“No kidding,” said Shirer. The sarcasm was out before he could stop himself.
“Sorry, sir. Guess you’re familiar with all this stuff.”
“No,” Shirer answered. He pointed to a console that he knew was another radar beam jammer. “What’s that?”
“Echo delay mode, sir. Slows down the Bogey’s radar pulse — so he gets the echo later than he normally would. Thinks his target is further off than it is.”
“What happens if we’re in the missile’s path anyway?” Shirer asked.
“Console also has CDC — chaff-dispensing capability.”
Shirer smiled despite himself. Give the military manufacturers a simple idea and they’d give it a fancy name to impress the congressmen on the defense budget committees. “ ‘CDC— you mean it drops foil strips to scramble enemy radar?”
“Yes, sir. But we do have electronic jammer backups as well. This baby’s got over two hundred and forty miles of sheathed wiring. Sixty-one antennas.”
Shirer wasn’t sure an electromagnetic pulse could be prevented by sheathed or “condom” wiring, as the technicians called the pulse-resistant fiber-optic cable. It was certainly better than the old microchip circuits, which an electromagnetic pulse would certainly knock out and which had been replaced to some extent by gallium arsenide chips. But he wondered aloud whether the cables could survive a close-in nuclear air burst.
“Ah — manual doesn’t give minimum air burst radius, sir.”
“Didn’t think they would,” said Shirer. “Don’t think we’d like the answer.”
The lieutenant was quickly getting teed off with the new pilot, as he told the ground crew later. “He’s a moody son of a bitch,” the lieutenant charged.
“Heard he was an okay guy,” put in one of the electronic engineers. “One crackerjack of a pilot, by all accounts. An ace, my man!”
“Yeah — well, I’m not the fucking enemy.”
“Probably lonesome for his missus,” put in the engineer. “Though I thought they liked bachelors to drive the beast. No family to think about — might stop the trigger finger.”
“Dunno whether he’s married or not,” said the lieutenant disinterestedly.
“Well,” put in another technician. “Maybe something else is buggin’ him. Maybe he’s been drinking tap water.”
“Then he wouldn’t be sick,” said the engineer. “He’d be dead.”
“Could be he’s lovesick,” said another of the ground crew.
“I don’t give a shit,” said the communications lieutenant. “Whatever his problem is, I’d rather not be one of his crew if it hits the fan.”
“Don’t worry,” said the engineer, tearing open a sugar packet, letting it stream into his coffee. “It won’t go nuclear.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Normally David wouldn’t have shown such irritability. Maybe it was the bad weather, the overcast still so low, you could almost touch it, and the rubble from the Soviet rocket attacks still not cleared, partially covered by snow turned dirty from the coal fire pollution — or “bad ions in the air,” as his brother Ray would have said.
Whatever the reason for his mood, the Gallic shrug of the stationmaster at Ezemaal thirty miles east of Brussels bugged him. He suspected the man could speak English but was refusing to do so on principle, continuing to rattle away in either Flemish or French. As the unhelpful stationmaster walked on by them, a porter nearby told David slowly and clearly, “Un train est déraillé! Pres de Roosbeek.”
“Son of a bitch!” said David, turning and walking quickly back to the Humvee.
“Come on,” he yelled to his driver, Corporal Parkin, who had just started to relax with a cigarette. “Let’s go! They say a train’s been derailed.”
“Ours?”
“Don’t know — at Roosbeek. You know it?”
“Not to worry, chief. Got a Michelin in the glove box. Has to be on the line ‘tween here and Brussels, doesn’t it?”
“Right,” said David, with more optimism than he felt.
“Why don’t we just go on to Liege, guv?” suggested Parkin. “It’s not too far. Wait there. Nothing much we—”
“No!” said David. “Train’s full of wounded. Need all the help they can get. Besides, I know some people on it.”
“Oh. Yeah — well, that’s different, in’t?”
The stationmaster was coming back down the platform. Glancing quickly at them, his mood changed. “Be careful,” he told David. “You must have your identification ready. There will be many people there by now.”
“What you mean, guv?” put in the corporal, calling out over the rattle of the Humvee engine. “Lots of people?”
The stationmaster shrugged, as if the answer were surely obvious to all. “Police, the army — they might still be around, you see.”
“Why?” asked Parkin.
“The SPETS, of course. It was they who attacked—”
Before the Belgian could finish, Parkin had unclipped his seat belt, reaching down into the backseat. He produced a red light, its magnetic base thudding on the roof over him as he plugged its adapter into the dashboard lug.
As they sped back from where they’d come, having to use several detours because of rocket damage to the main Brussels road, David told himself it probably wasn’t Lili’s train anyway. There were dozens — goods trains, troop trains, passenger — every day. Had to be one of the busiest lines in all Europe.
The red light swishing in the mist produced a surreal pink glow. David wasn’t sure an illegal MP light was a good idea. It’d get them there faster, but if there were SPETS around, it could draw fire. Momentarily he was ashamed he was thinking about his safety rather than Lili’s, but then again, his marine training had conditioned him against drawing undue attention to himself in any battle zone.
“Don’t worry, sir,” Parkin assured him. “SPETS would’ve been after them for the front — the troops. Wouldn’t bother with anyone else on board. Anyway, this bird of yours — she’s a noncombatant. Right?”
As if that made any difference, David thought. “More non-combatants are killed than soldiers, corporal. Besides, you obviously don’t know about the SPETS.” As he spoke, David instinctively felt for his.45 sidearm. “You carrying any weapons?” he asked Parkin.
The corporal was shocked by the suggestion. “Only my rifle — in the back. Haven’t fired it since me national service. That was two years—” He paused. “Ah, not to worry, sir. The SPETS’re hit-and-run types, right? Won’t bother us. Hardly gonna go runnin’ around in uniform, are they? Civilian garb, most likely.”
“Allied uniforms,” said David, not taking his eyes from the fields, dim outlines of farmhouses, and gaunt, stripped poplars racing by. “They’ve got nothing to lose. They’d be shot as spies either way, in civilian garb or military.”
There was another flashing red light ahead and Parkin started pumping the brake. The Humvee slowed and though visibility was poor, they could soon make out six or seven men, all with submachine guns, possibly in Belgian military uniform, waving them down. Off to the right ahead, David spotted at least fifteen more — spread out — the same number to his left — all in all, a U-shaped formation running down either side of the road, the road blocked by two 3-ton trucks parked so they overlapped each other in a tight V — so you’d be forced to drop to five kilometers per hour in order to negotiate the S-turn.
“Bound to be our blokes, right?” proffered the corporal unconvincingly.
“Don’t know,” said David softly, watching the officer approaching him. “You any good at reversing this jalopy?”
“Not now,” said the corporal. “No way.” He was looking in the rearview mirror. The U-shape had closed to an O, with three men about twenty yards behind them advancing, submachine guns at the ready.