The President knew every eye in the Situation Room was on him. He did not like the feeling. He fought to control the shaking. Why? And why this way? His mind floated woozily back to his Inauguration Day and the ride up Pennsylvania Avenue with his predecessor. He did not like the man he had beaten and did not particularly respect him, a feeling he knew was mutual. The inaugural ride had been mostly silent. Then, as the procession made the final turn toward the Capitol, the outgoing President finally broke the silence.
“What would you do if, the moment you took your hand off the Bible today, the Soviets hit you with a BOOB attack?” The question was quiet and serious.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he had replied, not sure he had heard.
“If the Russians hit you with a BOOB attack?”
“A what attack?”
“A BOOB attack.”
He had turned away from the crowds outside the limo and met eyes that bored in on him, the way he felt other eyes boring now. “Afraid you’ve got me there,” he replied, the crowds smile still on his face. “Thought I’d been briefed on ’em all. What the hell is a BOOB attack?”
“Bolt out of the blue. No warning at all.”
“We both know that’s the least likely scenario.” The President-elect didn’t like his predecessor’s tone. This was his day, dammit. “Guess that’s why they gave it that acronym, huh?”
“Don’t kid yourself. You don’t have the space to kid yourself now. We say it’s the least likely because it’s the only one for which we can conceive of no humanly acceptable response. Therefore it won’t happen. We’re very good at rationalizing. Everything nuclear is a rationalization. The Japanese started World War II with a BOOB attack.”
“This is different. This is nuclear. Only a boob would do it.”
“Maybe. We ended World War II with a BOOB attack. A nuclear BOOB attack. The Soviets reminded me of that many times. And don’t kid yourself about our wonderful propensity for acronyms. For most of our political lifetimes we’ve been living with a nuclear policy known as Mutual Assured Destruction. If each side has enough to totally destroy the other, neither side will use it. Nice rationalization, that one. Nice acronym, too. MAD.”
The President-elect had stopped smiling and stared eye to eye with the man he was succeeding. Then he broke into a grin again.
“Well, at my age, I don’t think I’ll let boobs keep me awake nights,” he said, and turned to resume waving to the crowds.
“That’s too bad,” he heard over his shoulder. The conversation had confirmed his opinion of the man he had defeated. The man was damned rude.
O’Toole collided with the raw outside air last but at full stride. The first icy assault froze the hair inside his nostrils, then seared the inside of his lungs. Jackhammer pain racked his head. Icy darts jabbed through the soles of his boots, slicing at the nerves in his wet feet. His brain, overwhelmed by the sensory overload, went blank as he careened down the out-ramp, only his instincts and training propelling him after his crewmates.
Near the wingtip, Moreau edged past Halupalai, lung fog billowing over her shoulder. Kazaklis moved past, too, enveloping the Hawaiian in their mist. Moreau scrambled up the belly hole first, clambering up the inky stairwell toward the hypnotic lure of the dim red glow of the cockpit lights two levels above. Kazaklis entered next, his groping hand landing high on the inside of the copilot’s leg before reaching the railing.
“You bastard,” Moreau spat over her shoulder.
“Move it, Moreau,” Kazaklis shot back. “I’ve felt better thighs on a Safeway fryer.”
That wasn’t true. But he had been regretting the foolishness of his move on Moreau for six long months now. There were plenty of pelvic bones. And she knew damn well there was nothing sexual about a stray hand in the chimney of the B-52. Not with the clock running.
Moreau cursed herself silently. She was having a bad night. She knew the hand had strayed accidentally. She could have saved herself a lot of grief six months ago. But she wasn’t a grief-saver. And when he came at her with that Captain Shazam of the Strategic Air Command crap—the same line, she imagined, that rounded the heels of every female in the High Pine Lounge—she had shrieked in laughter. Not that any line would have worked. Moreau had been on the Kazaklis trip herself, matched him conquest for conquest, she was sure. But she had stopped a year ago, looking for a better hold on a very shaky life. Like everything she did, she also stopped with a totality bordering on obsession. She hadn’t been with a man for more than a year, ending the earlier obsession with what might have been the consummate sex act in the history of SAC. In a No Lone Zone. Well, she hadn’t violated security. She sure as hell hadn’t been alone.
At the top of the stairwell, Moreau glanced sideways at the code box on the jump seat and hurried forward to the right-hand seat. She pulled the white helmet over her head, adjusted the radio to all five channels. Kazakhs, immediately behind her, slipped into the lefthand seat and did the same, his mind as far from their flare-up as hers now.
“Ignition,” Kazakhs said in a crackling, radio-warped voice, which Moreau echoed. Then the pilot’s sinewy hands, covered in fireproofed gloves, began manipulating the eight white engine throttles between them and Moreau began the methodical activation of other instruments. The engine roar gradually accelerated.
Kazakhs glanced at the luminous dial of his watch and mentally complimented himself. They had made it very quickly, under three minutes. Then he began to chafe, waiting impatiently for the codes. He turned and peered into the dark recesses of the back of the compartment. There, over the locked code box, he saw two vague forms. One, Halupalai, he thought, grabbed the other, O’Toole, and shook him violently. He saw Halupalai’s arm rear back and then plunge forward toward O’Toole’s face.
“Codes!” Kazakhs said angrily into the radio. “Have you fuckers gone crazy back there? Codes!”
The President’s appointments secretary shook him gently by the elbow. “Finish it, Mr. President,” his old friend said. “There is so little time.” It was only then that the President realized his eyes had drifted away from the telegram. His aide smelled of bourbon. Lucky fellow.
“…It is of epochal importance that you understand my rationale and recognize that this is not an act of aggression. Two weeks ago the Politburo voted to mount a full Counterforce attack against all your military and strategic targets simultaneously, with a second assault poised against your cities if you responded. It was the attack my country’s military leaders have advocated for years—sudden, preemptive, and total. You would not have survived. We would not have survived either, although not all in my government agree with that assessment. I was able to delay that action. But I have merely bought us a brief moment for one last effort to halt the madness. Our meeting in Vienna was a similar effort. It failed. The misunderstandings ran deeper than my worst expectations. What you apparently perceived as my weakness was in reality an effort to warn you how fragile was the balance of the debate within my government over the threat of your massive arms buildups. The failure of Vienna tipped that balance. The cost of matching you weapon for weapon is far too great for the Politburo faction that sees our social fabric ripping because of the immense investments we made to draw even with you in nuclear weaponry after the Cuban debacle. The cost of allowing you to proceed unmatched is far too great for the faction that believes we cannot ever be at bay again as we were during the 1962 crisis. I must say that I see the point of both factions. I think we all, the leaders of both our nations, knew that someday something would have to give…”