Ballistic Read online

  “But nuclear weapons are just for defense,” says a young woman in the back. “Without the threat of an attack from the Russians, why do we need—”

  “Do you know why the Soviet Union crumbled?” the professor interrupts.

  “‘Cause they wanted Big Macs and Levis,” says a long-haired guy in the first row.

  Professor Morton hits a button, and the wheelchair buzzes closer to the front of the stage. “Because we bankrupted them with defense spending. They had to keep up with the Joneses…and the Reagans. Now, ask yourselves this. If the American nuclear arsenal was merely for defense, why would the Russians have to keep up? Why build the SS-17’s, 18’s, 19’s, 24’s and 25’s? Why build a 25-megaton warhead, bigger than anything we’ve got, a digger that could penetrate Cheyenne Mountain and vaporize NORAD headquarters and obliterate any of our underground bunkers including ACC Command Post outside Omaha or the National Military Command Center underneath the Pentagon?”

  No one answers at first, but a guy in the first row fiddles with his gold earring and seems to think about it, then says, “‘Cause the Russians didn’t trust us.”

  “Right! Because the Russians were afraid of preemptive deterrence.”

  Blank looks from the back rows.

  “A first strike!” Professor Morton roars. “It was our first-strike potential that shriveled the commies’ testicles, and don’t ever forget it. From the last days on World War II right up through Reagan’s second term, the bastards were afraid we’d hit ‘em first. And they were right! The blockade of Berlin, the Cuban missile crisis, the Arab-Israeli wars of ‘67 and ‘73…hell, we came damn close a bunch of times.” He pauses, maybe for effect, maybe to consider whether to say it at all. “And there were some of us who thought we made a mistake not doing it as soon as possible and as hard as possible.”

  No one is laughing. No one is moving. Few students even take a breath.

  Professor Morton dabs his forehead with a handkerchief. He has worked up a sweat. “So ladies and gentlemen, never forget that we need that might, that ability to slick ‘em with submarine launched missiles and glick ‘em with land based missiles, the ability to make the rubble bounce with a clean fusion bomb, the ability to take out specific targets with a cookie cutter. Take away the missiles and you’re castrating America.”

  The young woman in eyeglasses raises her hand. “You’re not opposed to the START treaty, are you Professor? I mean, we have enough nuclear weapons now to—”

  “To prevent World War III.”

  “But the threat’s over,” the earring guy jumps in. “I mean, the Russians are broly.”

  Professor Morton wheels the chair around to face the student, who likely will never make Dean’s List, much less become another Oppenheimer. “Ah, the benefits of higher education. That broly bunch of guys at Glavkosmos sold rocket engines to India, missiles to China, submarines to Iran, and unless we stop them, ammonium perchlorate to Libya.”

  “Ammon…” the guy stumbles.

  “Rocket fuel! And another thing, uranium fuel rods are disappearing from Russian nuclear plants like trinkets shoplifted from Woolworth’s. China is supplying reactors to every rogue country in the world. Even Algeria has a hot cell to make plutonium. The North Koreans have made enough nuclear material at Yongbyon to build five bombs and have a missile, the Rodong-1, that can hit Japan. The Ukraine has 1800 warheads. Leonid Kravchuk may be okay, but what about its next leader? So, in short, ladies and gentlemen, the world is a far more dangerous place today than it was—”

  A rumble interrupts him.

  The lecture hall windows vibrate in their frames.

  The walls shake.

  Several students dive to the floor. “Earthquake!” one shouts.

  “The big one!” another screams.

  On the stage, Professor Morton calmly looks out the windows toward the quadrangle. He has heard the sound before, loves the growling roar, the sheer power of the engines.

  A moment later, an Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter touches down in the grassy quadrangle. Four Airborne Rangers in battle dress jump from the helicopter. It is an impressive sight, even to the jaded Stanford students, who pause on their way between classes, to watch the rugged men whose faces are smeared with camouflage grease and who carry assault rifles at port arms.

  Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Griggs, lean and graying, a triangular patch signifying Delta Force on his shoulder, follows the Rangers out of the chopper and leads them at double time toward the lecture hall. They burst through the door and pour into the hall, tromping down the steps to the stage.

  Professor Morton hits a button, and his wheelchair spins ninety degrees to face the lieutenant colonel, a man in his late forties with a squinting eyes and thin, humorless lips. “Let’s go, professor. It’s happening.”

  Professor Morton doesn’t even try to suppress a smile. He knows, of course. It’s not End Game. No exchange of ICBM’s across the polar ice cap. It would have been over in minutes, and there would have been no time to summon the man who built the systems, the genius who designed everything from the shape of the launch control capsule to the computer programs with the multiple codes. Designed them to be fail-safe. The system had checks, cross-checks and double cross-checks. It was flawless. But human beings were far from perfect, and this was a paradox that intrigued the professor. While humans passed on the same weaknesses from the days of the Garden of Eden, technology exploded exponentially and approached perfection.

  That thought always made him smile. Exploded. For as a physicist, he loved the Big Bang of the creator, which he always imagined with a small “c,” and he loved the little, big bangs he could create.

  But human error was always the risk.

  Incompetence or mendacity. Or both.

  Whatever the crisis, he knew, that somewhere a nuclear weapon had been triggered, and he would walk – or more precisely, roll – right into the middle of it. Create the monster, slay the monster.

  Professor Morton turns the wheelchair and faces the students. “Class dismissed. Next week, a quiz on deuterium fusion.” He pauses and lets his eyes twinkle. “If there is a next week.”

  -30-

  The Hot Breath of Lucifer

  Jack Jericho slogs through the sump, stops, looks warily behind. Nothing but the throb of machinery. He is under the tunnel now, headed toward the Launch Equipment Room.

  These fruitcakes have the launch control capsule, he now figures. Nobody ever calls him “sir,” not even the ticket taker at the Laramie Cineplex. And certainly not Lieutenant Owens. Jericho is a non-com, and Owens knows it. He was sending a message, and Jericho hoped it hadn’t gotten the missileer killed.

  Okay, so the terrorists took over the capsule. Which means they’ve breached the perimeter and captured Security Command. And God knows what else.

  But the bird didn’t fly. Jericho didn’t stop it, he knows. Hell, he nearly been turned into a fried mountaineer, working on the keyboard.

  He had a weapon now. And they were on his territory. No, check that. Outdoors, in the woods, along the banks of a stream, that would be his territory. Here, in the tunnel that resembled a mine shaft, even though he knew every twist and turn, it was not his territory. It was his purgatory.

  * * *

  In the launch control capsule, Rachel watches over Susan and Owens while James works feverishly at the computer keyboard, his lank, pale hair drooping into his eyes. Brother David leans over his shoulder watching, growing angrier with every “Access Denied” message on the monitor.

  “You’re supposed to be the expert,” David says, brusquely.

  “Hey, it wasn’t my job to get the codes, Brother Davy.”

  David kicks the railing that runs along the console. A petulant child. “Your blatant incompetence forestalls my destiny!”

  James stops what he is doing and turns toward David, whose face is flushed. “You wanna cut the Messiah crap? This ain’t like breaking into a switching station at Pacific Bell to make some lon
g distance calls. It ain’t changing grades at M.I.T.”

  “Who do you think you’re talking to?” David demands.

  “Back off, Davy. I know you. Hell, I’m the only one who knows you.”

  David angrily turns away from the console and faces Susan, who is staring at him. “What is it? Do you have something to say, Ms. Shrink? Do you have something to add to this fiasco?”

  “I could help you.”

  “Really? Do you know how to acquire the Secondary Launch Code?”

  “No, but with the proper therapy, we could exorcize your demons without a nuclear holocaust.”

  He glares at her. “You know nothing of my demons. You know nothing of me.”

  “But if I did, I could help you.”

  David considers telling her the story just to see her reaction. “I shot my father, doctor? What do you make of that?”

  What an oedipal delight, a smorgasbord of delicacies for a psychiatrist. How they loved him at the hospital when he wasn’t tormenting them. He spent eighteen months there, and it wasn’t bad, not when you live inside your head. He used his free time – of which there was plenty – to read and to change and then to change again.

  He had always been aware of his powers. He saw colors emanating from other persons and came to know that these were called auras. While still a child, he invented a parlor game he called, “I see.” Wearing a black cape and a makeshift turban from a bathroom towel, he would squeeze his eyes shut, work up visions, and reveal all manner of data, some mundane and some astounding. He could conjure up the names of long-deceased relatives and he could tell a stranger whether his ailment was an ulcer or a boil. He didn’t know how he saw these things; sometimes the visions came, sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes he was right, sometimes wrong.

  Family and friends often asked for predictions, but those were more difficult. David worked hard at making his prophesies come true, but nothing seemed to work, until he discovered a simple solution. Only predict those things over which you have control. If he told a neighborhood pal that his cat would soon die, and a few days later, the cat was found strangled, then David was a prophet, albeit a self-fulfilling one.

  Years later, as a young man sitting in the sun in a white wicker chair on the sweeping lawn of the mental hospital, David studied a wide spectrum of metaphysical sciences. At various times, he dabbled in theosophy, I Ching, Mesmerism, kabalism, voodoo, santeria, and even a brief fling with Satanism. He re-read Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde until the binding tore apart. The bookshelf in his tiny room was crammed with classic mystical literature including Marion Crawford’s Zoraster, H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, and Florence Marryat’s Daughter of the Tropics.

  Always possessed of self-awareness, David knew he was on a quest for his own identity. He read Ammonius, Buddha, Pythagoras, Confucius, Orpheus, Socrates and Jesus. He invented and re-invented himself a dozen times. First believing in a divine wisdom and moral ideals, he adhered to the motto, “There is no religion higher than truth.” Later he came to believe that he could define the truth.

  He became fascinated with the early apocalypticists. He studied the teachings of Novatian and Donatus from the third and fourth centuries who prophesied the coming Armageddon. That took him to the millennialists, the Anabaptists, Waldensians, Albigenses, and Moravian Brethren. He listened to Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists, and he consumed the Bible, focusing on the apocalyptic writings of Daniel, Ezekiel and finally, the Book of Revelations.

  All the while, David practiced his psychic gifts. After he was released from the hospital, he lived in a commune in Idaho populated by a motley collection of New Age dropouts, time-warped hippies and lethargic lost souls. The others gravitated to him, drawn by his piercing eyes and uncanny mental abilities. He learned the art of hypnotism and sleight-of-hand and became a compelling speaker and performer. To earn money for food and books, he ventured into town and set up a tent, amazing the locals with his mind-reading demonstrations at ten bucks a pop.

  When he had honed his gifts and perfected his performance, when he determined who he was, or at least who he wanted to be, David had but two choices: he could become a carnival act or he could start a religion.

  No, David thinks now. He won’t tell the psychiatrist his story. Not yet, anyway. But there is something within him, the showman, that cannot resist the center stage. It is the quality that makes him a seductive preacher. But even he knows it is built on the sin of pride. He turns to Doctor Susan Burns and says, “Do you believe that both God and Satan is within each of us?”

  “Is that what you believe?”

  “It is the Word. There is a constant struggle, the Lord our God against the fallen angel. Evil is such a powerful force.”

  Next to Susan, Rachel stirs from her chair. “David, don’t. This isn’t the time or—”

  “I can lead the flock because I know sin,” he goes on. “If I open the Seven Seals, it is because I was chosen to do so. If I am the Messiah, I am a sinful one. Even now, Lucifer’s voice rings louder than pealing church bells.”

  “David!” Rachel knows what is happening, even if Susan does not. “This is between us, David. It is not to be spoken of.”

  “Still, I fear I feel his hot, sulfurous breath on my neck.”

  “David, please,” Rachel implores him.

  He closes his eyes and lets his voice rise and fall, the words like pounding waves breaking on the shore. “And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, ‘Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll? See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.’”

  “Ain’t gonna open nothing,” James says, “unless we get that code. I figure two hours before Special Forces gets here with a hard-on for the Root of David.”

  “But even as I follow my destiny,” David goes on, ignoring his old friend, “even as I prepare to be martyred as the Lamb of Christ, Satan pulls at me.”

  David hits a button on the console and the blast door pops open with a pflop of its seals. He leans down behind Susan, opens her handcuffs, then roughly pulls her to her feet. As he drags her toward the open door, Rachel’s voice takes on a scolding tone, “David, we have a higher purpose.”

  “Indeed, we do,” he replies, “but all work and no play makes David an even naughtier boy.”

  * * *

  Captain Pete Pukowlski knows his rights. Which is just what he is telling this muscle-bound son-of-a-bitch who dispenses words as if they were silver dollars.

  “I am intimately familiar with the provisions of the Geneva Convention as it pertains to prisoners of war,” the captain says.

  Gabriel says nothing, just gives Pukowlski a little shove as the group moves through the underground tunnel toward the missile silo.

  “And under said provisions, I demand confinement in quarters commensurate with my rank.”

  Gabriel separates him from the ambassadors and shoves him through the door to a storage room. Using his shotgun to nudge Pukowlski along, they move to the rear of the room and stop in front of a steel vault with a wheeled door. “Open it,” Gabriel commands.

  “That’s against the regs unless we’re wearing—”

  “Open it!” Gabriel pokes the shotgun barrel into the captain’s rib cage.

  The captain does as he is ordered.

  “Inside! Now!”

  Before he can protest, Pukowlski is shoved in the back and stumbles into the vault. Gabriel slams the steel door shut and turns the wheel, locking the door. Talking to himself, for the sound cannot penetrate to the other side. “Much more appropriate.” Then he walks away, flicking off the lights. Even in the dark, the sign on the steel door is illuminated by a fluorescent orange border. Glowing ominously, it reads, “Danger—Radioactive Waste.”

  -31-

  Nuclear Family

  Brother David leads Dr. Susan Burns down the tunnel toward the silo, passing several commando
sentries whose posture straightens as they pass. David nods to them but says nothing. His mind is elsewhere. He pushes open the door to the sleeping quarters/galley and shoves Susan inside. Shadowy, with a bare concrete floor and jammed with half-a-dozen bunks, the room is illuminated by a single yellow bulb. David does not turn on the overhead lights in the Spartan room.

  “Now, doctor,” he says, “before you get rid of my demons…” He pulls out two pairs of handcuffs, and fastens each of her wrists to an overhead pipe, arms spread wide. “I’m going to show you heaven.”

  He kneels down and removes her shoes. She is on tip-toes now, spread-eagle, exposed and vulnerable. David stands and places his face close to hers. She can feel his breath, warm and moist, coming faster now as he loosens her long, dark hair from a clip, then unties the bow-tie on her silk blouse.

  “I thought you were a man of God,” she says, struggling for control.

  He unfastens the top button on her blouse. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

  “I didn’t think you were a common rapist.”

  Another button. “Oh, but I was never common. Surely you are capable of a more sophisticated diagnosis.”

  “You’re what the medical literature would call a middle-class psychopath.”

  “How bourgeois. I always imagined myself a bohemian.” He grabs Susan by the chin and twists her head, forcing her to look him in the eyes. “Come now. Tell me my symptoms. What’s bugging poor little Davy?”

  Susan masks her fear, knowing part of his pleasure derives from her terror. She tries to control her breathing, aware that her face is flushed. Her arms are already growing heavy, and she feels the damp cold from the floor against her bare feet. “I’m sure you’ve heard it before.”

  “I have, but not from someone so lovely, so delicious.” With fingers spread, he rakes both hands through her hair, which falls freely over her shoulders. “All the others just poked and prodded, tested and analyzed. There’s never been anyone so perfectly suited to be the vessel of my wisdom, the repository of my seed.”