Red Thunder

by John Varley

  Soon we were flying along on the smooth water.

  THE WIND IN our faces whipped away even the steroid-pumped Everglades mosquitoes. The day had not yet begun to get hot. The water below us was the color of weak tea and the sky above blue and [174] cloudless. We barreled along through a primeval world where I could easily imagine duck-billed dinosaurs browsing in the trees. Kelly squeezed my hand and smiled at me. I’d had worse days.

  ON A MAP you can see hundreds of what they call hammocks scattered through the Everglades. There are also islands, streams, creeks, sloughs. The hammocks on the maps could be miles long, but even the smallest-scale maps didn’t indicate the ones that were only an acre or two, because they weren’t very permanent features.

  Caleb finally beached the airboat on a bare knuckle of cracked mud that might have had enough room to park a dozen cars… if you didn’t mind seeing them sink like mammoths in the La Brea Tar Pits. We had to step carefully when we got out. My first step cracked through the skin of dried mud and I almost lost a shoe. The footing was a bit firmer in the center of the little island.

  Looking around, I wasn’t sure why Caleb had selected this place, an hour’s ride from where we’d left the vehicles. Most every mile of swamp we passed through seemed just as isolated as any other mile, though I knew this wasn’t strictly true. We saw other airboats passing in the distance, and once came close enough to wave at the driver.

  We quickly saw that we were basically just along for the ride, and because Jubal wanted us there. Travis and Jubal set the rocket on its end near the center of the hammock, then started placing other devices around it. Neither of them had anything to say, they just worked steadily stringing wires, plugging things into other things, sweat dripping off their foreheads. The rest of us stood around, slapping at mosquitoes.

  It occurred to me that, if this thing worked, we might be about to witness something as historic as the Wright brothers’ first flight. But to tell the truth, all I wanted to do was get it done and get out of there. I was getting eaten alive!

  I mentioned the Wright brothers analogy to Kelly, and she slapped her forehead and dug around in her purse. In a moment she found a pink throwaway PrettyPixel camera and started snapping pictures as [175] fast as she could click the shutter. Travis frowned, and told her those pics would have to be considered classified information for the time being.

  “Yes, sir, Colonel Broussard,” she said, and kept snapping away. “And stupid me, I left my vidcam home sitting on my desk.”

  Which is why there is no video of the maiden-and final-flight of the good ship Everglades Express, and why Kelly appears in only one picture taken that day, when Caleb insisted the six of us pose in front of the completed rocket setup, a bug-bitten family looking like they’d rather be anywhere else but this hellhole.

  They had it all ready in no more than half an hour. Jubal stood looking at it, his fists on his hips, nodding in satisfaction. He put his hand on the conical nose cone. There was a round piece of glass set into it.

  “Dis eye,” Jubal said, “dis eye find de sun, yes she does. Lock on to de sun, den keep herself in dat attitude fo’ all de flight. Dat way she go straight up.”

  We all piled back in the boat and Caleb eased us off the mud flat and back through the shallow water as Travis paid out a cable from a Radio Shack reel.

  At two hundred feet Travis looked at Jubal.

  “Far enough, Jube?”

  I didn’t like the frown I saw on Jubal’s brow. He muttered, then looked around, and smiled when he found what he was looking for.

  “Ovah dere,” he said. He was pointing at another hammock, this one a bit bigger than Rocket Hammock. Caleb moved the boat over there, and we could see on the other side there was a small eroded bank, maybe three feet high, with a fallen tree trunk lying on top of it. Now we could crouch down behind the bank and the tree and be protected if the rocket should blow up.

  Travis and Jubal took another five minutes plugging the ends of the wires into an old laptop computer and then they were ready. Travis handed out safety glasses and hard hats from the boat, and we all put them on.

  “I think we should all get down behind the bank,” Dak said.

  [176] “Can’t we peek over the top?” Kelly asked. “I want to get pictures.”

  We all looked at Jubal, who was again looking nervous.

  “Go ahead on,” he said. “Peek. But be careful, cher.”

  Travis had the remote control in his hands. I put my arm around Kelly. Then I looked at Jubal. He grinned, and shrugged.

  “T’ree, two, one, an-”

  He flicked the launch switch as he said “zero,” and the world exploded.

  There was a shock wave that blew my helmet off, an explosion that sounded like a bomb going off. And directly ahead I saw a wall of mud rushing toward me.

  “Oh, me oh my,” Jubal said, and the wall hit us.

  It was actually a wall of water, a big wave maybe four feet high, but it was thicker than water had any right to be. It was full of mud, decaying leaves, twigs. We all tried to fall back in front of it, but there was nothing but more water behind us. I staggered a few steps before sitting down in the glop, and the wave crested over the bank we’d been sheltering behind, then over us.

  For a few seconds everything was dark, then my head broke through and I was gasping… and that’s when the water and mud that had been blown into the air started to rain down on us. I don’t think the planet has often seen a filthier rain. A bullfrog landed on me and sat in my lap for a moment, stunned.

  Travis was shouting something I couldn’t hear clearly, something about covering our heads. My hardhat had been swept away. I found Kelly and we huddled together, hunched over, hoping the explosion hadn’t been powerful enough to throw any sizable rocks or tree trunks into the air.

  It was over in a few seconds, though it seemed a lot longer. The water settled down, the mud stopped falling from the sky.

  “Did it blow up, Jubal?” Alicia shouted.

  “No ’splosion, cher,” he said, then pointed into the air. “Look!”

  We did, and saw a straight white line rising from the launch site, already twisted a little as the air currents caught it. Far, far away the line was still growing as the tiny rocket reached the upper levels of the [177] atmosphere. Kelly and I stood up unsteadily and watched the line dwindle and lengthen… and suddenly it stopped.

  “What happened?” I asked Jubal. “Run out of fuel?”

  “No, Manny.” Jubal entered some numbers on the mud-covered computer. “Outta de atmosphere. She up ’bout eight mile now.”

  Caleb was standing in the boat, bailing with a galvanized metal bucket. He looked up and tossed me a plastic bait bucket.

  “Bail, son,” he said. “We gotta get outta here. This tub don’t fly too good with two ton of mud in her, and she got no scuppers.”

  I didn’t know a scupper from a yardarm, but I could see what he meant. I got to work, and was soon joined by all the others using their hard hats, except Travis, who was reeling in cable as fast as he could wind it. We worked like a road gang in hell.

  One good thing about the mud. The mosquitoes couldn’t bite through it.

  We had the boat about as dry as it was going to get when Travis pointed into the sky and shouted. Squinting into the glare, I saw four contrails way, way up there. They were flying close, then they moved apart and circled around the remains of the rocket’s vapor trail like bloodhounds casting for a scent.

  “Fighter group,” Travis said. “Probably from the base at Boca Chica Key.”

  “Navy jets,” Dak said.

  “You think they’re looking for us?” Alicia asked.

  “They ain’t counting alligators, hon. What else is there out here they might want to see? I never thought the sucker would go up so fast!”

  “I t’ink I mighta dropped a-”

  “Later, Jube. We got to get outta here. Try to look like tourists!”

  We scrambled in and Caleb go
t us moving. Look like tourists? How were we going to do that, covered in mud?

  Kelly started scooping handfuls of water and splashing it over her hair and her face. The rest of us did, too. I dipped a plastic bucket into the water… and promptly lost it, snatched right out of my hand when I let it go too deep. I held on to the next one better, and dumped it over Dak’s head. He sputtered and grabbed the bucket from me.

  [178] “I don’t need cleaning up!” he shouted. “I don’t show the dirt like you whiteys do!” And he dumped a bucketful on me. Pretty soon we were mostly free of mud, though we were ankle deep in chocolate-colored water. Even though the air was humid, I figured the rushing wind would dry us pretty soon.

  “Over there!” Travis yelled in my ear, and I looked where he was pointing. Far away three elongated specks were moving through the air at treetop level. Travis reached up and tapped Caleb’s leg. Caleb nodded. Travis pointed to a thicket of mangroves, and Caleb arrowed straight for it. He turned off the engine and the silence surrounded us. After a moment we could hear the sound of the distant helicopters.

  “Hueys,” Travis said, quietly.

  “Did we do something wrong?” Kelly whispered.

  “Why are we all whispering?” Alicia whispered. Dak laughed.

  “We probably broke some federal laws about fireworks in a nature preserve, something like that,” Travis said. We knew he wouldn’t be behaving like this if that was all that was the matter. “I don’t want to get noticed by the military. Or even the Everglades rangers, for that matter. This has all got to stay secret.”

  Before long the Hueys were too far away to see or hear. Caleb backed us out of the briar patch and headed us back home. But soon he was slowing again. He waved, and I stood up and could see another airboat piloted by a grizzled old conch who must have been seventy. There was a tangle of weeds and vines between us, keeping us about twenty yards apart. A tourist couple was sweltering in pants and long-sleeved shirts, wearing safari hats with netting veils. They waved happily to us and we waved back, smiling. Kelly snapped their picture, and the woman snapped right back at her.

  “Broussard!” the old man shouted over the idling engines. “Did you hear an explosion, ol’ hoss?”

  “Heard something, McGee,” Caleb allowed. “Back yonder, I think.” He pointed at an angle at least ninety degrees away from where the launch had actually happened.

  “Saw something takin’ off like a rocket, too.”

  “Probably just some kids. You know how they are.”

  [179] “Yeah… in my day it was cherry bombs.”

  “These days, it’s likely to be an H-bomb,” Caleb laughed.

  McGee leaned over and spit in the water, which didn’t make his female passenger too happy. “Y’all take care, now, y’hear?”

  IT WAS FUNNY how, on the way out, I figured we were probably the only human beings for twenty miles in any direction. Coming back, I thought somebody needed to install a traffic light.

  I’m exaggerating. But we saw maybe a dozen other airboats. There were pickups and SUVs and ATVs on the dirt roads, and small planes overhead. None of them gave us any reason to believe they were looking for us.

  We made it back to the Middle of Nowhere in about an hour, then to Caleb’s trailer-home in fifteen minutes. Travis was in a big hurry. We took hasty showers, said our good-byes, thanked Grace for the food-and accepted a picnic basket crammed with more of it-then piled back into our vehicles and hit the road.

  When Kelly saw that Nephew Billy had washed all the road grime and bugs off the Ferrari she kissed him on the cheek. I shook his hand anyway.

  IN WHAT I thought was an excess of paranoia, Travis insisted the three vehicles not drive together, but maintain a five-minute separation. We were taking Alligator Alley back to Fort Lauderdale, so it wasn’t hard.

  “I’ve been asleep at the wheel as far as security goes,” he told us during a cellular conference call. “From now on, we’re going to be more careful than we’ve been. You gotta remember-”

  “Travis,” I interrupted. “If we’re going to be careful… do you think we should be discussing these things on cell phones?”

  There was silence for a moment. Kelly looked over and gave me a thumbs-up.

  “Manny, you’re a genius and I’m a jerk-off idiot. Everybody hang up and meet me at Bahia Mar in Lauderdale. We’ll have lunch.”

  * * *

  [180] BAHIA MAR IS one of your nicer marinas. About a zillion dollars’ worth of rich folks’ playtoys were tied up at the finger piers, motor and sail, blinding white and those deep blue tarps they wrap sails in. We found each other easily enough, and Travis led the way to a pretty city park and we all unloaded Grace’s lunch onto a picnic table. There was a bucket of fried chicken and a big Tupperware box of potato salad and scratch buttermilk biscuits and a watermelon for dessert. There was also a red-and-white checkered tablecloth to put it all on, heavy plastic plates and spoons, and a big thermos of grape Kool-Aid.

  “I have screwed up just about everything I’ve tried so far,” Travis said after the food had been distributed. “You notice my crazy neighbor lately? He’s ready to take off on a flying saucer with Jesus. Which is what he saw the day I landed you all in the pool by fiddling with something I didn’t understand.

  “As for today’s fiasco… what was I thinking?”

  “I’m sorry, Trav-”

  “Not your fault, Jubal.”

  “It was a decimal point, jus’ a little-”

  “I know, Jube, I know. But I can’t afford to drop any more decimal points. Friends, Jubal did a search while I was driving… show ’em, Jube.”

  Jubal went to http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/RealTime/JTrack/3D/ JTrack3D.html on his computer. I knew the site. It kept track of all satellites in orbit. We saw a display of the Earth surrounded by thousands of dots, many of them in a ring at the geosynchronous distance of 22,500 miles. Jubal zoomed in on Florida, then the southern tip of Florida, and entered the time of the launch. We saw a handful of satellites and lines representing their orbits. Jubal moved the cursor over one.

  “Dat be Friendship Station. She were ’bout two hunnerd miles away when de rocket go shootin’ by.”

  “Jes… You mean we could have hit it?” Alicia asked.

  “It would have been a trillion-to-one shot to hit it,” Travis said. “That doesn’t worry me. No, the thing that worries me is that our bird would [181] have showed up on their radar. Also this satellite, and this one. Not to mention ground radars. Now some people in our government know there’s something out there that can outperform any rocket in their arsenal. I mean, our bird was accelerating at twenty gees, and it would have kept it up until it was out of radar range. When they lost it, it was traveling faster than any man-made object has ever traveled. Ever, in the history of the world.”

  We all digested that for a while. Suddenly I didn’t feel so hungry.

  “Now our government knows there’s somebody out there with a powerful new technology. I’m sure they’re going to want it. And what I worry about is our alphabet soup of intelligence agencies. FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA.”

  “What about SMERSH?” I asked, joking. Travis didn’t laugh.

  “I’ve often asked myself that question,” he said. “Is there a super, super secret agency in the government, accountable to no one, licensed to kill, like in a James Bond movie? I hope not, but there’s no way for us to know. By its nature nobody would ever have heard of it.”

  “ ‘If I told you, I’d have to kill you,’ ” Dak said.

  “Exactly. So it’s a waste of time to worry about something like that. I’m worried enough about the ones we do know about.

  “By triangulating the radar signatures they know where we did it. I can’t think they would learn much from the launch site. It’s hard digging in the ’Glades. That hole in the ground filled up with muddy water before we even left.

  “What worries me most is that I stupidly let us drive into a small, isolated town in three of the most m
emorable vehicles in Florida.”

  I looked at our little automotive fleet. It was so obvious once he’d said it, but it hadn’t occurred to me. Even now, there were half a dozen neighborhood kids standing around the vehicles, gawking.

  “They’ve got satellites that can read a license plate from orbit, and it was a clear day, but I strongly doubt they took any pictures. Why would they?”

  “But people will talk,” Kelly murmured.

  “You said it. Old man McGee saw us, and so did those tourists. As for McGee, he wouldn’t be apt to have much to say to a federal agent, [182] on account of the five years of federal time he did behind a marijuana smuggling conviction back in the ’70s. Not to mention that he’d assume they were revenuers out to find his still.

  “We drove straight through town. Those folks aren’t inclined to gab, but it will come out, and it may be linked to Caleb.”

  That was the worst news I’d heard so far. How far would those snoops go, if they suspected Caleb and his family had something to do with the launch?

  “What’s done is done,” Travis said. “We can’t take it back. But we can lie as low as we are able for a while, and we can be more careful in the future. Deal?”

  We all agreed… and pretty soon Dak wished he hadn’t.

  “Kelly,” Travis went on, “I guess you’ll be putting that Roman firebomb back in your father’s lot. Not much we can do about it, I guess. I’m hoping that anyone comes snooping around won’t figure a Ferrari demonstrator was likely to be the one showed up in Everglades City today.”

  Kelly looked thoughtful for a moment.

  “I can probably do better than that. Let me think on it.”

  “Good enough. Dak…” I could see Dak hadn’t gotten it yet. “Dak, could you… could you garage that blue beast for a while?”

  Dak’s eyes widened with surprise, then he gave a deep sigh.

  “Sure, Trav. For a while. You got a bicycle I could borrow?”

  “No, but I’ve got another bike somewhere. You could use that.” Dak looked a lot happier. “Manny, you keep the Triumph for a while.”