“David, I swear to Christ I never knew what made you tick. You were always a weird kid, and now… and now… ”
“I had powers! I had visions!”
“Yes, you did. In another age, you would have been burned at the stake. Righteous folk would have considered you the devil.”
“Or his misbegotten son.”
“Go ahead,” the professor says. “Have your fun. Crucify me.”
“What a delicious thought.”
“Look, I admit it. I didn’t know how to be a father. I was in love with my work.”
David’s tone is mocking as he mimics his father’s voice, “Not that I loved my son less, but that I loved the bomb more.”
“Damn you, David. What do you want?”
“Salvation, Daddy. Salvation for all eternity.” He clicks off the phone, then dials another number.
Jack Jericho is deep in the sump when the cellular phone rings. “Yeah, asshole. Talk to me.”
“Sergeant, in the game of chess, do you know what it’s called when you sacrifice your queen to save the king?” David asks him.
From his perch on a web of pipes in the drainage sump, Jericho speaks into the cellular phone. “I dunno, the Heimlich Maneuver?”
“It’s called postponing the inevitable.”
“Yeah, but I can wait.”
“Unfortunately, I cannot.”
“I understand,” Jericho says. “So many psychoses, so little time.”
“We’re going to launch the missile, sergeant. You can’t stop it. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t stop it.”
“So why are you concerned with me?”
“I want you here in the capsule. I want you here with me, Jack.”
The sound of his name runs a shiver through Jericho. He checks the clip on the Uzi, snaps it into place. “Why? Aren’t your half-wit apostles interesting company?”
“Jack, don’t you know our fates are intertwined?”
“Then I want a new fortune teller.”
“I can give you the peace you’ve never known. I can give you the power of which you’ve dreamed.”
“You don’t know anything of my dreams.”
“You have nightmares, don’t you Jack? I knew it the moment I saw your muddied aura. But I didn’t know then what haunted your nights. You dream of the mine, the deep, dark, scary mine.”
Jericho slumps against an electrical conduit. He doesn’t want to listen, but he does not click off. For the briefest second, Jericho wonders if he enjoys the pain, wonders if he might not deserve it.
“Jack, your ran from your destiny while I pursued mine… with a vengeance.”
Jericho’s voice is weak, his eyes hollow. “If I’d gone back in, I would have slowed the evacuation of men coming out.”
“Fate gave you one chance for glory, and you ran the other way. I’m offering you a second chance.”
“I did the right thing. I would have caused others to die.”
“You could have saved your father and your brother!”
“I followed orders, dammit!”
“And look where it got you.” David turns to Susan Burns. “Tell him. Tell him who he is, for the fool does not know.”
Susan remains silent. David slaps her hard across the cheek, then drags her to the phone. His face is red, his mood swinging wildly into rage. “Tell him, mindfucker! Tell him, you mother of harlots, you Jezebel!”
Blinking back tears, Susan says, “Survivor’s guilt. You want to be killed, Jack. You want to die now to repent for living then.”
David’s voice drops into a whisper. “That makes you a very dangerous man, and I want the dangerous men on my side.”
Jericho’s grief turns to anger. Images of his wasted years flash by. Thoughts of his family collide with fury at this madman who would destroy so much. “You’re right, I’m dangerous. I’m your nightmare because I’m just as damaged as you are. You want to die, and I just don’t give a shit. But if I die, I’m going to take you with me.”
“Words! Empty words! So long, sergeant.”
David clicks off the phone and smiles with cruel satisfaction. Susan Burns turns away so that David will not see her tears.
In the drainage sump, Jack Jericho stares into space. He is numb, detached, unfocused. The channel is lit only by dim yellow bulbs, and Jericho sits deep in the shadows. He is in a nook in the wall of the channel, a location that offers the illusion of protection. A closet in a haunted house. The phone rings again, and Jericho angrily punches a button and yells, “Go fuck yourself!”
The voice on the other end of the line seems genuinely startled. “Sergeant Jericho, must I remind you of the proper method of addressing an officer?”
“Sir, I’m sorry sir. I thought—”
“You thought nothing,” Colonel Zwick says. “Now, did I order you off the missile base?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then get the hell out of there. I swear, if Morning Star doesn’t kill you… ”
A noise startles Jericho.
“… I will!”
Jericho pulls the phone away from his ear and listens. Nothing but the thumping pumps. What was that noise, like the clank of a rifle barrel against a pipe? The colonel’s distant voice grows angrier. “Sergeant, are you there? Dammit, sergeant!” There is a soft splash in the water, and Jericho hangs up.
Thirty yards from Jericho, around a bend in the channel, four commandos with weapons drawn are on the prowl, hunched over in the low sump. They use hand signals to communicate and slow their steps to prevent splashing. A low-hanging conduit pipe from a generator blocks their path. The commando on point reaches up to brace himself. He does not see that the insulated rubber covering has been sliced open, a clean incision from a Jimmy Lile survival knife, and his hand slips into a mass of exposed wires as the insulation slides off.
Sparks explode from the opening. High voltage surges through the commando’s body, which convulses wildly, the electricity amplified by the knee-deep water, which seems to boil at his feet. Smoke billows from the open collar of his field jacket, and the channel is filled with the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh. As he sinks to the floor of the sump, floating face down in the grimy water, a second commando races to him.
“Judd! Judd!”
But poor Judd is dead. The other three commandos splash past him, rifles raised, looking for someone to shoot.
Ahead of them in the channel, hidden in the womb of the generator piping, Jericho closes his eyes and listens. Judging from the noise, he knows there are at least two more commandos, perhaps a third. He hits a switch in the nook, killing the yellow lights and plunging the sump into total darkness.
The commandos slip on infrared goggles and keep coming. They are within ten yards of Jericho’s hiding place when he grabs a handful of steel bolts from a tool tray and tosses them down the sump away from the approaching men. He ducks back into his nook, and the bolts rattle off the piping. A second later, the noise of the automatic weapons is deafening. Before the echoes have completely died out, Jericho tosses another handful of bolts in the other direction, behind the oncoming commandos. He can hear the men splashing in the water as they turn to shoot. Another volley of gunfire reverberates through the channel. Then, a scream, “Adam! You shot me! Adam… ”
The commando named Adam slogs through the water toward his friend, crying out, “No! No! No!”
Then, in the darkness, Jericho says. “Nice shooting, Adam.”
Adam whirls and fires. The bullets ricochet off metal and reverberate in the narrow channel.