“It's all speculative,” the general protested. But he went on, trying to condense the knowledge he had accumulated over years. “If we stopped now”—and he paused emphatically with doubt— “we have the world's two most powerful nations set back anywhere from several years to several decades.
“We have the world's two superpowers reduced to second-rank powers, perhaps on the level of a Brazil, with their only real influence resting in the threat of their remaining nuclear weapons. That is not a small influence. But we can expect world turmoil, as other countries try to fill the power void. Economies will collapse everywhere. Starvation will be common before spring throughout the United States, the Soviet Union, and the world. Some areas of the United States and the Soviet Union will not be habitable for a century or more. I am not an alarmist on radiation effects. It does not mean the end of the world. But millions more will die, even if we stop, and still further millions will perish from medical epidemics of a nonnuclear nature, from hunger and from civil disorder.
“Allow me just one example. We had more than one thousand intercontinental missiles buried primarily in the Plains states from Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas to Missouri and Arkansas. The Soviets had even more in the central regions of their country. Most were double-targeted. The only way to destroy those missile installations is with direct-hit ground bursts of fairly large mega-tonnage, digging them out in the craters. Such explosions cause the most intensive radiation damage, the dirt from the craters pulverized and kicked into the atmosphere as fallout. In one of our complexes, we had two hundred silos scattered in a hundred-mile radius around Great Falls, Montana. That area alone, according to our preliminary data, received at least three hundred ground-burst explosions in the one-megaton range. The area is so radioactive that men will be unable to live there for at least a century. The area contained the headwaters of the Missouri River, which feeds into the Mississippi. Worse, far worse, the fallout from those detonations plus others throughout the region naturally wafts east on the prevailing winds. It will drop most heavily on the breakbasket regions of the Midwest, the richest farmlands in the world. Crops will grow again there, but certainly not this year. This will cause starvation throughout the nation and probably the world. Ironically, even the Soviets depended on this breadbasket to feed their people.”
The general paused.
“Still, to be an optimist, the United States would survive. The Soviet Union would survive. Neither would survive comfortably.” The general stopped uncertainly.
“Thank you, general,” Harpoon said quietly. “And if this war continues?”
The general's face paled immediately and he snapped his eyes at Harpoon.
Kazaklis glanced at his altimeter. It was spinning. Thirty-seven thousand feet, thirty-six, thirty-five. Moreau, without orders, had begun taking the plane down. Smart little wench. The pilot's stomach was falling up again. He liked the feeling. In front of him, on the red television screen, he could see the MIG's climbing, desperately trying to slow down. They disappeared off the top of his screen. Other white images remained, moving rapidly toward him. Then others appeared, diving on the aircraft.
“New missile launches!” Radnor's voice was losing its artificial calmness. “One! Two! Four missile launches!”
“Radar-guided missiles approaching!” Kazaklis barked. “More chaff!” Alone, in the back of the upstairs cabin, Halupalai dumped more tinfoil. His palms sweated. One hand lurched again at the gun trigger, the other closing over the ejection lever. He swore at himself again for his inability to break the habit. The Buff groaned in its sweeping dive through the fallout cloud. Moreau began rocking the aircraft in evasion.
The first white intrusions were almost upon them. The plane rocked rhythmically. On Halupalai's screen the first blip poofed. Then the next and the next in rapid order. Halupalai felt the airframe shudder ever so slightly. Briefly the gunner was puzzled. Then he saw the last of the first intruders dart left, suckering into the phony heat of his decoy flare—poof!—and he let out a wild whoop. “Hot shit!”
“Hang on to your muumuu back there, ace,” Kazaklis drawled. “Four more coming.”
Halupalai's exuberance faded instantly. His screen was a clutter now of radioactivity and dancing snow from his tinfoil patterns. The four images sped raggedly at him through the snow. Suddenly they broke crazily away, skittering randomly after the tinfoil ghosts he had created. He sagged back into his bucket seat.
“Let 'er rip now, gunner,” Kazaklis exulted. “You just made it to the Super Bowl.”
“Hot shit,” Halupalai said without enthusiasm.
Up front, Kazaklis and Moreau looked at each other. Kazaklis shrugged. They still had four MIG's out there, with six missiles and a handful of other ways to stop them.
The pilot forgot Halupalai immediately. The Russian pilots had made the first mistake. But they could afford mistakes. He could not. He glanced at the altimeter—ten thousand feet, nine thousand, eight thousand—and then at his screen, on which the Arctic Coast crept back toward them. The fog was gone, the fallout cloud behind them. Kazaklis leaned forward and pulled the flash curtain open at its corner. Below him, starlight shimmered off ice and snow. He felt the tension surge into him, the silver captain's bars rise on his shoulders, the Strategic Air Command lightning bolt stretch tightly on his arm. The percentages were not good. But they were better where he was going. He was not depressed at all. He was going down to low level, where he liked it, where he could take those bastards up against the canyon wall. “I'll take it now,” the pilot told Moreau.
“Dammit, admiral, I don't know how to answer that,” the general said.
“The hell you don't. We've been studying it for years.”
“And all we came up with is imponderables.”
“Bullshit. Just plain bullshit. Just because we don't know precisely what happens to the F1 level of the ionosphere as opposed to the F2 level doesn't mean a damn now. Just because we didn't tell the public diddly-squat about it doesn't mean we don't know a lot about it. Tell him what General Jones told Congress.”
“Christ, anybody could figure that out. I don't know why people were surprised.”
“Start there.”
“General Jones, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs late in the Carter administration and early in the Reagan years, testified in 1980 that if both countries emptied the whole shooting gallery . . .”
The general stopped.
“Come on,” Harpoon pushed. “Get on with it.”
“He testified that the deaths in the northern hemisphere would be in the hundreds of millions.”
The successor sat rigidly watching. His face had paled. He felt as if he had been spun up and down like a yo-yo since boarding this plane. This is not what he had planned during his trek through Louisiana. Off to his side the director of Fish and Wildlife, who had not uttered a word since takeoff, sweated like a lathered quarter horse. The remaining Secret Service agent stood with his legs crossed, as if he were faced with a problem of imminent bodily evacuation.
“Thank you,” Harpoon said. “Now, go on.”
“Go on where, admiral?” the general asked wearily. “We simply don't know.”
“We know enough, general. We're in the middle of it. We've got the man sitting here. He may not be able to stop it if he wants to. But he has a right to know. A need.”
“Sir, you haven't even told him how the SIOP plan works yet.”
“I will, general. I'd like to get to it before it's too late.”
“I'm sorry, admiral. It's just that the range of unknowns is so great.”
“I know, general. I'm sorry, too. Give him the most optimistic reading.”
“Optimistic.” The general's voice trailed off. Then he came to stiff attention. He began speaking in clipped tones. “End of the northern hemisphere as we know it. United States would go first, Europe almost simultaneously, Soviet Union shortly thereafter. Whether the hemisphere would remain habitable is conjecture. Radiation, na
tural epidemics, starvation, postwar hostilities would reduce the number of survivors by a factor of five, ten, twenty within months or a few years. Optimistic . . . Small bands of roaming survivors. Tribes with no political connection to one another. After a few decades, life might become similar to life in the Middle Ages. Fiefdoms. Tribal rivalries. Survivors would have severe problems with solar as well as man-induced radiation. The atmosphere's ozone layer, which protects life from natural solar radiation, will be seriously damaged, perhaps destroyed. At least temporarily. It might rebuild itself in twenty, thirty years. Much would depend on activity in the southern hemisphere.”
The general stopped. “Pessimistic,” the admiral demanded.
“Pessimistic,” the general repeated. “Nobody knows. The explosions and the radiation won't kill everybody. A new ice age is possible from the atmospheric dust shielding the sun. Just the opposite is also possible. If the ozone layer is depleted too greatly, man won't be able to handle it even in the southern hemisphere. Then, in theory, the species will die out. Like the dinosaurs. In that sense, it could be On the Beach. But from solar radiation. It took two billion years to build the ozone layer and allow life on this planet. We can totally destroy it in the next few hours. . . .”
The general stopped and stared vacantly for a moment. Then he sat down slowly. The only sound was the slight whir of the E-4's engines, barely perceptible through the insulation of the briefing room.
After a moment, the successor rose suddenly from his seat, his face not quite ashen but distinctly pallid. “I need a moment by myself,” he said.
Harpoon stared at the man with both impatience and bleak understanding. “We have very little time, sir,” he protested halfheartedly.
“I need a moment by myself,” the man repeated unequivocally.
Without further ado, the successor moved quickly out of the compartment. Not even the Secret Service agent followed. Harpoon shifted from foot to foot, briefly bewildered and uneasy. Little time? They had no time. He looked at his watch—1042 Zulu. But as he looked up to see the successor's back disappear out the doorway, the admiral felt a new wave of pity for this overmatched man. He also held a glimmer of hope that the briefing had penetrated. If so, a moment's delay might be worth it.
Outside the briefing room, the successor moved hurriedly down unfamiliar hallways till he found the staircase. He climbed it and reentered the presidential quarters. Inside his own compartment, he knelt quickly. He needed a briefing from a higher source than Harpoon. He prayed deeply and with a low burble that echoed eerily in the lonely room. The prayer lasted only a moment, and then, with a solemn amen, he rose confidently, the pallor gone from his face.
Nine
1100 ZULU
Kazaklis brought the B-52 back toward the North American coastline at one thousand feet, temporarily trading deception for speed. He was in a sprint now, with the unseen Foxbats looping high and around toward him, the old bomber screaming low and vulnerable over the last jagged crags of the ice-locked Beaufort Sea. The B-52 gulped gas ferociously, Elsie's precious gift taking them in the wrong direction, the only direction. The pilot's own fuel, adrenaline, pulsed rapidly through his body, deftly tucking questions and fear in some side pocket of his mind. He subconsciously reached for his groin, arranging his vitals for the crunch, and barely caught the urge to remind his copilot to do the same. Instead, he went to the all-channels intercom.
“Hokay, you guardians of democracy,” Kazaklis said, “secure the family jewels. We're goin' in for the ball-buster.”
The bravado sounded tinny over the tortured scream of the engines, eight jets pushed to their limit. The speed gauge read Mach point-nine-five, just over six hundred miles an hour, just under the speed of sound. The altimeter held briefly, then began to drop again precipitously. At the pilot's right, Moreau helped Kazaklis control the creaking, bumping bomber, forgetting the navigational charts balanced on one knee. In front of them their red screens danced crazily, the night cameras in the Buffs nose picking up the last ice tangles of the sea and converting them into a maze of computer images. Just ahead lay the western mouth of the Mackenzie, where a winter that began in September had petrified the competing forces of the river and the sea, forcing them up into a rock-hard barrier that loomed on the screen.
“Hard left!” Kazaklis barked. The ancient plane moaned as it banked, then leveled out again. “Landfall?”
“River delta,” Moreau replied. “Ice jams in the mouth. Broad outlets beyond. Flat tundra. No landmarks.” It was not an ideal place to do what Kazaklis needed to do.
The altimeter read three hundred feet and wobbled downward.
“Coming up on twenty seconds,” Moreau continued. “Ready . . . now.”
Kazaklis braced himself. The altimeter spun down from two hundred feet, bouncing as badly as the plane. The screen showed the ice barrier moving right.
“Five seconds. Hang on.”
The B-52 struck the roiling coastal winds like a flat rock on water, bellying up, then sagging down precariously, old rivets and younger bones jolted and complaining under the strain. “Jesus!” Moreau blurted involuntarily. “Fifty feet!” Kazaklis said. “Get it up!” The charts bounced unnoticed off Moreau's knee as she helped the pilot tug frantically at the flailing bomber. At fifty feet, she knew well, they were in severe peril. The long, sleek wings flapped like a seagull's, drooping so much on a routine takeoff the designers had given them wingtip wheels. This was not routine, the ice jam still menacing on their right, the Foxbats menacing somewhere unseen. Moreau agonizingly helped Kazaklis nudge the balky plane back up to one hundred feet. He held it there.
“Cut it a little close,” Moreau said brittleley. Then she removed the edge from her voice. “Nicely done, Captain Shazam.”
“Umm,” Kazaklis responded, preoccupied. “What's ahead?”
Moreau reached for the charts. The plane bumped violently again.
“Hands on wheel!” Kazaklis said urgently. “Forget the charts. That's why we got the boys in the loony bin.” He glanced quickly to make certain he had switched to private.
“Flat as a pancake. Dozen arms of the Mackenzie.”
They both knew Arctic rivers were so wide and shallow that radar couldn't pick up their banks.
“Great place to hide,” Kazaklis said sardonically.
“Be lucky to hide a snowball down there.”
“Wanta park it on the river and toss snowballs at 'em?”
Moreau said nothing.
“What about the mountains?”
“Richardsons. We got better charts of the Verkhoyansk.”
“Figures.”
“Maybe twenty miles to the foothills. Low, treeless. Not much better.”
“Book say Foxbats got look-down radar?”
“Says maybe. They were working on it.”
“Shit. Anybody tell the spooks at Langley about eternal vigilance?”
“Foxbats were designed to go after other fighters, not look down on us.”
“That's our edge.”
“Not much.”
Kazaklis eased the speed back to Mach point-eight-five. The Buff was rattling like his pa's old Ford truck. Last flight of the Polar Bear, he thought. Still, he didn't want the rivets popping just yet. He switched to all channels.
“Anybody talkin' soprano down in the basement?”
Downstairs, in the navigation compartment, Radnor was on private. He was sweating and bleeding, and he held hard eyes on Tyler. “Don't fuck this one up, Tyler,” he said menacingly. “I want these bastards. For Laura. You got that, buddy boy? For Laura.”
Tyler stared back at his crewmate. The navigator's face twisted grotesquely, but it wore a look of vague understanding. “Yeah, I got it, Radnor. For Laura.” Tyler had tears in his eyes. He brushed them away with a fireproof glove and switched radio channels. His voice squeaked in a forced falsetto, a forced joke. “Radnor says I ain't gonna need my jewels anymore, commander.” Radnor swore at him silently, then felt the tea
rs welling in his eyes, too.
“You okay down there, navigator?” The pilot's voice was very concerned.
“He's okay,” Radnor said flatly. The radio fell silent for a moment. Radnor's eyes continued to lock on Tyler. Both men were crying.
“Well, give me a reading, fellas,” Kazaklis said blandly. “Come on.”
Tyler turned toward his screen, its rotating arm stretching out one hundred miles, far beyond the nose cameras available to the pilots. “High terrain sixteen miles,” he said professionally. “Dead ahead. Five hundred feet elevation, rising to fifteen hundred. Knobs rising eighty, a hundred feet along the way. Watch 'em.”
In the cockpit Kazaklis shook his head at Moreau. Tyler's emotions were bobbing up and down like a weekend sailboat in a storm.
“Bandits?” the pilot asked.
“Not yet,” Tyler said firmly now. “Screen's clear as a bell.”
Kazaklis relaxed briefly, even as the wheel tugged harshly at his forearms. Clear as a bell. Suddenly he drew bolt upright. “Gunner!” he yelled. “You got the jammer on?”
In the rear of the compartment the commander's alarmed voice jolted Halupalai out of a morose daydream. He stared, panicky, at the confusion of unfamiliar switches in front of him. Briefly, he couldn't find the right one. Then he flicked it, sending out the powerful beams that helped hide them. He turned to see Kazaklis craning his head toward him. Halupalai looked away quickly. Shit, Kazaklis thought. The whole damn place is a funny farm.
“Bandits,” Tyler broke in. “Southeast. Eighty miles. Just over Mach one.”
“Shit,” Kazaklis said. “Shit, shit, shit.”
The successor strode into the briefing room with a new certainty, and Harpoon, who had presided over the deathly silent group during the several minutes of the man's absence, felt a sudden shiver of concern.
“Are you a believer, admiral?” the successor asked abruptly.
“A believer?” Harpoon repeated, mystified.
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