Ballistic

-54- Die a Hero

Jack Jericho is drenched.

And exhausted.

And bloodied from bouncing off rocks and trees on the way down what used to be — and once again is — Chugwater River.

Rappelling down the silo wall, the adrenaline ebbs, and he feels his arms give out. He hangs there a moment, then kicks off the wall, letting yards of rope escape. Without gloves and a harness, the rope burns a trail around his waist and tears skin from the palms of his hands. He swings lower, strikes the wall with his boots and kicks off again, teetering into space.

Clang, he bangs into the missile, rebounds like a pinball back into the silo wall and off again. This time he desperately reaches out and grabs the nose cone. Hugging the missile. Struggling to hang onto the top of the titanium shroud with one hand, he uses the other to dip into his tool belt where he comes out with one of the wrenches. Too big. He tries the second wrench, adjusts it, and goes to work.

A moment later, in the launch control capsule, David is looking at a monitor showing water pouring into the silo. He hits a button, and a different camera shows the missile. The shot pans from the floor of the silo, where the water is now three feet deep, up to the burners, suspended another seven feet higher. The camera moves higher, showing the shaft of the missile to the fourth stage where David sees a sight that freezes him.

Dangling on a rope, a man has a wrench attached to the nose cone computer box.

The sergeant!

The maintenance man.

Like the beggar Lazarus, rising from the dead.

“I knew he’d come back,” Susan Burns says from her position at the back wall.

“You knew nothing!” David yells.

“He wanted to change. You gave him the chance.”

“I gave him the chance to die. Now I will have to help him.” David grabs a headset and an Uzi and turns to Rachel. “Launch the instant you have the second key.”

“But what if you are in the silo?”

“Launch!”

Watching him go, Rachel has tears in her eyes.

In black watch caps and darkened faces, the Green Berets and Rangers are slipping into their harnesses, which fit uneasily over their Kevlar armored vests. Each man is responsible for his own rope, assault rifle, gas mask and saw-toothed knife. They are thirsting for the chance to go down that hole.

It’s what they’ve trained for. To save their country. And the world.

The Rangers are famed as assault troops. The product of intense, dangerous training, they are among the world’s best fighting men and truly believe the mystique that goes with the Ranger creed: “I accept the fact that as a Ranger my country expects me to move further, faster and fight harder than any other soldier. Never shall I fail my comrades.”

The Green Berets trace their history to the early 1950’s when eight-man “A-Teams” were trained to fight the Russians behind enemy lines in the event of World War III. Today, they undergo grueling training and are experts in raids, reconnaissance, ambushes and sabotage.

The lieutenant knows it’s a death trap. Bodies will be stacked like cord wood at the bottom of the shaft. They’ll be the only cover for the men who come after them. He hears Colonel Zwick’s raspy voice through the headphones. “Son, you gotta get your men down that shaft. Jackal’s stuck on top the mountain.”

“I could divert half my men to the silo,” the lieutenant says. “Divide the enemy force in the hole.”

“Too late. That’s low ground, under water now, and not passable. Not even the SEALs could get down there.”

Jack Jericho is not a Navy SEAL, Army Ranger or Green Beret. At this moment, he could be a window washer on a high-rise skyscraper. Except his rope is looped through a clip on his tool belt and wrapped twice around his waist — wrapped so tightly he thinks a boa constrictor has chosen him for a mate — and a waterfall pours over him from above. But he’s not washing windows. He’s performing a lobotomy on a nuclear missile.

Jericho has two of the recessed bolts out of the computer box. It is not easy work. The wrench does not fit perfectly and keeps slipping off. His hands are wet, and his arms are dead. He tugs hard on the third bolt. Tighter than the first two. He places both hands at the end of the wrench handle for additional purchase and puts all his weight behind it. The wrench slips, Jericho loses his balance and dangles precariously over the silo floor. He reaches up, steadies himself on the rope, then swings back to the nose cone.

He’s back at work on the third bolt when he thinks he hears a familiar sound. He stops and listens. The roar of rushing water. His own breathing. Nothing more.

But there it is again, an electrical hum that grows louder, and Jericho watches as the gantry’s work cage heads up the silo wall. He can’t see through the roof of the gantry, and Jack Jericho has never been blessed with even modest extrasensory powers. But he knows who’s there, knows it in his heart, feels it in his bones. Brother David has come to kill him.

Jericho regains his balance, gets a decent grip on the wrench, and urgently works at the third bolt. The wrench catches and the bolt comes free, Jericho dropping it into the water far below. The gantry has not even come to a stop when David fires a burst of 9 mm. shells from the Uzi. He aims for Jericho’s back, the widest target, but the movement of the gantry throws him off. The Uzi shoots high, and the shells plunk into the concrete wall of the far side of the silo.

Jericho spins in his rope, a fly caught in a spider’s dangling web. Pushing off the nose cone, he spins to the other side, using the missile itself for cover.

Another burst from the Uzi, several shots pinging off the titanium shroud of the nose cone. Jericho winces as sparks fly.

The gunshots stop.

Stalemate.

David can’t shoot him, and Jericho can’t reach the computer box.

David yells over the roar of the waterfall. “You’re finally going to get your wish, maintenance man.”

Jericho stays hidden behind the nose cone, but David sprays a half-dozen shots over him anyway. “You’re going to die a hero,” David says.

-55- Nailing It

Water pours through the grates in the floor of the silo. Not enough to keep the water level from rising under the missile, but enough to flood the sump. At an incline in the sump near the launch control capsule, the water is just below James’ waist and still rising.

James takes a deep breath and dives under the surface, holding a flashlight. Cheeks blown out like a tropical fish, he sweeps the floor with his hand, desperately reaching for the key.

Hitting it.

Knocking it farther away. Damn. Damn. Damn.

He comes up for air. Gasping. He’s in lousy shape, a condition he blames on the lack of protein in the Eden Ranch diet. Funny, thinking about food at a time like this. But that’s what is going through his mind. Things he’ll miss when he’s dead. Which won’t be long, he is sure. Steaks and crossword puzzles and jazz quartets, and the computers, of course. But not much more. James always knew what it would be like, joining Davy on this gig. The final riff. A long way from taking yokels’ money for ten minutes of mind reading.

More than any of David’s followers, James knew. Not that he considered himself a follower. Buddies, pals, best friends. Okay, so Davy was the leader, as between the two of them, but James was no born-again groupie. Since the time they were kids, he knew Davy had a gift, could see things, and that was cool. It was long ago that James attached himself to Davy like a pilot fish to a shark, and it paid off for both of them. James had no life, he’d be the first to admit. Never did. No other friends as a kid, unsure with girls, then hopeless with women.

If he had to sum it up in a bumper sticker, “Life sucks, then you die” wouldn’t be a bad slogan for his life. Might as well go up in a ball of flame. If Davy makes the cover of TIME, James figures he’ll be good enough for a sidebar around page twenty.

He takes a deep breath, goes under again, opens his eyes and sees the key. Cautiously this time, he extends a hand and grabs it. He comes up, bursting out of the water, both arms raised above his head as if he’s just won an Olympic medal. He spits out a mouthful of water that tastes of slick metal. “Read my mind, Davy. I got the key into heaven!”

Or put another way, James thinks, the key out of hell.

Gabriel watches as two commandos cautiously approach the shredded body, the top half still hanging in the dangling rope. The carcass is bloody and torn like a side of beef, but his face is still recognizable. “It’s Daniel!” one commando shouts, shrinking back in horror, both at the thought he killed his comrade and at the fate that awaits them all.

There is a plunk-plunk as two fragmentation grenades land in the blown-out elevator. The two commandos are five meters away and turn to run. But it is too late. The grenades explode, and shrapnel tears through them. The echoes of the explosion reverberate off the underground rock shelf. Another two grenades land, but these hiss and release smoke instead of hot metal. Like a rock band, the Green Berets and Rangers will make an entrance through a smoky haze.

The soldiers begin their descent down the shaft, their ropes whistling in the harnesses. They open fire with their assault rifles even before touching down, but the return barrage cuts down the first five men. Other brave men follow. One is able to toss a grenade that bounces on the steel catwalk and rolls toward Gabriel’s feet. Jeptha, a young commando, dives onto it, and its explosion kills him instantly in a muffled roar. Gabriel’s men have donned gas masks and stand their ground. He turns to then, “For the glory of God! Die like men and live again as angels.”

The fire now is heavier from the Green Berets and Rangers. Using the debris as cover, several have leapt out of the blown elevator car. They return fire as more soldiers rappel down the shaft, futuristic warriors in their masks, harnesses and vests.

Fifty meters away, James rushes from the sump back toward the capsule. He hunches his shoulders and lowers his head, tortoise-like, as shells from the battle whiz past him and bury themselves in the walls. The air is thick with cordite and dust and he coughs, then winces at the deafening roar. James is just steps away from the open capsule door when a stray bullet from a soldier’s rifle catches him in the thigh. It is a clean, through-and-through shot, and it drops him to his knees. He gets up scrambles, half crawling, trying to reach the capsule. But he’s gotten turned around, and in the smoke and din from the gunfire, in the pain and shock from the wound, James is headed down the catwalk toward the battle. He looks up to see his compatriots dying as the soldiers pick them off, one-by-one. In moments, it will be over. He is disoriented, in pain, and nearly paralyzed with fear.

From somewhere, he hears his name called. Or is he imagining it? He cocks his head. There it is. Rachel’s scream, “James! James!” But so faint. He turns around, sees the light from the capsule’s open blast door. He scuttles toward it, fighting off the urge to look behind him. He has the sensation of being chased, being hunted. He staggers inside the capsule, and Rachel hits the button, closing the eight-ton door.

David leans far over the edge of the gantry, trying to get the angle. Jericho is still hidden on the far side of the nose cone. David fires off a burst, but it’s no good. If he can’t see Jericho, he can’t shoot him. “Stay where you are, sergeant!” he yells. “You’re going to get a helluva ride.”

Three bolts gone, one to go, Jericho thinks.

And time running out.

He wonders why they haven’t already launched. He knows he will be shot removing the last bolt, but wonders if he can still do it and pull out the computer before he dies.

Suddenly, Jericho swings out from behind the missile, one hand on the rope, the other hand pulling the stud driver from his tool belt. David is off balance at the gantry ledge. He raises the Uzi, but Jericho fires first with the stud driver from his tool belt. Whomp. A four-inch carbon steel nail strikes David in the abdomen.

David lurches forward, and his Uzi drops over the edge of the gantry, plunging into the water far below. Grimacing, he pulls the nail from his gut and jams it through his left palm. He glares derisively at Jack. Showing no pain. Watching the blood drip from his palm, then turning his hand over and studying the pool of blood that forms around the protruding point of the nail. “I forgive you, Jericho, for you know not what you do.”

“You’ve got a serious identity crisis, pal,” Jericho says, then swings to the front of the computer panel and goes back to work on the fourth and last bolt.

The remaining commandos fall back along the catwalk, making a last stand as they retreat to the launch control capsule. Half-a-dozen Green Berets advance, spraying 5.56 mm. fire from their lightweight Squad Automatic Weapons.

Gabriel screams at his men to fight back, and they do, even with those with multiple wounds. Gabriel is out of ammo for the assault rifle but still has a Mossberg shotgun, and the first soldier to get within twelve feet of him takes a full load in the chest.

Finally, a Ranger with a laser-sighted assault rifle lines up a pink dot squarely in the center of Gabriel’s chest. He tattoos Gabriel with four shots to the sternum and two more above the heart for good measure. Gabriel sinks to the catwalk, and the remaining commandos fight to their own deaths, except for one who puts the barrel of a rifle in his own mouth, strains to reach the trigger, then ends the pain forever.

The lieutenant with the mustache advances across the catwalk. His men are peppering the titanium blast door with small arms fire. They do no damage and run the risk of hitting themselves with ricochets. The cylindrical capsule is designed to withstand hits above ground from Russian SS-18 missiles. The idea never was to guard against terrorist takeovers, but the door is doing just fine. The lieutenant takes a quick look and signals his men to stop firing. “Okay, where the hell’s the plastique?”

Through his headset, David hears Rachel’s voice screaming. “James has been shot. Where are you David?”

“Did he get the key?”

“Yes, but the soldiers are… ” Her voice trails off, and though David cannot hear the sound of gunshots from outside the soundproof capsule, he can see the Special Forces in his mind’s eye. This vision, he knows, is real. He shoots a look at Jericho, who cannot loosen the last bolt.

“Launch!” David commands her. “Launch for a new Jerusalem.”

“Not with you in there, David! Please!”

“Heed my Word.”

She clicks off and David looks back at Jericho. Then he screams, “Praise the Lord,” dashes toward the edge of the gantry and leaps into space.

Two Rangers with expertise in demolitions are stacking wads of C-4 plastique against the blast door. When the stack is waist high, one of them lets out a whistle and says, “Might cause an earthquake, but don’t know if we can peel the top of that can.” He embeds a tiny antenna into the putty-like plastique and turns to the lieutenant. “Sir, you might not want to get up close and personal with this.”

The lieutenant agrees and motions his men to take cover. As they head down the ramp toward the tunnel, they notice the rising water coming from the silo.

Jericho still works on the last bolt when he hears David’s wailing praise to the Lord and turns his head in time to see the man flying through the air, legs churning.

A second later, David slams hard into Jericho, banging his head into the nose cone. Fireworks explode behind Jericho’s eyes. David is screaming something, but Jericho cannot make out the words as a thunderstorm rages in his brain. Two hands are around his neck, choking him. One hand is impaled with the nail, and it slashes Jericho’s neck.

Jericho feels the warmth of his own blood but as his head clears, he hits David with a backward elbow strike. The elbow cracks two ribs. David winces, then cries out, “Pain, Jericho! Pain means nothing!”

“Good, ‘cause I owe you some.”

The two men exchange punches while clinging to each other. Only the rope around Jericho keeps them from plunging to the rising water below. David’s voice comes in short, pained breaths, “As written in Job, ‘The eyes of the wicked shall not escape.’”

Jericho hits him with two short rights to the gut, working on the broken ribs. David jams the heel of his hand into Jericho’s Adam’s apple, and Jericho hoarsely rasps, “As said by John, ‘I won’t be wronged. I won’t be insulted. I won’t be laid a hand on.”

“John never said such things.”

“John Wayne, dipshit.” Jericho kicks away from the missile and they swing into space, water pouring over them from above. They trade punches and swing back to the missile. David gets a hand around Jericho’s neck and slams his head backward into the nose cone. The thud echoes inside Jericho’s brain.

Now, they are wrestling, becoming entangled in the rope, twisted twice around the nose cone and themselves. Instead of one or the other falling, they are tightly bound to the missile.

David’s headset, long since torn from his head, is tangled in the rope. It crackles with static, but then a faint voice is heard by them both.

“Key turn clockwise… on my mark,” Rachel says.

-56- Underwater

The keys are in their slots when the C-4 explodes. A concussion wave roars down the tunnel and knocks half-a-dozen Green Berets to the floor, shattering their eardrums. It cracks a hundred-ton sheet of rock in the roof of the cavern, fills the tunnel with dust and sets loose a landslide of pebbles.

But it does not open the blast door.

Inside the capsule, James sits in the commander’s chair, a belt tied around his upper thigh as a makeshift tourniquet. Rachel sits in the deputy’s chair. They each hold a key in the slots twelve feet apart.

The explosion jars the capsule, which noses down at the concussion, then pops up again, its four shock absorbers, each thick as an oil drum and eight feet high, absorbing the impact. Lights flicker for an instant, then come back on.

“Key turn clockwise… on my mark,” Rachel says.

James nods. Behind them, Susan sits, shackled, watching in terror.

In the tunnel, the lieutenant angrily shouts into his radio transmitter. “Get me more Semtex, now!” He clicks off the radio. “Logistics,” he says to himself. “All war is logistics and supply.”

“Three, two, one,” Rachel counts aloud. “Rotate and hold.”

They both turn their keys.

Five seconds pass. An eternity.

“And release,” she says.

They both allow the keys to turn back. A klaxon horn honks. Lights flash.

“Kingdom come,” James says.

“Thy will be done,” Rachel adds.

Susan is out of ideas and deathly afraid. So she turns to the only resource she has left. Prayer.

In stunned silence, the brass watches the Big Board flash with the words, “LAUNCH SEQUENCE IN PROGRESS.” The computerized voice is calm as ever, a housewife reciting her grocery list. “Generators activated. Launch in ninety seconds. Confidence is high.”

“Lionel, if you have any bright ideas, you might pass them on just now,” General Corrigan says.

In his wheelchair, the professor stares vacantly at the board. He gives no sign of having heard the general but begins speaking softly. “I was there, Hugh.”

“What? Where?”

“I was there at Eniwetok in ‘52 when we detonated the first hydrogen fusion bomb. I was there with the Teapot Committee and I was there when we needed to reduce the weight of the payloads just to get the birds to fly. I was there when the Army still thought missiles were fancy artillery shells and couldn’t imagine why we needed an ICBM program. I did it, you know. I did it all for thirty-eight years.”

“And now it’s come to this,” the general says.

“It’s not the way I planned it,” Lionel Morton says. “You know, back in the fifties and sixties, I always hoped we’d use the missiles. Hell, I prayed that we’d use them when we had clear nuclear superiority. I know that sounds… ” He pauses. “Inhumane.”

“Insane is more like it, Lionel.”

“I didn’t want an all-out war. No attacks on their cities. Preventive deterrence. A limited strike on the Russian missile fields plus simultaneous hits on their bomber bases. Then a demand for total unilateral nuclear disarmament or we’d finish them off.”

“We’d have to,” Corrigan says, “because they’d have come at us with everything they had left.”

“We could debate that all day, Hugh, but you’re missing my point.”

“Which is?”

“Now that’s it happening, I can see that I was wrong. I can see it all now. God forgive me, I was wrong.”

In the waterlogged sump, the pumps are throbbing. Generators drive heated gases through thick, insulated tubes into the missile canister. Rising water in the silo roils like a stormy sea.

On the missile’s nose cone, both Jericho and David — tangled in the rope — can hear the driving force of the pumps. It seems to vitalize David, and he unleashes a series of punches. Jericho fights back, but the endless night has taken its toll.

David gets a grip on the rope and pulls, spinning Jericho hard into the nose cone. Then he yanks the rope the other direction, and it gets stuck in the clip attached to Jericho’s tool belt. “Jack be nimble!” David cries out, yanking again on the rope, bending the clip, then breaking it. The rope spins free of the tool belt. “Jack be quick!” One more tug, the rope comes loose from Jericho’s waist. He tries to grab the end but misses and plummets toward the water. “Jack fell off the candlestick!” David shouts triumphantly.

The surging water is fifteen feet deep, lapping at the rocket burners, suspended off the silo floor. In the confined space of the silo, the water sloshes against the walls like breaking waves on a pier.

Jericho hits the surface and goes under. He touches bottom, bounces back up to the surface, takes a breath, and is swept under again by the tug of a whirlpool. Like an underwater tornado, the water swirls downward into an open drain. Jericho tries to swim against the surge, but it’s useless. He is sucked into the drain and driven by the force of the water into the flooded sump.

He kicks and paddles but mostly is just propelled by the force of the water, deeper into the channel. The walls seem to press in on him. His shoulder strikes a duct, and he bounces into a web of piping where he becomes stuck. He struggles in the dark, cold water, but cannot free himself.

Underwater.

Lungs ready to burst.

A miner in a flooded shaft.

Crushed by a timber.

Waiting to die.

Jack Jericho has become his father.

-57- The Morning Star

The second explosion rocks the underground cavern and sets loose a choking cloud of dust. The powerful Semtex jars the blast door, and a burly N.C.O. pries it open with a crowbar. The lieutenant leads six Green Berets into the launch control capsule. The first two inside roughly yank James and Rachel from their flight chairs.

“It’s too late!” Susan Burns cries out. “The launch is activated. When the gases reach full pressure, the missile will go.”

“How do we abort?” the lieutenant demands.

James looks up from his position on the floor. “You don’t. Once the key is turned, it’s too late.” James gives him a sickly smile and sings out, “Sor-ry.”

The lieutenant kicks him in the ribs with a hard-toed combat boot. The computer’s voice says, “Launch in sixty seconds.”

The lieutenant looks up at a security monitor. A camera halfway up the silo wall is panning from the floor where the gases beat the gushing water into a seething foam. The camera pivots skyward, up the length of the missile. There at the top, a man is tangled in a rope. He seems to struggle, and at first the lieutenant thinks the man is trying to get free so he can leap from the nose cone to the gantry. But then it becomes clear.

The man is tying the rope tighter. He wraps it around his legs and loops it over the nose of the missile, pulling it taut, then knotting it.

“Who the fuck is that?” the lieutenant asks.

With tears in her eyes, Rachel answers, “The Messiah.”

“Yeah? Well, he looks like hood ornament to me.”

A torrent of water that began its journey in Chugwater Dam, then spilled down the mountain and cascaded into the silo, now surges through the drainage sump. Compressed into the channel, it picks up speed, tearing at ductwork, breaking Jericho out of the web of piping, and carrying him farther away from the silo. There is nowhere to go but where the water will take him. The channel reaches an incline where the water slows and becomes more shallow. Out of breath and barely conscious, Jericho reaches up, grabs an overhanging pipe and pulls his head above the water.

He drinks in a series of short breaths and hangs there, gasping.

And thinking.

He can let the slowing water carry him farther into the sump, away from the silo. Which is what he should do. Get out of harm’s way before the missile blows.

He tried to stop it. There’s nothing more he can do.

He thought he was going to die, but now he knows, he can survive this. No one could blame him for running now.

No one.

Except himself. He’s run before. He was frightened then. Afraid to die. If heroism is acting courageously in the face of fear, what he is about to do isn’t heroic at all. He is a man without fear, something he has not been for a long time. Unafraid to die, he is nonetheless a man with a purpose for living. And that, too, is something he has not been for a long time.

Jericho turns back toward the silo, fighting the current, which tears at him and tumbles him backward into the water. He gets up and struggles on, desperately pulling ahead on pipes and conduits. The water deepens as he gets closer to the silo, filling the channel, and his head bangs against the ceiling. He has no choice but to go under. He takes a breath and exhales, sucks in another breath, and dives under, kicking hard, swimming against the current, pulling himself along on scaffolding and floor-mounted equipment. He blows out some dead air, feels the ache in his lungs, kicks harder, and keeps going. He swims up through the open drain and into the silo where he bobs to the surface and takes in a long breath.

The water is twenty feet deep now, extending ten feet up the suspended missile, which bobs in its cables. The steaming gases continue to fill the canister. The propulsion launch can only be seconds away, he knows. He kicks out of a swirling whirlpool, swims alongside the missile, reaches up and grabs the umbilical cord that hangs from the fourth stage. He pulls on the umbilical and steadies himself, then hangs there, half in the water, half out. Does he even have time to climb up the cord to get to the computer box? If he makes it, how will he get the box open?

He sees David above him, lashed to the nose cone. Jericho looks at his own hands. He holds the umbilical, the spinal cord of the missile, where even now, final digital instructions are being fed to the MGCS from the launch control capsule’s computer. On the gantry, he couldn’t reach it. On the floor of the silo, same thing. But now, lifted by the water, here it is. If only there is enough time.

Jericho grabs the saw-toothed survival knife from the sheath on his leg and begins frantically cutting through the thick rubber casing to a mass of colorful wires underneath.

In the STRATCOM War Room, no one speaks as the computerized voice calmly announces, “Propulsion steady. Pressure three hundred pounds per square inch. Launch in fifteen seconds. Systems go. Confidence is high. Ten seconds, nine, eight, seven… ”

Jericho saws away at the umbilical, cutting deeper through the web of wires, down to the last, thin filaments, which he severs just as…

Whoosh! The rocket erupts skyward, bursting from the water and out of the silo with incredible speed.

The roiling water propels Jericho to the bottom, sweeps him into the vortex of an underwater maelstrom. He smashes against the silo floor, spins a dizzying circle under water and is driven to the surface, then hard into the steel ladder on the silo wall, where he desperately clings to a rung as the water surges over him.

From the perimeter of Base Camp Alpha, Colonel Henry Zwick watches through binoculars, and what a sight. Against the first light of dawn, the sleek black missile soars above the waterfall pouring into the silo. “Mother of mercy,” he whispers to himself.

Trailed by a blast of steam, the missile seems to hang in the air for a moment.

Motionless, as if deciding on its own, whether to fly or…

The missile pitches over and drops back to earth, splashing down into the river that once again flows through the missile base and onward into the valley. The missile picks up speed in the current, bouncing down a series of rapids in the shallow water, now tinted red by the rising sun.

The Big Board shows a computer simulation of the PK lifting off, and then, the impotent missile simply drops back to earth. A technician in a headset stands at his console, “No first stage ignition! No flame! The bird is down! The bird is down!”

A second of quiet relief. Then jubilation. The officers slap each other on the back as if their genius resulted in the triumph. General Corrigan walks around, thanking his staff. Nervous laughter. Locker room congratulations. “We had’em all the way.” The celebration is still going when the technician sits back down at his console. Watching the monitor, he hits a few keys. His brow is furrowed. “General,” he calls out. “You’d better have a look at this.”

Dazed and bleeding, Jack Jericho climbs the steel ladder toward the lip of the silo. He can see the contrails in the sky above him, but he knows it is merely a steam trail. He would have heard the rockets explode to life if there had been ignition. He would have seen the burst of orange flame from the first stage of the rocket, would have been scorched by its heat.

He knows the missile is down, and reason tells him, it is dead. The warheads would not have armed until the missile was on its ballistic descent. Reason tells him that David is dead, too. But a feeling of utter dread tells him something else. Other than the nightmares that peered into his own past, Jack Jericho never had a vision. Now, he does not so much see as feel. He feels the malefic presence of David Morton and can nearly sense his derisive laughter. A wave of fear sweeps over Jericho. For he knows, without knowing how, that David is alive.

The missile spins lazily in the water. As it completes a revolution, David becomes visible, still lashed to the nose cone. Blood flows from his mouth and ears. His arms are spread wide, his feet are together — a watery crucifixion. He appears dead, but slowly his eyes open and his lips move. The missile bounces off a shallow rock, then lodges between two boulders.

He sees the vision again, the flow of grayish white. Sees it more clearly than before. It is not a banner blowing in the wind, as he had thought. It is a great river, moving slowly at first, still and shallow, then surging forward, faster and rougher, until it plunges over a great waterfall.

“The bomb leadeth me beside the still waters,” he recites. “It restoreth my soul.”

General Corrigan stands behind the technician at the console. Professor Morton motors over and wedges the wheelchair between two officers at the general’s side. The female mechanical voice intones, “Air burst programmed at five thousand feet. Detonation in seven minutes.”

“What the hell’s going on!” the general demands.

The technician bangs his keyboard in frustration. “The computer thinks the missile’s in flight, and it’s armed the warheads.”

“That’s impossible!” Professor Morton yells. “I designed the accelerometers myself. They’re interfaced with the Environmental Sensing Devices. Unless they detect that the missile has left the earth’s atmosphere, then re-entered, there can be no detonation. I designed it to prevent us from blowing up Denver or Salt Lake City.”

“You might have designed it that way, professor,” the technician says, “but there must have been a defect. The missile thinks it’s on ballistic descent to the target. The fusing system already sent a test signal to the firing system, which relayed the signal to the firing circuits. The MIRV’s are armed. When they think they’re at five thousand feet, they’re going to detonate, all ten of them.”

Professor Morton looks at the general, seeking support. “Hugh, I’m telling you, it’s not possible.”

“Air burst in six minutes,” the computer’s voice says, blandly.

General Corrigan clasps the professor by the shoulder. It is a gesture both of long friendship and sadness. “You always said that the machines worked, Lionel. Only the men were defective. Have you forgotten who made the machines?”

Jack Jericho is nearly swept off the ladder by the waterfall that gushes over him. Climbing the last few rungs through the downpour, he does not see the man standing on the lip of the silo, bracing himself on a stanchion.

Jericho pulls himself over the last rung and finds himself staring straight into the savage face of Gabriel. The commando, who should have died a dozen deaths, is badly injured. Blood oozes from several wounds. Two bandoliers of shells criss-cross his chest. Under a torn shirt, a dented forty millimeter grenadier vest is visible. It took the brunt of the kill shots to the sternum and over the heart. Gabriel aims a bulky M-60 machine gun at Jericho’s midsection. “Prepare to meet your Maker, son of Satan.”

Jericho is oddly calm, though he knows the massive gun will cut him in two. “My father’s name was William, and he was the best man I ever knew.”

“Then join him in hell!”

Blam! Shot between the eyes, Gabriel topples sideways into the silo, disappearing in the foam and mist of the waterfall.

Standing eighty yards away on the river bank, Captain Kyle Clancy lowers his scoped M-16.

“Stay there!” he yells at Jericho. “We’ll come get you.”

“No time!” Jericho yells back. “Gotta go!”

Go where, Clancy wonders. The sergeant looks like one of those victims of a Midwestern flood, stranded in the middle of a river that shouldn’t be there at all. Now what the hell is he up to?

Jericho dives into the swift-flowing current. The captain stares incredulously. “Oh, shit!” The current takes Jericho closer to the shore, and Clancy tosses a rope to him. It falls short, but it wouldn’t matter anyway because Jericho makes no attempt to grab it. Clancy watches Jericho body surf down the rapids, slamming into rocks, bouncing off fallen trees. Clancy winces with each jolt.

Jericho can see the missile lodged between two boulders. In the distance, he hears the roar of tumbling water. He kicks and paddles, doing the West Virginia version of the Australian crawl, something learned long ago in water-filled limestone quarries. Just as he grabs the trailing umbilical cord, the missile works itself free of the boulders and continues down river. As the missile picks up speed, Jericho crawls up the cord, hand-over-hand.

Once aboard, he works his way up toward the nose cone where David lies sprawled on his back, entangled in the ropes. His face is a deathly gray, his eyes closed. Blood is caked in his ears, his nose, and in the corners of his eyes. His face a battered mess. Suddenly, in a rasping voice that reminds Jericho of a rattlesnake, David says, “Sergeant Jericho, my favorite janitor.”

Scrambling on all fours up the rubberized fuselage, Jericho approaches him.

“I knew you would come, sergeant. I saw it. But why did you come?”

“To make sure you were dead. To kill you, if you weren’t.”

David’s hacking gurgle of a laugh brings a pink bubble of blood to his lips. “Can you hear the heart of the beast, Jericho?”

The missile rotates slowly in the water, and Jericho has to grab the ropes to hang on. The roar of rushing water grows louder. “What are you talking about?”

“The bomb lives!” David proclaims. “Hear its Word.”

Stunned, Jericho slides over to the computer box and puts an ear to the cold metal. He hears the unmistakable clickety-click of the computer.

“As the sound picks up tempo, we approach detonation, Jericho. Surely you know that. I would say we have less than three minutes. But have no fear. You can live forever at the foot of my throne.”

“Your throne will be a pyre in hell,” Jericho says, taking the knife from the sheath on his leg. He begins working on the one remaining bolt in the computer box but can’t get enough purchase and the knife slips off.

David, eyes closed, begins chanting. “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. Who is and who was. And I bring you the Morning Star.”

-58- Friendly Fire

A blizzard of information flashes across the Big Board: air speed, altitude, fusing and firing system checks, and detonation time. It is the same readout the Board would show if the MIRV’s were on ballistic descent to their targets. The computer’s voice calmly recites, “Initial air burst in two minutes.”

General Corrigan and Colonel Farris watch the display in silence until the colonel speaks, “The good news, sir, is that if we were going to have a nuclear incident anywhere in this country, Wyoming’s about the best place.”

“What?”

“I’ve been on the horn to the Pentagon,” the colonel says, “and it’s generally agreed we can handle this. National Guard and Red Cross are being alerted, of course, but official policy will be to downplay the nuclear incident.”

“Downplay ten nuclear explosions, each one seventeen times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb?”

“Well, you gotta look at the bright side.” The colonel stops and lets out a little laugh. “No pun intended. There aren’t half a million people in the whole state. The official spin is to regard the incident as an unfortunate military accident, sort of like friendly fire.”

“Jesus H. Christ.”

“Maybe we’ll vaporize some trees, and you’re not going to eat the trout for a hundred years, but in terms of what could have happened, it’s not that bad. That’s our stance with the press, so the anti-nuke crowd doesn’t use this as an excuse to plant flowers in the silos we still have left. I mean, sir, we don’t want… ”

Colonel Farris looks up and notices that the general has walked away, leaving him alone.

The bolt will not move, so Jericho uses the knife to pry open the plate covering the computer box. There is a moment when he thinks the blade will break, but it does not. He gets leverage, then slides the plate around the fulcrum created by the remaining bolt. Inside Jericho sees a tangle of wires and electronic gizmos. The clickety-click seems louder, faster. He has no idea what to do.

The missile collides with a boulder, and Jericho nearly falls off. Regaining his balance, he looks downstream. He hears the rush of cascading water, and just ahead, the river seems to stop well in advance of the horizon.

“It must be a glorious sight,” David says. “Can you see it, Jericho? Can you see the falls?”

“The what?”

But then he knows. Jericho had climbed Chugwater Cliffs. Three hundred feet nearly straight up. Rock climbing in summer, ice climbing in winter. Before the Corps of Engineers built the dam, it was a towering waterfalls. And it is again. What was it Kenosha said? “In the end, the earth will prevail.”

Jericho takes a breath and jams his hand inside the computer box, ripping out a trail of wires, chips and plugs. A series of pops and sizzles. He reaches in with both hands and struggles to pull the computer out of its compartment. Getting to his feet, Jericho raises the computer high above his head. Standing there, the missile revolving in the water like a giant tree trunk, Jericho is struck by notion buried deep in his unconscious, an image from his childhood. He remembers a picture on the wall of the First Lutheran Church back home, Moses with the tablets of the Law held high over his head. Moses had come down from the mountain with the Lord’s commandments and found the Hebrews worshiping the golden calf. They had broken their covenant with God, and Moses was pissed.

But the computer is not the voice of God, Jericho thinks, hurling it into the river where it floats for a moment before disappearing from view.

General Corrigan and his staff watch the Big Board as the seconds tick down. The computer speaks in that irritating, calm voice, “Altitude thirty thousand feet. Air burst in… ”

The voice goes silent.

A message flashes on the board. “Firing system disabled. Warheads disarmed.”

The officers have been on a roller coaster too long. They cannot celebrate. Some are dubious. General Corrigan turns to a technician. “Can you confirm—”

As if to reassure the brass, the computerized voice says, “Detonation aborted. Detonation aborted.”

The technician simply says, “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

Finally convinced the crisis is over, the officers slap each other’s shoulders and whoop it up. A football team after a win. Someone passes out cigars as if a baby has been born.

In the center of the celebration a somber General Corrigan turns to Professor Morton.

“Thank God,” Corrigan says.

“Amen,” Morton adds.

The waterfalls rumble like an angry god. The missile spins one hundred eighty degrees in a whirlpool, heads backward toward the precipice, then straightens itself and continues at even greater speed. David lies on his back, barely conscious, barely alive.

“It’s all over,” Jericho tells him. “The bomb is dead.”

David’s voice is barely audible. “Then I shall carry it unto the Lord.”

“He doesn’t want you. Either damn one of you.”

David’s lifeless eyes close and his head drops to the side. Jericho gives him one last look, then dives into the river. He tries to swim to shore, fifty yards away, but the current is too strong. Losing strength, he’s swept toward the waterfalls alongside the missile. Dangerously close to the edge, Jericho struggles futilely against the raging current. He tries to grab onto a boulder rising out of the water but is swept past it. A large tree limb comes by. He grabs at it and misses. No matter. It would only carry him over the falls. The water pushes him under and brings him back up again.

He is past fatigue, beyond exhaustion. He is at the point of giving up, of accepting the pain that is brief, the darkness that is forever. Or is it? In these last seconds, he thinks about his own beliefs. He has tried to be a decent man, to do as much good and inflict as little damage along the path of life as possible. He believes in God and in a hereafter. God who made this stream and the men who drink from it. He remembers the incredible beauty of the sun rising over Devil’s Tower and knows now that it is misnamed. God made the Black Hills and the Belle Fourche Valley and the volcano that became the stark, unearthly tower. God made the prairie dogs and porcupines, the golden eagles and mountain bluebirds. God made me, too, Jericho thinks. And he is ready to go home.

He stops kicking and his arms, heavy as pine logs, drop to his side. He turns over on his back, squints against the morning sun, and lets the raging water carry him on.

A shadow passes over him, and he opens his eyes.

A strong hand reaches down and grabs him under one shoulder. Jericho does not have the strength to either help or resist. He lets himself be picked up and hauled over the side of a dugout canoe where he coughs water out of his lungs, then deeply inhales the sweet air. He looks up to see Kenosha, bare-chested, paddling with powerful strokes, propelling the canoe toward the river bank.

Jericho hauls himself up and looks toward the falls. He catches a last glimpse of the grotesque manmade beast of metal, fuel, and cataclysmic power as it sails over the falls and disappears in a sea of foam, swallowed up by the eternal forces of nature, by the Earth itself.

-59- One Final Ghost

The sun is high in the blue Wyoming sky, and Base Camp Alpha swarms with suits.

State Department flunkies sip bottled water and tend to the freed ambassadors, toting food from a catering truck commandeered from a movie set in the Black Hills. No M.R.E.’s for the diplomats.

Gleaming trucks with huge satellite dishes are in place, network news crews dropping in by helicopter. Reporters jockey for position in front of the command tent, waiting for a glimpse of Colonel Zwick and Captain Clancy, already anointed as the brains and brawn of Operation Peacekeeper.

The armor is moving out, raising a racket, to the consternation of the TV reporters who are doing their stand-ups in front of Abrams tanks that won’t stand still or be quiet. Medics patch up wounded soldiers, and the F.B.I. hauls off Rachel, James and the few surviving commandos in shackles.

Jack Jericho stands alone, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He sips coffee and seems at peace with the world, if a bit removed from it. There are too many thoughts to sort out just now. He thinks of his father and his brother, and for once, the thoughts do not bring anguish. Strange, random memories come to him. He remembers catching his first trout, his father helping him clean the fish, then cooking it over an open fire. Has anything ever tasted so good? He remembers wrestling with his brother in a field of freshly mowed hay. He remembers the coal mine, too, but the feeling is different, now. There is a sadness, but it is a sadness without pain. He thinks of the memorial outside the collapsed shaft that was erected by the union. Twenty-seven names are inscribed on a bronze plaque.

Jericho has never seen the memorial. He never went back to the mine after that day. Now, he is swept by a desire to lay his hands on the plaque, to run his fingers over the letters of his father’s name, his brother’s name. Now, he can do it. He must do it.

Suddenly, Elizabeth, the little girl in pigtails, skips away from a pack of soldiers and rushes toward Jericho. She waves her plastic wand, and a trail of crystalline bubbles floats above her in the breeze. “Will you still be my friend?” she asks.

“Always,” Jericho answers, smiling. A female lieutenant comes over and takes Elizabeth by the hand. Jericho waves good-bye.

Though he does not hear the footsteps behind him, Jericho senses movement. Turning, he sees Kenosha approach. The two men stand there a moment without speaking. Their understanding and care for each other transcends language. “You have changed, Jack,” Kenosha finally says.

Jericho nods. “You have helped me learn.”

“It wasn’t me. It was you. You listened to the voices of the spirits.”

“And now it’s time to go home, Kenosha. I can do it now.”

“Then go, my friend.”

“Not without words of wisdom from your ancestors.”

Kenosha seems to think about it. “Be cautious, my friend.”

“Cautious?”

“Speed traps on Interstate 80. The troopers in Nebraska are the worst.”

Jericho laughs. He hugs his friend. “Now that you’ve saved my life, aren’t you responsible for me forever? I’ve seen that in the Westerns. Isn’t it an old Indian custom that—”

“You were swimming, and I gave you a lift to shore,” Kenosha says. He turns to leave. Several yards away, his golden palomino waits in front of the command tent. “Besides,” Kenosha says, turning back, “you’d be too damn much trouble.” He mounts the palomino and rides off.

Colonel Henry Zwick and Captain Kyle Clancy come walking out of the tent, a cluster of reporters in tow. Zwick stops and jabs his pipe in Jericho’s direction. “Now, there’s the airman you should interview,” the colonel says. “Sergeant Jack Jericho is either going to get court-martialed or win the Medal of Honor.” He turns to Clancy. “Isn’t that right Captain?”

Clancy looks Jericho up and down. “He’s doesn’t follow orders, but he’s got brass balls.”

“Captain, I didn’t get a chance to thank you,” Jericho says. “You saved my life.”

Clancy cracks a crooked grin. “What makes you think I was aiming at him?”

Jericho smiles back and snaps off a salute. Reporters bombard the colonel and the captain with more questions as they walk away. Alone now, Jericho walks slowly toward the flowing river.

“Ser-geant!”

He knows that insistent, bellowing voice. Turning, Jericho sees Captain Pete Pukowlski.

“Sergeant, you’re out of uniform.”

“Yes, sir. It won’t happen again, sir.” Jericho salutes again, a new record, two in one day.

“The hell it won’t. You’ll probably be on CNN wearing one of those Eye-talian suits, telling everybody how you saved the world.” For once, Pukowlski’s tone is laced with humor.

“I’ll tell them I owe everything to my captain’s rigorous training.”

“Damn right you do.” Pukowlski returns the salute. “You’re a shitty airman, Jericho.”

“Yes, sir. I know.”

“But you’re a helluva man.”

Without another word, Pukowlski turns and leaves.

It takes Jericho several minutes to work his way from the camp to the shore of the river. Coming down the embankment, he sees Dr. Susan Burns, standing alone, looking across the water that flows through what had been the 318th Missile Squadron. She is pale, and her face is bruised where David struck her. For an awkward moment, they stand wordlessly, watching the river, now flowing peacefully through the rugged landscape. On the other shore, an elk cautiously approaches the water, eying them. They don’t move, and the elk begins drinking from an eddy at the shoreline.

“I came back for you,” Jericho says. “I mean, I tried to come back. I wasn’t going to leave you there.”

“I know. Everyone knows.”

“It’s not that I’m a hero or anything. I had to do it. Even if I wanted to run, I… ”

Susan Burns steps close to him and touches a finger to his lips, hushing him. “Thank you, Jack. Thank you for everything.” She puts a hand around his neck and pulls him down. She is waiting with parted lips.

He holds her in his arms, and they kiss until he feels warm tears tracking from her face to his. At last Jericho pulls back and says, “If it hadn’t been for you, I never would… ”

She silences him again with another kiss. When they separate this time, she says, “Where will you go now?”

“Back to West Virginia. Lay one final ghost to rest.”

Across the river, the elk feeds at a clump of berries.

Susan gives Jericho a hug, then one last lingering kiss, the best of the three. “Washington’s just down the road. Maybe you’ll visit.”

He tenderly wipes a tear from her eye. “I will. I promise.”

He wraps an arm around her and they turn toward the resurrected river, just as a trout leaps from the water, glinting silver in the sun.