On the gantry ledge, Jericho’s head is over the edge, the commando trying to shove him off. Jericho rolls over, pinning the commando beneath him. The commando kicks at Jericho, toppling him backwards into the silo wall, which is studded with hoses and gauges. The commando dives for the Uzi.
Jericho spins the wheel of a valve just below a sign emblazoned, “Warning: LOX.” He grabs a hose and aims it at the commando. A blast of liquid oxygen shoots out and hits the man commando squarely in the face, blinding him and searing him with a freezing pain. He staggers backwards, squeezing the trigger of the Uzi, firing wildly, the shots pinging off the silo wall. He pirouettes, claws at his eyes, takes a step backward, then another, then a final one. But his foot doesn’t come down. He has stepped off the ledge, seems to hang there a moment, then plummets toward the floor, screaming, falling, falling… and landing with a thunk at David’s feet, the Uzi skittering a few feet away.
Jericho makes his way to the edge, looks down at David, and for a long moment, the two men just glare at each other. “I’ll be back!” Jericho shouts. “I’m coming back for the woman, but I’m coming back for you, too.”
“No you won’t! It’s not in your nature. Run, Jericho, Run. It’s what you’re good at.”
There is nothing Jericho can say. He backs away from the ledge, painfully pops his dislocated shoulder back into place and retrieves his knife from the gantry floor. He moves back to the silo wall, climbs into the exhaust tube, and disappears from view.
He wriggles slowly through the tube, climbing toward the surface. If the commandos cannot find the tube’s outlet pipe which is obscured in the old river bed by underbrush, safety waits above.
But safety can be a hell all its own.
So Jericho is not thinking about escape.
He is already planning how he will join the battle.
-35-
Ask the Missile
Base Camp Alpha is a scene of controlled chaos at the foot of Chugwater Mountain eleven hundred meters from the blown front gate of the 318th Missile Squadron. The sights, sounds and smells are pure military as Quonset huts are erected, tents are pitched, and men and materiél pour in.
Loaded with equipment, olive green deuce-and-a-half trucks pull up the gravel road. Moving slower in the procession, massive trucks called HEMETTS carry tons of ammunition and building supplies. CH-47 Chinook helicopters off-load troops of the Armored Cavalry, and CH-46 Sea Knight copters lower Light Armored Vehicles on cargo hooks.
Forklifts move pallets loaded with wooden crates and bladders of fuel. Bulldozers clear trees and push topsoil spiked with twisted limbs into makeshift fortifications. A dozen M2/3 Bradley Fighting Vehicles equipped with grenade launchers, TOW missile launchers and 25 mm. cannon take a forward position alongside six M109A6 Paladin self-propelled howitzers. Poking through the pine trees, a 120 mm cannon appears. It is attached to an MA1A2 Abrams main battle tank, a seventy-ton fighting machine that is the most sophisticated piece of rolling armor in the history of warfare. Four of the tanks, encased in armor plate tougher than the eighteen inches of solid steel protecting a battleship’s control tower, crunch through trees and underbrush and take their positions.
MLRS rocket launchers on tracked vehicles pull into place at the perimeter. Called “steel rain” by the Iraqis whose parade they rained on. the rocket launchers fire TGW smart missiles. As the vehicles come to a halt, struts extend, elevating the rocket tubes to fire at an thirty-degree angle over the missile silo. It is a strategy that might be called, “if all else fails… ” for no one believes they can shoot down a Peacekeeper missile.
The PK is cold launched, ejected from the canister by pressure created by a mixture of water and gases in a generator. The missile literally pops up out of the silo when the pressure in the sealed canister reaches three hundred twenty pounds per square inch, and something’s got to give. What gives is the missile, all one hundred ninety thousand pounds of it.
There is that moment, less than one second, when the PK hangs there, one hundred feet above the ground. If a ground-to-air rocket launcher could acquire the target, if the gunners knew precisely the moment the Peacekeeper would be there, maybe it could be shot down. But there is no time. In that next second, the rockets ignite with the roar of an angry god, and in the next sixty seconds, they catapult the missile to eighty-six thousand feet.
The first stage peels off, and the second stage fires up, again burning brightly for just a minute, but carrying the missile to a height of three hundred seventy-thousand feet. The third stage is not much longer lived, giving its all in less than ninety seconds, but by this time, the missile is in space traveling at an incredible fifteen thousand miles an hour. It has gone ballistic.
Everywhere at Base Camp Alpha, there are the sounds of chugging diesel engines and spinning rotors, the shouts of men hard at work building and digging. The fragrance of the trees and rich brown earth is mixed now with the pungent smell of diesel fuel and wet canvas and lubricated metal.
By nightfall, there will be enough firepower here to overthrow a healthy number of third-world countries. Whether it is sufficient to take over a missile silo without killing half-a-dozen foreign ambassadors or causing what the Atomic Energy Commission would blithely refer to as a nuclear incident is another matter.
Half a mile above Base Camp Alpha, on an old logging road whose ruts are now overgrown with sunflowers and bright red Indian paintbrush, a lone rider in buckskins sits astride a golden Palomino. Motionless, Kenosha watches as the elaborate war machine is assembled. Then, with a tug of the reins, man and horse turn and make their way higher up the slope, through strands of white birch trees, across a plateau of sagebrush, then higher still through a stand of fir trees. Kenosha works the horse farther away until he can no longer see or hear the grinding engines below him, until he is swallowed by the ancient forest itself.
In the launch control capsule, James works doggedly at the computer as Rachel watches over his shoulder. Brother David enters the capsule from the tunnel, and Rachel glares at him.
“How was your proselytizing? Did you convert her?” Rachel’s tone is sarcastic, and she shoots an angry look at Susan Burns, who is handcuffed and sitting on the floor against the rear wall of the capsule. The psychiatrist wears a blue flightsuit, her hair flowing over her shoulders.
“The woman is not important,” David says, “but something else is. We seem to have a stray airman who refuses to either die or see the light.”
Susan looks toward him, and then away, trying not to reveal her interest. Still, David catches the look in her eyes. “Yes, doctor, I refer to your favorite patient, the cowardly coal miner from Shitkicker, West Virginia.” He turns toward Rachel. “Have Matthew’s men above ground scour the river bed. He’ll be there presently.”
“Armed?” Rachel asks.
“Only with a knife. Matthew will dispose of him.” He looks back to Susan who gives no reaction. “Other than the vexatious sergeant, everything is under control. The ambassadors are confined in the equipment room, and the loud-mouthed sergeant has his own quarters.” He walks down the rail toward the launch commander’s console. “James, how goes it?”
“Damn slow.”
“What can I do to help you?”
James lets out a mirthless laugh. “Bring me the President.”
“Why, looking for an appointment to the cabinet? Secretary of geekdom, maybe.”
“No. I want to ask him the Secondary Launch Code.”
“I doubt he’d tell you.”