“You won’t melt.”
On the gantry, Jericho opens the rucksack and pulls out the last of Sayers’ bungee cords and the telescoping fishing rod he retrieved from the barracks. He secures one end of the cord to the gantry railing and ties the other end around his waist. It’s the only way he figures he can get to the silo floor without using the gantry, which makes too much noise, or the ladder which is too slow and in plain view. He slides the fishing rod open to its full length, then roots around in the rucksack until he finds a whipperwhill skeeter fly and a long-shanked hook. Then he lets loose with a long, graceful cast toward the floor one hundred feet below.
The fly dangles near the ear of the commando named Jacob. Absentmindedly watching his buddy, who is halfway down the grate into the sump, Jacob swats at the skeeter and misses. Jericho reels in and casts again. This time the fly buzzes just off the man’s earlobe. He slaps at it and plants the razor-sharp triple barbed hook in his ear. “Yee! Ouch! Holy… ”
Jericho reels in as the commando yelps and begins a crazy dance across the silo floor, pulled along by the hook that is embedded firmly in his ear. The other commando crawls out of the grate. Unable to see the thin fishing line, he stares in disbelief at his comrade. “Jacob, are you possessed?”
Two other commandos hear Jacob’s yelping and race in from the tunnel. They behold the weird sight of their comrade jitterbugging across the silo, his head cocked to one side. “Brother David says Satan’s minions can make themselves invisible,” one commando says.
“If we don’t find this infidel, Brother David will make us invisible,” the other replies.
One looks up and spots Jericho on the gantry ledge, preoccupied with his fishing. The two commandos begin climbing the metal ladder that runs up the silo wall. On the gantry, Jericho keeps reeling line in and letting it out, as if he were fighting a marlin. All the time, he is leading Jacob just where he wants him, until splash, Jacob falls into the open sump. His buddy jumps in to rescue him. Jericho watches a moment, waiting for more commandos to come to the aid of their brethren. He cannot see the two commandos ascending the ladder, and by the time he realizes they are no longer on the silo floor, it is too late. He hears a noise behind him and whirls around to see the men climbing onto the gantry from the ladder.
“What have we here?” one commando says, triumphantly, pointing an Italian Beretta —12 at Jericho’s chest.
“The infidel,” his friend answers. “Brother David will reward us.”
“Sure he will,” Jericho says. “You’ll get an extra ration of librium with your rice pudding.”
“Don’t move, heathen!”
The Uzi is on the floor of the gantry. If Jericho goes for it, he’ll be cut in two. “Brother David and I have an appointment,” he says. “You best take me to him.”
“Any tricks, and we’re to send you straight to hell.”
Sizing up the situation…
“Already been there,” Jericho says, “and all things considered, I’d rather be in Wyoming.”
Nowhere to go…
“Now, put your hands on the back of your head,” the commando says.
But down!
Jericho obeys, then flexes his knees and leaps backward off the ledge of the gantry. He plunges toward the silo floor, and above him, the startled commandos hear his cry, “Sh-i-i-i-i-i-i-t!”
But there is no splat of bone and tissue against steel.
Exchanging startled looks, the commandos cautiously approach the
edge and look down toward the silo floor. Suddenly, Jericho bounces back up, grabs an ankle of each commando and yanks them off the gantry. Now, three bodies plummet toward the floor.
Two sounds.
The simultaneous, sickening crunch of the two commandos splattered on the polished steel floor.
And the bo-ing of the bungee cord as it reaches its full length just five feet above the floor and springs Jericho back up toward the gantry a second time. Down he goes again, and bo-ing, back up again, finally coming to rest five feet above the bodies. Jericho unhooks the bungee cord and drops to the floor. He races to a closed grate at the entrance to the tunnel, opens it and climbs into the sump, just as Jacob, holding a bloody ear, and his buddy crawl out of the grate beneath the missile. As Jericho slides the grate back into place over his head, he hears the thunder of footsteps and the shouts of commandos in the tunnel. He pauses a moment to let his eyes become adjusted to the darkness, then works his way through the maze of pipes and equipment, listening to the rhythmic thumpa thumpa of the generators.
“Welcome back to hell,” Jericho says to himself.
-44-
Humans Never Win
Despite the clamor all around him — huddled conferences of military officers, F.B.I. and D.I.A. agents — Professor Lionel Morton plays a quiet game of chess on his wheelchair computer. He is as placid as a white-haired retiree on a park bench, oblivious to the commotion. He appears, in fact, just the same as he has been his entire adult life, completely indifferent to those around him. To Lionel Morton, with Pd.D.’s in both physics and aeronautical engineering, with a complete understanding of both theoretical and applied uses of nuclear energy, the world is merely his test tube. If other people have any use, it is as guinea pigs, laboratory rats. They are neither hated nor loved but are to be used for the advancement of knowledge and science.
The professor hits a key and moves a pawn, sacrificing it to the computer’s next move.
Certain people are more valuable than others, he knows. A runny-nosed child who wants to play baseball — even one’s own son — is no use whatsoever. This is so clear that Lionel Morton does not even try to understand why many so fathers waste their Saturdays at ball games, bowling alleys, or beaches. They could be productive, but instead choose to fritter away their time with wives and children. Children, for chrissakes, are of even less use than women.
Morton moves a black pawn to f-4, and the computer moves a white pawn to f-5.
Shortly after World War II, Morton read of the numerous experiments conducted on concentration camp prisoners by Nazi scientists. Young men were forced into vats of ice water while technicians timed how long it took them to die of hypothermia. The world was revolted by these and other medical experiments performed by supposedly reputable physicians. But to Lionel Morton, then a graduate student, it all made sense. The Germans wanted to know how long their own pilots could survive in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic. No use wasting precious airplane fuel searching for airmen already dead. As for the concentration camp prisoners, well, they were dead men, sooner or later, anyway.
The problem with most people, Lionel Morton concluded long ago, was that they could not be objective. Emotion clouded judgment, so he banished it from his life. He prided himself on his ability to place rational thought above all else. Romantic love was a psychotic state to be avoided, so he never suffered a broken heart, never even cried. Sports, movies, music and TV were mindless excursions from reality, wastes of time. On vacation, he would visit the Stone Age nuclear reactors at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, or stay home and fool with mathematical formulas that would disprove cold fusion. On his desk in his university office, instead of family mementos, Lionel Morton placed gruesome photos of burn victims from Hiroshima. He neither mourned for these victims nor gloated over their pain. To him, they were simply scientific exhibits, proof of the ultimate power of man’s genius.
Lionel Morton hits a key and moves a pawn to d-4, where it stares the white pawn in the eye at d-5. He takes a moment to admire the board. With his black knight at f-3 and his two pawns facing two opposing pawns on row four, he has created an unbreakable bind on e-5 and has frozen the white pawn at e-6. The computer clicks for a moment before a mechanical voice says, “Congratulations, Professor Morton. Your successful deployment of the Sicilian defense results in a Maroczy Bind. We could continue to play, but it will result in a draw. Thank you for a most interesting game.”