Ballistic

-39- West Virginny Rules

Jack Jericho is still searching for weapons in the security officers’ quarters when he hears the noise from outside.

Voices.

Too close.

The barracks door squeaks open and bangs shut. Footsteps make the floorboards sing.

“How long we supposed to search for this infidel?” one voice says.

“Until we find him.”

A laugh. “I’ll bet he’s halfway to Canada by now. For soldiers, they did not put up much of a fight.”

The voices grow louder. The two commandos are approaching the security officer’s quarters. “Brother David wants to make an example of this one.”

“What, crucifixion?”

“He has spoken of it. He told Gabriel to build a cross near the silo cap.”

There is a pause, as if both men are thinking about it, visualizing the sight.

“Brother David says he would love to see the general’s face when they bring him a satellite photo with a crucified airman next to a launching missile. Says it should be the new Air Force logo.”

“Dramatics,” one man says. “Always the dramatics.”

Jericho slides the window up and crawls out, dropping six feet to the ground. He flexes his knees and lands gently, keeping his balance. Then he scuttles along the building and through some light underbrush to the nearby mess hall. On his stomach, he does the infantryman’s crawl underneath the temporary wooden building — made permanent by budget cuts — which is raised on concrete blocks.

Once under the building, Jericho lifts a grimy grate from the floor above him. Removing the grate, he hoists himself into the galley, emerging from a dripping grease pit next to an old gas stove.

If filth were a virtue, Jack Jericho would be a saint. He is covered with grime from the exhaust tube, brambles and leaves from the underbrush, and a thick layer of gunk from the grease pit.

Trays of bologna sandwiches sit on a counter. A sizzling vat of oil bubbles away in a French fry cooker. Figuring he’s not going to be alone for long, Jericho stuffs several sandwiches into his pockets and begins searching for weapons. The kitchen knives aren’t sharp enough to cut the bologna, and besides, he still has his Jimmy Lile survival knife. He could use matches, however, already thinking about building a homemade bomb out of a milk carton, Joy liquid soap and cigarette lighter fluid. He’s looking through some drawers when he hears the sweet, soft voice of a little girl.

“There he is, Brother Matthew,” Betsy says.

Jericho wheels around to see Betsy in the doorway. Next to her, a muscular, bearded man wearing a green military t-shirt and camouflage fatigue pants holds a Remington 870 pistol grip, short-barreled shotgun. The barrel is pointed squarely at Jericho’s solar plexus. The sight tightens his gut into a knot.

Betsy is pointing at him. “He said he was my friend, and that Brother David was confused.”

Matthew pats her on the head. “Thank you, child.”

She gives Jericho a sweet smile and skips out the door.

The shotgun still leveled at Jericho, Matthew clicks on a walkie-talkie and says, “We have the infidel.” After a garbled reply, he speaks to Jericho, “I’m supposed to keep you alive, but it doesn’t matter to me one way or the other.”

Jericho shrugs. For a long time, it wouldn’t have mattered that much to him, either. But now, for a reason he does not completely understand, staying alive — saving Susan and the others — has become paramount. “Do what you have to do. I know I will.”

Matthew takes a step closer. “What’s that in your pockets?”

“Supper. I was getting hungry.”

“Hands behind your head. One move and your guts will be sprayed all over the wall.”

Jericho does as he’s told. “The death penalty for stealing sandwiches? That’s even worse than what they did to Jean Valjean.”

“Who is this John, one of your comrades?”

Jericho allows himself a scornful smile. “You’ve read one book too much and the others too little.”

“Turn around! Face the wall.” Angry now.

Again, Jericho does as he’s told,

“Spread ‘em,” Matthew orders, kicking Jericho’s legs apart. He begins frisking Jericho, opening the snap pockets on his fatigues. He finds a sandwich, pulls it out and tosses it across the room. Another pocket, another sandwich. In a moment, he’ll come across the cellular phone, then the knife, strapped to Jericho’s leg. “What’s this?”

Patting the long pocket on the pantleg, Matthew reaches in and pulls out something, not quite sure what it is. In the split second it takes for him to realize that it’s alive and that it’s head is turning, he has no time to react. The ferret sinks its teeth into the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. “Ow!” he screams, jumping back. “Satan incarnate!”

Matthew is off balance as Jericho spins to his left, grabs an iron skillet from the stove, and swings a forehand with a slight uppercut. Matthew sees it coming, brings up the shotgun, but too late. The skillet clanks the barrel, knocking it skyward. A blast tears a hole in the ceiling. Matthew swings the shotgun back toward Jericho who grabs the barrel and yanks hard across his body. The gun flies out of Matthew’s hands and across the room.

Jericho drops to the floor and uses a single leg takedown to bring Matthew to the floor “You wanna wrassle?” Matthew taunts him, slipping out of Jericho’s grasp and spinning into a reverse. He grabs one of Jericho’s elbows, the other hand slips around his waist in the classic referee’s position. A two-point reverse. “I was state champion at 180 pounds,” he boasts. He breaks Jericho down to the floor, banging his head into the floorboards and scraping his ear along the wooden planks, picking up splinters. “You want to go Greco-Roman or freestyle rules?”

Jericho works his left arm free and sends his elbow backwards, bashing it into Matthew’s mouth. The commando spits out blood and a chipped tooth. “West Virginny rules,” Jericho says.

Still sprawled on the floor, they tussle, exchanging punches. Jericho clobbers Matthew with a fist, but the punch glances off his skull. Then, Matthew kicks Jericho away, and both men get to their feet, locking up, again. Wrasslin’ style. They push and shove, trying to get leverage, banging each other against the galley wall, a rack of heavy spoons and spatulas crashing to the floor.

Suddenly, Jericho lifts one leg and slams his combat boot down on Matthew’s instep. The man howls in pain, and Jericho clotheslines him with a forearm to the Adam’s apple.

Jericho slips behind Matthew, works both hands up under his arms and locks them behind his head in a full nelson. An illegal maneuver in both Greco-Roman and Olympic freestyle, but not in West Virginny. Arms straining, the veins standing out on his neck, Jericho pushes forward, bending Matthew’s head close to the old stove and the french fry vat. Matthew’s eyes are wide open, and he sees the boiling oil grow larger until it fills his range of vision, the same view Icarus must have had on his way to the sun.

Matthew tries to pitch to the right, but Jericho braces his leg and won’t allow himself to be thrown off. Matthew tries to buck his head backward and smash Jericho in the face, but the grip on his neck is too strong.

“Say your prayers,” Jericho says through gritted teeth, pushing Matthew’s head closer to the scalding oil.

“I’m not afraid to die,” Matthew rasps.

“If you help me,” Jericho says, “I’ll let you go.”

“You son-of-a-bitch,” Matthew hisses, his voice weakening.

“C’mon! Help me stop Brother David. He’s a madman. You must know that.”

“He’s the savior,” Matthew says through clenched teeth.

“Good, ‘cause you’re going to need him.” Jericho pushes harder, and Matthew’s face is close enough to the vat to feel the sizzle of the boiling oil.

“Go to hell,” Matthew rasps.

“After you!” Jericho gives a last lunge, dunking Matthew’s head into the bubbling oil, holding him under. “If I were you, I’d cut back on the fried foods,” he says, helpfully.

Ker-click. The unmistakable cocking of a shotgun.

Jericho looks around, sees another commando in the doorway pointing the Remington 870 at him. He pushes Matthew toward the man, takes two steps and dives into the well of the grease pit just as a shotgun blast tears a chunk out the wall above his head.

-40- The Father and the Son

In the STRATCOM War Room, the Big Board blinks with blueprints of the missile silo and schematic cross-sections of the launch control capsule, the sump, and the sleeping quarters/galley. General Corrigan and Colonel Farris are joined by Army Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Griggs. The officers plus FBI Agent Hurtgen stand over a sprawling diorama of the 318th Missile Squadron base.

Colonel Farris uses an elbow to put himself between Griggs and General Corrigan. Farris would like to keep this an Air Force operation and the last thing he wants is Army Special Ops coming in and saving his ass. “Sir, we could zip a smart bomb right down that silo. Bingo! No more missile.”

“Bingo,” General Corrigan says softly, “no more hostages.”

“Yep,” Griggs says, using a sidestep to get back in the general’s field of vision. “When the rocket fuel blows, count on a hundred per cent kill ratio in a thousand meter radius. And that’s if there’s no nuclear reaction. If they can arm the missile and you get yourself a nuke flash, well… ”

“So, our smart bomb isn’t so smart after all,” the general says.

“Sir,” Griggs says, “if I could make a suggestion. We could drop Delta Force down the elevator shaft with a simultaneous descent into the open silo and secure the area in less than five minutes.”

“Casualties?” the general asks.

Agent Hurtgen clears his throat. “The Psych Pro leaves no doubt that Morning Star, that is, David Morton, will execute the hostages at the first shot.”

Lieutenant Colonel Griggs nods in agreement. “That’s a given cost of the operation.”

General Corrigan takes it in. “So the President tells the world, ‘Sorry, we just killed the U.N.’s non-proliferation team to take back an ICBM we don’t need from a nut who probably couldn’t launch it or detonate its warheads.’”

“But that’s not the worst case scenario, sir,” Agent Hurtgen says.

“No, it isn’t,” the general agrees. “Worst case scenario, he can launch the damn thing.”

“And if he has the ability, the experts say he’ll do it,” Hurtgen adds. “The middle ground is that, failing the ability to launch, he can still arm and detonate the ten warheads.”

“What are the projections on reasonable probability?”

“Fifty per cent on the ability to launch, fifty percent on the ability to detonate without a launch,” Hurtgen says.

“The D.I.A. concurs, sir,” Colonel Farris says.

“Fifty per cent. “You pick’em. General Corrigan shows a sad smile. “You know, I’ve been in the Air Force thirty-six years.”

“Yes, sir,” chorus Farris, Griggs and Hurtgen.

“All of them with distinction,” Colonel Farris adds, polishing the general’s apple.

“Including half-a-dozen years in that five-sided building where there are more asswipes than toilets,” General Corrigan adds, eying all three men.

“Yes, sir,” Griggs responds.

Colonel Farris, who spent two years in the Pentagon as an aide in U.S. Space Command, keeps quiet, not knowing where this is going.

“So cutting through the bullshit, gentlemen,” the general says, “what you’re telling me is that we don’t have the slightest idea what Mr. Morton can do.”

No one disagrees.

“And what you’re also telling me is that the bastard’s got Uncle Sam by the balls.”

Again, no dissent is heard.

As the general ponders the situation, a thin man of fifty with a close-cropped gray beard works his way through the semi-circle of officers. Colonel Farris sees the newcomer and waves him toward Hugh Corrigan. “General, I don’t think you’ve met Dr. Rosen. He’s the expert on eschatology.”

Blank looks greet that announcement.

“End times study,” Dr. Rosen explains. “Doomsday cults, the apocalypticists.”

The general gives him the once over. Dr. Stuart Rosen wears rumpled gray trousers and a navy blue sport coat. He’s balding on top and tries to conceal it with back-to-front brushstrokes that look like a wheat field plowed by a drunken farmer.

“I’ve also handled hostage negotiations for the Bureau,” Dr. Rosen adds, “which is serendipitous, is it not?”

General Corrigan hates rhetorical questions and has little use for psychiatrists so he ignores the question and instead, asks one of his own. “Who the hell are these nuts, anyway?”

“Just the latest in a long line, I’m afraid,” Dr. Rosen says. “Cults in this country go back to the Shakers and the Hutterites. They’re mostly benign, but once in a while, you’ll get a Jim Jones or David Koresh. There is an interesting twist in this case. According to some of his dropouts, Brother David has psychic powers.”

“You mean he claims to have… ”

“They gave concrete examples of his ability to ‘see’ things in their past, things no one else could know. Apparently, it was quite convincing.”

The general is incredulous. “That’s how this crackpot got his followers to attack a missile base, with an Amazing Kreskin routine?”

Dr. Rosen scratches at his beard and says, “Oh, I’m sure that helped. But cults have been seducing followers for hundreds of years with far more basic techniques. The indoctrination methods are amazingly similar, whether you’re dealing with Moonies, Hare Krishnas, or apocalyptic groups. They prey on what they call ‘sheepy’ people, depressed, borderline antisocial, lonely rejected types in search of a family. Folks with low self esteem, impressionable and malleable, some truly schizophrenic. They’re looking to a leader to solve all their problems, and indeed, all the world’s problems. They have a sense of incompleteness, maybe even self hatred.”

“Not the makings of a good army,” Colonel Farris chimes in.

“No, not at first. The conversion process begins with isolation from all past life and friends. They strip the newcomer of all possessions, even his or her name. Humiliation and guilt are used to dismember the former self. They indoctrinate and brainwash. They use sleeplessness and food deprivation combined with drug-induced hallucinations. I’d be surprised if our Brother David didn’t keep a healthy supply of LSD, mescaline, or psilocybin in the compound. Anyway, after they destroy the person that was, the convert gets a new identity, a new purpose in life.”

“To die?” the general asks, in wonderment.

“To die in a blaze of glory, and maybe to live forever,” Dr. Rosen says. That’s how they achieve the ultimate in sanctity. In a way, they’re similar to the Nazis in the 1930’s, who would be considered a cult by today’s standards. Hitler’s genius was that he saw that he could build a charismatic cult, not by promising creature comforts, but rather by promising struggle, danger and glorious death.”

The general shakes his head. “What about the specifics of dealing with our nut case?”

“Well, you’ve got the combination of two forces, end-time prophesy and millenarism, the predicted thousand-year reign of Christ. Many cults have been preparing for Judgment Day, engaging in ecstatic behavior through prayer, trances, hysteria, even paranoia. The Cargo Cults in Melanesia thought they could turn back colonization that way. So did the Paiute Indians not far from here.”

“What’s that got to do with Brother David.”

“Same modus operandi,” Dr. Rosen says. “All these cults traditionally regard contemporary morals and laws as irrelevant. The only thing that matters is the impending catastrophe, which to them is a glorious event. Before leading his cult to mass suicide, Jim Jones predicted a nuclear war in which only his followers would survive. David Koresh considered himself the Messiah, and an angry one at that.”

Dr. Rosen pulls out a notepad and reads from it. “‘I am your God and you will bow under my feet.’”

“I beg your pardon,” General Corrigan says.

“These were from Koresh’s final writings recovered after the conflagration in Waco. ‘I am your life and your death. Do you think you have power to stop My will? My seven thunders are to be revealed. Do you want me to laugh at your pending torments?’ Et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, you get the same drift from the Holy Church of Revelations. They have a charismatic leader, totally committed followers, and apparently no fear of death.”

“Oh, there is one difference,” the general says.

Dr. Rosen raises an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

“These bastards have ten nuclear warheads.”

There’s a commotion at the back of the group. An aide approaches and nods toward a phone. “It’s Morning Star again, sir.”

“Speak of the devil,” the general says with a mournful smile.

The aide hits the button on a speaker phone and General Corrigan leans close to the microphone. “How are you, Mr. Morton?”

“Mr. Morton?” Amused and playful now. “You’re showing off, Hugh. Letting me know how clever you can be with a budget of just a few hundred billion. So you know who you’re up against. Only child of the famous Lionel Morton, but now just a poor country preacher with a handful of disciples. Taking on you and your minions must seem as foolish as challenging Pontius Pilate and the Legions of Rome.”

Behind the general, Dr. Rosen whispers, “Talk about delusions of grandeur.”

“I think it helps us both, Mr. Morton, to know who we’re dealing with,” the general says.

“I know what the Behavioral Science Unit must have told you. ‘Deny him his identity. Don’t feed his delusions. Make him play on our field.’”

General Corrigan kneads his knuckles into his forehead. The beginning of a four-aspirin headache. This David Morton is smart, cocky and dangerous, and he enjoys all three. Hugh Corrigan is pure military. He has covered his ass on funding, training, and deployment with the best of the Pentagon bullshitters and congressional budget cutters. He has eaten steaks and guzzled whiskey with the Armed Services Committee and remembers the names of their wives and mistresses — and never confuses them — even after a fifth round of drinks. But he doesn’t have the slightest idea how to deal with David Morton.

The general gestures toward Professor Lionel Morton, who motors over to the speaker phone, a gleam in his eye. “Why don’t you give it a try, professor?”

Morton leans close to the microphone. “Okay, Davy,” he says, his tone defiant and challenging. “Your childish dramatics have gotten my attention. So let’s get on with it.”

“Ah, the famous Professor Morton, scourge of academia, apologist for the Pentagon, unrepentant symbol of the military-industrial complex, and primary piglet sucking at the pork-barrel tit of the Air Force.” He lets his voice become childlike. “Hello Daddy.”

“Hello yourself, you self-centered, egomaniacal son-of-a-bitch.”

“Staring into a mirror can be so painfully revealing, eh Daddy?”

“This is all about me, isn’t it Davy?”

“It is ironic, Paterfamilias, that the world will remember you for what I shall do.”

“I’ve already made my mark, you little snot. You think you were reborn? Hell, I was reborn on July 13, 1948 when I saw the launch of an MX-774 at White Sands.”

“Sorry, Pops, but no one wants to hear of your past glories, not even your toady military friends.”

“What do you want, Davy?”

“I wanna be just like my Daddy,” David croons.

“You’re trying to be sarcastic, but you’re really telling the truth and don’t even know it. You didn’t think you could measure up, Davy. That’s why you became a nihilist or whatever the hell you are. I did things. I made things. I was there from the beginning, the Matador, the Snark, the Rascal and the Navaho. The Jupiter and the Thor. I built the Atlas and Titan, built them from the ground up! Damn you, do you know what that means?”

“No one cares, Daddy. No one even remembers their names. Or yours.”

The professor’s tone is mocking. “And what have you done?”

“I’ve seen the light,” David says. “And now I’ll act.”

“You’ll fail! Just like you failed at the Point. Just like you did at the Seminary. Maybe a bunch of losers and dead-head misfits think you’re the Second Coming. But I know you. I know what excites you and what frightens you. You’re the same little shit you always were, only your toys are more dangerous.”

“They’re your toys, daddy. I’m just borrowing them.”

“You always wanted what was mine. Well you couldn’t have your mother, and you can’t have my bomb! Not then, not now, not ever!”

Dr. Stuart Rosen tugs at General Corrigan’s sleeve and whispers, “I strongly advise against confrontation until the first four steps of persuasive reasoning have been attempted.”

The general ignores him, letting Professor Morton go on.

“You were a fuck-up then,” the professor says, “and you’re a fuck-up now… Oedipus!”

“Ah, there you go again, Daddy dearest. But let’s explore the analogy. I suppose I’m destined to kill you.”

“Then gouge your own eyes out,” the professor says. “Why not try that first?”

“No, Daddy, I won’t kill you, either. You must witness God’s work, his power as embodied in the missile and unleashed by me.”

“It’s my missile, Davy. You don’t have the slick code, and you can’t get it.”

“If you thought that, if you really knew that, dear old Dad, you would have told your buddy Hugh, and he’d have dropped Special Forces down the hole quicker than you can say, ‘ICBM.’ Good-bye for now, Daddy. See you at dawn.”

-41- Water Ride

Exhausted and dripping with grease, Jack Jericho crawls through the scrub brush on the banks of the dry river bed. A commando sentry patrols nearby. Waiting for the chance to get by him, Jericho hears what sounds like a man’s heavy breathing somewhere behind him. Then the cr-ack of a twig snapping. Jericho flattens himself to the ground.

Another cr-ack.

The bushes move beside him.

A snort.

Then a plug-ugly boar scuttles over, sniffing and licking his ugly chops. Jericho doesn’t move.

“Who’s there?” A commando’s voice, perhaps 10 meters away. The man is obscured by the heavy underbrush.

The boar gets a whiff of Jericho’s filthy pants, seems to like the rank odor, and begins licking. “Good, eh boy?” Jericho whispers. “Bacon grease, probably one of your cousins.”

The boar slowly moves up Jericho’s body, its mouth drooling, its tusks jabbing him. Finally, the boar begins licking Jericho’s face.

“Identify yourself!” the commando demands, his voice louder. “I hear you in there.”

Jericho listens to the sound of a magazine being clicked into place, the commando nervously checking and re-checking his rifle.

The boar lets out a grunt, then trundles off in the direction of the voice. It sniffs the air, getting the man’s scent. Jericho reaches into his rucksack and pulls out one of the bungee cords. Making a loop out of a small piece of the cord, he fashions a homemade slingshot. He picks up a small round stone and wedges it into the loop. “Sorry, boy,” he says, and lets fly.

Thwap! He nails the boar in the ass.

It emits a beastly roar and charges toward the commando.

“Last chance!” the commando yells. “Come out with your hands up.” He storms through the bushes toward Jericho. The boar bursts out of the bushes in an explosion of tusks and teeth and barrels into the man, eviscerating him with its razor-sharp tusks. The man’s shrieks cut through the woods.

Jericho gets to his feet and takes off across the dry river bed. In a few moments, he is trudging up a trail above the missile base toward Chugwater Dam. The sun has set, and the base is lit by sweeping searchlights from the Army’s base camp, plus the work lights at the ever-expanding front line of tanks, trucks and other military vehicles. He pauses, realizes how hungry and thirsty he is. The bologna sandwiches are gone from his pockets.

He knows that a river used to flow down the mountain, but the Army Corps of Engineers took care of that with Chugwater Dam. Now, the mountainside is inhospitable, unless you’re good at foraging. Jericho quickly locates some thistle plants, peels off the thorns and chews on the tender stems. It’s a watery snack he called “survival celery” back in West Virginia. He peels another and hands it to Ike, who stays at his feet. Ike chews the stem, keeping his eyes on Jericho.

After a moment, he continues up the trail in the dim light. Along the path are fir and birch trees. He finds a wild blackberry bush just off the trail and pauses to pick a handful. Sour but not bad. A few more paces, and Jericho comes across the fern called fiddleheads. Pulling out some young ones, he chews the leathery fronds that taste a bit like raw asparagus.

Looking up the mountainside, Jericho sees the night lights at the Chugwater Dam control building. He pulls out the cellular phone he had found in the security officer’s office.

The command tent at Base Camp Alpha is jammed with maps, charts and communications gear. Outside, the sound of heavy vehicles has faded, and the shouts of soldiers have quieted. It is dusk, and the Army is in place. Puffing a pipe, Colonel Henry Zwick fills the tent with cherry blend smoke, a trick the Armored Cavalry officer discovered years earlier to avoid the stench of diesel fuel, metallic lubricants, and too many men with too few showers. The colonel stands inside a semi-circle of Special Forces officers, using a wooden pointer to highlight sections of a scale model of the missile base.

“In conclusion, gentlemen,” the colonel says, “if every last one of you does exactly as ordered, and if every one of your men performs exactly as they’ve been trained, maybe — just maybe — we can end this without a nuclear catastrophe or the loss of the hostages.”

There is some mumbling among the officers, interrupted when an aide signals the colonel to pick up a red telephone. Zwick punches a button, activating the speaker and a tape recorder. After listening a moment, the colonel says, “What’s your name again, son?”

“Jack Jericho, United States Air Force, E-5.” For once, Jericho sounds like an airman. In the tent, the officers stop talking among themselves and listen. The voice is distant, and there is a sound of rushing water.

Colonel Zwick fiddles with his handlebar mustache. “You in the latrine, sergeant?”

Jack Jericho sits on a steel catwalk above a spillway at Chugwater Dam. Twenty feet below, water tumbles into an aqueduct which runs from the dam down the mountain and around the missile base. From his perch, Jericho can see the lights from the open missile silo. Every few seconds, searchlights sweep over the missile base from the Army base camp nearby.

“I’m on the dam, sir, above the aqueduct,” Jericho says. “I’ve got a cellular phone.” The Green Beret officers exchange looks. Base Camp Alpha is equipped with five military radio systems: UHF secure, HF secure, FM secure, SATCOM and VHF, and this dipshit is calling on a cellular, like some orthodontist in his BMW. A goofball kid with a scanner could pick up the call.

The colonel gestures to the miniature dam on top the scale-model mountain, then drags the pointer down the slope toward the missile silo. “How’d you get up there? Were you in the silo?”

Jericho hesitates. A faint notion of guilt clings to him, as if the colonel asked why he hadn’t died fighting the terrorists. “Yes, sir.”

At that moment, in the security building of the 318th Missile squadron, a commando wearing earphones sits with his hand on the dial of a radio frequency scanner. He listens to the scratchy voice of Jack Jericho. “I was there. I met the enemy, sir, and he ain’t us.”

“Sounds like you’re going to be of considerable help to your Uncle Sam, airman. We need you to brief us on Morning Star.”

“Sir, I know that hole better than anybody,” Jericho blurts out. “Every nook and cranny. I can help your men launch an assault. I’d like to go with the first wave.”

In the command tent, Colonel Zwick puffs at his pipe. Behind him, an Army Ranger captain whispers, “The first wave. Thinks he’s at Omaha Beach.”

“You’re not Air Force Special Ops, are you son?” Colonel Zwick asks.

“No, sir.”

“Have you ever seen death up close?”

Jericho’s eyes flicker, but he doesn’t answer. It is a question that defies an answer.

“Son, what is it you do for the 318th?”

“Maintenance, sir. I clean the sump, maintain the perimeter fence and keep the launch generator running.”

In the command tent, some of the officers — Delta Force, Rangers, and Night Stalkers — exchange crooked grins.

“That’s an important job, and I’ve got another important job for you,” the colonel says. “I want you to brief us on everything you saw and heard down there. I’ve got diagrams of the tunnel and the sump, but diagrams only get you so far. I want you to look my officers in the eye and tell ‘em what the hell’s going on down there. Then you’ll get out of the way, and we’ll do whatever we’re ordered to do.”

“Sir, I don’t think there’s time for all that. There are innocent hostages down there. There’s a woman they’re torturing. They’re trying to launch the missile, and maybe they can do it and maybe they—”

“Son,” the colonel interrupts. “If it were up to me, we’d have been down that hole faster than shit through a goose, but I follow orders. You get my drift?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Because I’m ordering you to get the hell off that mountain and make your way to the base camp. You’ll do us no good if you get killed. I’ll alert our perimeter. Give me your E.T.A.”

“It’s going to be a while, sir.”

“What does that mean, Sergeant?” The colonel has abandoned his avuncular tone. Now, it’s all business.

“I have a detour to make.”

“Sergeant! I want you off that mountain. I want you off the missile base. Do you read me?”

“Five by five, sir.”

“Good. Now, get over here where you’ll be of some use.”

“I’m afraid not, sir.”

“What!”

“I’ve got to go back into the silo.”

“Sergeant!”

“I promised someone,” Jack Jericho says. “One of the hostages.”

Jericho stares across the pouring water of the spillway, pondering what he has just done. Refused a direct order, for one thing. The only comforting thought is that he can’t be court-martialed if he’s killed by Brother David’s maniacs. For a moment, he listens to the colonel yammering at him, then looks down at his filthy t-shirt and brushes at a pink spot, absent-mindedly trying to wipe it off.

The spot moves.

Jericho brushes at it again.

It moves again, centering on his sternum.

Jericho looks up. At the end of the catwalk, a commando aims a laser-sighted Mauser 66 at him. Ping! A bullet ricochets off the steel railing. The phone is still locked in Jericho’s grip. He can hear the colonel screaming, “Sergeant! You’ll be court-martialed.”

Jericho tucks and rolls across the catwalk. Ping! Ping! Two more misses. Jericho scrambles to his feet and begins running to the far side of the catwalk, zig-zagging away from the rifleman.

“I’ll lock the cell at Leavenworth myself!” comes the colonel’s muffled voice.

Jericho stops short. A second commando lies in the prone shooting position on this end of the catwalk, too. A shot misses. Then another. Jericho jams the phone into his rucksack and vaults over the railing. Kicking at the air, he tumbles into the spillway twenty feet below where he sinks into the cascading water. The force carries him under, smashes him against the bottom of the concrete spillway, then carries him to the surface and into the narrow aqueduct that curls down the slope. He sucks in a greedy breath of air and is swept under again. In seconds, he has traveled hundreds of feet down the aqueduct, and he can no longer hear the gunshots.

-42- Let It Blow

Reams of paper spill out of the console computer in the launch control capsule. Eyes bleary, James works at the keyboard, occasionally lifting the pages to examine the scrolling numbers.

“Can you get the code or not?” David asks, his tone querulous.

“I th-ink I can, Bro-ther Davy,” James says, playing dumb, dragging out the words, having some fun.

“What’s taking so long?”

James takes off his glasses, rubs his eyes, then turns toward David. “It doesn’t help if you keep pestering me every fifteen minutes. Aren’t you supposed to have the patience of Job?”

“Right now, I have the wrath of Zeus!”

James turns back to his work. “Pagan. I knew it would come to this.”

David slides his flight chair down the railing. He knows when it’s best to let James alone. Behind him, Rachel keeps a watch over Susan, whose hands are cuffed behind her. Owens, also cuffed, sleeps on the floor, his head slumped against the capsule wall. “Let’s play, ‘Imagine,’” David says to Susan.

She looks at him through sullen eyes. “I’m tired of your games.”

“No, no, no. You must play with me. What do you imagine they’re doing at STRATCOM right now? And at Cheyenne Mountain and at the Military Command Center?”

“They’re talking about you,” Susan says. “You’re the center of attention. Does that make you happy?”

“Of course. But what are they saying? What are they doing?”

“Deciding how to kill you without killing us. Figuring out if you can launch the missile or detonate it if you can’t launch.” Her tone takes on an angry edge. “Trying to figure what makes a schizo like you tick.”

“Changing your diagnosis, eh doctor?”

“No. Just adding paranoid schizophrenia with delusions of grandeur.”

That brings a smile of mock disbelief. “Paranoid? My dear, doctor, as you have just acknowledged, the entire United States military is trying to kill me.”

Naked, soaking wet and shivering, Jack Jericho peers out of the underbrush near a concrete pillar of the aqueduct. The temperature has plunged as the sun settles below Rattlesnake Hills to the west. Over his head, water roars down the elevated aqueduct and around the missile facility.

“Guess I needed a bath, anyway,” Jack Jericho says to himself. Except for the survival knife strapped to his ankle, he could be Adam in the Garden of Eden. He wrings out his clothes and tests the cellular phone. The little green light clicks on, but he doesn’t feel like talking to Colonel Zwick and having his prison sentence increased.

Jericho hears a rustling in the underbrush, turns and looks straight into a glaring flashlight.

The man’s voice is urgent, perhaps a little afraid. “Who are you? Identify yourself.”

Jericho shields his eyes and sees a commando holding a flashlight in one hand, an Uzi in the other. The flashlight is pointed at Jericho’s face, the Uzi at his gut. “They call me Brother John,” he calmly tells the man.

The flashlight works its way down Jericho’s body. “You’re out of uniform,” the commando says.

“Occupational hazard, but I’m clad in God’s own garment.”

The commando regards him suspiciously. “I don’t recognize you, Brother John.”

“I am a recent convert, but I believe I have seen you at evening vespers.” Holding his breath, hoping to hell there are evening vespers.

The commando moves closer, studying Jericho. “Then you should have no trouble telling me the hidden meaning of the sixth seal of Revelations.”

“The sixth seal,” Jericho repeats, nodding appreciatively. Buying time now. “One of my favorite passages.”

“Mine, too.”

“Do you know it by heart?” Jericho asks.

“Who does not?”

“Indeed,” Jericho says.

“‘I watched as he broke the sixth seal,’” the commando recites with appropriate fervor. “‘The sun turned black as a funeral pall and the moon all red as blood, and the stars fell to earth, like figs shaken down by a gale. The sky vanished and every mountain and island was moved from its place.’”

“Sounds like a hell of a storm.”

“Do you joke about such things?” The commando moves even closer.

“No, I just thought the meaning was obvious.”

“Of course. But the hidden meaning. What does Brother David teach us?”

“Oh, that,” Jericho says. Their faces are just inches apart. “That’s easy. Do unto others… ”

Jericho viciously head-butts the commando, breaking the man’s nose with an explosion of cartilage and blood. “Before they do unto you!”

The man falls backward and writhes on the ground, spitting foamy blood. Jericho picks up the Uzi and points it at him. “I want your clothes. We’ll finish the Sunday school class later.”

“My clothes?” the man says, the words barely audible. Disoriented from the pain, confused by the demand. “Do you wish to join us?”

“No, I want to join the circus. Now, c’mon. Give me your clothes.”

The commando strips out of his fatigues, and Jericho tears his own wet clothing into strips that he uses to gag the man, then ties him to a tree with another of Sayers’ bungee cords. Newly dressed, with the Uzi in hand, Jericho picks up his rucksack and heads through the dry river bed toward the exhaust tube. Peering through the underbrush, he sees a commando sentry standing at the outlet pipe. So they found it. Too late to trap him inside, but just in time to keep him out. Fifty yards away, three sentries patrol the circumference of the open missile silo.

“They don’t want me around for the party,” Jericho says to himself. He sits back on his haunches and thinks.

What would Special Forces do?

Call in an air strike.

But what can I do?

Diversion.

He grabs the cellular phone and calls a number he knows by heart.

General Corrigan, his cheeks flushed, is on the phone with Colonel Zwick. “A sergeant?”

“An E-5,” Colonel Zwick says from the command tent at the base camp. “He’s the maintenance man for the launch generator.”

“What the hell can he do?”

“Nothing but get in the way,” the colonel tells him. “Special Ops is ready, sir, and awaiting your orders.”

“Thank you, Henry. You sit tight for now.” The general clicks off the phone and turns to his staff. “There’s one airman still roaming around the missile base, and naturally, it’s some swab jockey, second class.”

Professor Morton sits off to one side in his wheelchair. “Wasn’t it Clemenceau who said that war was too important to be left to the generals?”

“It was, Lionel, but do you think he wanted it left to the janitor?”

“Oh, I’m sure he can’t muck it up any worse than Special Ops.”

“Enough!” Corrigan says. He wags a finger in Professor Morton’s face. “Lionel, what the hell was that disk doing in your house?”

“I designed it,” the professor says, petulantly, turning his wheelchair away. “It’s mine.”

“Yours! ICBM Enable Codes and P.L.C.’s are yours? They’re U.S. government property. They’re classified! They’re Top Secret! What the hell’s wrong with you, Lionel?”

“I like to have my work close at hand.”

That brings a snort of disbelief from Colonel Farris, who has been observing from the circle of military brass surrounding the two men. “Did Eisenhower leave the plans for D-Day laying around the house?” he asks. “Did Westmoreland misplace maps of Cambodian air raids at the convenience store? Did Meade discuss plans for Gettysburg at the saloon?”

“There were no plans for Gettysburg, you ninny,” Morton responds. “Gettysburg was an accident of history, a mistake, like your commission.” He turns to General Corrigan. “Hugh, why do you surround yourself with these imbeciles?”

“Don’t change the subject,” the general says. “You’re a goddam security risk.”

“But you keep calling me back to upgrade your toys, don’t you?”

The general sighs. What’s done is done. “Is there any chance that lunatic son of yours can get the Secondary Launch Code?”

“It’s not on the disk.”

“We know that. Had it been, ten nuclear warheads would already have detonated over Jerusalem.”

“Can little Davy get the code?” Professor Morton muses, a wry smile on his face. “No, because he refuses to see himself for what he is.”

General Corrigan shakes his head at the enigmatic statement. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Perhaps in time, you shall know. Meanwhile, let’s consider the benefits of a first strike.”

“A what?” General Corrigan isn’t sure he heard correctly.

“The benefits to the United States of America of allowing the PK to fly its coop.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” The general is incredulous.

“Well, obviously there’d be a wealth of in-field research, material we just couldn’t duplicate in the lab. Temperature and dynamic pressure of the blast, firestorm, base surge, afterwind speeds, hard data we could gather by satellite, but only from a real detonation, not computer models. Plus medical information, statistical analysis of fatalities and casualties such as blindness, radiation poisoning, internal injuries. Psychological studies of survivors, that sort of thing. All invaluable and simply not able to be duplicated in the virtual world.”

“You’re not serious,” General Corrigan says. “You want to kill hundreds of thousands of people as a lab experiment.”

“Not for that alone. The political consequences might be even more compelling, so bear with me. For now, call it an academic inquiry. Or contingency planning, Hugh. Isn’t that what you do all the time?”

“Go on. I’m listening.”

“Let’s assume that my only child, bless his dastardly heart, acquires the S.L.C. and that you are unable to stop the launch by either technological or strategic means. What happens?”

“A holocaust. A one-hundred per cent kill ratio for a radius of twelve miles from ground zero of each warhead. Lingering death by radiation poisoning, burns and internal injuries to several hundred thousand others. Complete destruction of the holiest city in the world, home to three religions. The greatest single catastrophe in the history of the world.”

“Of course, of course,” the professor says, a bit impatiently. “But politically, what are the consequences? Surely, you have discussed this with the National Security Advisor.”

“I have, and that’s classified. Frankly, Lionel, you’re the last person I would share—”

“Oh, stow it, Hugh! I can figure it out. The State Department has already alerted the Israelis as to the silo takeover and the reconfiguration of the command data buffer. If the slick is entered into the capsule computer, the damage will be catastrophic, the psychological injury unprecedented in history.” A smile plays at the corner of Morton’s mouth. “Which raises a question. If little Israel is laid waste by ten nuclear warheads, what would Iraq, Iran and Libya do? Maybe Syria, too.”

“You tell me, Lionel.”

“They’d finish the job,” Colonel Farris breaks in. “They’d attack. It’d be their one and only chance to defeat a stronger, better organized military power. They’ve waited fifty years, and it’s like all those prayers to Allah will have been answered.”

“Right!” the professor proclaims. “Colonel, you are not the complete idiot I always took you for.”

Colonel Farris nods a thank you.

Nobody says anything for a moment. Then in a low voice, General Corrigan speaks. “It’s a possible scenario that’s been discussed.”

That brings a laugh from the professor, who hits a button, and moves his wheelchair closer to the general. “Damn right it’s been discussed. That’s what would happen, and everyone in Washington knows it. What those short-sighted, pension-loving, pencil-pushers haven’t thought about is the potential benefit of letting it all happen.”

No one asks the question, but Professor Lionel Morton answers it anyway. “The benefit, gentleman, is that with one fortuitous stroke, we will have neutralized the world’s hot spot. Between the militant Arab fundamentalists, those pesky Palestinians and the hard-line Israelis, the Middle East is the world’s powder keg. We can just let it blow.”

“Let it blow?” General Corrigan shakes his head.

“Boom! Boom!” the professor whoops. “Let the Arabs and Israelis engage in a final, all-out war. A pox on both their houses. They will expend themselves, destroy each other, and end World War III before it begins.”

The officers exchange looks and mumble to themselves. Finally, Agent Hurtgen says, “What asylum did this maniac escape from?”

“Ours,” General Corrigan replies.

-43- The Diversion

The old Volkswagen Beetle chugs past the sign reading, “Rattlesnake Hills Sewage Plant,” grinds its gears and chugs up the mountain road at a clunky fifteen miles an hour. Inside, Jimmy Westoff inhales the tangy aroma of charred meat and sizzling grease. The tiny back seat is loaded with Styrofoam cartons of cheeseburgers, chili and french fries.

Unbeknownst to Jimmy, eight M-16 rifles are trained on him. Camouflaged in the gully at the side of the road, a squad of Army Rangers watches Jimmy drive by. A lieutenant with a darkened face and a helmet disguised as a mulberry bush speaks into his radio. “Possible enemy vehicle on Access Road One.”

A scratchy voice comes through his headset. “How many men, what sort of weaponry.”

Through an infrared night scope, the lieutenant sees the placard attached to the VW’s roof: “Old Wrangler Tavern — We Deliver.” Maybe it’s his imagination, but he thinks he gets a whiff of burgers as the car passes. “One man in a VW Beetle,” he says. “No known weapons.”

“One man?”

“Unless it’s one of those clown cars where they just keep piling out.”

Jimmy stomps on the accelerator, the little car bucks and rounds the last curve, sputtering to a stop in front of the sentry post of the 318th Missile Squadron. Jimmy gets out of the car, feels a tickle in his nose from the dust the VW has kicked up, and sneezes loudly. A kilometer away, at Base Camp Alpha, watching through a telescopic night scope and listening through bionic earpieces, Colonel Henry Zwick says, “Gesundheit.”

The road had been purposely left open in the hopes that reinforcements the Holy Church of Revelations would arrive. Colonel Zwick wanted to capture several commandos and interrogate them, but so far, the road has been quiet except for the asthmatic Volkswagen.

The colonel watches Jimmy pull out several grease-stained cartons filled with Styrofoam boxes. “We’re about to see if Napoleon was correct,” Zwick says.

“About what?” Captain Kyle Clancy asks, raising his own night scope. His face is covered with a thick layer of camouflage grease which seems to overflow the deep scar that runs from his cheekbone to his chin.

“About an army marching on its stomach. These fellows are into fast food.”

The captain lets out a little laugh. “Shit, colonel, it can’t be any worse than our M.R.E.’s.”

His arms loaded, Jimmy Westoff walks up to the guard house. He doesn’t recognize the commando in combat fatigues with no military insignia. “Who ordered forty buffalo burgers, twenty fries, and ten sides of chili?”

The commando points an M-16 at Jimmy’s head. “Outta here. This is restricted property.”

“No shit, like I really thought it was a sewage plant. You new or somethin’? And what’s with the uniform?”

From his view in the underbrush, Jack Jericho can see the sentry post in the flickering headlights of the Volkswagen. He had called the tavern an hour earlier on the cellular phone, and now he waits for his chance. A commando still guards the exhaust tube’s outlet pipe, but with any luck, he’ll be fetching dinner soon.

At the guard house, the commando is becoming annoyed. “No one told me anything about burgers.”

“Like what else is new? You wanna call the Pentagon and get authorization, ‘cause I’m telling you, my arms are getting tired, and in a minute, you’re gonna have chili all over your boots.”

“Okay, okay. Leave it all here.”

Jimmy puts the boxes on the ground, goes back to the car and brings over some more. “That’s two hundred twelve fifty, not including tip.”

The sentry pats his empty pockets. “Do you believe, as it is written in Ecclesiastes, that ‘money answereth all things’?”

“I believe that if I don’t get paid, Uncle Buck will kicketh my ass from here to Hell’s Half Acre.”

“Sorry,” the sentry says, inhaling the aroma of the burgers, and dragging one of the boxes inside the guard house. “I’m requisitioning the food in the name of the Lord.” He is salivating. Other commandos begin to drift over to the guard house, eager to eat. Their mission should have been over by now. They should be ascending to heaven. Death they could take; hunger bothered the hell out of them.

Jericho waits and watches, but the commando near the outlet pipe doesn’t move.

At the guard house, Jimmy is throwing a tantrum. “You shittin’ me? I drive all the way up here and now you’re jerking my chain.” Jimmy’s voice is cranked up a few notches. “Where’s Dempsey anyway? Sleeping one off.”

“Dempsey?”

“The security dude who’s usually here. He never stiffs me.”

From inside the gate, a broad-shouldered commando carrying a shotgun pushes his way past the others. His harsh voice carries all the way to the underbrush where Jericho watches. “What’s going on here?” Gabriel demands.

“Supper,” the sentry says, a little unsure.

“Back to your posts! All of you, now!”

Jimmy Westoff, with the blissful ignorance of the young, yells at Gabriel. “Hey, cowboy! Whether you want the grub or not, you still gotta pay. C’mon, or I’m gonna complain to the captain how you’re jerking me around out here.”

Gabriel wheels around, the shotgun pointed at Jimmy Westoff’s Adam’s apple.

“On the other hand,” Jimmy says, “if you’re a little short, maybe Uncle Buck would take a check.”

The shotgun drops toward the ground, and a second later, the blam echoes through the trees and across the missile base. Jimmy Westoff’s pant legs are warm and wet. At first he thinks he’s been shot. Then, he realizes he’s peed his pants. The rest of him is covered with cheeseburger shrapnel.

Reacting to the shotgun blast, the commando near the outlet pipe clicks off the safety on his rifle and heads toward the sentry post. Taking advantage of the diversion, Jericho darts toward the flared end of the pipe.

At the perimeter of Base Camp Alpha, a sharpshooter with a tripod-mounted Israeli Galil sniper rifle has Gabriel in the cross-hairs of his infrared scope. “I can take him,” he says, keeping his finger on the trigger, his breathing soft and slow. He moves the rifle slightly up and to the right, taking into account wind speed and the gravitational fall of the bullet over eleven hundred meters.

“I’m sure you can,” Colonel Zwick says. “But we don’t fire a shot until our orders change.”

“Yes, sir,” he says, releasing the pressure on the trigger, and muttering an inaudible “shit” under his breath.

At the guard house, the commandos begin to disperse and resume their positions. One comes back to the exhaust tube’s outlet pipe. He does not notice that the screen has been replaced just a tad cockeyed, it being hard to pull into place from inside the pipe.

Now, in the darkness and gloom of the exhaust tube, Jack Jericho works his way back toward hell. That’s the way he thinks of it. But Jericho knows there are all kinds of purgatory. He’s been doing a slow death in one of his own making. How much worse can this one be?

Sweating heavily, Jack Jericho works his way down the exhaust tube toward the missile silo. He is halfway there, the Uzi slung over one shoulder, the rucksack on the other, when he is startled by a sudden, discordant sound. It takes him a moment to realize that the cellular phone is ringing. He digs it out of a pocket and answers, “Yeah.”

“Sergeant, you surprise me,” a male voice says with a hint of amusement.

At first, he thinks it’s Colonel Zwick, calling to give him hell. But it’s Brother David. He knows where I am, Jericho thinks, feeling trapped, a rat in a maze. Scanning equipment picked up his earlier call to the Colonel.

“Are you there, Sergeant Jack Jericho from Sinkhole, West Virginia? Why haven’t you high-tailed it like some scared rabbit? Flight would be so much more consistent with your profile.”

“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on,” Jericho fires back. He had wanted to stay quiet and now curses himself for letting the bastard get to him. Over the phone, he hears David’s laughter.

In the launch control capsule, David hits the speaker button and nods to Rachel, who uses an Uzi to prod Captain Pete Pukowlski toward the microphone. “Someone wants to talk to you,” David says.

Pukowlski shuffles to the console, his feet shackled by leg irons, his hands cuffed behind him. “Jericho, give yourself up.”

“Puke, that you?” an astonished Jericho replies. “I thought you were dead.”

Captain Pukowlski reddens. “You will address me as ‘sir.’ I am still your captain, Jericho.”

“Not any more. I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.”

“The fuck are you talking about? That’s insubordination.”

David pushes Pukowlski away from the microphone. “Actually, it’s ‘Invictus.’ It was intended for me, the sergeant’s way of rejecting determinism. But he is wrong. His fate, like yours and mine, is sealed.”

“We make our own fate,” Jericho says. “We have free will.”

“Sergeant, you are so much more interesting than these uniformed eunuchs like Pukowlski, who couldn’t captain the H.M.S. Pinafore. I’d like to know more about you, Jericho.”

“Go screw yourself.”

“Did you sit on some mountaintop in the Appalachians reading poetry while your countless cousins picked lice from their scalps?”

“Let the hostages go and I’ll answer all your questions.”

“Do you really believe all that whimsical claptrap about free will?”

“I don’t believe it’s all preordained.”

“Oh, but it is. An Apocalypse followed by the thousand year reign of the Savior.”

“With you his right-hand man.”

“I am the vessel chosen to set in motion the forces that cannot be restrained. I can no more resist my fate than a wave can resist being driven against the shore.”

“That’s a cop out. We’re all captains of our own destiny.”

“As I suspected, the son of miners and moonshiners is a poet at heart. Look at your life, Jericho. If you are right, if your fate has not been sealed, look how abysmally you have exercised your free will.”

“I’m about to change that.”

“Yes, you are. You’re about to die. Oh, I wish I had time to spar with you. We could go a few rounds of dueling bards. Reason versus belief, rationality versus spirituality. But duty calls.”

“Meaning what?”

“Simply this, Sergeant. If you don’t surrender at once, I shall have to kill the captain.”

Jericho continues crawling through the tube. “Promises, promises,” he says into the phone.

“Jericho!” Pukowlski screams.

“Ah, perhaps I’ve chosen the wrong hostage,” David says. He moves to the capsule’s back wall and roughly grabs Dr. Susan Burns, yanking her out of the chair. Her hands are cuffed behind her, and she still wears the missileer’s blue jumpsuit. “Sergeant, there’s someone else who wants to say hello.”

“Jericho, just take care of yourself,” Susan says, her voice breaking. “Don’t worry about me.”

David pulls the microphone away. “Sorry, sergeant, she’s the next to die.”

Jericho strains not to lose it, not to show emotion, but he fails. “Hear my word, dirtbag! You hurt that woman, and I’m going to gut you like a barnyard pig. I’m going to skin you and nail your hide to the barn door, and I’m going to sip rye whiskey while I watch you rot.”

“How quaint, how country,” David mocks him. “I’d be scared to death if I didn’t know all about Sergeant Jack Jericho, the sniveling coward. You can make all the threats you want, Sergeant. Problem is, it takes balls to go ballistic!”

“Let’s go at it, just you and me,” Jericho shoots back. “Or are you afraid without your zonked-out warriors?”

“You dare call me, ‘afraid?’ You, whose life is circumscribed by fear. Like the Sioux warrior who is hung from a line of rawhide strung through his back, I fear no pain. I fear no man. And most of all, I fear not you, Jack Jericho.”

David cackles spitefully and hangs up. Jericho angrily bangs his fist against the wall of the tube, and even the metallic echo sounds like a scornful laugh.

Ten minutes later, Jericho is at the screen separating the exhaust tube from the interior of the missile silo. He peers through it, sees two commandos on the floor of the silo ninety feet below. Carefully, Jericho removes the screen, then swings out of the tube onto the orange steel ladder that is bolted into the silo wall. He slides down the ladder several feet to the gantry and flattens himself against its floor. He is staring directly at the fourth stage of the missile, just below the nose cone, and something is wrong.

A hole.

Like a cavity in a tooth.

The computer box is missing.

“Son-of-a-bitch,” he says to himself. He remembers the palm-sized Newton Messagepad Fax he lifted from the security officers’ barracks and pulls it out of the rucksack. Hitting the power, he uses the electronic stylus to draw a picture, then punches out a number and hits the SEND button.

Colonel Henry Zwick stands in front of the command tent, admiring the spruce and fir trees silhouetted by a half-moon. It is just after nine p.m. His men and machines are primed, and it’s quiet at Base Camp Alpha. As he puffs on his pipe, the only sound is of the wind through the trees, the chirping of night birds, and the belly-aching of Captain Kyle Clancy, who has been pleading his case for the Night Stalkers.

“My men are ready, colonel. Damn, this is a cakewalk, if you’d just let us go.”

“It’s not up to me, Kyle. You know that.”

“This can’t be any harder than breaking a hostage out of Cárcel Modelo prison in Panama or getting back Napoleón Duarte’s daughter in El Salvador.”

“Be patient, Kyle. You know, the best Viet Cong snipers could sit in a tree for two weeks without moving just to get a good shot at an American officer.”

“Before my time. All I know is, my men got real hard-ons for some action.”

“Tell ‘em to keep it in their pants for now, Kyle.”

An aide emerges from the tent and hands Colonel Zwick a sheet of paper. The colonel examines Jericho’s FAX, a crude drawing of the missile with an opening in the nose cone. Scowling, the colonel says to the aide, “Get me General Corrigan.” Then he turns back to Captain Clancy. “Kyle, your men may get to unzip after all.”

The colonel turns to head back into the command tent. He takes one last puff on his pipe and disappears inside. In his wake, wisps of cherry-flavored smoke curl into the breeze and disappear into the night air.

Lying prone on the floor of the gantry, Jericho peers down at the silo floor. White steam hisses from the idling launch generators, and in the reflection of the red silo lights, billows up like blood-stained fog.

Two commandos patrol the floor of the silo. One opens the grate to the drainage sump while the other holds a flashlight and looks inside. “It’s wet down there, Jacob,” says the one with the flashlight.

“You won’t melt.”

On the gantry, Jericho opens the rucksack and pulls out the last of Sayers’ bungee cords and the telescoping fishing rod he retrieved from the barracks. He secures one end of the cord to the gantry railing and ties the other end around his waist. It’s the only way he figures he can get to the silo floor without using the gantry, which makes too much noise, or the ladder which is too slow and in plain view. He slides the fishing rod open to its full length, then roots around in the rucksack until he finds a whipperwhill skeeter fly and a long-shanked hook. Then he lets loose with a long, graceful cast toward the floor one hundred feet below.

The fly dangles near the ear of the commando named Jacob. Absentmindedly watching his buddy, who is halfway down the grate into the sump, Jacob swats at the skeeter and misses. Jericho reels in and casts again. This time the fly buzzes just off the man’s earlobe. He slaps at it and plants the razor-sharp triple barbed hook in his ear. “Yee! Ouch! Holy… ”

Jericho reels in as the commando yelps and begins a crazy dance across the silo floor, pulled along by the hook that is embedded firmly in his ear. The other commando crawls out of the grate. Unable to see the thin fishing line, he stares in disbelief at his comrade. “Jacob, are you possessed?”

Two other commandos hear Jacob’s yelping and race in from the tunnel. They behold the weird sight of their comrade jitterbugging across the silo, his head cocked to one side. “Brother David says Satan’s minions can make themselves invisible,” one commando says.

“If we don’t find this infidel, Brother David will make us invisible,” the other replies.

One looks up and spots Jericho on the gantry ledge, preoccupied with his fishing. The two commandos begin climbing the metal ladder that runs up the silo wall. On the gantry, Jericho keeps reeling line in and letting it out, as if he were fighting a marlin. All the time, he is leading Jacob just where he wants him, until splash, Jacob falls into the open sump. His buddy jumps in to rescue him. Jericho watches a moment, waiting for more commandos to come to the aid of their brethren. He cannot see the two commandos ascending the ladder, and by the time he realizes they are no longer on the silo floor, it is too late. He hears a noise behind him and whirls around to see the men climbing onto the gantry from the ladder.

“What have we here?” one commando says, triumphantly, pointing an Italian Beretta —12 at Jericho’s chest.

“The infidel,” his friend answers. “Brother David will reward us.”

“Sure he will,” Jericho says. “You’ll get an extra ration of librium with your rice pudding.”

“Don’t move, heathen!”

The Uzi is on the floor of the gantry. If Jericho goes for it, he’ll be cut in two. “Brother David and I have an appointment,” he says. “You best take me to him.”

“Any tricks, and we’re to send you straight to hell.”

Sizing up the situation…

“Already been there,” Jericho says, “and all things considered, I’d rather be in Wyoming.”

Nowhere to go…

“Now, put your hands on the back of your head,” the commando says.

But down!

Jericho obeys, then flexes his knees and leaps backward off the ledge of the gantry. He plunges toward the silo floor, and above him, the startled commandos hear his cry, “Sh-i-i-i-i-i-i-t!”

But there is no splat of bone and tissue against steel.

Exchanging startled looks, the commandos cautiously approach the

edge and look down toward the silo floor. Suddenly, Jericho bounces back up, grabs an ankle of each commando and yanks them off the gantry. Now, three bodies plummet toward the floor.

Two sounds.

The simultaneous, sickening crunch of the two commandos splattered on the polished steel floor.

And the bo-ing of the bungee cord as it reaches its full length just five feet above the floor and springs Jericho back up toward the gantry a second time. Down he goes again, and bo-ing, back up again, finally coming to rest five feet above the bodies. Jericho unhooks the bungee cord and drops to the floor. He races to a closed grate at the entrance to the tunnel, opens it and climbs into the sump, just as Jacob, holding a bloody ear, and his buddy crawl out of the grate beneath the missile. As Jericho slides the grate back into place over his head, he hears the thunder of footsteps and the shouts of commandos in the tunnel. He pauses a moment to let his eyes become adjusted to the darkness, then works his way through the maze of pipes and equipment, listening to the rhythmic thumpa thumpa of the generators.

“Welcome back to hell,” Jericho says to himself.

-44- Humans Never Win

Despite the clamor all around him — huddled conferences of military officers, F.B.I. and D.I.A. agents — Professor Lionel Morton plays a quiet game of chess on his wheelchair computer. He is as placid as a white-haired retiree on a park bench, oblivious to the commotion. He appears, in fact, just the same as he has been his entire adult life, completely indifferent to those around him. To Lionel Morton, with Pd.D.’s in both physics and aeronautical engineering, with a complete understanding of both theoretical and applied uses of nuclear energy, the world is merely his test tube. If other people have any use, it is as guinea pigs, laboratory rats. They are neither hated nor loved but are to be used for the advancement of knowledge and science.

The professor hits a key and moves a pawn, sacrificing it to the computer’s next move.

Certain people are more valuable than others, he knows. A runny-nosed child who wants to play baseball — even one’s own son — is no use whatsoever. This is so clear that Lionel Morton does not even try to understand why many so fathers waste their Saturdays at ball games, bowling alleys, or beaches. They could be productive, but instead choose to fritter away their time with wives and children. Children, for chrissakes, are of even less use than women.

Morton moves a black pawn to f-4, and the computer moves a white pawn to f-5.

Shortly after World War II, Morton read of the numerous experiments conducted on concentration camp prisoners by Nazi scientists. Young men were forced into vats of ice water while technicians timed how long it took them to die of hypothermia. The world was revolted by these and other medical experiments performed by supposedly reputable physicians. But to Lionel Morton, then a graduate student, it all made sense. The Germans wanted to know how long their own pilots could survive in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic. No use wasting precious airplane fuel searching for airmen already dead. As for the concentration camp prisoners, well, they were dead men, sooner or later, anyway.

The problem with most people, Lionel Morton concluded long ago, was that they could not be objective. Emotion clouded judgment, so he banished it from his life. He prided himself on his ability to place rational thought above all else. Romantic love was a psychotic state to be avoided, so he never suffered a broken heart, never even cried. Sports, movies, music and TV were mindless excursions from reality, wastes of time. On vacation, he would visit the Stone Age nuclear reactors at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, or stay home and fool with mathematical formulas that would disprove cold fusion. On his desk in his university office, instead of family mementos, Lionel Morton placed gruesome photos of burn victims from Hiroshima. He neither mourned for these victims nor gloated over their pain. To him, they were simply scientific exhibits, proof of the ultimate power of man’s genius.

Lionel Morton hits a key and moves a pawn to d-4, where it stares the white pawn in the eye at d-5. He takes a moment to admire the board. With his black knight at f-3 and his two pawns facing two opposing pawns on row four, he has created an unbreakable bind on e-5 and has frozen the white pawn at e-6. The computer clicks for a moment before a mechanical voice says, “Congratulations, Professor Morton. Your successful deployment of the Sicilian defense results in a Maroczy Bind. We could continue to play, but it will result in a draw. Thank you for a most interesting game.”

Morton angrily pounds the keys on his typewriter, writing, “But I want to win.”

The computer’s voice responds almost immediately, “Humans never win.”

With Colonel Farris at his side, General Corrigan leaves a cluster of officers and approaches the wheelchair. He watches over the professor’s shoulder as the computer sets up another game. Without looking up, Morton says, “William the Conqueror was once so enraged at losing a game that he broke his chess board over his opponent’s head. Then there was the French knight, Renaud de Montauban, who succeeded in killing an opponent with a heavy wooden chess board.”

The general doesn’t respond, and Morton looks up. “Hugh, could we speak privately a moment?”

The general nods, and Colonel Farris slips off to one side. Morton hits a button and clears the chess game from his computer screen. “It’s amazing how closely chess resembles war, isn’t it Hugh?”

“It’s been said before, but personally, I prefer poker.”

Morton goes on, “Even the terminology of chess sounds like a session at National Military Command. Attacks and double attacks, blockades and decoys, strategic defenses and escapes and, of course, my favorite, the end game.”

“War’s not a game, Lionel, just because we make it sound like one.”

“Humor me a moment, Hugh, and let’s play out the analogy. The pawns are the infantry, slogging it out in the trenches, even more valuable if they breach the other’s line. The knights are the airborne, vaulting over the enemy. The bishops are powerful artillery, but clumsy in closed positions, while the rooks combine might and mobility like the armored cavalry. In both war and chess, you must out-think the enemy, always planning two steps ahead. You must box in the enemy, limit his choices until you have achieved what the Germans call zugzwang, where any move worsens his position. You want to force him to either surrender or die.”

“What’s your point, Lionel?”

“They think I’m crazy,” he says, gesturing toward the ensemble of officers, “but you know I’m not. I’m the last of the objectivists. I can separate all elements of external cognition from internal feelings.”

“Then I feel sorry for you.”

“Don’t. I meant it before when I said you should let the bird fly for purely strategic reasons.”

“I’m sure you did.”

“No one can make the hard choices anymore. In the last fifty years, we’ve become a nation of weaklings. Not since Hiroshima and Nagasaki has an American president shown any real guts. They’re too worried about the polls and the Sunday morning interview shows. We wimped out in Korea and Cuba and Vietnam and everywhere else where we’ve been seriously challenged. A couple of nuclear payloads over Hanoi, and Ho Chi Minh would have surrendered in a week.”

“Would he, or would the Russians have responded in kind against Saigon, and then would we hit the missile fields at Yedrovo, Kartala and Kostroma, and then would they hit Cheyenne Mountain? Where would it end?”

“Those are precisely the chances you have to take,” Morton says, looking off into space. “It’s ironic, Hugh. You’re a general who never believed in military solutions, and I’m a scientist who always did.”

“You put too much faith in your machines,” the general replies.

“The weak link is man, not the machine. All my creations work just the way I designed them.”

General Corrigan turns away. “That’s the damned scary truth.”

James continues to work at the computer while Brother David watches over his shoulder. “Davy, I can see your reflection in the monitor.”

“So?”

“So, it bothers me.”

“Would it be better if I gave off no reflection, like a ghost in one of those horror films.”

“It would be better if you just let me alone.”

David turns away, seemingly bored. Behind him, Susan Burns has been dozing. Slowly, her eyes open, and she stifles a yawn.

“Ah, the doctor is in,” David says. “Shall we resume our discussion?”

“You want to talk more about yourself?”

“It is a subject of which I never tire. Tell me more about my charming personality.”

“It’s true that psychopaths often have a certain beguiling charm. It’s used to manipulate others. Underneath the veneer, they are unsocialized. You, for example, are grossly selfish, callous, irresponsible, and unable to feel guilt or to learn from experience and punishment. Your frustration tolerance is low. You blame others or offer seemingly rational reasons for your anti-social behavior. You manifest aggressive-sadistic tendencies and exhibit what used to be called a ‘moral insanity.’”

“Is that all?”

“And you probably have a very small penis.”

That gets a chuckle from James, who doesn’t look up from the computer. If the remark wounded David, he doesn’t show it. “I have a new job for you, doctor.”

That causes Rachel to stir. “David… ”

“I believe Dr. Burns would make an excellent deputy at the console. When Brother James has retrieved the S.L.C., the good doctor’s job will be to turn the second key.”

“Not a chance,” Susan says.

“Not even to save your own life.”

“I couldn’t live with myself.”

“You can live with me. Forever.”

Furious, Rachel stands and stomps to the rear of the capsule.

“Do you think you can convert me to your cause?” Susan asks, eyes wide in disbelief.

“Yes, and to me,” David says, confidently. “But that can wait, at least for a while.” A small smile plays on his lips. “But enough about you. Now, tell me about my father.”

“You hate him,” she says, “but you admire him, too. The contradiction, the cognitive dissonance, makes you loathe yourself.”

David barks out a laugh and moves closer to Susan, leaning over her. She doesn’t flinch. “I think you understand what makes you tick, and you know the mechanism is broken. But your revel in your own knowing insanity.”

“I’m just doing Daddy’s work, like any loving son. As it is written in John, ‘Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.’”

“Only because you want to. You willed yourself to become your father, only more so. He built the bomb but couldn’t use it. You took the bomb and—”

“And will light the fuse to it,” he says with a grin.

Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Griggs despises Commander Elwood (Woody) Waller.

Always has. Always will.

Friggin’ Navy Seals.

Sure, they’re tough. Hell, all the Special Ops are tough. Green Berets, Night Stalkers, Air Force Commandos, and the friggin’ SEALs with their Trident insignia that always looked like the Budweiser logo to Griggs.

He never doubted his own personal toughness. He led operations in Central America that never made the newspapers or the Congressional Record. Tougher than he looked, they said about Charlie Griggs. He didn’t have the brahma bull neck and rocky ledge jaw of the recruiting posters. With the thin mustache and pale hair going gray, with the slightly receding chin, Charlie Griggs looked like an accountant. If you noticed the size of his pole-ax wrists, though, if you watched the way he walked, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet, aware of all movement around him, you might have a clue.

These days, Charlie Griggs was driving a desk at Fort Bragg. It was his bad luck to get the job baby-sitting this maniac professor for reasons of geography. At the time the 318th Missile Squadron was being overrun by a bunch of Bible-spouting crazies, Charlie Griggs was a special guest visiting Hell Week at the Naval Special Warfare Center, the SEALs training base outside San Diego. He had just walked into the “grinder,” the forlorn asphalt exercise yard, passing under the sign, “The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday,” when he was ordered to fly up the coast to Palo Alto and snag the professor. At least the surprise assignment got him away from Woody Waller’s constant bragging.

God, they were a tiresome bunch, and Griggs had seen enough push-ups in the mud and screaming drill instructors to last a lifetime. As for the macho saloon antics — pouring rum on a bar and lighting it in memory of a dead colleague — well, melodrama never played well for Griggs. These days, his specialty was hostage rescue. He was an expert in demolitions and small arms fire and could tell you just how large a charge of plastique to attach to a door to blow it without killing the hostages inside. He was equally adept at “instinctive firing” and “rapid-aim fire,” and to this day, would not mind being the first one through a blown door where the first decision is whether to shoot and whom.

But Griggs’ days of rappelling down buildings are over. Lately, he’s been drawing up contingency plans for Delta Force’s counter terrorist unit, coordinating with Woody Waller’s SEAL-Team 6 and the F.B.I.’s Hostage Response Unit. Griggs hates the parochial rivalries, hates playing the role of the eager cutthroat commando, but it has to be done, or Woody Waller would gobble up ever blood-and-guts assignment. Now, the two of them have General Hugh Corrigan surrounded and are pleading their respective cases.

“General, my men deserve to be first to go down that hole,” Griggs says.

“With all due respect, Charlie, SEAL Team-6 is faster and better than any team Delta can muster,” Waller responds.

“Easy, Woody. You too, Charlie,” the general says. “You’ll both get your chance.”

“I hope so, sir.” Griggs knows he is expected to beat the drums a little harder so he sucks it up and lets loose with the macho bullshit. “My men haven’t tasted blood since Desert Storm.”

Commander Woody Waller laughs in mock disbelief. He is a square-jawed, crew-cut Hollywood version of a Navy SEAL. “That was a real ballbuster, huh Charlie? Rounding up some starving ragheads.”

“My men were human trip-wires behind enemy lines while your Malibu lifeguards were playing with boogie boards in the Gulf.”

“Individual experimental landing craft,” Waller corrects him, though in fact, they were black boogie boards sent from California for a nighttime beach landing that never occurred.

“Delta Force was eating the Republican Guard for lunch, not riding around Kuwait City in dune buggies.”

“Fast Attack Vehicles. Charlie, why are you so jealous of the SEALs, anyway?”

“Enough, already!” General Corrigan holds up his arms. “Colonel Zwick reports that Morning Star has removed the MGCS computer. There’s the distinct possibility that they already have the Secondary Launch Code or are about to get it.” The general pushes past the two rivals. “So I suggest you save your animosity for the enemy, gentlemen.”

-45- Operation Masada

A grate opens in the floor and Jack Jericho pulls himself into the Launch Equipment Room. He moves to the door and peeks cautiously into the tunnel. Three commandos are headed his way. Jericho ducks back inside, dashes through a row of supply shelves and climbs to the top shelf. Just then, the door opens, and the commandos come in, high-low, M-16’s wheeling in every direction.

One of the commandos flicks on the light switch. Each takes a row and begins searching. In the middle row, a commando stops and listens. Maybe he’s heard something, but it could have been the footsteps of his comrades. He listens again, seems to sense something, then hears a metallic rattle above him. He looks up just as a Jeep’s heavy snow chain drops around his neck. He reaches up to toss of the chain, but above him on the shelf, Jack Jericho yanks it tight.

A gurgling sound comes from the commando who struggles against the pressure on his neck. Muscles straining, Jericho lifts the commando off his feet and ties both ends of the chain around the shelf’s support pole.

“Samuel!” one of the other commandos yells. “Samuel, where are you?”

Jericho leaps off the shelf and scurries down the row toward the light equipment pen at the end of the room.

The other two commandos race into the middle row where they find Samuel hanging by his neck, feet swaying two feet above the floor. The first commando yells to his unseen foe, “I’ll kill you myself!”

Jericho hears the threat as he opens the gate to the equipment pen.

“Come,” the second commando tells his comrade. “Let’s call for the others.”

“No! He’s in here, and we’ll find him.”

A sound stops them.

A whirring.

A blinding headlight turns into their row. Something moves toward them. They shield their eyes and see it.

A forklift!

Jack Jericho pulls back a lever, and the lift blade rises. The forklift is barely narrower than the row between the shelves. The commandos can turn and run, or they can stand and fight. Both raise their weapons and unleash a barrage of gunfire that ricochets with metallic clangs off the approaching forklift. Then, they turn and run. At the first opening, they duck into the next row, Jericho turns the corner and chases them through the maze of shelves. Finally, they come to a dead end against a concrete wall. The commandos turn and fire. Jericho hunches down into the seat of the forklift. Sparks fly as bullets ping off the steel shelf that supports the blades.

The forklift plows ahead, Jericho leaning hard on the throttle.

The commandos stand their ground.

The two-pronged forks bear down on them, gut-high.

Whomp! Whomp! The commandos are impaled like olives on toothpicks.

The forklift stops with a thud as the blades crunch into the wall, blood spurting. Jericho throws the machine into reverse, and with the commandos still attached, he wheels out of the Equipment Room and into the tunnel. He turns toward the launch control capsule and opens up the throttle. Fifty yards down the tunnel, he passes under a panning video camera.

At that moment, in the launch control capsule, Brother David looks up into the panel of security monitors. Flashing by, he sees the forklift with the two bodies aloft. “Damnation!”

David stands and looks out the small blast window overlooking the tunnel. The forklift is aimed straight for the side of the capsule. “Stop him!” Two commandos storm out of the capsule and into the tunnel. They open fire just as Jericho locks the throttle down and dives off the forklift, rolling over twice and coming to a stop within five feet of a floor grate.

The forklift rolls on, each skewered commando still hoisted there. The two commandos on the floor duck out of the way just as the forklift crashes into the capsule, plastering the bodies to its wall and streaking the blast window with blood.

Inside the capsule, David paces like a caged tiger. Turning toward Dr. Susan Burns, he fumes, “The fool dares to taunt me. He has shed the blood of saints and prophets.” David picks up a microphone and hits a button. His voice can be heard all throughout the missile facility, even in the sump under the tunnel, where Jericho now makes his way through the maze of piping. “Now, heathen, hear the Word. As it is written, ‘I will make Mine arrows drunk with blood, and My sword shall devour your flesh.’”

Brother David sits in the deputy’s flight chair, barely noticing James, who continues to work at the computer. “I may have misjudged the sergeant,” David says, perhaps to himself.

Overhearing him, Susan Burns says, “So you admit fallibility.”

“Don’t play your shrink games with me, doctor. I know all the tricks of the trade. I never claimed infallibility. If I am the Messiah, it is in sinful form.”

“Or are you just a charlatan? Didn’t Jesus warn of false prophets, wolves in sheep’s clothing?”

“Then you should be afraid of my bite.”

“There’s still time to back down. You can make a statement on television, get your message across.”

“My message will be delivered with the heat of a thousand suns.”

“Unless the sergeant stops you.”

“The sergeant,” he repeats. Thinking about him now. Not admitting, even to himself, the concern, but summoning up a vision. Just a color at first, a grayish white. He concentrates and sees it clearer, a flowing grayish sheet, and he peers deep into his mind but can only think of a banner waving in the wind. It does not compute. Not getting a handle on the vision, he lets it go.

He opens Jericho’s personnel file and thumbs through the pages. “I thought the sergeant would run and hide at the sound of a shaken leaf. What do you suppose has gotten into this cowardly coal miner?”

Susan Burns does not answer immediately, and David shoots a lethal glance at her. When she remains silent, he approaches her and places his face close to hers. “Your diagnosis, doctor, or would you prefer to stretch your arms again?”

“Jack Jericho has a purpose,” she says, finally. “A reason for living, at least for a while.”

“And what would that be?”

“To kill you, of course,” she answers, “or to die trying.”

Jack Jericho moves deeper into the sump, takes a fork in the channel and pauses to listen. Just the familiar thumpa heartbeat of the pumps. He is alone. He wonders when the Army’s assault will come, wants to be part of it, his mind’s eye painting wondrous pictures as he leads a contingent of Delta Force soldiers into the capsule. Rescuing the damsel, saving the world. Stupid, he thinks. Special Ops won’t let him near the place, and he’d probably screw it up if they did.

Suddenly, the cellular phone rings.

Jericho clicks a button. “Yeah.”

“You’re making a mess of things, maintenance man,” David says.

“Just doing my job.”

“I think not. I think it’s become personal. But your heroics are futile.”

“I never wanted to be a hero.”

“And you’ve succeeded.” He laughs. “But where do you go from here?”

“Wherever you are, pal. You want to get rid of me, let the woman go.”

“Oh, how gallant, how chivalrous. And here, I thought you were protecting the interests of your government. It turns out you’re just pursuing an unrequited love.” He turns toward Susan Burns. “It is unrequited, isn’t it, doctor? I’d hate to think you were mixing business with dubious pleasure of fornicating with the janitor.”

“You’re wrong,” Susan says. “The pleasures were exquisite. Jack Jericho is all man.” Mocking the preacher. Letting him know who measures up and who doesn’t.

Through the phone, Jack hears her, and for a moment, wonders if he has missed something. No, even drunk, he would have remembered that.

“Liar!” David fumes, but his voice betrays doubt, the beginning of weakness.

Jericho keeps quiet. In the capsule, David punches a button, muting his microphone, then gestures toward Captain Pukowlski, who is shackled against the wall. “That noise on the phone,” David says, “what is it?”

The captain doesn’t answer, and Rachel presses a rifle barrel into his fleshy jowls.

“What is it!” David demands. The thumpa can clearly be heard on the speaker.

“The drainage pump,” the captain says, grimacing. “In the sump.”

“But where?” The rifle barrel presses harder.

“Channel B, maybe sixty meters west of the missile.”

“Thank you, captain,” David says. He gestures to a commando guard. “Now take him back to the storage room with the ambassadors. Keep him out of my sight, or I’ll kill him.” David turns his mike back on and says into the phone, “Sergeant, you seem to be all alone in the world.”

In the sump, Jericho slogs through the dirty water. A rat scurries across a pipe above his head. He listens to David’s voice on the phone. “Perhaps we could make room for you in our family.”

“No thanks,” Jericho says. “Your family is seriously dysfunctional.”

He hangs up.

Two uniforms and a suit surround General Corrigan. F.B.I. Agent Hurtgen, Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Griggs and Commander Woody Waller, the three hostage response team leaders, jockey for position and plead their cases as the general examines the sophisticated diorama of the missile facility, complete with miniature commandos and toy soldiers.

“I’d run a diversion toward the elevator,” Griggs says, gesturing to the model, “then run a full rappel strike down the silo wall.”

The general nods, then using a wooden pointer, slides a platoon of toy soldiers and tiny Armored Personnel Carriers toward the silo.

Agent Hurtgen shakes his head. “It’d be ninety seconds quicker straight down the elevator shaft, based on our Hostage Response Unit computer simulation.”

“Simulation, masturbation,” sneers Waller. “Fuck ‘em in both holes at once.”

“I agree with Woody,” Griggs says.

Waller beams at the support from his Army rival. “And let the F.B.I. sit this one out. When it comes to rappelling under fire, you have to go with SEAL TEAM-6.”

“SEALS, schmeals,” Hurtgen responds. “This isn’t a beach landing.”

Woody Waller bristles. “One contingency was an amphibious assault. The map showed a river running next to the silo.”

“The river’s been dry for five years!” Hurtgen yells. “Shit, even the Triple-A maps have that right. What’s the matter, can’t the Jedi Warriors read?”

Mocking the nickname of SEAL TEAM-6 was too much. Waller wouldn’t mind taking this guy on an underwater demolition job and shoving the explosives up his ass. Just as he’s about to suggest that, General Corrigan sweeps the pointer across the diorama, scattering the toy soldiers over the miniature countryside. “Men, let’s work together, okay?”

Colonel Griggs clears his throat and says, “General, if we don’t kick off soon, Delta Force and the SEALS are going to start killing each other.”

Bells ring and chimes sound in the computer, and James sits ramrod straight, watching a blizzard of numbers flash across the monitor. “Voila,” he says, triumphantly.

David slides his flight chair down the railing next to James. “Do you have it?”

“Got my foot in the back door.” James’ eyes are red and he is fatigued, but his voice reflects the excitement of a new discovery. A message scrolls across the monitor, “SECONDARY LAUNCH CODE MATRIX.”

“Yes!” James shouts. He hits several more keys, sweat plastering his pale hair to his forehead. “Just one more little… ”

Another message appears on the monitor, “ENTER PASSWORD TO ACCESS CODE.”

“Shit!” James bangs several more keys, but the same message repeats itself.

David wheels around and faces Owens. “Don’t look at me,” the lieutenant says. “The password is transmitted with the E.A.M. launch order. I’ve never seen it, never heard it.”

Rachel jams the barrel of a rifle against Owens’ temple. “Might as well shoot me,” he says, “‘cause I don’t know shit.”

David bangs his fist against the console, then turns to James. “Can you extract it from the M.G.C.S. computer?”

“It’s not there,” James says, still working away. “All I’ve got is this.”

David swings back to the monitor. On the screen, seven cursors pulsate.

“Fill in the blanks,” James says. “It’s a seven-digit password, letters or numbers or both. You want to know the possible number of combinations?”

“No! I just want to launch the missile.”

In the STRATCOM War Room, the klaxon horn is blaring. On the Big Board, two messages appear, “SECONDARY LAUNCH CODE MATRIX.” and “ENTER PASSWORD TO ACCESS CODE.” A technician pulls off his headset and turns to General Corrigan, “They got in, sir. If they enter the password, all they have to do is re-enter the Enable Code, turn the keys, and the bird is gone.”

General Corrigan turns to Professor Morton. “What about it, Lionel? You said he couldn’t—”

“Quite creative,” Morton says with grudging admiration. “I didn’t think he’d get this far, but now who knows? The little momma’s boy may surprise us after all.”

“Percentages, Lionel. Give me some numbers.” There is the sense of urgency in the general’s voice.

“No way to tell. But remember one thing. David Morton is flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. He’s not stupid, Hugh.”

The general ponders that for a moment, agreeing with the professor. Crazy yes, stupid no. He turns to Colonel Farris. “Tell Colonel Zwick to prepare for kickoff, but not to move until he receives my direct order.”

An aide works his way through the crowd of officers and brings General Corrigan a telephone, then whispers in his ear. The general straightens his shoulders and speaks into the headset. “Yes, Mr. President.”

A pause.

“Yes, Mr. President.”

Another pause.

“Yes, I understand, Mr. President.”

General Hugh Corrigan’s jaw muscles clench with each tight nod of his head. He hangs up the phone and turns to the circle of brass. His face is gray, and he looks ten years older than just a few hours earlier. “Tel Aviv has just informed the Commander-in-Chief what its response will be to a nuclear strike.”

“Jesus, General, they’re not going to do something stupid like counter-attack us, are they?” Colonel Farris asks.

“Not us. But they’ve got something called Operation Masada in the event one of the Arab countries hits them with a nuclear weapon.”

“Masada. A fight to the finish,” Dr. Stuart Rosen says, and the military men turn toward him. “After the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in the first century, the last of the Jewish zealots occupied a mountaintop fortress at Masada. There were only a few hundred zealots, but they were vicious fighters, and it took fifteen thousand Roman troops two years to defeat them. As the fortress fell, the remaining Jews took their own lives, rather than be enslaved by the Romans.”

“I don’t get it,” Farris says, a puzzled look on his face. “The Arabs have nothing to do with—”

“Doesn’t matter,” Professor Morton breaks in. “‘Never again,’ and all that Holocaust melodrama. I hadn’t thought of it before, Hugh, but it makes perfect sense. The Israelis must strike first just like they did in ‘67. When they waited, when they let the Arabs hit them in the Yom Kippur War, they were nearly pushed into the Red Sea. This time, if they wait, they’ll be annihilated. Maybe they will be anyway, maybe it’s as suicidal as the zealots on the mountaintop, but at least, they’ll take a good portion of their enemies with them.”

“All of them,” Corrigan says. “Their response will be nuclear. Baghdad, Tripoli, Tehran, the oil fields of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.”

“A flamboyant acting out on a grand scale,” Dr. Rosen says, disapprovingly.

“Can’t we talk the Israelis into just taking the hit?” Farris asks. “Hell, we’ll help them rebuild.”

“Apparently, they feel their people have taken one hit this century, and that was quite enough,” General Corrigan says.

“Jesus,” the Farris mutters. “Looks like the professor’s going to get his wish.”

General Corrigan turns toward Lionel Morton, who is making a series of mathematical calculations on his wheelchair computer. “Lionel, why don’t you tell everyone what would happen if the Israelis make good on their threat.”

“Assuming they use all their warheads, and there’s no reason not to, radioactive clouds of sand and oil will reach the stratosphere,” he says, still studying his computer monitor. “Fires in the fields will be too hot — in every sense of the word — to put out. They’ll burn for fifty years to seventy-five years. The clouds will superheat the atmosphere, changing the climate. It will be warm at first, but then, the sun will be blocked for several decades. It will snow in Miami, and the polar ice cap will extend as far south as say, Virginia.”

“Nuclear winter,” Colonel Farris says, shaking his head.

“I always thought that was an overly dramatic term,” the professor says, “but you’ve got the idea.”

“Lionel,” the general says, “if there’s any chance that you still can influence your son, you’ve got an obligation to your country to try.”

The professor seems to think about it, and Dr. Rosen, the shrink, pipes up, “General, I must advise against another session of paternal brow-beating. Overt hostility will only provoke the young man. This rivalry between father and son can only exacerbate—”

“Shut up, you fleabag Freudian,” the professor snarls. He turns to the general. “Okay, Hugh. Get the son-of-a-bitch on the phone.”

-46- Postponing the Inevitable

“I knew you’d call again, pater,” David says, when they get him on the line. He speaks into the old black, rotary telephone and smiles at Susan. Proud they’re coming to him.

“Mistakes were made, I’ll admit that,” Lionel Morton says, softly.

David smiles again and hits a button, turning on the speaker. Letting his audience enjoy his handiwork, admire his repartee. “Is that an apology, that sotto voce, passive voce, mealy-mouthed evasion?”

“Yes, goddamit! I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t the father you wanted.”

“Apology not accepted,” David says, gleefully. “And for the record, I’m not a bit sorry I wasn’t the son you wanted, assuming you wanted a son at all.”

“I did the best I could.”

David barks out a bitter laugh. “What do you think of that, Dr. Burns? Dear old Dad did the best he could.”

“It’s a shopworn cliché,” she answers. “It’s what virtually every parent in a dysfunctional family says.”

“Did you hear that, Daddy? You’re just a worn out cliché. Come on, Dr. Burns, tell us more. Daddy never had the benefit of therapy and doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

“Your father was remote and demanding. Nothing you did was ever good enough for him.”

“No, no, no. Nothing I ever did was bad enough.”

“Godammit, David,” the professor’s voice rumbles through the speaker. “What do you want? Do you want to kill me?”

“Heavens, no. I already tried that. I prefer you alive and crippled. But that isn’t politically correct, is it? Alive and ambulatorily disadvantaged, that’s my Daddy. Do you still need medication for the pain? I’ll bet the dosage has increased over the years. I’ll bet you’re so strung out most every night, you wouldn’t know if someone broke into your house and rifled through your study.”

“David, I swear to Christ I never knew what made you tick. You were always a weird kid, and now… and now… ”

“I had powers! I had visions!”

“Yes, you did. In another age, you would have been burned at the stake. Righteous folk would have considered you the devil.”

“Or his misbegotten son.”

“Go ahead,” the professor says. “Have your fun. Crucify me.”

“What a delicious thought.”

“Look, I admit it. I didn’t know how to be a father. I was in love with my work.”

David’s tone is mocking as he mimics his father’s voice, “Not that I loved my son less, but that I loved the bomb more.”

“Damn you, David. What do you want?”

“Salvation, Daddy. Salvation for all eternity.” He clicks off the phone, then dials another number.

Jack Jericho is deep in the sump when the cellular phone rings. “Yeah, asshole. Talk to me.”

“Sergeant, in the game of chess, do you know what it’s called when you sacrifice your queen to save the king?” David asks him.

From his perch on a web of pipes in the drainage sump, Jericho speaks into the cellular phone. “I dunno, the Heimlich Maneuver?”

“It’s called postponing the inevitable.”

“Yeah, but I can wait.”

“Unfortunately, I cannot.”

“I understand,” Jericho says. “So many psychoses, so little time.”

“We’re going to launch the missile, sergeant. You can’t stop it. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t stop it.”

“So why are you concerned with me?”

“I want you here in the capsule. I want you here with me, Jack.”

The sound of his name runs a shiver through Jericho. He checks the clip on the Uzi, snaps it into place. “Why? Aren’t your half-wit apostles interesting company?”

“Jack, don’t you know our fates are intertwined?”

“Then I want a new fortune teller.”

“I can give you the peace you’ve never known. I can give you the power of which you’ve dreamed.”

“You don’t know anything of my dreams.”

“You have nightmares, don’t you Jack? I knew it the moment I saw your muddied aura. But I didn’t know then what haunted your nights. You dream of the mine, the deep, dark, scary mine.”

Jericho slumps against an electrical conduit. He doesn’t want to listen, but he does not click off. For the briefest second, Jericho wonders if he enjoys the pain, wonders if he might not deserve it.

“Jack, your ran from your destiny while I pursued mine… with a vengeance.”

Jericho’s voice is weak, his eyes hollow. “If I’d gone back in, I would have slowed the evacuation of men coming out.”

“Fate gave you one chance for glory, and you ran the other way. I’m offering you a second chance.”

“I did the right thing. I would have caused others to die.”

“You could have saved your father and your brother!”

“I followed orders, dammit!”

“And look where it got you.” David turns to Susan Burns. “Tell him. Tell him who he is, for the fool does not know.”

Susan remains silent. David slaps her hard across the cheek, then drags her to the phone. His face is red, his mood swinging wildly into rage. “Tell him, mindfucker! Tell him, you mother of harlots, you Jezebel!”

Blinking back tears, Susan says, “Survivor’s guilt. You want to be killed, Jack. You want to die now to repent for living then.”

David’s voice drops into a whisper. “That makes you a very dangerous man, and I want the dangerous men on my side.”

Jericho’s grief turns to anger. Images of his wasted years flash by. Thoughts of his family collide with fury at this madman who would destroy so much. “You’re right, I’m dangerous. I’m your nightmare because I’m just as damaged as you are. You want to die, and I just don’t give a shit. But if I die, I’m going to take you with me.”

“Words! Empty words! So long, sergeant.”

David clicks off the phone and smiles with cruel satisfaction. Susan Burns turns away so that David will not see her tears.

In the drainage sump, Jack Jericho stares into space. He is numb, detached, unfocused. The channel is lit only by dim yellow bulbs, and Jericho sits deep in the shadows. He is in a nook in the wall of the channel, a location that offers the illusion of protection. A closet in a haunted house. The phone rings again, and Jericho angrily punches a button and yells, “Go fuck yourself!”

The voice on the other end of the line seems genuinely startled. “Sergeant Jericho, must I remind you of the proper method of addressing an officer?”

“Sir, I’m sorry sir. I thought—”

“You thought nothing,” Colonel Zwick says. “Now, did I order you off the missile base?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then get the hell out of there. I swear, if Morning Star doesn’t kill you… ”

A noise startles Jericho.

“… I will!”

Jericho pulls the phone away from his ear and listens. Nothing but the thumping pumps. What was that noise, like the clank of a rifle barrel against a pipe? The colonel’s distant voice grows angrier. “Sergeant, are you there? Dammit, sergeant!” There is a soft splash in the water, and Jericho hangs up.

Thirty yards from Jericho, around a bend in the channel, four commandos with weapons drawn are on the prowl, hunched over in the low sump. They use hand signals to communicate and slow their steps to prevent splashing. A low-hanging conduit pipe from a generator blocks their path. The commando on point reaches up to brace himself. He does not see that the insulated rubber covering has been sliced open, a clean incision from a Jimmy Lile survival knife, and his hand slips into a mass of exposed wires as the insulation slides off.

Sparks explode from the opening. High voltage surges through the commando’s body, which convulses wildly, the electricity amplified by the knee-deep water, which seems to boil at his feet. Smoke billows from the open collar of his field jacket, and the channel is filled with the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh. As he sinks to the floor of the sump, floating face down in the grimy water, a second commando races to him.

“Judd! Judd!”

But poor Judd is dead. The other three commandos splash past him, rifles raised, looking for someone to shoot.

Ahead of them in the channel, hidden in the womb of the generator piping, Jericho closes his eyes and listens. Judging from the noise, he knows there are at least two more commandos, perhaps a third. He hits a switch in the nook, killing the yellow lights and plunging the sump into total darkness.

The commandos slip on infrared goggles and keep coming. They are within ten yards of Jericho’s hiding place when he grabs a handful of steel bolts from a tool tray and tosses them down the sump away from the approaching men. He ducks back into his nook, and the bolts rattle off the piping. A second later, the noise of the automatic weapons is deafening. Before the echoes have completely died out, Jericho tosses another handful of bolts in the other direction, behind the oncoming commandos. He can hear the men splashing in the water as they turn to shoot. Another volley of gunfire reverberates through the channel. Then, a scream, “Adam! You shot me! Adam… ”

The commando named Adam slogs through the water toward his friend, crying out, “No! No! No!”

Then, in the darkness, Jericho says. “Nice shooting, Adam.”

Adam whirls and fires. The bullets ricochet off metal and reverberate in the narrow channel.

“You killed him,” Jack Jericho says, “but you missed me. I’m behind you.”

Adam turns the other way and fires on full automatic, letting a burst go until, click, he’s out of ammo. He fumbles with another clip.

Jericho hits the switch again, and the yellow lights flicker on. Another switch, and stronger spotlights fill the sump with a white glare. Blinded, Adam tears off his night goggles and through squinting eyes sees a figure six feet in front of him. A man holding something. An Uzi! The three-shot burst to the chest is mercifully on target. Adam is dead before he splashes to the floor.

Jericho turns to head the other way, wanting to duck back into cover, still not knowing if there is a fourth commando in the sump. He never sees the rifle butt swinging at his head, and it catches him squarely on the chin.

Jericho’s world explodes into a galaxy of shooting stars.

He hears himself grunt, feels a jolt that rockets from his spine down through his fingertips and his toes.

The pain lasts just a second, because a moment later, he is tumbling backward, unconscious, never feeling the cold, dark water that envelops him.