“Something’s screwy,” Owens says. He hits a switch on the console and a tape rewinds. He hits the “play” button and his own voice comes from a speaker mounted on the wall.
“Yeah, what about the backup?”
A pause, then, “Backup shorted out. We’ll report it.”
The sound of chairs scraping the floor, then a muffled voice. Owens stops the tape, hand cranks the reel backward, then hits a button that enhances background sound and suppresses sound closest to the mike. The voice is still muffled, and because of the slow play time, the tone is a deep bass, but the words are audible. “Qu-ick. ca-ll STRAT-COM. Ca-ll NO-RAD. Ca-al the Pres-I-dent. We’ve be-en… ”
Another pause and then a rich plumping sound, a hammer smacking a ripe melon. And then slowly, a deep baritone, “fu-cked.”
“Without having been kissed,” Owens says. “Jesus H. Christ, what’s going on up there!” He quickly slides down the console toward the communications racks. Ordinarily, the deputy is in charge of communications, but Owens wouldn’t trust Billy Riordan to call for home delivery pizza. Owens has his choice of an array of communications gear, but he chooses the most reliable, the old black rotary telephone. He dials the number for the duty officer at STRATCOM and gets a busy signal. Damn! He flicks on the AF-SAT up-link transmitter to bring in a satellite. When he’s made the connection, Owens struggles to keep the fear out of his voice, “STRATCOM-1, this is Launch Facility 47-Q. Do you read me?”
The headquarters of U.S. Strategic Command, called STRATCOM, is buried deep in a blast-proof bunker at Offut Air Force Base outside Omaha, Nebraska. The cavernous War Room is lined with computer consoles and high-tech communications gear. On the front wall, the Command Center Processing and Display system, commonly called the “Big Board,” shows North America, Europe and Asia overlaid with colorful tracking symbols representing movement of aircraft and naval fleets.
Colonel Frank Farris leans over a communications technician and speaks into a microphone. He has finished his fourth cup of coffee and third donut in the last hour and is pleased to have something to do besides the crossword puzzle. “We read you, 47-Q. We’ve lost the link with your security officer.”
“No kidding,” Owens says. “That’s why I’m on the horn. If this is a drill, no one told us about it. What the heck’s—”
“Stay cool, 47-Q. We have no record of a security drill, and no other capsules report any irregularities, but go to Condition Yellow. Secure the capsule, terminate elevator access, scramble communications.”
“Affirmative, STRATCOM.”
Owens clicks off the phone and takes a look at the open blast door. “Hey Billy, you heard the man. Now, how the hell do we scramble communications?” He opens the T.O. and leafs through the pages.
“I’ll shut down the elevator,” Billy says.
Dr. Susan Burns watches as he punches several buttons on the console. Leaning close to him, she says, “Billy, I know you’ve been under great stress, and I want to help, but you’ve got to tell me—”
“There’s nothing you can do. Nothing.” He fiddles with a switch, then turns to Owens. “It won’t lock down.”
“What!”
A buzzer sounds, and a woman’s soothing mechanical voice comes over the speaker above their heads, “Elevator access granted. Elevator in motion.”
Owens stares are a digital display showing the elevator’s steady descent into the hole. “Now, who—”
“Probably Security coming down to find out why the lines are dead,” Billy says. “Hope they’re not as spooked as you are.”
“Yeah, well they’re not trapped like sardines in a… ” Owens notices the blast door is still open. “Billy, are you fucking deaf? Close the door! Do I have to come down there and do everything myself?”
“The door is open for saints and sinners alike.”
Owens’ eyes go wide. “What the fuck are you—”
“We welcome the righteous and the wicked. Salvation is open to all.”
“Are you out of your cotton-picking mind?” Owens swivels toward the blast door. From outside comes the clacking of boots on the catwalk connecting the launch control capsule to the elevator. Owens kicks his flight chair down the railing toward Billy, then reaches out to punch the red button that will close the blast door. Billy grabs Owens’ arm with both hands and yanks him away.
Owens is heavier and stronger, and he shakes Billy off and reaches out again. This time, Billy pulls a snub-nosed .38 from a zippered pocket in his flightsuit. “Freeze!”
Owens stops short. His hand is a six inches — a million miles — from the button. “You are fucking crazy!” He grabs the gun, twisting it away while he pounds at Billy’s face with his free hand. They struggle awkwardly, still seated in their flight chairs.
Susan Burns leaps from her chair and dives for the console, hitting the red button. With a soft hydraulic whoosh, the pressure begins building to close the eight-ton door. The door is reinforced with steel pins and coated with space-age polymers. Closed and locked, it secures the capsule against a nuclear blast above. Now, it begins its painfully slow closing.
A jumble of sounds, Owens and Billy grappling with each other, their breaths coming in short, harsh exhalations. The door is halfway closed. The pounding of the boots growing louder. A shout from outside, “Go for it!”
A commando dives for the entrance and lands across the doorway. As the door closes, cracking his ribs, three other commandos use the man’s back as a springboard to vault inside. Owens, one hand around Billy’s neck, tries to wrestle away his gun. Gabriel swings his rifle butt and smashes Owens across the forehead. Billy holds his throat and coughs. Terrified, Susan watches helplessly as a woman in an ankle-length dress and a man in a blood-spattered dark suit enter the capsule. The scene is so beyond belief as to be utterly surreal.
Brother David surveys the console, a look of self-satisfaction on his face. Then he heads straight for the blast door control panel and hits a green button. He does this, Susan notes, as naturally as a driver flicking on the wipers. Knew what he was looking for, a cocky smirk on his face. A chill runs through Susan with the realization that this man, whoever he is, knows what he is doing. And that look in his eyes. So strange. A burning intensity but at the same time, an icy remoteness.
The blast door slowly opens wide enough for two commandos to drag their injured cohort inside. David hits a red button and waits as the door slowly closes with a liquid pflump of its seals. He pulls out a walkie-talkie. “Matthew, the angel has landed. Maintain the perimeter.”
He turns to the others, seeming to take inventory. He spreads his arms over the glowing lights and sweeping radar beams of the console. “Ah, the splendors that I behold. Home, sweet home. Wouldn’t Daddy be proud?”
-23-
The Unstable Boy
Jack Jericho listens to the rhythm of water dripping from the drain into the sump. He is hunched over the Launch Eject Gas Generator, up to his knees in grimy water, tending to a pump beneath the floor of the tunnel that connects the missile silo to the launch control capsule. Twisting a monkey wrench against a stubborn valve, his hand slips and the wrench clangs off the tubing and slams into his knee.
“Dammit and little chickens!” He rubs the knee and hops on one foot, splashing through the sump. When the pain eases, he returns to the valve, tightens the wrench, and uses two hands to lever it open. In a moment, the pump is primed, and water begins flushing down the pipes and out of the sump. Bent at the waist in the low channel, Jericho heads toward the silo. “Now, Susan,” he says to himself, “I mean, Dr. Burns. Don’t judge a book by its cover.” He stops, takes the measure of his own words. “No. Stupid and defensive. A total cliché.”