to JFK. Mongo's right about JFK too; if we can get off the ground, we'll need the biggest, fastest plane we can find."

  "I'm going," McCloskey said tersely.

  "You're needed here, Lieutenant," Garth said. "If this thing behind us isn't defused properly, New York City and all the people in it, as well as most of the people in the surrounding counties, are gone. Your badge and rank may be needed to get people listening and moving."

  "You'll need my badge and rank at the airport, Frederickson-that is, unless you think you can commandeer and fly an airplane out of there on your own." He paused, turned to the second patrolman, a very young man who had been listening to our conversation intently with a pale face but firmly set jaw. "Harry, can you take care of business here?"

  The young patrolman named Harry swallowed hard, then took his walkie-talkie from his belt and gripped it so hard that his knuckles turned white. "I certainly can, sir," he said in a strong voice. "I guarantee you I'll get people listening and moving. I've got a wife and two kids living here."

  "Then get to it."

  As the patrolman hurried out of the room, I turned to the female paramedic. "I need something that will keep me on my feet, maybe for as long as twenty hours. After that, it doesn't matter how hard I crash; I can spend as much time as I need to in a hospital. But now I need to keep moving. Do you understand?"

  "Me, too," Garth said.

  The paramedic looked at McCloskey, who nodded. The woman reached into her satchel, removed a hypodermic needle and a transparent plastic bottle filled with large green pills. "This will reduce your fever for a time," she said to me, indicating the needle. "The pills are for both of you."

  "Amphetamines?" I asked.

  The woman nodded. "I'll give you the bottle-but you really have to be careful with them. We use them with some heart attack and shock victims; they're fast-acting, and very potent. The usual dosage is one-not to be followed by another for four to six hours. They'll keep you on your feet, all right-but you're going to pay a heavy price if you take too much of this stuff, or use it for too long."

  "Got it," I said, taking the bottle from her. I popped open the cap, shook out one of the green pills, and swallowed it as the paramedic rolled up my sleeve, daubed my shoulder with alcohol, then gave me an injection of what I assumed was some antibiotic.

  "I'm all right for now," Garth said, shaking his head when I offered him the bottle. "I'll take one later if I need it."

  I put the bottle of pills in the pocket of my jeans. Another paramedic had removed two packets from his valise; he gave one to Garth, one to me. I ripped open the plastic and found myself holding what I recognized as one of the silver-colored heat wraps developed by NASA-it was very lightweight, but would have astounding insulating properties.

  "These should help keep you warm," the man said. "Just wrap them around yourselves, and keep them closed as much as possible."

  Garth and I nodded our thanks, then hurried out the door after McCloskey and Frank Palorino. The amphetamine was already starting to kick in; it was putting strength in my legs, but I felt giddy, with a strong metallic taste in the back of my mouth.

  "How are you feeling?" Garth asked as we followed the two policemen down a corridor I hadn't had time to explore.

  "Don't ask-but the answer is probably no worse than you."

  Garth grunted. "I didn't take a dunking through the ice in the Hudson," he said in a low voice. "Maybe you should take a pass on this, brother. It's not going to do anybody any good if you fall off a snowmobile in our travels. You know I'm not going to leave you behind; but if you agree to stay here, you'd be in a position to get right through to Kevin Shannon or Mr. Lippitt as soon as the telephones come back on line."

  "No. You had it right the first time. Either of us can call Shannon or Mr. Lippitt anywhere along the line. I won't
fall off any snowmobile-and I won't slow us down; if I do think I'm slowing us down, then I'll bail out the first chance I get. There must be emergency shelters all over the place. In the meantime, all I have to do is keep truckin' along for a few hours. After that, it won't make much difference, will it? At least not for millions of other people."

  "Okay," Garth replied simply.

  I'd hoped to have time to look for my sneakers and my Seecamp, but we were going out another way and, as I myself had pointed out, at the end seconds could count. I, at least, was wearing heavy wool socks, and I knew I was just going to have to make do.

  There was another elevator at the end of the corridor, and it took us express all the way down to street level. It opened into a wood-paneled vestibule; three doors-smashed in by McCloskey on his way to our rescue-later, we were out on Fifth Avenue, which I barely recognized.

  Wind screamed all around us, and in the whipping, swirling gusts of snow we could barely see each other. Garth wrapped the silver, life-preserving shroud tightly around me, then lifted me up in his arms in order to keep my stocking-clad feet out of the snow. We might have been somewhere in a blizzard-whipped Arctic, except for the huge, towering black shapes of surrounding buildings which occasionally came into view when the wind shifted. Off to our right, McCloskey and Palorino were conferring with three parka-clad policemen. When they had finished, the three men nodded, then walked away, quickly disappearing into the blinding snow. A few moments later we heard an approaching roar, and then we were surrounded by men on snowmobiles. McCloskey and Palorino replaced two of the drivers. At McCloskey's signal, Garth sat me down on the seat behind Palorino; I pulled my feet up as far as possible, adjusted my silver shroud, then wrapped my arms tightly around his waist, burying my bare hands in the deep pockets of his down-filled parka. Garth climbed on behind McCloskey, and then we were off in a roar of unmuffled engines.

  Speeding, bumping, sliding, carving through the Arctic night that had somehow descended over New York City, I was completely disoriented. I knew where we had to go, and how to get there, but it was as if the world had been turned upside down, and the swirling white made it impossible-for me, at least-to tell direction. But McCloskey and Palorino somehow managed to keep going. Occasionally we swerved sharply, or flew through the air; after a few of these tricky ground and aerial maneuvers, I realized that we were running an obstacle course of abandoned cars that were three-quarters buried in the snow. With my cheek pressed tightly against Frank Palorino's back, I could see only to my right, and, although we were making our way through midtown Manhattan, I could not make out a single landmark through the slit in my silver wrapping. I wasn't exactly warm; but, with Palorino's body acting as a wind screen, I wasn't exactly cold, either, and I knew that I would be all right as long as I kept the foillike material wrapped around me. I felt like a candy bar. Oddly enough, my feet were giving me the most problems-not from cold, but from the heat from the manifold on which I was resting them; I kept pulling them up and trying to lock my knees against the front of the carriage rack.

  The amphetamine and antibiotic injection notwithstanding, I kept passing out for brief but dangerous periods; wrapped in my thin cocoon in a world of darkness, I kept segueing in and out of semiconsciousness. Every once in a while I was conscious of Palorino's hand on my hip or thigh as he reached back to make certain I was still centered on the seat behind him. Once I woke up to find that we had stopped, and we were surrounded by a number of National Guardsmen who were talking to us excitedly-nodding, gesturing, pointing. There was the acrid smell of gasoline, and then the delicious aroma of coffee right under my nose. I grabbed at the Styrofoam container and drank greedily, burning my tongue and the roof of my mouth and not caring. Then came the deafening roar of the motors, and we were once again on our way.

  Sometimes I dreamed fever dreams, and in one of my dreams I glimpsed a great silver object in the snow, white on white, a potential weapon in our thus far decidedly one-sided battle against insane men and mindless nature. "SST!" I shouted against the thick material of Frank Palorino's parka. "SST!"

  But Palorino couldn't hear me over the roar of the engine, or maybe I was only dreaming that I was shouting, because there was no response. Time lost meaning, and I just focused all my attention on the need to hang on to my driver. Once when I woke up, my surroundings seemed clearer, and I realized that it was dawn. I drifted back to sleep.

  14

  I awoke with a start, started to sit up, and grabbed at my head as a sharp pain shot through my skull. For a moment I couldn't figure out where I was or what had happened-and then I remembered. I sat up straight, ignoring the pain in my head, and looked around me. It took me a few moments to orient myself, and then I realized that I was alone on the backseat of an olive-drab-colored National Guard Sno-Cat, which had been left with the motor running and the heater turned on full blast. Above the steady, throaty growl of the Sno-Cat's engine, I could hear wind screaming outside the frosted Plexiglas windows. The storm had not let up, but the milky light pouring in through the windows told me that it was day. I glanced at my watch, then realized that it had been thoroughly disabled during my tussle and dousing with Tanker Thompson.

  Cursing under my breath, I yanked on the door handle and pushed open the door with my shoulder; the door was promptly caught and yanked back off its hinges by a powerful gust of wind. I stuck out my head, squinted against the swirling snow; the Sno-Cat, along with the two snowmobiles we had been riding on, was parked atop a massive snowdrift near the entrance to the control tower at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Still cursing Garth for leaving me behind, I eased back into the interior of the Sno-Cat to take stock of myself. I felt groggy, to be sure, but I thought that my fever might be down. I took the plastic bottle of amphetamines out of my pocket, shook out one of the green pills, and swallowed it. Then I rewrapped myself in my foil shroud, slid back across the seat, and fell out into the snow. I slid down the face of the drift on my back, got up, hippety-hopped and waded through the snow in my stocking feet to the entrance to the control tower. I went through the door, paused long enough to brush as much snow as I could off my socks, then hurried up the stairs.

  I found Garth, McCloskey, Palorino, and two National Guardsmen up in the glass dome at the top of the control tower talking to two unshaven, obviously exhausted air traffic controllers who kept shaking their heads and gesturing out the windows.

  Garth turned and saw me as I came through the door. "Mongo!"

  "What time is it?"

  "Four o'clock," Garth said quietly.

  Eight hours left.

  "Are the telephones working?"

  Garth shook his head.

  "We can't wait."

  "Mongo, there's nothing we can do but wait and hope," McCloskey replied in a weary voice. His eyes were bloodshot, and there were dark circles around them. "Nothing can get out of here; even if it could, it's debatable whether we could get to Idaho in time to do anything. Our only hope is that we'll get telephone communications back in time for the Air Force to send planes to find and destroy the place."

  "There's at least one child in there, McCloskey," Garth said evenly, "and probably more. If you bomb Eden, you'll kill children."

  The muscles in McCloskey's jaw clenched, and he looked away. "I know that-but it won't be my decision. That's certainly what they'll have to do. It's the only course of action that makes sense. You said you don't know exactly where Eden is, and you don't even know where the transmitter is inside Eden. The Air Force certainly isn't going to want to waste time looking for it; there's too much risk, and too little time."

  "There's already too little time for us to waste any of it standing around here and having this conversation," I said. "The place to establish communications is in the air, away from this storm. There'll at least be military planes in the air. We can communicate with them, and they'll find a way to get through to Shannon or Mr. Lippitt."

  "For Christ's sake, Frederickson, you've got eyes! Ca
n't you see what's going on out there?!"

  I turned to one of the air traffic controllers, a slight, blue-eyed man with blond hair that was now greasy and plastered to his forehead. "The Concorde. Does Air France or British Airways have one parked here now?"

  The blue-eyed man looked at his equally disheveled companion, who nodded. "Yes," he said, turning back to me. "British Airways-it was the last plane in before we closed down the airport. But I don't see how. . Even if the captain agreed to make the attempt, it would be suicidal to try to take off in this storm. The wind shear factors alone would be almost beyond belief, and-"

  "Where are the captain and his crew staying?!" I snapped, grabbing Garth's wrist and bending it around in order to look at his watch. It was 4:28.

  "The International Hotel, up the way."

  "I know where it is," I replied, turning to the senior

  National Guardsman. "Captain, do you suppose you could round up some of your men and plow out a corridor of sorts in front of the British Airways hangar?"

  The guardsman looked at McCloskey, who nodded. "I can try," the guardsman replied tersely.

  I said, "I don't want it plowed right down to the tarmac; it would only drift in again. See if you can level off the drifts and leave a cushion of, say, two or three feet. The path should be at least as wide as the hangar doors, and as long as you can make it. And make sure there are no buried planes or machinery out there. Okay?"

  "I'll do my best, Frederickson. Good luck to you guys."

  "And to you." I turned back to the blue-eyed air traffic controller. "Can I borrow your watch?"

  Without a word, the man removed the stainless steel watch from his wrist, handed it to me. I put it on.

  "Let's get going," Garth said. "We've got to get up the road to the hotel."