In the cockpit, not a word was exchanged for minutes. Kazakhs had retaken the controls and Moreau tried to will some vitality back into her lifeless arms, some sense into her benumbed head.
“Nice job,” Kazakhs said to her, his monotone barely discernible.
Moreau did not respond immediately. “Do you think you could have done that?” she asked.
Kazakhs paused too. Their words seemed to be lobbing back and forth like tennis balls caught on a stop-action viewer. “I suppose so.”
“What Elsie did.”
“I know.”
“Took guts.”
“Guess so.”
“Guess so?”
“Don’t really know what it takes, do we? Life comes along and hands us one and we react.”
Moreau slumped in exhausted exasperation. She had neither the heart nor the energy for anger. “You guess so,” she said with lifeless weariness. “Life comes along. You react. How can you write those people off that way? What does life mean to you, Kazakhs? Do you even think about it?”
His words came back without emotion. “Life’s a game, Moreau,” he said. “A game you play the best you can.”
“Good God,” she murmured. “A game. And what if you lose?”
“You tell yourself you were playing the Yankees,” he said blankly.
The silence went tomblike. A long while later, Kazakhs glanced sideways at Moreau. She sat stiffly in her seat. He wondered which of them was better off now, although that was a matter of very small degree. Was she, this strange woman, his chance partner who had believed in something and had it all come apart? Was he, who had believed in nothing and had it all come true? He glanced at his watch and saw it was past one a.m. in Oregon, these not being Zulu-time thoughts. His old man would be up in a couple of hours, lacing the morning coffee with the usual Jim Beam and heading into the same eternal woods as if this were just another day, with the fallout, if it had reached the Coos this soon, being just more hay-fever pollen. He saw Sarah Jean… and the contrails flick away one by one. Briefly he wondered if this abrasive, perplexing woman sitting next to him was as fraudulent in her life cover as he was in his. He snorted quickly, inhaling the thought and the tears, and radioed downstairs, asking for a fix on their Positive Control Point, the last stop sign the Air Force left for them before the plunge low over Russian tundra.
Far behind Polar Bear One, on the ground in the damp drizzle of the woods of Louisiana, a man in jeans, a yellow chamois shirt, and a down vest watched a group of shadowy figures approach him. He knelt nervously behind a soggy fallen tree, holding a double-barreled shotgun trained on the newcomers. He had used the gun in the past hour. Life had been a bizarre and unexplainable hell since the far-off but near-blinding midnight flashes during this damnable camping trip. Since then, people had gone crazy, and the man had defended himself.
Through the murk, he saw the group of men carefully advancing on him. They held small sawed-off weapons, and the man shivered. He shakily pointed the shotgun at the first shadow and fired. He heard a grunt and the shadow fell. The other shadows faded into the protective cover of the woods. Suddenly the woods thundered with the fire of automatic weapons and the branches splintered above him. He cowered deeper into the semiprotection of the log.
“I’m a federal Cabinet officer!” he shouted, cursing himself for a voice that sounded squeaky with fear.
“Throw your weapon out,” a disembodied voice responded. He paused uncertainly.
The woods thundered again and the spray of wood chips showered him again, closer this time.
“Secret Service!” the disembodied voice said. “Throw your weapon out. Now.”
The man looped his shotgun up over the log, but kept himself protected. He heard crunching footsteps nearing and looked up to see men in bloodied business suits pointing stubby gray submachineguns at him. “Identification,” one said curtly. He reached for his wallet. “Hold it!” the voice commanded. “I’ll get it.” The figure reached over and extracted the wallet, examining it carefully. The man in the jeans heard a sigh of relief from above him. “The Condor is caged,” the figure said over his shoulder to the others, and the weapons were lowered.
The leader of the Secret Service agents beckoned to a man who did not seem to belong with the group. He was short, fat, and carried a small black book. “Do your thing, judge,” the agent said, “and do it fast.”
The ceremony was over in seconds, the man in the jeans so woozy he was not sure what he had pledged to do. Then the lead agent took him by the arm. “Mr. Secretary… Mr. President… we have to get you out of here in one helluva hurry.” Hundreds of miles to the northeast, in an inky blackness somewhere in Maryland, Sedgwick opened his eyes slowly and painfully. It took him a moment to adjust to the near-total darkness. As his eyes focused, he first saw the jagged, twisted metal of the rear section of Nighthawk One. It appeared to have been sheared off only a few feet in front of his seat, and the rest of the chopper was nowhere to be seen. He panicked and turned abruptly to look at the passenger next to him, a sudden surge of pain causing him to faint again. After a moment, his wits seeped back. He turned more slowly this time, saw his companion hunched forward exactly as he had been when the chopper started down. He reached over and grasped the man’s wrist, seeking a pulse. At first, in his grogginess, he missed it. Then he felt a slight but distinct pump… pump… pump.
SEVEN
• 0930 Zulu
“They got the fuel, general.”
“Enough?”
“Marginal.”
“And the tanker?”
“Crashed. Near Great Bear.”
In the Looking Glass, Alice turned away, squeezing the major’s shoulder. He glanced at the row of clocks on the far cabin wall, his eyes quickly passing Moscow time and Washington time and Omaha time. Zulu time read 0930, three and a half hours after the first exchange. Since the conversation with Harpoon, more of their communications had come back up. But not nearly enough. He moved across the narrow aisle to another member of his battle staff.
“Your boys?”
“One of ’em got a few minutes from a tanker out of Thule.”
“The tanker?”
“Down in Baffin Bay.”
“And your other Buff?”
“The tanker out of Goose Bay is still chasing him. Don’t particularly want the B-52 to slow down. Looks like they’ll rendezvous near the east coast of Greenland, north of Iceland. It’s hairy.”
“Yes.” Alice’s voice was tired and he turned toward his old friend for the summary. “So what do we have, Sam?”
“Less than fifteen still flying, sir. Half of ’em refueled. Three or four more will get the fuel. The rest will have to go in with what they have.”
“Did the FB-111 make it in?”
Sam looked at Alice strangely. They had made a guinea pig out of the supersonic fighter-bomber, sending him in too fast to probe the Soviet defenses for the B-52’s. “That wasn’t a fair test, general.”
Alice said nothing. Fair. Damn you, Sam. That’s why we’ve got generals and that’s why we’ve got colonels.
“He never was meant to fly supersonically all the way,” Sam continued. “Little spurts, yeah, for evasion and the final run, sure. Not all the way. He was slurping gas like a Ferrari.”