Jericho still works on the last bolt when he hears David’s wailing praise to the Lord and turns his head in time to see the man flying through the air, legs churning.
A second later, David slams hard into Jericho, banging his head into the nose cone. Fireworks explode behind Jericho’s eyes. David is screaming something, but Jericho cannot make out the words as a thunderstorm rages in his brain. Two hands are around his neck, choking him. One hand is impaled with the nail, and it slashes Jericho’s neck.
Jericho feels the warmth of his own blood but as his head clears, he hits David with a backward elbow strike. The elbow cracks two ribs. David winces, then cries out, “Pain, Jericho! Pain means nothing!”
“Good, ‘cause I owe you some.”
The two men exchange punches while clinging to each other. Only the rope around Jericho keeps them from plunging to the rising water below. David’s voice comes in short, pained breaths, “As written in Job, ‘The eyes of the wicked shall not escape.’”
Jericho hits him with two short rights to the gut, working on the broken ribs. David jams the heel of his hand into Jericho’s Adam’s apple, and Jericho hoarsely rasps, “As said by John, ‘I won’t be wronged. I won’t be insulted. I won’t be laid a hand on.”
“John never said such things.”
“John Wayne, dipshit.” Jericho kicks away from the missile and they swing into space, water pouring over them from above. They trade punches and swing back to the missile. David gets a hand around Jericho’s neck and slams his head backward into the nose cone. The thud echoes inside Jericho’s brain.
Now, they are wrestling, becoming entangled in the rope, twisted twice around the nose cone and themselves. Instead of one or the other falling, they are tightly bound to the missile.
David’s headset, long since torn from his head, is tangled in the rope. It crackles with static, but then a faint voice is heard by them both.
“Key turn clockwise… on my mark,” Rachel says.
-56-
Underwater
The keys are in their slots when the C-4 explodes. A concussion wave roars down the tunnel and knocks half-a-dozen Green Berets to the floor, shattering their eardrums. It cracks a hundred-ton sheet of rock in the roof of the cavern, fills the tunnel with dust and sets loose a landslide of pebbles.
But it does not open the blast door.
Inside the capsule, James sits in the commander’s chair, a belt tied around his upper thigh as a makeshift tourniquet. Rachel sits in the deputy’s chair. They each hold a key in the slots twelve feet apart.
The explosion jars the capsule, which noses down at the concussion, then pops up again, its four shock absorbers, each thick as an oil drum and eight feet high, absorbing the impact. Lights flicker for an instant, then come back on.
“Key turn clockwise… on my mark,” Rachel says.
James nods. Behind them, Susan sits, shackled, watching in terror.
In the tunnel, the lieutenant angrily shouts into his radio transmitter. “Get me more Semtex, now!” He clicks off the radio. “Logistics,” he says to himself. “All war is logistics and supply.”
“Three, two, one,” Rachel counts aloud. “Rotate and hold.”
They both turn their keys.
Five seconds pass. An eternity.
“And release,” she says.
They both allow the keys to turn back. A klaxon horn honks. Lights flash.
“Kingdom come,” James says.
“Thy will be done,” Rachel adds.
Susan is out of ideas and deathly afraid. So she turns to the only resource she has left. Prayer.
In stunned silence, the brass watches the Big Board flash with the words, “LAUNCH SEQUENCE IN PROGRESS.” The computerized voice is calm as ever, a housewife reciting her grocery list. “Generators activated. Launch in ninety seconds. Confidence is high.”
“Lionel, if you have any bright ideas, you might pass them on just now,” General Corrigan says.
In his wheelchair, the professor stares vacantly at the board. He gives no sign of having heard the general but begins speaking softly. “I was there, Hugh.”
“What? Where?”
“I was there at Eniwetok in ‘52 when we detonated the first hydrogen fusion bomb. I was there with the Teapot Committee and I was there when we needed to reduce the weight of the payloads just to get the birds to fly. I was there when the Army still thought missiles were fancy artillery shells and couldn’t imagine why we needed an ICBM program. I did it, you know. I did it all for thirty-eight years.”
“And now it’s come to this,” the general says.
“It’s not the way I planned it,” Lionel Morton says. “You know, back in the fifties and sixties, I always hoped we’d use the missiles. Hell, I prayed that we’d use them when we had clear nuclear superiority. I know that sounds… ” He pauses. “Inhumane.”
“Insane is more like it, Lionel.”
“I didn’t want an all-out war. No attacks on their cities. Preventive deterrence. A limited strike on the Russian missile fields plus simultaneous hits on their bomber bases. Then a demand for total unilateral nuclear disarmament or we’d finish them off.”
“We’d have to,” Corrigan says, “because they’d have come at us with everything they had left.”
“We could debate that all day, Hugh, but you’re missing my point.”
“Which is?”
“Now that’s it happening, I can see that I was wrong. I can see it all now. God forgive me, I was wrong.”
In the waterlogged sump, the pumps are throbbing. Generators drive heated gases through thick, insulated tubes into the missile canister. Rising water in the silo roils like a stormy sea.
On the missile’s nose cone, both Jericho and David — tangled in the rope — can hear the driving force of the pumps. It seems to vitalize David, and he unleashes a series of punches. Jericho fights back, but the endless night has taken its toll.
David gets a grip on the rope and pulls, spinning Jericho hard into the nose cone. Then he yanks the rope the other direction, and it gets stuck in the clip attached to Jericho’s tool belt. “Jack be nimble!” David cries out, yanking again on the rope, bending the clip, then breaking it. The rope spins free of the tool belt. “Jack be quick!” One more tug, the rope comes loose from Jericho’s waist. He tries to grab the end but misses and plummets toward the water. “Jack fell off the candlestick!” David shouts triumphantly.
The surging water is fifteen feet deep, lapping at the rocket burners, suspended off the silo floor. In the confined space of the silo, the water sloshes against the walls like breaking waves on a pier.
Jericho hits the surface and goes under. He touches bottom, bounces back up to the surface, takes a breath, and is swept under again by the tug of a whirlpool. Like an underwater tornado, the water swirls downward into an open drain. Jericho tries to swim against the surge, but it’s useless. He is sucked into the drain and driven by the force of the water into the flooded sump.
He kicks and paddles but mostly is just propelled by the force of the water, deeper into the channel. The walls seem to press in on him. His shoulder strikes a duct, and he bounces into a web of piping where he becomes stuck. He struggles in the dark, cold water, but cannot free himself.
Underwater.
Lungs ready to burst.
A miner in a flooded shaft.
Crushed by a timber.
Waiting to die.
Jack Jericho has become his father.
-57-
The Morning Star