“Who builds this rocket?” the Israeli ambassador asks.
Pukowlski gives him the fish eye. “Why, you want to buy stock or maybe get some preemptive deterrence insurance against the A-rabs?”
“We are at peace with our neighbors,” the Israeli says brusquely.
“Yeah, aren’t we all? Anyway, the first stage was built by Thiokol, second by Aerojet, third by Hercules, and fourth by Rocketdyne. The guidance is by Rockwell, I.M.U. by Northrop, assembly and testing by Martin Marietta and Denver Aerospace. First string, All-American know-how, top to bottom.” He winks at the Japanese ambassador. “You fellows do a helluva job with Toyotas and TV sets, but if you want a four-stage ICBM, there’s only one place to shop.”
“We do not want such a thing,” the Japanese ambassador says. “Our memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still alive.”
“Little Boy and Fat Man,” Pukowlski says, almost wistfully. “Before my time, and obsolete as a buggy whip by today’s technology. You know Little Boy hit Hiroshima with only twenty kilotons, a lousy fifth of a megaton of U-235 in a gun-assembly bomb. Nothing like the fission-fusion-fission thermonuclear warheads today. Can you imagine the damage that ten warheads, each with two megaton lithium deuteride cores, could do?”
“Yes,” says the Japanese ambassador. “I can.”
“‘Course you fellows are our friends now, and we let bygones be bygones. We had our Pearl Harbor, you had your Hiroshima.”
The Japanese ambassador’s look is not as forgiving. “And Nagasaki.”
“Yeah, war is hell.”
There is mumbling in foreign languages that Pukowlski neither understands nor cares to. Leading the visitors toward the gantry, he says, “Let’s take a ride.”
They squeeze aboard, Pukowlski hits a switch, and the gantry runs up the track in the wall of the silo. As they ascend along the shaft of the missile, nearly close enough to touch its dull black surface, Pukowlski launches into his statistical routine. He could be a tour guide telling visitors how many steps there are inside the Statute of Liberty. “The PK is seventy-one feet long and eight feet, seven inches in diameter. Fully loaded with fuel, it weighs one hundred ninety-five thousand pounds. What you’re looking at is a coating of black rubber that covers the Kevlar skin. Up at the top, what looks like a silver bullet, is the titanium shroud covering the nose cone. The shroud ejects when the PK’s still on the way up, just two minutes into flight. ‘Course, it’s already at four hundred thousand feet altitude. From there on out, the MIRV’s are exposed. They’re made of carbon-carbon, about four feet high, kind of look like black ice cream cones coming at you, pointy-end first, but they’re flying at six thousand miles an hour, and instead of filled with strawberry or chocolate, they’ve got the power of God inside.”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard nuclear weaponry described as divine,” the Israeli ambassador says.
“You don’t hang out in the right church.” The ambassador is a chubby little guy with curly hair who reminds Pukowlski of a comedian he saw on the cable. What the hell was that guy’s name?
The gantry stops at the level of the nose cone. The captain hits a switch, and the cage extends horizontally toward the missile.
“Now, you’re gonna get an experience only a few human beings have been privileged to partake,” he says with excessive formality. The cage stops just inches from the nose cone. Pukowlski reaches out and touches the tip. Then he strokes it, his hand caressing the shiny, smooth titanium shroud. “Put your hand on the greatest power the world has ever known,” he tells the group. “You can even feel the computer clicking away, and if you close your eyes and use your imagination, you can feel the might of the dragon.”
The ambassadors whisper among themselves, but none reaches out to pet the missile. Embarrassed, Pukowlski clears his throat and hits the switch to retract the gantry to the wall. “You fellows gotta forgive me. When I’m this close to the power and the glory, I get downright poetic.”
Dr. Susan Burns has joined lieutenants Owens and Riordan in the launch control capsule. On a monitor above their heads, Captain Pukowlski is visible on the gantry, stroking the shroud, the ambassadors watching him.
“Puke’s copping a feel again,” Owens says. He has run his flight chair all the way to the far end of the console, and he sits there, alternating his attention between the monitor and the multiple choice questions on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory answer sheet. “‘Would you rather be rich or respected?’” he reads aloud. “Shit, that’s easy, Dr. Burns. If you’re rich, you can buy respect.”
He fills in a blank, then continues reading, moving his lips slightly. “‘Did you ever cheat in school?’ Jeez, who didn’t?”
“Lieutenant Owens,” Dr. Burns says. “Would it be possible for you to complete the test silently?”
“Sure thing. Almost done.” He gives her a smile that even tip-hungry barmaids have found resistible.
While Owens finishes revealing the innermost depths of his skin-deep personality, Susan Burns moves to Billy Riordan. First she attaches a blood-pressure cuff on his right arm. Then she hands him a Rorschach ink blot card.
“Tell me what you see,” she instructs him.
“Chaos,” Billy says without hesitation.
“Of course, but what do you make of it? What images or emotions are evoked by the drawing?”
“You don’t understand, Doctor. What I see really is chaos. Anarchy, carnage, bloodshed, lambs led to the slaughter.”
Susan Burns watches the digital readout on the blood-pressure gauge as the numbers soar higher. She pauses to make a notation on a pad. Just then, a rumble as Owens rolls his chair down the track toward them. He shoots a look over Billy’s shoulder and says, “I’ll tell you what I see, doc.”
“Lieutenant Owens! Let your deputy do—”
“A woman with massive warheads, real first-strike hooters,” he goes on, unperturbed.
“Owens, please!” she pleads with him. “I’m required to test both of you while you’re on duty, but you’re making it impossible.”
“Sorry, but whadaya think? Am I normal?”
“Owens, you’re a certified, card-carrying American male.”
“Thanks, doc,” he says, then rolls down the rail to the other end of the console.
Susan Burns turns back to Billy Riordan and flips to the next ink blot.
“Now, Lieutenant Riordan, what do you see?”
Billy takes his time with this one. Beads of sweat form on his forehead. Susan Burns watches as the blood pressure hits a way-too-high 210 over 135. “What is it, lieutenant? What comes to mind?”
Softly. “The fires of hell.”
“I see.”
“Do you, doctor?” Louder now. “Do you see the pestilence, war, famine, and death?”
“Why don’t you explain it to me?”
“It is written in the Book. It is sung by angels in the heavens.”
“Do you mean that literally, Riordan? Do the angels really sing?”
“Everything in the Book means just what it says. The angels are real, and so are their songs.”
“Are there times you can hear them?”
“Now,” Billy says. “I can hear them now.”
BOOK THREE
Soldiers of the Apocalypse
-20-
Kill Them All
An old VW van shifts gears and heads slowly up the road of crushed rock, winding around the mountain. Inside, Rachel drives and Brother David sits next to her, holding a Bible. He is in his country preacher’s garb, black suit, white shirt, and thin, dark tie. A blonde ten-year-old girl with pigtails sits on his lap.