She stays quiet and he goes on, “You’re willing to sacrifice yourself for all mankind. A gesture brimming with Freudian noblesse oblige.”
Still, Susan is silent.
The phone buzzes. “What does old Hugh want now?” David says. Enjoying himself again, occupying center stage. He hits a speaker button and puts a tune to his voice. “Be all that you can be, in the Ar-my.”
“Mr. Morton, we’d like to engage you in a discussion.” General Corrigan’s voice is calm, polite.
“Or a distraction. You’re looking for a few good men, eh Hugh?”
“We know you’re searching for the password. We don’t think you’ll get it, and we prefer to end this without bloodshed. We’re prepared to discuss amnesty.”
“Off we go into the wild blue yon-der,” David sings out, “high-er still, into the sun.” He laughs, then says, “You’re lying Hugh. Besides, only the Lord can offer forgiveness. Your amnesty is a purely secular concept of no interest to me.”
“What is it you want, Mr. Morton? Death and devastation?”
“The few, the proud, the Marines!” David calls out.
“We’re not going to make progress this way.”
“Progress, Hugh? Like the progress my dear Daddy made for you. Semper Fi.”
“Mr. Morton, I know you’re a very intelligent young man, but I’m not sure you comprehend just what those ten nuclear warheads can do.”
“Au contraire. Do you know what the first injury will be to a person standing at ground zero?”
“Injury?” General Corrigan lets out a humorless laugh. “Injury hardly begins to describe—”
“A broken ankle, perhaps a broken leg, and certainly burst eardrums.”
“Are you out of your mind? A person at ground zero will be vaporized.”
“Not at first, not until after thirty seconds or so of quite unimaginable horror. At the moment of the air burst, there is a flash that will blind anyone whose eyes are open. The shock wave from the ionized atoms then causes a pressure wave that will buckle the ground with such force that it will break the bones of anyone standing there, hence our broken ankles. Then an atmospheric blast wave will surge out horizontally and flatten every manmade structure at ground zero, be it the Wailing Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, or the Mosque of Omar. The dynamic pressure of the blast will set loose winds of six hundred miles an hour. Anyone unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity will be picked up and swirled about in the firestorm. The radiant heat of the fireball will turn glass, metal and wood into ash, and a person’s internal organs will simply burst into flame. You use the word, ‘vaporized.’ I prefer to think that a person is ultimately reduced to one’s essential elements.”
“What does that mean?”
“It really isn’t ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ Hugh. More like ashes to nitrogen and hydrogen.”
In the STRATCOM War Room, General Hugh Corrigan stares into space. “If you’re attempting to be utterly repulsive, Mr. Morton, you’re succeeding. If you want to shock us with your inhumanity, fine, we’re shocked.”
“Why, Hugh? It’s your weapon. I’m just using it before you have the chance.”
“It’s not intended to be used,” Corrigan says, angrily. “It’s intended to deter war.”
“How quaint a concept. But if you ask me, it’s use it or lose it. And guess what, Hugh? You lose it, and I use it.”
General Corrigan’s shoulders slump. He is willing to try just about anything, so he signals Dr. Rosen to come to the phone. The balding psychiatrist looks like he slept in his sport coat, and in fact, he’s been cat-napping most of the long night. Behind Dr. Rosen, three nervous middle-aged men in suits — one polyester, two brown plaid — look on.
“Mr. Morton, there’s someone I’d like you to hear from,” the general says.
“Pray tell, who could it be? Not Daddy, again. Hopefully, you’ve locked him up. He’s quite insane, you know. What now, an expert hostage negotiator dyspeptic shrink?”
“David, this is Dr. Stuart Rosen,” the FBI psychiatrist says in an unctuous tone. “Think of me as a master of ceremonies.”
“Or masturbator,” David adds, helpfully.
“David, we have three theological experts here representing a wide spectrum of views on the Book of Revelations.”
In the launch control capsule, David listens listlessly while scanning the security monitors. On the screens, Army searchlights sweep the darkened perimeter of the missile base. Next to him, James still works at the computer, trying out a variety of seven-letter words in the blinking cursors. “Missile” doesn’t work. Neither do “Goddard,” “Nuclear,” “Liberty,” “Kennedy” or a hundred more improbable ones including “Sputnik” and “Hussein.” James tries to imagine the technicians who programmed this sucker. It’s a No Lone Zone with the codes, too. One technician could have the Enable Code, but another would possess the S.L.C. James conjures up a nerdy guy working for defense contractor, a guy who goes to the grocery store himself because he doesn’t have a girlfriend or a wife. “Grocery” doesn’t work. Neither does “forlorn.”
The shrink goes on for a while about what he calls the “panorama” of interpretations of the Book of Revelations. “Our experts believe your view of the prophesied Apocalypse is, shall we say, premature.”
“No doubt, like your ejaculations,” David says.
“David, we need to discuss your current plans,” Dr. Rosen says, ignoring the remark. “Let’s put them in perspective with your overall goals, how you see yourself in the universe, your relation to people around you, what we might call your personal context, your—”
“Hugh!” David interrupts. “Why do you insult me with this thumb-sucking bed-wetter?”
General Hugh Corrigan grimaces and doesn’t respond. Next to him, Colonel Farris whispers, “First thing the fucker’s said all night that makes any sense.”
“Goodbye, doctor,” David says. “Goodbye, Hugh.”
The phone clicks off. Dr. Rosen wrinkles his forehead. “I’m not sure I liked the sound of those ‘goodbye.’ They had an air of finality about them.”
General Corrigan would like to lend an air of finality to the F.B.I. psychiatrist, but an aide signals that he’s wanted on another line. “If it’s the President again, tell him to go to sleep. We’ll wake him if—”
“It’s the Pope,” the aide says.
“What does he want?” Stunned.
“He wants to know if he can help.”
“Sure. Ask if he can rappel two hundred feet down an elevator shaft with automatic weapons pointed up his skirts?”
Taking the telephone, the aide’s tone is formal and respectful. “Your Holiness, the General asks for your prayers.”
Jack Jericho is on all fours, scrambling up the steep trail toward Chugwater Dam. Below him, the lights from the open silo cut into the night sky like signals to heaven. From this height he can see the war machinery in place on the perimeter of Base Camp Alpha. Searchlights from the camp sweep the mountainside, intermittently passing over him.
He thinks of Susan Burns and how he left her and what will happen to her if there is an all-out assault on the capsule. He quickens his pace, hoisting himself on reedy branches that grow out of the parched soil.
The back side of the mountain is lit only by the half moon. Riding easily on a golden palomino, Kenosha leads a company of Night Stalkers up a boulder-strewn drainage ditch. Some of the soldiers appear unsteady on their horses, awkwardly clutching their saddle horns, cursing as their asses bounce in the saddle. A corporal’s horse veers out of the ditch and into the trees. He kicks it in the ribs but doesn’t pull hard enough on the reins, and the horse carries him straight into a tangle of low branches which knock him to the ground.