“Boom! Boom!” the professor whoops. “Let the Arabs and Israelis engage in a final, all-out war. A pox on both their houses. They will expend themselves, destroy each other, and end World War III before it begins.”
The officers exchange looks and mumble to themselves. Finally, Agent Hurtgen says, “What asylum did this maniac escape from?”
“Ours,” General Corrigan replies.
-43-
The Diversion
The old Volkswagen Beetle chugs past the sign reading, “Rattlesnake Hills Sewage Plant,” grinds its gears and chugs up the mountain road at a clunky fifteen miles an hour. Inside, Jimmy Westoff inhales the tangy aroma of charred meat and sizzling grease. The tiny back seat is loaded with Styrofoam cartons of cheeseburgers, chili and french fries.
Unbeknownst to Jimmy, eight M-16 rifles are trained on him. Camouflaged in the gully at the side of the road, a squad of Army Rangers watches Jimmy drive by. A lieutenant with a darkened face and a helmet disguised as a mulberry bush speaks into his radio. “Possible enemy vehicle on Access Road One.”
A scratchy voice comes through his headset. “How many men, what sort of weaponry.”
Through an infrared night scope, the lieutenant sees the placard attached to the VW’s roof: “Old Wrangler Tavern — We Deliver.” Maybe it’s his imagination, but he thinks he gets a whiff of burgers as the car passes. “One man in a VW Beetle,” he says. “No known weapons.”
“One man?”
“Unless it’s one of those clown cars where they just keep piling out.”
Jimmy stomps on the accelerator, the little car bucks and rounds the last curve, sputtering to a stop in front of the sentry post of the 318th Missile Squadron. Jimmy gets out of the car, feels a tickle in his nose from the dust the VW has kicked up, and sneezes loudly. A kilometer away, at Base Camp Alpha, watching through a telescopic night scope and listening through bionic earpieces, Colonel Henry Zwick says, “Gesundheit.”
The road had been purposely left open in the hopes that reinforcements the Holy Church of Revelations would arrive. Colonel Zwick wanted to capture several commandos and interrogate them, but so far, the road has been quiet except for the asthmatic Volkswagen.
The colonel watches Jimmy pull out several grease-stained cartons filled with Styrofoam boxes. “We’re about to see if Napoleon was correct,” Zwick says.
“About what?” Captain Kyle Clancy asks, raising his own night scope. His face is covered with a thick layer of camouflage grease which seems to overflow the deep scar that runs from his cheekbone to his chin.
“About an army marching on its stomach. These fellows are into fast food.”
The captain lets out a little laugh. “Shit, colonel, it can’t be any worse than our M.R.E.’s.”
His arms loaded, Jimmy Westoff walks up to the guard house. He doesn’t recognize the commando in combat fatigues with no military insignia. “Who ordered forty buffalo burgers, twenty fries, and ten sides of chili?”
The commando points an M-16 at Jimmy’s head. “Outta here. This is restricted property.”
“No shit, like I really thought it was a sewage plant. You new or somethin’? And what’s with the uniform?”
From his view in the underbrush, Jack Jericho can see the sentry post in the flickering headlights of the Volkswagen. He had called the tavern an hour earlier on the cellular phone, and now he waits for his chance. A commando still guards the exhaust tube’s outlet pipe, but with any luck, he’ll be fetching dinner soon.
At the guard house, the commando is becoming annoyed. “No one told me anything about burgers.”
“Like what else is new? You wanna call the Pentagon and get authorization, ‘cause I’m telling you, my arms are getting tired, and in a minute, you’re gonna have chili all over your boots.”
“Okay, okay. Leave it all here.”
Jimmy puts the boxes on the ground, goes back to the car and brings over some more. “That’s two hundred twelve fifty, not including tip.”
The sentry pats his empty pockets. “Do you believe, as it is written in Ecclesiastes, that ‘money answereth all things’?”
“I believe that if I don’t get paid, Uncle Buck will kicketh my ass from here to Hell’s Half Acre.”
“Sorry,” the sentry says, inhaling the aroma of the burgers, and dragging one of the boxes inside the guard house. “I’m requisitioning the food in the name of the Lord.” He is salivating. Other commandos begin to drift over to the guard house, eager to eat. Their mission should have been over by now. They should be ascending to heaven. Death they could take; hunger bothered the hell out of them.
Jericho waits and watches, but the commando near the outlet pipe doesn’t move.
At the guard house, Jimmy is throwing a tantrum. “You shittin’ me? I drive all the way up here and now you’re jerking my chain.” Jimmy’s voice is cranked up a few notches. “Where’s Dempsey anyway? Sleeping one off.”
“Dempsey?”
“The security dude who’s usually here. He never stiffs me.”
From inside the gate, a broad-shouldered commando carrying a shotgun pushes his way past the others. His harsh voice carries all the way to the underbrush where Jericho watches. “What’s going on here?” Gabriel demands.
“Supper,” the sentry says, a little unsure.
“Back to your posts! All of you, now!”
Jimmy Westoff, with the blissful ignorance of the young, yells at Gabriel. “Hey, cowboy! Whether you want the grub or not, you still gotta pay. C’mon, or I’m gonna complain to the captain how you’re jerking me around out here.”
Gabriel wheels around, the shotgun pointed at Jimmy Westoff’s Adam’s apple.
“On the other hand,” Jimmy says, “if you’re a little short, maybe Uncle Buck would take a check.”
The shotgun drops toward the ground, and a second later, the blam echoes through the trees and across the missile base. Jimmy Westoff’s pant legs are warm and wet. At first he thinks he’s been shot. Then, he realizes he’s peed his pants. The rest of him is covered with cheeseburger shrapnel.
Reacting to the shotgun blast, the commando near the outlet pipe clicks off the safety on his rifle and heads toward the sentry post. Taking advantage of the diversion, Jericho darts toward the flared end of the pipe.
At the perimeter of Base Camp Alpha, a sharpshooter with a tripod-mounted Israeli Galil sniper rifle has Gabriel in the cross-hairs of his infrared scope. “I can take him,” he says, keeping his finger on the trigger, his breathing soft and slow. He moves the rifle slightly up and to the right, taking into account wind speed and the gravitational fall of the bullet over eleven hundred meters.
“I’m sure you can,” Colonel Zwick says. “But we don’t fire a shot until our orders change.”
“Yes, sir,” he says, releasing the pressure on the trigger, and muttering an inaudible “shit” under his breath.
At the guard house, the commandos begin to disperse and resume their positions. One comes back to the exhaust tube’s outlet pipe. He does not notice that the screen has been replaced just a tad cockeyed, it being hard to pull into place from inside the pipe.
Now, in the darkness and gloom of the exhaust tube, Jack Jericho works his way back toward hell. That’s the way he thinks of it. But Jericho knows there are all kinds of purgatory. He’s been doing a slow death in one of his own making. How much worse can this one be?
Sweating heavily, Jack Jericho works his way down the exhaust tube toward the missile silo. He is halfway there, the Uzi slung over one shoulder, the rucksack on the other, when he is startled by a sudden, discordant sound. It takes him a moment to realize that the cellular phone is ringing. He digs it out of a pocket and answers, “Yeah.”