To launch, they would each take a key from the red boxes. After entering the Enable Code and the Prepatory Launch Command on their consoles, they would remove a plastic strip covering two keyholes, one in each console approximately twelve feet apart.
No Lone Zone. Even Shaq doesn’t have the wingspan to launch by himself.
They must turn, hold and release their keys simultaneously, or the launch command will not be accepted by the computer in the fourth stage of the PK. There is another safeguard, too, against a mistaken or renegade launch. Another capsule must enter the identical codes, a second “launch vote,” making the procedure double fail-safed.
“Hey, Owens,” Lauretta says. “They don’t pay overtime, so you can figure this one out.” She makes a paper airplane out of the teletype message and sails it to him. He catches it but makes no effort to unfold or read it.
“You sure you want me to? It’s probably a love letter from that major at Malmstrom.”
Lauretta ignores him and runs a quick check on the other communications gear, AFSAT, the link to the Air Force satellite system, SLFCS, the survivable low frequency system with underground wiring intended to withstand a nuclear blast, and SACDIN, a more modern digital network run by computer. There’s also the telephone with direct links to NORAD in Cheyenne Mountain, STRATCOM at Offut Air Force Base in Omaha, the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon, and the Alternate Command Center buried inside Raven Rock Mountain in Maryland, just in case the Pentagon has been obliterated by an enemy attack. The phone itself is something of a relic, a black, rotary dial model the likes of which are not seen on TV commercials extolling the virtues of AT&T versus MCI.
The launch facilities are like that. While the Minuteman III’s have computers and fancy monitors with on-screen commands, the Peacekeeper capsules still have the old lighted boards descended from the Titan project in the sixties. The irony is that the PK is the newer missile with greater range, accuracy and punch. In front of Sanders in the commander’s chair is a console festooned with multi-colored lights. Each light is emblazoned with its own descriptive term, the jargon, too, reaching back to the beginning of the missile program. “Strategic Alert,” “Standby,” “Missile Shutdown,” “Fault,” “LF Down,” “LF No Go,” “Enabled,” “Launch Command,” “Launch Inhibit,” “Launch in Progress,” “Missile Away,”
Beams sweep endlessly across Doppler radar screens, and security monitors attached to the capsule’s ceiling show live shots of the base above them as well as the PK missile three hundred yards down a tunnel from where they now sit.
Owens, who would have been a decent running back at Oklahoma if he hadn’t torn up a knee, leans on the back of Sanders’ chair. “Get your rocks off today Curly?”
“Day ain’t over yet,” Sanders says.
Owens watches the digital clock on the console change from 0759 to 0800. “Now it is.”
Sanders and Lauretta unbuckle their harnesses, and Owens finishes his coffee. “Ain’t fair, Curly. How come I’m stuck with Bible Billy while you get Miss Intercontinental Ballistic Boobs?”
Lauretta kicks her flight chair down the railing and bangs into Owens’ leg. “Hey!” he cries out.
Lauretta jabs a finger into his chest. “Because spending twenty-four hours with you, Owens, would be cruel and unusual punishment.”
“Okay, okay,” Owens says, raising his hands in surrender. “Jeez, a guy can’t even joke around anymore. Right Billy?”
“Not in the hole,” Billy answers. “‘Missileers shall maintain a constant state of readiness. Space Command frowns upon non-service related activities such as playing cards, personal conversation, and horseplay.’”
“Not to mention farting when the vent fan’s down,” Owens adds.
Sanders and Lauretta remove their combination locks from the red boxes, then Owens and Billy fasten on their own. “See you guys,” Owens says. “And be careful, it’s hell up there.” In a moment, Sanders and Lauretta are gone, heading across the catwalk toward the elevator.
Billy and Owens buckle themselves into the flight seats, and Billy hits a button. With a pneumatic whoosh, the blast door begins to close. The door weighs eight tons and is solid steel, four feet thick. Five steel pins, the size of fireplace logs, are recessed into the door and extend into ports in the wall to seal off the capsule. A separate latch on the door locks the pins into place. Until recently, the door opened and closed with a hand air pump, it taking nearly a full minute to operate. In recent renovations, a button on the deputy’s console operates the pump, but it still takes nearly thirty seconds for the pins to insert or retract and the giant door to move.
“I knew you were going to do that,” Owens says.
“What?”
“Seal the blast door.”
“It’s in the T.O. You’re supposed—”
“I know what’s in the regs, Billy. But if we ever got an order to launch, or if incoming were headed this way, don’t you think we’d have time to punch that button and close the damn door?”
“That’s not the point. We’re trained to do exactly as we’re taught. If we foul up the little things, then the—”
“My point is, I hate feeling like a sardine in here.”
“I’m sorry, but I feel strongly about this.”
“That’s what I love about you, Billy,” Owens says. “You are so damn predictable.”
-14-
The Race
Stripped to his boxer shorts, Jack Jericho swats at a mosquito that has targeted his neck as ground zero. “Skeeters biting better than the trout,” he says to himself. Behind him, Devil’s Tower radiates a prism of colors from the morning sun.
Bending over the stream, Jericho fills his helmet with water, then props it upside down between two rocks in the blazing fire. He cuts long, thin slices of tannic tree bark with his survival knife and drops them into the helmet. As the concoction boils, he cuts sturdy four-foot long branches from a pine tree, then lashes them together with twine. Along the embankment, he finds a half-buried Styrofoam cooler, its bottom punched out.
“Tourists,” he says derisively.
He takes the cooler and ties it to the cross-section of branches, then carefully lifts his helmet from the rocks and cools it in the stream. Finally, he dips his fingers into the helmet and streaks the orange liquid across his face and body.
Digging into his rucksack, Jericho grabs the jug of moonshine and works out the cork with his thumb. He puts the jug to his lips but it’s dry. Staring in disbelief at the empty jug, he sighs, “Was it good for you, too?”
Ten miles downstream from Jack’s campsite, Sayers and Reynolds stand on a bridge, urinating into the tumbling water fifteen feet below.
“Ow, that river’s cold,” Reynolds says with a laugh.
“Yep, and deep, too,” Sayers boasts.
They zip up and lean on the bridge railing, looking upstream. Reynolds lights a cigarette. Sayers pops the top on a beer and slaps at a mosquito on his neck, squashing it in a tiny pool of blood.
“The sarge’ll never make it,” Reynolds says, exhaling a puff. “Never.”
Sayers looks at his watch and takes a pull on the beer. “I feel sorry for the him. Puke’ll have his ass.”
“It’s his own damn fault. His job’s to maintain the machinery in the sump, but you can’t hardly get him down there.”