“Goddammit, gunner, go back and sit down!”
The Hawaiian, bending over the telegraph machine behind the pilot’s seat, jerked upright at the unexpected violence in the words.
“You’re pacing up and down like a goddamn expectant father,” Kazakhs spat.
“Just looking for the message, sir,” Halupalai said defensively. “We oughta have the message by now. We only got two hundred miles to go.”
Kazakhs let his shoulders droop. The waiting was driving them all crackers. Where was the Looking Glass? Where was the message giving them passage through their control point, confirming their targets, revealing the codes to arm weapons? Halupalai, assigned the job of decoding the instructions, had been moving back and forth between his seat and the telegraph since the refueling. Kazakhs suddenly felt guilty. He didn’t like blowing at Halupalai. Nobody liked getting angry with Halupalai.
“Hang tough, Pops,” he said soothingly. “Go on back and sit down. The doc will be out soon enough. And he’ll tell you it’s a boy.”
Halupalai slouched back toward his rear seat.
“It’s a boy,” Moreau mused, “a goddamn boy.”
Kazakhs bristled again. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna start the Gloria Steinern shit. Not now.”
“Settle down, commander,” Moreau said evenly. “Little jumpy, aren’t we? History was getting the better of me. Not penis envy. After they tested the first bomb at Trinity, they sent Truman a coded telegram in Potsdam. Just like the one we’re waiting for. ‘It’s a boy,’ the message said. ‘It’s a girl’ meant the bomb was a dud.”
“Thanks for the history lesson,” Kazakhs said sullenly. “Maybe ours will say ‘It’s a person.’ Then we can guess.”
Moreau didn’t reply at first. It’s a girl, Harry. Sorry, Mr. President, a bomb without a cock. No blow-jobs for the Japs. No phallic club to hold over Uncle Joe Stalin. No need for strategic penetrators plunging into Mother Russia. No need for the big hard ones buried in the womb of America’s prairies. Man’s ultimate failure, Mr. President. It’s a girl.
“No,” she finally said. “Ours will be a boy too, Kazakhs.”
“Yeah.”
“You ever wonder where we’d be if it had been a girl, that first one?”
“Still fightin’ the Japs door to door.”
“Come off it.”
“Omaha Beach syndrome.”
“You okay?”
“We need to do a little mission planning.”
“We don’t even have a mission.”
“Mission planning!”
Very shrewd, commander. Now you’re being the commander, commander. Keep them busy while they’re in the landing boat. Keep yourself busy.
“Okay, heroes, we’re gonna do a run-through on Irkutsk,” Kazaklis heard himself say to all crew stations.
Downstairs, Tyler turned toward Radnor. “Jesus Christ, Kazaklis is really something. Mission planning. To Irkutsk. Jesus. Guess that’s why they think he’s such a hotshot. He takes everything so serious.”
Radnor turned his head away. His stomach gnawed. Please be quiet, Tyler.
“Not me. Tell you that, Radnor. I’ll never take this stuff so serious. This is a stepping-stone for me. I’m getting out as soon as I can. Use the Air Force, that’s what I say. Let ’em get you that master’s degree and get back outside to a nice quiet, sane life quick. That’s what I’m doing. No more war games for me. No sir-ree.”
For the first time, Radnor thought Tyler sounded as if he were trying to convince himself. The thought made the radar operator still more nervous. He had to get away again. “Request permission to leave station, sir,” he radioed up to Kazaklis.
Why, Sarah Jean? Nothing is forever. Why not, Sarah Jean? “Pee in your frigging boot, Radnor!” Moreau looked at Kazaklis and thought his eyes glistened. But that, of course, couldn’t be, and the commander quickly lowered his visor.
“Is the E-4 down, Sam?”
“I think so, general.”
“No radio confirmation?”
“Christ no, sir. They sure as hell don’t need to send up any beacons. We got one big sitting duck on the ground in Baton Rouge right now and there still are plenty of hunters around.”
“Subs.”
“We had no trouble taking out the ones they used in the first exchange. They were gone in minutes. We also caught a Delta-class sub in the harbor near Havana. The commander must have been sound asleep or chasing Cuban fanny in town. But we lost track of one Yankee-class boat a coupla days ago after he went silent off Haiti. And we know there were a couple more off Venezuela about the same time. We sure as hell can’t find them now—or do anything about it if we could.”
“It’s a damned risky landing.”
“I don’t know if 1 would have taken the chance, general.”
“We’ve still got a little document called the Constitution, Sam.”
“Yeah, I know, sir. But are we even sure we got the right guy?”
“Sam, old friend, right now you are flying around in a world without an ionosphere. You are flying over a country that doesn’t have fifty functioning computers. Nobody said nuclear war was going to be an exact science. The last word we got from the Presidential Successor Locator, two minutes before it and most of the successors went, said he was the highest-ranking likely survivor. The plan said don’t fart around, get the most likely. And get him fast.” Alice paused. “Bird-watching in rural Louisiana was a pretty good place to be when the bubble burst.”
“Jesus, is that what he was doing?”
“He was on an inspection tour of a game-management area. Camping out overnight to please the nature-lovers.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. I’m not. That was his job, Sam.”
“God. A couple of hours ago his biggest problem was understanding the mating habits of the red-billed osprey. I wouldn’t want to be the first guy to brief him on the forty thousand target options in SIOP.”
“The man’s got a much bigger problem than understanding SIOP, Sam. And a decision to make.”
“Fast.”
“Very fast.”
“The Secretary of the Interior. Whew.”
“Eighth-ranking in the constitutional order of succession, Sam. President of the United States. Your Commander-in-Chief.”
“Okay, kids,” Kazakhs said jauntily. “We’re at the dateline and I’m takin’ her down.”
Moreau felt the adrenaline surge through her, washing away the lingering aches of the refueling. Below her, in her mind’s eye, as she had a dozen times in mission drills on the ground at Fairchild, she could see the twisted crags and soulful spires of Arctic Ocean ice floes rising up toward them. She could almost feel the huge drooping wings of her bomber, her strategic penetrator, strain against heavier and heavier air as they dropped lower and lower, beneath the radar, beneath the eyes of their adversaries.
“Ready offense?” Kazakhs asked.
“Ready,” Tyler responded.
“Ready, defense?”
“Ready,” Halupalai answered.
“Position, nav?”
“One hundred eighty degrees longitude, seventy-seven degrees north.”