“If you thought that, if you really knew that, dear old Dad, you would have told your buddy Hugh, and he’d have dropped Special Forces down the hole quicker than you can say, ‘ICBM.’ Good-bye for now, Daddy. See you at dawn.”
-41-
Water Ride
Exhausted and dripping with grease, Jack Jericho crawls through the scrub brush on the banks of the dry river bed. A commando sentry patrols nearby. Waiting for the chance to get by him, Jericho hears what sounds like a man’s heavy breathing somewhere behind him. Then the cr-ack of a twig snapping. Jericho flattens himself to the ground.
Another cr-ack.
The bushes move beside him.
A snort.
Then a plug-ugly boar scuttles over, sniffing and licking his ugly chops. Jericho doesn’t move.
“Who’s there?” A commando’s voice, perhaps 10 meters away. The man is obscured by the heavy underbrush.
The boar gets a whiff of Jericho’s filthy pants, seems to like the rank odor, and begins licking. “Good, eh boy?” Jericho whispers. “Bacon grease, probably one of your cousins.”
The boar slowly moves up Jericho’s body, its mouth drooling, its tusks jabbing him. Finally, the boar begins licking Jericho’s face.
“Identify yourself!” the commando demands, his voice louder. “I hear you in there.”
Jericho listens to the sound of a magazine being clicked into place, the commando nervously checking and re-checking his rifle.
The boar lets out a grunt, then trundles off in the direction of the voice. It sniffs the air, getting the man’s scent. Jericho reaches into his rucksack and pulls out one of the bungee cords. Making a loop out of a small piece of the cord, he fashions a homemade slingshot. He picks up a small round stone and wedges it into the loop. “Sorry, boy,” he says, and lets fly.
Thwap! He nails the boar in the ass.
It emits a beastly roar and charges toward the commando.
“Last chance!” the commando yells. “Come out with your hands up.” He storms through the bushes toward Jericho. The boar bursts out of the bushes in an explosion of tusks and teeth and barrels into the man, eviscerating him with its razor-sharp tusks. The man’s shrieks cut through the woods.
Jericho gets to his feet and takes off across the dry river bed. In a few moments, he is trudging up a trail above the missile base toward Chugwater Dam. The sun has set, and the base is lit by sweeping searchlights from the Army’s base camp, plus the work lights at the ever-expanding front line of tanks, trucks and other military vehicles. He pauses, realizes how hungry and thirsty he is. The bologna sandwiches are gone from his pockets.
He knows that a river used to flow down the mountain, but the Army Corps of Engineers took care of that with Chugwater Dam. Now, the mountainside is inhospitable, unless you’re good at foraging. Jericho quickly locates some thistle plants, peels off the thorns and chews on the tender stems. It’s a watery snack he called “survival celery” back in West Virginia. He peels another and hands it to Ike, who stays at his feet. Ike chews the stem, keeping his eyes on Jericho.
After a moment, he continues up the trail in the dim light. Along the path are fir and birch trees. He finds a wild blackberry bush just off the trail and pauses to pick a handful. Sour but not bad. A few more paces, and Jericho comes across the fern called fiddleheads. Pulling out some young ones, he chews the leathery fronds that taste a bit like raw asparagus.
Looking up the mountainside, Jericho sees the night lights at the Chugwater Dam control building. He pulls out the cellular phone he had found in the security officer’s office.
The command tent at Base Camp Alpha is jammed with maps, charts and communications gear. Outside, the sound of heavy vehicles has faded, and the shouts of soldiers have quieted. It is dusk, and the Army is in place. Puffing a pipe, Colonel Henry Zwick fills the tent with cherry blend smoke, a trick the Armored Cavalry officer discovered years earlier to avoid the stench of diesel fuel, metallic lubricants, and too many men with too few showers. The colonel stands inside a semi-circle of Special Forces officers, using a wooden pointer to highlight sections of a scale model of the missile base.
“In conclusion, gentlemen,” the colonel says, “if every last one of you does exactly as ordered, and if every one of your men performs exactly as they’ve been trained, maybe — just maybe — we can end this without a nuclear catastrophe or the loss of the hostages.”
There is some mumbling among the officers, interrupted when an aide signals the colonel to pick up a red telephone. Zwick punches a button, activating the speaker and a tape recorder. After listening a moment, the colonel says, “What’s your name again, son?”
“Jack Jericho, United States Air Force, E-5.” For once, Jericho sounds like an airman. In the tent, the officers stop talking among themselves and listen. The voice is distant, and there is a sound of rushing water.
Colonel Zwick fiddles with his handlebar mustache. “You in the latrine, sergeant?”
Jack Jericho sits on a steel catwalk above a spillway at Chugwater Dam. Twenty feet below, water tumbles into an aqueduct which runs from the dam down the mountain and around the missile base. From his perch, Jericho can see the lights from the open missile silo. Every few seconds, searchlights sweep over the missile base from the Army base camp nearby.
“I’m on the dam, sir, above the aqueduct,” Jericho says. “I’ve got a cellular phone.” The Green Beret officers exchange looks. Base Camp Alpha is equipped with five military radio systems: UHF secure, HF secure, FM secure, SATCOM and VHF, and this dipshit is calling on a cellular, like some orthodontist in his BMW. A goofball kid with a scanner could pick up the call.
The colonel gestures to the miniature dam on top the scale-model mountain, then drags the pointer down the slope toward the missile silo. “How’d you get up there? Were you in the silo?”
Jericho hesitates. A faint notion of guilt clings to him, as if the colonel asked why he hadn’t died fighting the terrorists. “Yes, sir.”
At that moment, in the security building of the 318th Missile squadron, a commando wearing earphones sits with his hand on the dial of a radio frequency scanner. He listens to the scratchy voice of Jack Jericho. “I was there. I met the enemy, sir, and he ain’t us.”
“Sounds like you’re going to be of considerable help to your Uncle Sam, airman. We need you to brief us on Morning Star.”
“Sir, I know that hole better than anybody,” Jericho blurts out. “Every nook and cranny. I can help your men launch an assault. I’d like to go with the first wave.”
In the command tent, Colonel Zwick puffs at his pipe. Behind him, an Army Ranger captain whispers, “The first wave. Thinks he’s at Omaha Beach.”
“You’re not Air Force Special Ops, are you son?” Colonel Zwick asks.
“No, sir.”
“Have you ever seen death up close?”
Jericho’s eyes flicker, but he doesn’t answer. It is a question that defies an answer.
“Son, what is it you do for the 318th?”
“Maintenance, sir. I clean the sump, maintain the perimeter fence and keep the launch generator running.”
In the command tent, some of the officers — Delta Force, Rangers, and Night Stalkers — exchange crooked grins.
“That’s an important job, and I’ve got another important job for you,” the colonel says. “I want you to brief us on everything you saw and heard down there. I’ve got diagrams of the tunnel and the sump, but diagrams only get you so far. I want you to look my officers in the eye and tell ‘em what the hell’s going on down there. Then you’ll get out of the way, and we’ll do whatever we’re ordered to do.”