State of War

10

The hearing aid was just a tiny little thing, Howard thought. It certainly wasn’t very impressive looking.

Geneva Zuri held it in the palm of her hand, showing it to him. “I’ll give you an instruction booklet to take home,” she said, “but the basics are pretty simple. If you pull this little door open, you can see where the battery goes.”

Howard took it from her and did as she had suggested. At first he thought he was going to drop it, it was so small, but after a few moments he started to get the hang of it.

He frowned slightly when he saw the button-style battery. At maybe half the size of an aspirin tablet, it was going to take a pair tweezers to load and unload it.

“That’s how you turn it off at night,” Geneva said. “Just open the door and take out the battery. We recommend that you keep it in its case with the silica granule packet to dry it out. In the morning, pop it back in, close the door, and you’re good to go. Try it. It helps if you pull your ear out with one hand and use your thumb to shove it in.”

“What’s the little button on top here do?”

“Changes the channel. Put it in, I’ll show you.”

Howard was used to using earplugs for shooting. He had no trouble inserting the hearing aid.

He didn’t know exactly what to expect, but he was just a tiny bit disappointed. He didn’t notice any change at first.

He frowned. Was that somebody talking? He shook his head. No, they were singing…

He turned to look, and saw somebody walking past outside the window. He grinned.

Zuri leaned forward and looked into his ear. “Nice fit. Shake your head.”

He did. It didn’t move in his ear at all.

“It won’t fall out by accident,” she said. “In fact, it’ll take a little effort to remove it. Some people have problems with that.” She leaned back, rustled a paper at him, and that sounded very loud. She knew it, too. He could tell by the way she smiled. “You expected to hear some kind of roaring sound when you put it in, didn’t you, like the wind or static or something? Maybe some feedback squeal, like a cheap PA system?”

“Yeah, I did.”

She smiled again. “What it’s supposed to do is make the bad ear work like the good one. It won’t be perfect, but it should seem as if both ears are working better. You’ll be able to pinpoint sound location better, too.”

He nodded.

“That button you mentioned?” she went on. “Reach up and push it.”

He did and heard two soft beeps.

“Again.”

He heard only a single beep this time.

“One beep is the normal mode,” Zuri said. “That’s the default when you turn it on in the morning. The second channel, the two-beeper, is for very loud environments, those with a lot of background noise. In the two-beep mode, it will pump mid-ranges, like most speech, but not the hum of your computer drive or car’s engine. All you have to do is toggle back and forth until you get it where you want it.”

She reached over and snapped her fingers by his good ear. “Cover this ear.”

He did so.

She snapped her fingers by the one with the aid in it. “Sound about the same?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now pop it out. It’ll help if you come underneath, use your thumb, and pry a little.”

He removed the device. She was right. It took a bit of effort. That was good. He didn’t want his expensive electronic ear falling out on the sidewalk where somebody could step on it…

“Now let see it.”

He handed it to her.

“Here’s a little wire loop tool, to clean the wax out of the speaker channel, like so. Hold it angled down, so the wax falls out, see. And you can use the little plastic poker, right here, to clean out the air channel, that’s this hole here. Don’t clean anything else, except with a little brush, or maybe wiping it with a soft cloth. No cleaners, no soap, no water. Don’t shower or go swimming with it in, you don’t want to get it wet. A hat should protect you in the rain, a drop or two probably won’t hurt anything, but if it looks like you are going to get deluged, stick it into this little waterproof packet and put it in your pocket until you get somewhere dry.”

He nodded again.

“I want you to wear it for a couple days, go on about your business as usual, then come back. We can adjust it if something is too loud or harsh or not loud enough. It only takes a minute to do that. I just hook it to my computer and program the changes.”

She handed it back to him and he put it back in his ear.

“You’ll have to change the battery about once a week,” she said. “I’ll give you a package of spares, and a little holder you can carry a couple around in. Don’t drop it on the floor if you can help it, or in the bathtub. Like I said before, if you lose it or break it, it’s covered for two years. By then, we’ll probably have a new model anyway.”

“Sounds pretty simple.”

“It’s not particle physics. If you can stick your finger in your ear, you can use these things.” She paused. “Are you a betting man, General?”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“I’ll wager ten dollars that nobody but your wife notices you’re wearing it unless you tell them — and another five that even she doesn’t notice.”

“You must be pretty sure of yourself.”

She nodded. “Like I told you, it’s not visible from the front, and you can’t see it from the back. The only place someone can spot it from is directly to the side, and even then, most people don’t look at your ears.”

He grinned at her. “Do you make that bet with all your patients?”

She nodded. “All of the ones who get this model. In fact, I usually bet them twenty bucks, not ten, but you’re a tougher case. Cops, federal agents, those folks who automatically mark you for purposes of ID, they’re the most likely to notice it, and they are exactly the kind of people you work with.”

“Great.”

“Even so, it’s better than going ‘Eh, sonny, what’s that?’ all the time, isn’t it?”

He felt a little stab of vanity. “Yeah, well, that’s easy for you to say.”

She suddenly went very serious. She looked at him silently, not smiling at all. After a moment she gave a small nod and turned her head to the side so he could see her right ear. Then she turned to show him the left.

She had hearing aids in both ears.

“One of the reasons I went into this field was because of a nasty virus I had when I was a child. It caused a high fever and burned out part of the wiring in both ears. I’ve worn hearing aids since I was eleven.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Zuri,” he said.

“Don’t be. I’m not. Not anymore, anyway. These things really do work great, General.”

Howard sighed. She was right. A little piece of plastic and circuitry and a computer chip sure beat the other option, no doubt about it.

He stood up and shook her hand. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. See you in a couple of days.”

Howard nodded and headed out the door, whistling as he left.

Ames stood in the middle of a dry and dusty plain, alone. All around him was emptiness and desolation.

From where he stood, there were no signs of civilization whatsoever. No roads. No cars. Just the tire tracks his own driver had left, and they were already crumbling in the sand.

A hot wind was trying to take his hat off. The summer sun played upon the mostly barren ground. Tumbleweed, the only sort of life he could see, bounced slowly along the sun-baked sand.

If you didn’t know any better, you might think a man out here alone would be in trouble.

Ames smiled, feeling a certain sense of, well, superiority. He had a secret.

Everybody knew about Cheyenne Mountain, near Colorado Springs. The bombproof military operations center had been obsolete for that purpose before it was ever finished. By the time the excavation was done, and before they had even built the massive doors, the Soviets had targeted the complex. Rumors were they had enough megatonnage of ICBMs aimed at Cheyenne Mountain that, if the shooting ever had begun, the complex would have become a radioactive crater.

The best part was that the government had known all this, and they went ahead and built it anyway.

The cold war had produced more than a few such “secure” sites. Some of them probably would have survived a nuclear engagement, if for no other reason than that they really were secret. The ones the Soviets knew about, like Cheyenne Mountain, would have been destroyed, of course.

There had been a handful, however, that had been carefully and secretly constructed. Usually — but not always — this was under the guise of mining or heavy industry. The locations were never bandied about, and, through great diligence and great luck, their very existence was kept secret. Some of those would have probably made it.

Ames knew about three of these. One was outside Washington, D.C., for congressmen and senators. There was another one in Mississippi, and Ames knew that one would always be safe. Nobody in their right mind would waste missiles on the Holly Springs National Forest in northern Mississippi. Not unless they knew for sure there was something worth shooting at there, anyway, and probably they didn’t. Fifty-odd years after it was built, most of the locals didn’t even know the bomb shelter was there.

The third site was in central Texas.

Some miles southeast of Odessa, this third one had been designed to house close to two hundred people. Ames guessed that the intended guests were probably big oil barons who had contributed significantly to certain politicians’ election campaigns. It had been stocked with water, food, medical supplies, diesel engines and fuel, and power generators to run the lights, and air-conditioning, refrigeration, air filtration, and sewage systems. It would keep that many people alive and well for six months. The fewer people inside, of course, the longer they could survive.

Built in the mid-1950s, it had a fair-sized library. It also had dozens of radios and little black-and-white televisions, all with vacuum tubes, most of which still worked. And it had a gold mine of vinyl records — LP albums and 45 rpms that had never been played and were probably worth thousands to collectors.

The contractors had dug an underground garbage pit a quarter mile away from the compound. Electric golf-style carts could haul trailers of trash to it via a concrete tunnel buried thirty feet under the ground.

It had cost millions to build and stock, and it had never been used. The cold war ended. The threat of nuclear winter didn’t go away completely, of course, but it had been greatly reduced. And the underground hideout had become a great white elephant.

So Ames had bought it. A real steal at six million and change, with both sides of the arrangement convinced they had suckered the other. Ames smiled at that. He had spent almost that much simply restocking and updating the supplies.

It had come with a huge pantry of canned goods, much of which were still useable, even after more than five decades. He had added smart-freezers and refrigerators stuffed with high-quality produce and meats. If he ever had to come here for an extended period, the only thing he would miss would be fresh fruits and vegetables. With freeze-drying, however, he could keep all kinds of foods not quite as good as fresh, but better than canned, almost forever.

Ames also installed a commercial-quality gas stove with a thousand-gallon propane tank to fuel it. He hid a satellite dish or two and put in state-of-the-art electronics, including televisions, computers, and sensor and communications gear. When he was all done, his little hideaway was perfect. Safe. Isolated. Secret.

Even if you knew it was there, it was almost impossible to get there without being spotted, by land or air. On top of that, its security system included both radar and heavy equipment sound detectors, and Ames had surrounded it with a minefield full of nonlethal noise poppers.

He was confident no one would be sneaking up on him, but he wasn’t worried if anyone did manage to defeat his security. The place itself was impregnable. Built of hardened concrete and rebar with walls six feet thick, it was a veritable fortress. Best of all, it lay under twenty to thirty feet of very solid ground.

Safe and secure, but comfortable, too. Like everything else in his life.

He looked around again, feeling very satisfied, then headed for the secret entrance to the stairwell. It was far too hot to spend much time out here, especially since it was much nicer inside.