Behind him, Matthew surveys the damage. Rachel, carrying an Uzi, is at his side. A commotion, and David turns. Airman Reynolds bursts into the room, soaking wet, a towel around his waist. “Quick, call STRATCOM! Call NORAD! Call the President! We’ve been… ”
He sees the massacre, stops short, knows in that instant he’s a dead man.
The thwomp from Matthew’s silenced MP-5 drops Reynolds who was going to say, “overrun” but simply says “fucked” as his dying word.
David grimaces and hangs up the phone. “Let’s move!” he commands Gabriel.
A sudden look of worry crosses Matthew’s face. “The PAL code for the elevator!”
Rachel hands David a brown envelope with a tie seal. “Billy has done his job so very well.”
In the launch control capsule, Owens yells into the dead line. “Security Alpha, do you read me? Come in, Security Alpha!”
At the far end of the console, Susan studies Billy, who is oddly serene. “What’s happening, Lieutenant Riordan?”
Owens wheels around. “Why ask him? Billy’s been out to lunch for the last six months.”
“Riordan!” Susan implores him.
Billy recites the answer as if memorized from his catechism. “Stars in the sky will fall to earth like figs shaken from a dying tree.”
“What does that mean?” she demands.
“Just what it says. The Bible is not allegory. It is the Word. Are you ready for the Apocalypse?”
-22-
Name that Neurosis
Captain Pete Pukowlski leads the U.N. delegation down a ladder into the generator room beneath the missile silo. The thumpa-thumpa of the launch generator is as soothing to the captain as a mother’s heartbeat to an infant. “You’ve seen the brains and the balls of the missile,” he says. “These are its legs.”
Pukowlski steps over a taut hose that runs from the generator to the canister sheathing the missile. He waits a moment, surveying his domain, as the ambassadors gather around him. “The missile’s shot out of the tube by a blast of heated gases that are pressurized to three hundred twenty pounds a square inch. Whoosh!” The captain makes a plunging motion with his arm. “It’s pretty much like the Polaris on the subs, or one of those toy rockets where the kids pump it up with air pressure.”
“A toy?” the Israeli ambassador asks. “That is a rather casual reference to a weapon of mass destruction.”
Jackie Mason! The name comes to Pukowlski. The ambassador reminds him of Jackie Mason.
“Well, of course, this baby’s not a toy,” Pukowlski says, retreating. “Not with ten MIRV’s on the top. And of course, the rocket’s not the weapon at all, just the delivery system, but my point is, the initial propulsion is the same as… ”
Oh the hell with it, the captain thinks, just letting it go. Why try to justify anything to these bozos? He catches sight of Sergeant Jericho mopping the floor of the generator room, a furry brown animal crawling around his neck. A couple of the ambassadors have noticed the goof-off, too, and Pukowlski clears his throat to get their attention, then plows ahead. “Anyway, gentlemen, when the missile is clear of the silo, the computer in the fourth stage sends a message to fire up the rocket engines. And, my friends, when those burners ignite, it’s Mardi Gras, the Fourth of July, and Christmas… ” He shoots a look at the Israeli, trying to recall the name of that Jew Christmas before giving it up. “All rolled into one.”
But the ambassadors do not seem to be in the holiday spirit. At the moment, they are watching Jack Jericho go about the mundane task of swabbing the floor while a rodent perches on his shoulder. Pukowlski shoots Jericho a murderous look which goes unacknowledged. As usual, Jericho’s mind is elsewhere. “Sergeant!” Pukowlski shouts. “Get rid of that rat.”
Startled, Jericho snaps to attention, or the best he can while holding a mop. “Sir!”
“Did you hear me, Jericho?”
“Yes, sir. But it’s a ferret. It kills rats.”
“And I kill sergeants. Do you follow me, Jericho?”
“Like a duck behind its mother… sir.”
Jericho stuffs the ferret in the large front pocket of his fatigues, grabs his mop, and heads down the ladder into the drainage sump.
David and Rachel lead a contingent of commandos across the security bridge. In his dark suit and tie and carrying a leather briefcase, David looks like a lawyer rushing to court, albeit a lawyer splattered with the blood of a deceased Air Security Policeman. The barracks having been secured, Gabriel joins the procession, while Matthew remains with his men in Security Command. At the elevator housing, David types out an alpha-numeric code on a PAL keypad. The computer screen flashes, “Access Granted,” and the massive steel doom rumbles open.
Suddenly, from behind them, “Halt!”
Carrying an M-16A2 service rifle, Sayers runs toward them across the security bridge. A commando drops to his knees and swings up his assault rifle, but Sayers dives to the floor of the bridge, shoulder rolls, then flattens himself into the prone firing position. Sayers has never before fired a gun in anger, unless you count a perfunctory shot with a .38 at a black BMW filled with drug dealers that was cruising his Brooklyn neighborhood. Now, in the fraction of a second that will spell his life or death, his training comes back to him, just as they said it would:
“Describe the M-16A2, airman.”
“A lightweight, magazine-fed, gas-operated, air-cooled, and shoulder-fired weapon, sir.”
“State the maximum range and maximum effective range.”
“Maximum range, three thousand five hundred thirty four meters, sir. Maximum effective range five hundred fifty meters, sir.”
Sayers is only twenty-five meters away when he lets the first burst go, and two commandos fall. “Take him!” David shouts. “Blast him to hell.”
Another commando fires wildly, spraying the security bridge with his Uzi but missing Sayers, who squeezes off another burst and takes out the shooter. Then he swings his rifle toward the long-haired man in the blood-spattered suit, the one shouting orders to the others. Odd, Sayers thinks, how he stands there squarely in the middle of the elevator housing, giving me a full target, unafraid. I’ll cut him in two. Sayers has him in the front sight, aiming for the middle of his chest, is ready to add polka dots to his tie. Squeezing the trigger now, and…
Nothing.
Jammed.
Damned.
And the rest of it comes back, too.
Swab out the bore and chamber with a patch moistened with CLP.
Clean upper receiver of powder fouling, corrosion, dirt, and rust.
Clean bolt carrier group.
Who the hell ever thought we’d really need these things? Which is Sayers’ last thought as he futilely tries to clear his weapon and Gabriel puts one bullet through his left eye with an MP-5.
“Providence truly smiles on us today,” David says, leading his faithful into the elevator.
“What’s the T.O. say when security doesn’t answer?” Owens asks, banging down the phone in the launch control capsule.
“But security answered,” Billy Riordan says.
“Yeah, then hung up.”
“The power probably went down again.”
Their flight chairs are centered on the command console. Dr. Susan Burns sits behind them, watching and listening.