Kenosha and Captain Clancy lead the Night Stalkers up the steep slope, near the top of the mountain. Suddenly, a gunshot from the darkness rings above their heads. Other gunshots, and two soldiers topple from their horses. Clancy tries to find the source of the gunfire, but seeing no flash, and with the sound echoing off the rocks, he cannot. Kenosha points higher on the slope, and Clancy signals his men to take cover. More fire, and one of the horses spooks, throwing its rider. The other soldiers dismount and dive for cover. Kenosha calmly walks his horse out of the ditch and joins the captain behind a boulder.
In Army parlance, the soldiers establish a “hasty fighting position,” then unleash a volley of automatic weapons fire, killing a number of rocks, but no commandos. Return gunfire keeps them pinned down.
Clancy looks through infrared binoculars, scanning the mountainside above them. He sees the flash of gunshots in the darkness. “Only four of them, but the bastards have the high ground. Never expected they’d post sentries on this side of the mountain.”
“It is not the first time the Army has underestimated an enemy’s prowess,” Kenosha says.
Clancy shoots him a look.
“Little Big Horn is not far from here, just over the Montana border.”
“Yeah, well you’re on the other side now, chief, and if you’ve got any bright ideas, let me hear them.”
“As a matter of fact,” Kenosha says, “I do.”
Jack Jericho climbs a jagged cliff above the trail on the front side of Chugwater Mountain, pale moonbeams reflecting off massive boulders over his head. He claws at a crease in the rocks, slips, catches himself and keeps going. He can see the lights of the dam and its control buildings above him. Again, he slips and nearly falls, his boots digging into the cliff, seeking a hold, dislodging loose pebbles, which trickle down the slope. He regains his footing and pauses at the sound of gunfire from the backside of the mountain.
It’s begun, he thinks, and quickens his pace.
Below the cliff, farther down the trail, the pebbles come to rest alongside a combat boot. The man wearing the boots looks down and then up at the cliff, then resumes following his prey.
James sits with his hands poised like a pianist above the keyboard of the computer. “It’s a seven digit password. We’re talking eight billion possible combinations if it’s alphabetical only. If it’s mixed, alpha-numeric, there’d be—”
“No,” David says, “there’s only one.”
“You’re sure, aren’t you?”
“I’m sure it’s one of just a few choices. All I have to do is climb inside my father’s warped brain and find them.”
“Okay,” James says. “Let it rip.”
“I’ll do it,” David says, motioning for the flight chair.
James shrugs and gets up. David sits, takes a breath and hits a key. On the monitor, the letter “M” replaces the first cursor. David fills in the rest of the word, “M-A-T-A-D-O-R.”
“What is it?” James asks.
“The nickname for the XB-61 missile my dear Daddy worked on in the fifties.”
The computer makes a whirring sound. Then a discordant beep, and the screen flashes, “Password Rejected. Enter Secondary Launch Code Password.”
David types, “A-E-R-O-B-E-E.”
““Another missile?” James asks.
“The X-8,” David tells him.
“Who would even remember the name?”
“I think that’s the idea.”
Again, the computer rejects the word. “One more try,” David says, punching in, “P-O-L-A-R-I-S.”
They wait in silence, and after a moment, another rejection message. David sits staring into the monitor, then says, “My father’s baby.”
“That’d be you. But ‘David’ has only five letters.”
“The son-of-a-bitch could have been making a joke. A perverted private joke that only he would get.”
“What are you talking about?”
David quickly taps out, “O-E-D… ”
“No,” James says. “It couldn’t be.”
David smiles, watching his own reflection in the monitor, and hits another key. “We’ll soon find out.”
At that moment, in the STRATCOM War Room, the Big Board shows four letters and three pulsating cursors:
O E D I_ _ _
Colonel Farris wrinkles his forehead and says, “Ed-dy… Oh-dee? Now what’s he doing?”
Professor Lionel Morton motors over in his wheelchair and blurts out a bitter laugh just as a “P” is added to the screen.
“Goddamit! He’s got the password. He’s got the code.”
In the launch control capsule, David Morton’s eyes burn with hate. In the reflection of the monitor, he resembles a younger Lionel Morton. On the screen, ‘OEDIPUS’ stares back at him like a vicious taunt. Five seconds after the “S” appears, the computer’s mechanical voice intones, “Secondary Launch Code Password Confirmed. Re-Enter Enable Code. Launch Sequence in Progress.”
James slaps David on the back. Rachel bursts into tears of joy. Susan slumps against the back wall in anguish.
At STRATCOM, the mechanical voice delivers the same message: “Launch Sequence in Progress.” The uniformed officers are frozen in place. Professor Morton hits a button on the wheelchair and moves past the contingent of brass. “Checkmate, gentlemen.”
-50-
Flood Gates
Four commandos with automatic weapons are hunkered down behind boulders, firing straight down the drainage ditch at the dug-in Night Stalkers.
The Night Stalkers load 40 mm. grenades into M203 launchers and let them fly. The launcher has a range of 350 meters and is accurate to about half that distance. The commandos are 150 meters away, but the angle of the slope throws off the targeting. Grenades land twenty feet behind the commandos and rain dirt on them, but they keep shooting.
Other soldiers unleash soaring tracer shots, incandescent threads illuminating the night. Still, they are pinned down by the commandos above them. Captain Clancy speaks to Colonel Zwick on the radio. “Colonel, we need air support. Gimme some Cobra gunships.”
Kenosha grabs the colonel’s arm. “There is another way.”
The gantry moves vertically up the silo wall, stopping at the level of the PK’s fourth stage. Wearing white gloves, David holds the computer box as if it were a newborn babe. He uses an elbow to hit a button, and the gantry extends horizontally to the missile. Slowly, carefully, he fits the box back into its compartment, reattaches several plugs and hits a switch. The computer springs to life. He replaces the metal plate and inserts the four bolts.
For a moment, David just looks at the missile. Then he lays a hand on the titanium shroud, the silvery cap of the nose cone. Finally, he places his cheek against the smooth metal and spreads his arms around it. He stands there, listening to the heartbeat of the beast. At peace.
Looking down the slope, the four commandos of the Holy Church of Revelations see a horse without a rider bolt from the drainage ditch and race into the woods. They do not see the man hanging onto the horse’s neck, his body tucked away on the far side. In a moment, the horse disappears.
Lying prone at the front of the Night Stalkers’s position, a soldier opens up with an M-60 machine gun, spraying 200 rounds per minute up the slope. With their assault rifles, other soldiers lay down a blistering barrage, providing cover, as Kenosha rides out of the woods and up the rocky incline around the right flank. The slope is impossibly steep and covered with a loose, slippery gravel. Kenosha navigates by memory and by the light of the tracer rounds. The horse slips backward in the gravel and raises up its head in fear, and Kenosha whispers soothing endearments.