“Time for what? To welcome the Apocalypse?”
“No. To get the hell out of here.” Daniel swings the rifle away and uses his free hand to help Jericho to his feet. The splashes are drawing closer, and a flashlight beam dances down the channel in the distance.
Jericho takes a few wobbly steps down the sump the other way, then looks back over his shoulder. “Why are you doing this? Aren’t you a believer?”
“Oh, I believe, all right. I believe in a forgiving God. I believe in love and goodwill toward our brothers and sisters. I just don’t believe in Brother David.”
Moments later, Jericho stops at the intersection of two channels in the sump. He hears the splashing and occasional clanging behind him as the commando team hunts him down.
He can outrun them.
He can hide from them.
But it won’t do any good. It won’t stop David and his band of crazies.
He tears a strip of cloth from his fatigues and wedges it into a piece of piping directly over the channel. Then he goes down the intersecting channel. Bolted into the wall is an orange steel ladder leading into a vertical metal chute. A sign bolted to the chute reads, “Personnel Evacuation Shaft.”
It will take him all the way to the river bed above the missile silo. He will have to find another way back in, but he’s already thinking about it, and it may just work.
He remembers something Kenosha told him, something about the missile raping the earth. Sooner or later, Kenosha said, the earth would reclaim the land. He pictures Kenosha, hears his words. “In the end, my friend, the earth will prevail.”
“That’s right, you smart old coot,” Jericho says to himself. “But maybe I can give Mother Earth a helping hand.”
Colonel Henry Zwick and Kenosha stand over a table, intently studying reconnaissance photos of the missile facility. “What we’re trying to do,” the colonel says, “is achieve simultaneous entry into as many access corridors as possible with maximum firepower. Our problem is that the only sure way to get down there is the elevator shaft, and it’s—”
“Sir!” Captain Kyle Clancy, his face coated with camouflage grease, interrupts. “With all due respect, sir, strategy and tactics should not be discussed with… ”
For a moment, the colonel thinks Clancy is going to say, “Indians.” For the same moment, the colonel is ready to throttle the younger man. But finally, Clancy says, “civilians.”
“If you don’t shut up, captain,” the colonel fires back, “that’s what you’re going to be. Now, you can listen if you want, but the man I want to hear from is Kenosha. He knows the territory, Kyle, and he’s too modest to tell you, but he earned a Silver Star when you were still in knickers.”
Clancy shoots a look at Kenosha, but doesn’t get a rise out of him.
“Eleventh Armored Cavalry in ‘Nam,” the colonel says.
“The Blackhorse,” Clancy says, beginning to connect the dots. “That was your regiment, wasn’t it, colonel?”
“Damn straight!”
Then simultaneously, Zwick and Kenosha loudly declare, “If you ain’t Cav, you ain’t!”
To Clancy, the cavalry trooper’s slogan sounds strange coming from the pony-tailed man in buckskins, but what the hell. “Okay, I’m outnumbered by the guys who believe in firepower and armor.”
“Mobile firepower,” Kenosha corrects him.
Pointing to a satellite photo on the table, Zwick says, “We need a second access corridor. We have to divide the enemy’s fire and have a second route to the capsule.”
“The open silo,” Kenosha says.
“Right. But it’s farther up the mountain, and the terrain’s too rugged for APC’s. Choppers are too loud for a surprise attack, and infantry will be exposed crossing the river bed.”
Kenosha points to a map showing the mountain and the valley to the north. “There is a natural drainage ditch on the back side of the mountain. It is steep and rocky, but you could climb it without being discovered, then approach the silo from the rear, coming down from the dam.”
The colonel looks from the maps to the photos, then back again. Finally, Clancy says, “How the hell would we get up there without being seen or heard?”
“The old fashioned way,” Kenosha says. Both officers look at him, waiting. “Horses.”
Zwick and Clancy exchange surprised glances. Then Zwick breaks into a grin. “Sure, why not? We are the cavalry.”
“Horses,” Clancy ponders. He pictures himself atop a galloping steed, blasting away with pistols in each hand. “My men can shoot from damn near any position. Standing, prone, kneeling supported, kneeling unsupported, forward slope, bunker windows, sitting on the can taking a dump, if we have to. No damn reason in hell we can’t shoot from horseback.”
The ladder ends at metal shelf just below ground level. A sign on the shelf reads, “Emergency Egress Only.” Jericho reaches over his head and pulls a metal chain, and the shelf folds in two, dumping three feet of sand onto his head. Blast insulation. In the event of a strike by enemy warheads, the sand would be fused into glass and the missile crew — if they survived the hit — would have to chip through it to get out of the hole and discover what was left of their world. Jericho shakes the crud out of his hair and reaches up to open the hatch.
The cool night air hits his face, and he sucks in a long breath. It is nearly three a.m. It’s only been hours, but it seems like days since the nightmare began. He climbs into the dry river bed and looks around. Searchlights sweep across the missile base. He turns away from the silo and heads toward a rocky trail that leads up the mountain.
In launch control capsule, a bell rings, and a message flashes across a monitor: “Security Breach.” David hits a button, and a three-dimensional grid of the missile facility appears on the screen. A blinking red arrow appears over the words, “Personnel Evacuation Shaft.”
David picks up a walkie-talkie and clicks it on. “My brother, he is in the river bed. Bring me his head!”
-48-
Sibling Rivalry
At just after 3 a.m., David turns to Susan Burns and says, “I was hoping to convert you.”
“How? With your so-called psychic powers? Do you expect me to swoon because you see my aura?”
“You have been wounded. My flock is made up of the lame.”
“Lame brains,” she says. “Look, nothing is going to bring me to you. Not force. Not the Stockholm Syndrome. I don’t identify with you. I pity you.”
David is silent a moment, and then he says flatly, “I should kill you now and get it over with.”
Susan Burns shrugs. “Would that make you happy?”
“Deliriously.”
“Then do it. I prefer my patients to enjoy life.”
“Or should I tie you to the blast door, spreadeagled and naked, a sacrificial offering for the Special Ops boys? They won’t know whether to shoot you or fuck you.”
“But you can’t do either one, can you?”
“You mock me!” he thunders. “You, the symbol of a profession of frauds and quacks! You, who follows a false science instead of the Word.”
“Show me the light. Shoot me. Kill me now.”
David grabs Rachel’s rifle and swings the barrel toward Susan’s head. Then, just as suddenly, he lets the rifle fall to the floor. He laughs, throws his head back and cackles until tears flow. “You are so clever, Dr. Susan Burns. You think that if I kill you, I’ll be so revolted, so changed in some fundamental way by the utter cruelty of the act that I’ll stop. I’ll surrender, repent, and give them back their missile. Isn’t that it?”