“Jesus H. Christ.”
“Maybe we’ll vaporize some trees, and you’re not going to eat the trout for a hundred years, but in terms of what could have happened, it’s not that bad. That’s our stance with the press, so the anti-nuke crowd doesn’t use this as an excuse to plant flowers in the silos we still have left. I mean, sir, we don’t want… ”
Colonel Farris looks up and notices that the general has walked away, leaving him alone.
The bolt will not move, so Jericho uses the knife to pry open the plate covering the computer box. There is a moment when he thinks the blade will break, but it does not. He gets leverage, then slides the plate around the fulcrum created by the remaining bolt. Inside Jericho sees a tangle of wires and electronic gizmos. The clickety-click seems louder, faster. He has no idea what to do.
The missile collides with a boulder, and Jericho nearly falls off. Regaining his balance, he looks downstream. He hears the rush of cascading water, and just ahead, the river seems to stop well in advance of the horizon.
“It must be a glorious sight,” David says. “Can you see it, Jericho? Can you see the falls?”
“The what?”
But then he knows. Jericho had climbed Chugwater Cliffs. Three hundred feet nearly straight up. Rock climbing in summer, ice climbing in winter. Before the Corps of Engineers built the dam, it was a towering waterfalls. And it is again. What was it Kenosha said? “In the end, the earth will prevail.”
Jericho takes a breath and jams his hand inside the computer box, ripping out a trail of wires, chips and plugs. A series of pops and sizzles. He reaches in with both hands and struggles to pull the computer out of its compartment. Getting to his feet, Jericho raises the computer high above his head. Standing there, the missile revolving in the water like a giant tree trunk, Jericho is struck by notion buried deep in his unconscious, an image from his childhood. He remembers a picture on the wall of the First Lutheran Church back home, Moses with the tablets of the Law held high over his head. Moses had come down from the mountain with the Lord’s commandments and found the Hebrews worshiping the golden calf. They had broken their covenant with God, and Moses was pissed.
But the computer is not the voice of God, Jericho thinks, hurling it into the river where it floats for a moment before disappearing from view.
General Corrigan and his staff watch the Big Board as the seconds tick down. The computer speaks in that irritating, calm voice, “Altitude thirty thousand feet. Air burst in… ”
The voice goes silent.
A message flashes on the board. “Firing system disabled. Warheads disarmed.”
The officers have been on a roller coaster too long. They cannot celebrate. Some are dubious. General Corrigan turns to a technician. “Can you confirm—”
As if to reassure the brass, the computerized voice says, “Detonation aborted. Detonation aborted.”
The technician simply says, “Yes. Yes. Yes.”
Finally convinced the crisis is over, the officers slap each other’s shoulders and whoop it up. A football team after a win. Someone passes out cigars as if a baby has been born.
In the center of the celebration a somber General Corrigan turns to Professor Morton.
“Thank God,” Corrigan says.
“Amen,” Morton adds.
The waterfalls rumble like an angry god. The missile spins one hundred eighty degrees in a whirlpool, heads backward toward the precipice, then straightens itself and continues at even greater speed. David lies on his back, barely conscious, barely alive.
“It’s all over,” Jericho tells him. “The bomb is dead.”
David’s voice is barely audible. “Then I shall carry it unto the Lord.”
“He doesn’t want you. Either damn one of you.”
David’s lifeless eyes close and his head drops to the side. Jericho gives him one last look, then dives into the river. He tries to swim to shore, fifty yards away, but the current is too strong. Losing strength, he’s swept toward the waterfalls alongside the missile. Dangerously close to the edge, Jericho struggles futilely against the raging current. He tries to grab onto a boulder rising out of the water but is swept past it. A large tree limb comes by. He grabs at it and misses. No matter. It would only carry him over the falls. The water pushes him under and brings him back up again.
He is past fatigue, beyond exhaustion. He is at the point of giving up, of accepting the pain that is brief, the darkness that is forever. Or is it? In these last seconds, he thinks about his own beliefs. He has tried to be a decent man, to do as much good and inflict as little damage along the path of life as possible. He believes in God and in a hereafter. God who made this stream and the men who drink from it. He remembers the incredible beauty of the sun rising over Devil’s Tower and knows now that it is misnamed. God made the Black Hills and the Belle Fourche Valley and the volcano that became the stark, unearthly tower. God made the prairie dogs and porcupines, the golden eagles and mountain bluebirds. God made me, too, Jericho thinks. And he is ready to go home.
He stops kicking and his arms, heavy as pine logs, drop to his side. He turns over on his back, squints against the morning sun, and lets the raging water carry him on.
A shadow passes over him, and he opens his eyes.
A strong hand reaches down and grabs him under one shoulder. Jericho does not have the strength to either help or resist. He lets himself be picked up and hauled over the side of a dugout canoe where he coughs water out of his lungs, then deeply inhales the sweet air. He looks up to see Kenosha, bare-chested, paddling with powerful strokes, propelling the canoe toward the river bank.
Jericho hauls himself up and looks toward the falls. He catches a last glimpse of the grotesque manmade beast of metal, fuel, and cataclysmic power as it sails over the falls and disappears in a sea of foam, swallowed up by the eternal forces of nature, by the Earth itself.
-59-
One Final Ghost
The sun is high in the blue Wyoming sky, and Base Camp Alpha swarms with suits.
State Department flunkies sip bottled water and tend to the freed ambassadors, toting food from a catering truck commandeered from a movie set in the Black Hills. No M.R.E.’s for the diplomats.
Gleaming trucks with huge satellite dishes are in place, network news crews dropping in by helicopter. Reporters jockey for position in front of the command tent, waiting for a glimpse of Colonel Zwick and Captain Clancy, already anointed as the brains and brawn of Operation Peacekeeper.
The armor is moving out, raising a racket, to the consternation of the TV reporters who are doing their stand-ups in front of Abrams tanks that won’t stand still or be quiet. Medics patch up wounded soldiers, and the F.B.I. hauls off Rachel, James and the few surviving commandos in shackles.
Jack Jericho stands alone, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He sips coffee and seems at peace with the world, if a bit removed from it. There are too many thoughts to sort out just now. He thinks of his father and his brother, and for once, the thoughts do not bring anguish. Strange, random memories come to him. He remembers catching his first trout, his father helping him clean the fish, then cooking it over an open fire. Has anything ever tasted so good? He remembers wrestling with his brother in a field of freshly mowed hay. He remembers the coal mine, too, but the feeling is different, now. There is a sadness, but it is a sadness without pain. He thinks of the memorial outside the collapsed shaft that was erected by the union. Twenty-seven names are inscribed on a bronze plaque.