Smoke sipped his beer and watched the body posture of the men leaning against the bar and sitting on the stools. Some were ab- sorbed in the game, some were talking to a buddy. Most of them were doing a little of both.
This was Smoke Judy’s favorite weekend beer spot, only a mile from his place. He knew the bartender casually and they often exchanged pleasantries on slow days. There were a lot worse ways to make a living, Smoke decided, than running a neighborhood bar where the guys could stop in after work or take a break from lawn mowing and garage cleaning. The crowd was nice and the work pleasant, although the money wouldn’t be great.
Maybe he would get a place like this when he retired next year. He had dropped a hint to the bartender — who also owned the place — a few weeks back, trying to find out if he had ever thought of selling, but the man didn’t get his drift, or pretended he didn’t.
He was going to retire next year, with twenty-two years in. By law, as a commander he could stay in the navy until be had com- pleted twenty-six years of service, but he wasn’t going to endure the hassle of staff job after staff job with no chance of promotion.
The end of the line had been a tour in command of a training squadron in Texas. Four of those damn kids had crashed, three fatally. Hard to believe. He had worked hard and flown hard and done it by the book, and still those goddamned kids just kept smashing themselves into the ground like suicidal rats. The acci- dent investigators had never said or even implied he was at fault, Yet every crash had felt like God whacking him on the head, com- pressing another two vertebrae. He had gotten punchy toward the end, a screamer in the cockpit, afraid to certify any student safe for anything. He left that for the lieutenants.
The admiral had been sympathetic, of course, but he had no choice. He said. He had to rate Judy the lowest of all his squadron commanders. After all, four accidents? Nine million dollars’ worth of airplanes and three lives? That had been God’s final whack. Judy would never be promoted or given another command. All that remained was a decision on when to retire.
He had seen it coming, like something from a Greek tragedy, after that second kid augered in on a night instrument solo. A fucking Canoe U. grad no less! Then the third one, that kid punched out of a perfectly good airplane on a solo aero hop after he flew into the only cloud for fifty miles in any direction for ten whole seconds and got the plane into a high-speed spiral and pan- icked. But he stood there in the CO’s office afterwards and said he was sorry! The fourth one, that shithead — Judy had personally given him a down once already — one clear, cloudless day that spas- tic bastard failed to get the nose up to the horizon on a pullout from a simulated strafing run and pancaked in, smearing himself and his airplane across a half mile of cow pasture. The command- ing officer is always responsible. And so it had been, like a judg- ment from the Doomsday book.
Next year. With twenty-two in. That would give him 55 percent of his base pay, and if one or two of these little deals he was working with hungry contractors came through, he would do all right. Not rich, but okay.
He paid for the beer and left two quarters for a tip. His car was parked just fifty feet down the street, but as he walked toward it, the car in front backed right into it!
“Awww…”
The driver got out and walked back to examine the damage.
“Awww, shit!” Smoke Judy exclaimed when he saw the broken grille, the smashed headlight and the bowed-out fender. “Get your goddamn driver’s license yesterday?”
“Jesus, mister, I am sorry! My foot just slipped off the brake. Don’t know how it happened.”
“Awww, damn. The second time this year somebody has smacked it when it was parked. Look at this fender, willya? Those Japs must make these things out of recycled beer cans. Look how this thing’s sprungi And this headlight socket!”
The other driver turned from examining his own bent fender and smashed taillight and surveyed Judy’s damage. He was chunky, fifty or so, flecks of gray in his hair. “Don’t worry. I got insurance. They’ll fix it good as new. But honest, I am really sorry.”
“I suppose.” Smoke Judy shook his head.
“Maybe we’d better exchange information.”
“Yeah.” Judy unlocked his car and fished the registration and insurance certificate from the glove box while the other driver rooted in his.
“Maybe we should go inside and do this,” the chunky man sug- gested. “Can I buy you a beer?”
The Minotaur
“Why not.” Smoke turned and led the way back into the bar he had just come out of. “My name’s Judy. Smoke Judy.”
“Sorry we had to meet like this. I’m Harlan Albright.”
Dodgers kept his opinions to himself at dinner Sunday evening, partially because he was too busy with his food to waste effort on small talk, and partially because he could not have gotten a word in edgewise against Caplinger’s verbal flow. There were just the four of them around a table in an empty dining room — empty because the officers’ club was usually closed on Sunday evening and Secretary Caplinger declined to go off-base to eat — Dodgers, Caplinger, Senator Duquesne, and Jake Grafton. Caplinger dis- cussed the budget deficit. Third World debt, global pollution, and the illegal drug industry with a depth of knowledge and insight that amazed Jake and even quieted the senator, who was the only person at the table who tried to participate in the conversation. It was obvious that Royce Caplinger not only had read widely but had thought deeply about all these issues. Less obvious but equally impressive was the way he wove the strands of these mega-issues into one whole cloth.
After the steward placed a coffeepot in the center of the table and departed, closing the door behind him, Caplinger eyed Jake speculatively. “Well, Captain, it seems to me that now would be a good time to sound you out.”
“I’m just an 0–6, Mr. Secretary. All I see are the elephant’s feet”
Caplinger poured himself a cup of coffee and used a spoon to stir in cream. He surveyed Samuel Dodgers as if seeing him this eve- ning for the first time. “Good of you to share your Sabbath with us, Doctor. We’re looking forward to seeing your handiwork to- morrow.”
Dodgers wiped his mouth and tossed his napkin beside his plate. “Tomorrow.” He nodded at everyone except Grafton and de- parted.
When the door had firmly closed behind the inventor, Caplinger remarked, “Senator, what will happen on the Hill if it becomes common gossip that the father of Athena is a fascist churl?”
“You’ll be in trouble. That man couldn’t sell water in Death Valley on the Fourth of July.”
“My thought exactly. We’ll have to make sure he stays out of sight and sound. Little difficult to do in America, but not impossi- ble.” He grinned. When he did his face twisted. It didn’t look like he made the effort very often. “So how do the elephant’s feet look, Captain?”
Jake Grafton reached for the coffeepot. “I confess, sir, that I’m baffled. Seems to me that these new weapons systems under devel- opment, with the sole exception of Athena, are going to be too expensive for the nation ever to afford enough of them to do any good.”
All traces of the smile disappeared from Caplinger’s face. “Go on.”
“As the cost goes up, the quantity goes down- And every techni- cal breakthrough seems to double or triple the cost. If anything, Athena will be the exception that proves the rule. Athena should be a fairly cheap system, all things considered, but it’ll be the only one.”
“And., -” prompted the Secretary of Defense.
“Well, if our goal is to maintain forces which deny the Soviets any confidence in a favorable outcome in any probable nuclear war scenario, we seem to have reached the treadmill. We can’t maintain forces if we can’t afford them.”
“You made a rather large assumption.”
“So what is our goal?”
“The general public regards nuclear war as unwinnable. That’s the universal popular wisdom, and like anything that almost every- one believes, it’s wrong. The Soviets have
invested heavily in hard- ened bunkers for the top leadership. They’ve built underground cities for the communist elite. Somebody over there thinks they can win! Now their idea of victory and ours are two very different things, but as long as they think they can win, the likelihood of a nuclear war increases. Nuclear war becomes more likely to hap- pen.”
Caplinger glanced at the senator, then turned his attention back to Jake. He seemed to be weighing his words. “Our goal,” he fi- nally said, “is to prevent nuclear war. To do that we must make them think they can’t win.”
“So you are saying that any method of denying the Russians confidence in a favorable outcome — however they define favorable — is acceptable?”
Caplinger tugged at his lower lip. His eyes were unfocused. Jake thought he seemed to be turning it qver in his mind yet again, examining it for flaws, looking… Slowly the chin dipped, then rose again. “We need…” His gaze rose to the ceiling and went slowly around it. “We need … we need forces that can survive the initial strike and respond in a flexible manner, forces that are controllable, programmable, selective. It can’t be all or nothing, Captain. It can’t be just one exchange of broadsides. If all we have is that one broadside, we just lost.”
“Explain,” prompted Senator Duquesne-
“We’ll never shoot our broadside. That’s the dirty little secret that they know and we know and we will never admit. No man elected President of the United States in the nuclear age would order every ICBM fired, every Trident missile launched, every nu- clear weapon in our arsenal detonated on the Soviets. Not even if the Soviets make a massive first strike at us. To massively retaliate would mean the end of life on the planet Earth. No rational man would do it.” Caplinger shrugged. “That’s the flaw in Mutual As- sured Destruction. No sane man would ever push the button.”
Royce Caplinger sipped his coffee, now cold, and made a face.
“We must deny the communists the ability to ever come out of those bunkers. We need the ability to hit pinpoint, mobile targets on a selective, as-needed basis. That’s the mission of the F-117 and the B-2. If we can achieve that, there will never be a first strike. There will never be a nuclear war.”
Caplinger pushed his chair back away from the table. “Life will continue on this planet until pollution ruins the atmosphere and sewage makes the seas a barren, watery desert. Then life on this fragile little pebble orbiting this modest star will come to the end that the Creator must nave intended when he made man. Watching our Japanese televisions, listening to our compact laser disks, wear- ing our designer clothes, we’ll all starve.”
He rose abruptly and made for the door. Jake Grafton also got to his feet. When the door closed behind Caplinger, Jake shook the senator’s hand and wished him good night.
“He’s a great man,” the senator said, trying to read Jake’s thoughts.
“Yes.”
“But he is not sanguine. The political give-and-take — it de- presses him.”
“Yes,” Jake Grafton said, and nodded his farewell. Suddenly he too needed to be alone.
On Monday morning Jake put Secretary Caplinger, Senator Du- quesne, and their aides on a plane to Fallen with Helmut Fritsche and Harold Dodgers. He had decided to stay at China Lake and supervise the good doctor.
Sam Dodgers was in a foul mood, muttering darkly about money and conspiracies. Jake managed to keep his mouth shut. When the Athena device was ready and installed in the A-6, he helped strap Rita Moravia and Toad Tarkington into the cockpit. Toad was whistling some tune Jake didn’t recognize.
“No birds today. Okay?”
“Whatever you say, boss.” Toad was in high spirits. Higher than usual. He must be screwing Moravia, Jake decided, trying to catch some hint between them. The pilot was all business.
“Work the long distances today- Start at thirty miles and let Fritsche call you closer when he has the info he wants. Just keep the radar he’s using on your left side.”
“Sure, CAG. We understand.” He resumed his whistling as Jake helped him latch his Koch fittings.
“You know who whistles in the navy. Toad?”
“No, sir,”
“Bosun’s mates and damn fools.”
Toad grinned. “I’m in that second category, sir. Enjoy your day with Dr. Dodgers.”
Jake punched him on the shoulder and climbed down the board- ing ladder.
As the Intruder taxied out, Jake climbed into the yellow ramp truck that the base ops people had loaned him. He had no desire to return to the hangar and watch Dodgers tinker with a computer.
He drove down a taxiway and parked near the duty runway. He got out and sat on the hood. Already the morning was warm, growing hotter by the minute as the sun climbed higher and higher into the deep blue sky. Singing birds were audible here, away from the hustle and bustle of the ramp. A large jackrabbit watched him from the safety of a clump of brush.
He could hear the faint murmur of engines in the distance, and assumed that was Rita and Toad. The minutes passed as he sat there in the sun with the breeze in his hair. He had joined the navy those many years ago to fly, and now he was reduced to sitting beside a runway waiting for younger people to take off. Yet this was the world he knew. The world Royce Caplinger had spoken of last night — nuclear deterrence, global strategy — that was an alien environment, as foreign to him as the concerns of headhunters in the jungles of the Amazon.
He saw the tiny tail of the warplane moving above the swell in the runway. It turned and became a knife edge. Still at least a mile away, the visible tail came to a stop and remained motionless for several minutes.
Caplinger’s pessimism troubled him. Sure, the world had its problems, but every generation had faced problems: problems were the stuff life was made of. A man as brilliant as Caplinger, he shouldn’t be so … so bitter.
He heard the engines snarl, yet the tiny white speck of tail did not move. No doubt Rita was standing on the brakes, letting the engines wind up to full power and the temps stabilize before she let it roll. Now… now the tail began to move, slowly at first, then faster and faster.
The Intruder came over the swell in the runway accelerating quickly. A river of hot, shimmering air poured down and away behind the bird.
He pressed his fingers in his ears as the sound swelled in volume and intensity. The nose wheel rose a foot or so above the concrete. With a delicate wiggle the bird of prey lifted itself free of the earth and continued toward him in a gentle climb as the wheels retracted into the body of the beast. The howl of the engines grew until it was intolerable.
Now the machine was passing just overhead, roaring a thunder- ous song that enveloped him with an intensity beyond imagination. He glimpsed the helmeted figure of Rita Moravia in the cockpit with her left hand on the throttles, looking forward, toward the open sky.
He buried his face in his shoulder as the plane swept past and waves of hot jet exhaust and disturbed air cascaded over him.
When the gale subsided the noise was fading too, so he looked again for the Intruder. It was climbing steeply into the blue ocean above, its engine noise now a deep, resonant, subsiding roar.
He got down from the truck hood and seated himself behind the wheel. The birds in the scrub were still singing and the jackrabbit was still watching suspiciously.
Grinning to himself, Jake Grafton started the engine of the pickup and drove away.
18
The day Terry Franklin died was a beautiful day, “the finest day this year” according to a TV weath- erman on one of Washington’s local breakfast shows. The sun crept over the edge of the earth into a cloudless sky as a warm, gentle zephyr from the west stirred the new foliage. The weather reader promised a high temperature of seventy-four. Humidity was low. This was the day everyone had dreamed of while they endured the cold, humid winter and the wet, miserable spring. Now, at last, it was here. And on this day sent from heaven Terry Franklin died.
He certainly didn’t expect to die today, of course, or any other d
ay in the foreseeable future. For him this was just another day to be endured, another day to live through on his way to the life of gleeful indolence he was earning with his treason.
He awoke when his alarm went off. If he beard the birds singing outside his window he showed no sign. He used his electric razor on his face and gave his teeth a very quick pass with the cordless toothbrush he received for Christmas from his kids, whom he hadn’t seen or heard from for three weeks and, truthfully, hoped he wouldn’t hear from. If he heard from the kids he would also hear from Lucy, and she would want money. He assumed that she was back in California with her mother, the wicked witch of the west. If so, Lucy didn’t need any money: her father the tooth mechanic could pay the grocery bill and buy the kids new shoes.
He put on his uniform while the coffee brewed. The coffee he drank black, just the way he had learned to like it on his first cruise, which he had made to the Med aboard a guided-missile frigate.
He paused automatically on the front stoop and looked around for the morning newspaper, then remembered that there wouldn’t be one and pulled the door closed and tried it to ensure it was locked. He had canceled the paper a week after Lucy left. He never read it and Lucy only scanned the front page and read the funnies. She always wanted it for the crossword puzzle, which she worked every morning while watching Oprah. Twenty-five cents a day for a fucking crossword puzzle. He had relished that call to the circu- lation office.
The Datsun started on the first crank. He backed out of the drive and roiled down his window as he drove toward the stop sign at the corner. He fastened his seat belt, punched up the Top 40 station on the stereo and rolled. He only had three miles to go to the Park’N'Ride, but still he enjoyed the private little world of his car. These few minutes in the car, with the music he liked adjusted to the volume he liked, he cherished as the best part of the day.
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