Trinity's Child Page 9

  “Jeezuz,” Kazaklis muttered absentmindedly, “that was closer than a tit when you're screwin'.”

  “Missionary style,” Moreau said blandly.

  Kazaklis cocked an eye at Moreau, as if he had lost track. She stared straight ahead, but he laughed anyway.

  “Only way I know how, copilot. I'm just a country boy.”

  “Uhm.”

  They leveled the plane out at 10,500 feet and then quickly adjusted it back to a steady climb rate.

  “Well, I owe you one, Moreau,” Kazaklis said.

  “We're even, commander. One airplane for one eye.”

  Moreau's voice was steady. Kazaklis looked at her again to see what he should read into that one. But there was no way of telling. She still stared straight ahead.

  “Okay, let's find out what happened,” Kazaklis changed the subject. “It's still a long way out of this sonuvabitch.” He switched to all channels. “Navigator, this is the pilot. You guys comfy down there?”

  For a moment there was no answer. Then Tyler came on, his voice flat. “Scope's messed up.”

  “You sure? Ours are working now.”

  Tyler's voice turned brittle, his words biting with challenge. “Goddammit, I said my scope's messed up!”

  Down below, the navigator and radar operator sat side by side at small desklike radar consoles in the windowless well hole of the navigation compartment. Alongside Tyler were the stairs leading topside to the other four crew members and behind the stairs a small open space leading to the locked hatch into the landing-gear hold and then the catwalk around the bomb bay. The light always was red here, even in daytime. The place was a closet, claustrophobic, and the pervasive red lighting pulled the walls in even closer.

  Since the flash, which had bounced down here like an errant strobe light, Radnor had been transfixed by his radar screen. It was focused tightly on the area in front of the aircraft. The screen had flared with the flash. But now it was normal, except for a little more snow than usual. And an ugly red splotch, pulsing like a jellyfish, that crept out of the corner, partly on the screen, partly hidden beyond its range. But the radar was working.

  Radnor looked over at Tyler, whose screen was set on a wider field, yielding a picture in a cross-hatched fifty-mile radius around the plane. Tyler's screen showed snow flurries too, but it also seemed to be working. The navigator had not moved, his eyes glued to the screen. Radnor leaned toward him for a closer look. His jellyfish, reduced on the broader field, looked like an amoeba under a microscope. Then the circling arm of the radar passed over another amoeba, and another. Radnor felt a sob catch in his throat. The color in his face faded, the freckles throbbing like painful welts in the red night light. Mechanically he did distance calculations. He pulled back away from Tyler's screen, tears welling in his eyes. He waited, fighting back the tears, swallowing the sob out of his voice. Then he spoke to Kazaklis . “Three detonations, commander.”

  “No!” Tyler shrieked the rejection.

  “One slightly below us, maybe five miles ahead, fifteen degrees south. The others are behind us, air-burst altitude, due east . . .” Radnor's voice broke briefly. Then he added, “Roughly twelve and sixteen miles now.”

  “No. No.” Tyler sounded calmer now, but insistent. “Radnor's wrong. My screen's a scrambled egg. I don't see that at all.”

  Radnor tried to place a reassuring hand on Tyler's shoulder. Tyler savagely pushed it away.

  Up front, Kazaklis motioned Moreau to go on private once again.

  Moreau spoke first. “Tyler hasn't got much to go home to,” she said quietly.

  “Dead center. One on the base and one on the town.”

  “Bastards.”

  “This ain't tiddlywinks, pal. What would you have done? Hit Grand Coulee Dam and tried to flood us out? They wanted to catch us on the ground. It almost worked. So they kicked us in the butt with two that should have caught us, and almost got us with a misfire. . . .”

  “Almost . . .” Moreau said pensively, rubbing an eye that neither saw nor hurt.

  Kazaklis ignored her now. His mind searched through his options. He had at least three problems, and one—the radiation, about which he could do nothing—would have to wait.

  “What would you do if you were a submarine commander and your job was to take us out, all the way out?” he thought aloud.

  “Hit us again in thirty to sixty seconds,” Moreau replied. “In case I missed, in case somebody escaped, in case my warheads detonated each other. Submarine missiles are not that accurate. And they're fratricidal.”

  “That's right. They probably sprayed us with a dozen warheads, most of which killed each other. So if you were sitting out in the Pacific guessing ten minutes ago, where would you have dumped the next load?”

  “West. They knew we would take off west. And north. Where we're turning.”

  “Right . . . and wrong. We're turning south.”

  Moreau chuckled for the first time since takeoff. “Tahiti,” she said. “The senator from Vermont would love it. For all we know, he's President by now.”

  “No palm trees for you, Moreau. I gotta loop us around one big hot mother of a cloud. Percentage baseball. And you've gotta see if there are any friendlies still flying with us. Check Radnor and then try to find the rest of the squadron.”

  Moreau felt the big plane bank sharply left. Percentage baseball, indeed. That's what Kazaklis said every time he took a risk, and this was damned risky—brushing them up against a very radioactive cloud on the chance they had outguessed a Russian submarine commander. They had already taken one dose of radiation, God knows how large a dose.

  “We need a REM count,” Moreau said.

  “You're not glowing in the dark yet, Moreau.”

  “Get off my back, Kazaklis . We need to know how much radiation we took.”

  “Not now, we don't. It's irrelevant, isn't it? It's a ten-hour trip. You're gonna live long enough. We'll check it if we get out of here. Right now, I'd rather know if we have any friends with us.”

  Radnor already had started looking, and he was confused. “Beats me, captain,” he told Moreau. “I can see only one aircraft on my screen. It's big enough to be a B-52. Could be commercial, but he's sure in a strange place. Half-dozen miles behind us, very low, heading northwest.”

  Moreau changed radio channels.

  “Polar Bear cubs, this is Mama Bear looking for strays,” she said. “Do you read? This is Polar Bear One looking for Polar Bear Two.

  “Hello, Mama Bear.” The voice, scratched by radio static, carried a strong Texas imprint. “Nice to hear yore voice. This is Polar Bear Three. Ya-all lookin' for us, too?”

  “You're way off course, Polar Bear Three.”

  “Not suhprisin'. Nope, not a-tall suhprisin' to hear that.”

  “Polar Bear Three, do you have problems?”

  “Might say so, Mama. Couple.”

  “Can we help you?”

  “Don't rightly think so, thanks. Ya-all get to write the manual for World War Four, underline the part about pullin' yore screens, hear?”

  “You're blinded.” Moreau felt a tiny pang of dread.

  “Flyin' this old Buff by braille, Mama Bear.”

  “Hang in there, will you, Polar Bear Three? That's not the end of the . . .”

  Moreau stumbled. Polar Bear Three chuckled.

  “Li'l slip there, Mama Bear. Hope yore right. But I think that's ya-all's problem now. Not ours.”

  “There's a lot of desert out there, Polar Bear Three. We'll talk you down.”

  “Goddammit it, Moreau!” Kazaklis exploded into the radio. “We aren't talking anybody anywhere!”

  “Calm down, commander,” Polar Bear Three said quietly. “We'll respectfully decline. We already talked, and none of us feels much like wanderin' around in the desert for a few hours, stumblin' over mutated prairie dawgs. We didn't get very far from home. Dunno how the plane held together. Marvel of American technology. Thank the boys at Boeing for us. Old pappy's
not so good at flyin' blind, though. 'Fraid I wobbled us right through the edge of the cloud. We took about two thousand REM's.”

  Moreau shuddered. The crew of Polar Bear Three had taken a massively lethal dose of radiation. In a hospital, they'd be dead in a few days. They weren't going to a hospital.

  Down below, Radnor began shaking like a leaf. He had never heard of anyone taking that much radiation. In front of him, the jellyfish was growing, enveloping almost half his screen.

  “We got our seein'-eye dogs down in the basement,” Radnor heard Polar Bear Three say. “They didn't take the flash, lucky boys.

  And they's hot—pardonin' the 'spression, Mama Bear—to trot far as we can git after the bad guys.”

  Radnor's bones suddenly ached. He knew the two men, down in the dark basement of Polar Bear Three, just like he and Tyler, had been protected from the blinding flash. He also knew nothing except distance could protect them from the radiation. His skin felt prickly, as if just below the surface the white blood cells were munching away at the red. His head throbbed. His eyes ached. The jellyfish grew, as Kazaklis neared its edge.

  “Think we'll just mosey on north and see how far we git,” Polar Bear Three continued serenely. “We don't make it, ya-all do us a favor? Get those mutha-fuckahs for us. Pardonin' the language, Mama Bear.”

  The jellyfish pulsed almost off the wingtip.

  “Commander!” Radnor screamed.

  Almost simultaneously, Radnor's screen flashed, flaring wildly, and then flashed again, completely washing out the jellyfish.

  “Radnor?” Kazaklis responded.

  Again, there had been absolutely no motion in the plane. Radnor, embarrassed that he had panicked, took the briefest moment to compose himself. Then he said: “Nudets, sir. At least two detonations.”

  Kazaklis began counting. “Where?”

  “Dunno. Screen's flaring again.”

  “Lemme know.” Kazaklis sounded so calm Radnor's embarrassment deepened.

  Five. Six.

  “Polar Bear Three, this is Mama Bear,” Moreau continued. “Do you read me? Do you read me, Polar Bear Three?” She heard nothing but static.

  Seven. Eight.

  Halupalai saw the curl of the thirty-footer forming, feeling the mix of fear and exhilaration. He poised for it. He reached over and placed his hand on O'Toole's.

  Nine. Ten.

  “Screen's settling.”

  Eleven. Twelve.

  “Detonations north,” Radnor said, struggling to pick through the electronic riot of his screen. “Twelve miles. Fifteen miles.” The jellyfish was receding, and others, more distant, were forming.

  Kazaklis stopped counting at thirteen. He relaxed briefly. His taut shoulders sank, the double white bars of his shoulder patch drooping with them, as did the lightning bolt, the eagle's talons, and the olive branch. He began whistling, Oh beautiful, for spacious skies . . . Some seconds later, the first quiet little ripple of vibration moved through the Buff, then the second, pocketa, pocketa, magic fingers nursing the pilot's temples. . . . for amber waves of grain . . .

  “Little more practice,” Kazaklis said jauntily, “and we'll have this down pat.”

  Moreau looked at him strangely. “Polar Bear Three, this is Mama Bear,” she said urgently. “Do you read, Polar Bear Three?”

  “I don't think I'd bother, copilot,” Kazaklis interrupted.

  “Polar Bear Three, this is Mama Bear,” Moreau insisted.

  “You see any airplanes down there, radar?” Kazaklis asked Radnor.

  “I can't find him, commander. The screen's still kinda cluttered.”

  But Radnor knew, as did Kazaklis .

  “Polar Bear Three! Polar Bear Three!”

  “They were heading straight into the detonations, copilot. They're better off. Do a radiation check on us.”

  “Polar Bear Three ...” Moreau's voice trailed off. She slumped in her seat, rubbing her white eye. Then she began checking the radiation equipment.

  “We took fifty to a hundred REM's on launch, commander, sir,” Moreau said brittlely. “Maybe two hundred, probably one-fifty, passing the cloud. Commander. Sir.” Moreau felt perversely sorry she couldn't tell Kazaklis he was glowing in the dark. The dose would make them nauseous in a few days, but not seriously, and probably long after they would have to worry about it.

  “Well,” Kazaklis said cheerfully, “sounds like we're all gonna get a little dose of the Russian flu. Everybody get their shots?”

  “Commander? Would you turn on the heater? It's colder than a witch's tit down here.”

  It was Tyler. Maybe he's shaken it off, Kazaklis thought. He switched on the heater, having forgotten the routine chore in the turmoil.

  Fear the goat from the front, the horse from the rear, and man from all sides. At the end of their single unproductive meeting the Premier, his gray eyes staring unblinking as the translator repeated the words in English, had suddenly popped the old Russian proverb at him. The President remembered bristling, intentionally tightening every facial fiber to stare back sternly. That sounds like a threat, Mr. Premier. The Premier's face had sagged into hound-dog sadness, Russian fatalism seeming to mold consternation into a face that would give but not yield. A threat; ah, yes, I suppose it is, Mr. President. To both of us. We now return to our world of men. Do you think we can control such a place?

  Icarus interrupted the President's brief musing, answering a previous question. “How the hell can I explain what the Chinese did, Mr. President? Frankly, I think they did us a favor. I just wish their hardware had been a little better.”

  Icarus was down to eight minutes and he was not happy. He did not want to bother with this part. The President did. He was trying to get some grasp on a tangle of far-off events that made no sense. He needed to understand. One set of American missiles was on its way, at his instruction. But he still had a decision to make. A big one.

  “But Pakistan, for God's sake,” the President replied. “Pakistan has been allied with China longer than anyone in Asia.”

  “We're reasonably certain that was an error, a stray. A lot of mistakes are being made. Not only overseas.”

  The President let the last comment pass. He felt penned in, like a steer on the way to slaughter. Every new bit of information seemed to poke at him, cattle prods urging him this way and that, but always toward the same end.

  “And the Russians have not yet responded to the Chinese?”

  “They appear to be moving troops across parts of the Chinese border. It is difficult to determine. It is not exactly our most pressing problem here at the moment. The Soviets have not responded with heavy weapons.”

  “Heavy weapons. You mean nuclear weapons, general. They took a nuclear attack from the Chinese and did not respond.”

  “Mr. President, the Soviets have had less than five minutes. You've had almost twenty. The Chinese weapons were very crude. Of the forty-nine Soviet divisions the Chinese tried to hit along their border, I doubt a dozen were destroyed. Everybody in the world with a two-bit space satellite is watching this. The Chinese saw an opportunity and took it. It was semisuccessful.”

  “Semi. I'll bet that word sells well in Islamabad. The Pakistanis are not the most stable lot. The missile landed in the outskirts of the capital?”

  “In the Indus Valley, toward Peshawar. Our assumption is the Chinese were trying to loft one over the mountains toward Alma Ata or Tashkent. I think the Paks misunderstood.”

  The President started to laugh, uncontrollably. “Misunderstood?” he gurgled. “Jesus. I'll bet they did.” The President felt woozy again, his skull echoing, his brain rubbery.

  “Misunderstood badly, sir. They've launched aircraft toward Delhi.”

  The President focused sharply and stopped laughing. “The Pakistanis have nuclear weapons.” It was not a question.

  “A dozen, maybe more. Elementary devices. Gravity bombs. They have no missile-delivery system.”

  “So we have to assume those are headed for Ne
w Delhi?”

  “The Indians seem to be making that assumption. The Indians and the Paks aren't exactly friends. India has placed fighter interceptors in the air. And tactical bombers.”

  “And they also have nukes.”

  “That we know, sir.”

  “Good God, it's like a damned summer cold. One sneeze and everybody catches it.”

  The President closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose between two nervous fingers.

  “Almost everybody,” Icarus said bluntly.

  “What's that supposed to mean, other than another shot at my manhood?” the President snapped back.

  “It means it's time to sneeze. Everybody's snorting except us, the Brits, and the French. The Brits, as usual, are waiting for us, poor fools. The French, I'd guess, don't know which way to point their missiles—at us or the Soviets.”

  “Everybody?”

  “The Israelis,” Icarus acknowledged.

  “The Israelis,” the President repeated.

  “Well, what would you expect the Israelis to do? They've got planes flying in every fucking direction. They sent us one message: stay out of our way.”

  The President's head throbbed. The noise did not help. He glanced over at the sprung door. Bluish-white tongues of fire, jets from acetylene torches on the other side, sliced steadily around the remaining hinges. He could hear a muffled commotion and occasionally a muted pop-pop-pop, as if light globes were bursting.

  “Why don't they just blow the damn thing?” the President snapped at the duty officer.

  “We don't want the briefest communication outage now, sir. They're almost through. The Secretary of State's on the other side.”

  “I know he is,” the President said bleakly. He wanted to see the Secretary about as badly as he wanted General Patton reincarnated in the Situation Room. In fact, in their brief conversation a few moments ago, the Secretary had sounded like General Patton, ready to swoop in to save the civilized world.