Ballistic Page 18

The impact pops his shoulder out of its joint, but Jericho still holds on, swinging on the cord, first away from the PK then back where he bashes into the missile canister. He cries out in pain, then falls ten feet to the floor, where he lies in a heap.

  On the gantry, David peers over the ledge and looks at the motionless body one hundred feet below. He pulls hits a button on the dented walkie-talkie, and says, “Gabriel, would you be kind enough to join me in the silo? I’d like you to scrape up the janitor.”

  David rides the gantry down to the silo floor. He gets off, walks a few paces beneath the missile, and finds…

  Nothing.

  Jericho is gone.

  From the tunnel comes the clack of combat boots on concrete. Gabriel and four young commandos rush from the tunnel into the silo. David kneels at the spot where Jericho fell from the umbilical cord. Drops of blood lead to the grate, which lies outside its track. “Bring him to me!” David shouts.

  Gabriel climbs through the opening, followed by three of the commandos. David grabs the fourth commando and points at the dangling screen over exhaust tube high on the silo wall. “Get up there and fix that. And stay there. Keep a lookout until Gabriel reports that he has captured the heathen.”

  The commando mumbles his acquiescence, hops onto the gantry, and rides up the wall. As the gantry slows to a stop at the exhaust tube opening, the commando fails to notice a drop of blood on the floor.

  Suddenly, Jericho swings down from the roof of the gantry and crashes into the commando. They both fall to the floor, then scramble to their feet. With one arm dangling uselessly, Jericho takes a swipe with his knife, but the commando knocks it away with his Uzi, then levels to fire. Jericho barrels into him like a middle linebacker on a blitz. The Uzi flies out of the man’s hands and slides to the ledge of the gantry. Both men dive for it, wrestling at the edge, Jericho howling in pain when he lands on his shoulder.

  On the floor of the silo, David watches the struggle above him on the gantry, then angrily punches a button on the walkie-talkie. “Gabriel! Get back here.”

  David watches angrily from the silo floor. This janitor was proving to be more trouble than he had expected.

  On the gantry ledge, Jericho’s head is over the edge, the commando trying to shove him off. Jericho rolls over, pinning the commando beneath him. The commando kicks at Jericho, toppling him backwards into the silo wall, which is studded with hoses and gauges. The commando dives for the Uzi.

  Jericho spins the wheel of a valve just below a sign emblazoned, “Warning: LOX.” He grabs a hose and aims it at the commando. A blast of liquid oxygen shoots out and hits the man commando squarely in the face, blinding him and searing him with a freezing pain. He staggers backwards, squeezing the trigger of the Uzi, firing wildly, the shots pinging off the silo wall. He pirouettes, claws at his eyes, takes a step backward, then another, then a final one. But his foot doesn’t come down. He has stepped off the ledge, seems to hang there a moment, then plummets toward the floor, screaming, falling, falling…and landing with a thunk at David’s feet, the Uzi skittering a few feet away.

  Jericho makes his way to the edge, looks down at David, and for a long moment, the two men just glare at each other. “I’ll be back!” Jericho shouts. “I’m coming back for the woman, but I’m coming back for you, too.”

  “No you won’t! It’s not in your nature. Run, Jericho, Run. It’s what you’re good at.”

  There is nothing Jericho can say. He backs away from the ledge, painfully pops his dislocated shoulder back into place and retrieves his knife from the gantry floor. He moves back to the silo wall, climbs into the exhaust tube, and disappears from view.

  He wriggles slowly through the tube, climbing toward the surface. If the commandos cannot find the tube’s outlet pipe which is obscured in the old river bed by underbrush, safety waits above.

  But safety can be a hell all its own.

  So Jericho is not thinking about escape.

  He is already planning how he will join the battle.

  -35-

  Ask the Missile

  Base Camp Alpha is a scene of controlled chaos at the foot of Chugwater Mountain eleven hundred meters from the blown front gate of the 318th Missile Squadron. The sights, sounds and smells are pure military as Quonset huts are erected, tents are pitched, and men and materiél pour in.

  Loaded with equipment, olive green deuce-and-a-half trucks pull up the gravel road. Moving slower in the procession, massive trucks called HEMETTS carry tons of ammunition and building supplies. CH-47 Chinook helicopters off-load troops of the Armored Cavalry, and CH-46 Sea Knight copters lower Light Armored Vehicles on cargo hooks.

  Forklifts move pallets loaded with wooden crates and bladders of fuel. Bulldozers clear trees and push topsoil spiked with twisted limbs into makeshift fortifications. A dozen M2/3 Bradley Fighting Vehicles equipped with grenade launchers, TOW missile launchers and 25 mm. cannon take a forward position alongside six M109A6 Paladin self-propelled howitzers. Poking through the pine trees, a 120 mm cannon appears. It is attached to an MA1A2 Abrams main battle tank, a seventy-ton fighting machine that is the most sophisticated piece of rolling armor in the history of warfare. Four of the tanks, encased in armor plate tougher than the eighteen inches of solid steel protecting a battleship’s control tower, crunch through trees and underbrush and take their positions.

  MLRS rocket launchers on tracked vehicles pull into place at the perimeter. Called “steel rain” by the Iraqis whose parade they rained on. the rocket launchers fire TGW smart missiles. As the vehicles come to a halt, struts extend, elevating the rocket tubes to fire at an thirty-degree angle over the missile silo. It is a strategy that might be called, “if all else fails…” for no one believes they can shoot down a Peacekeeper missile.

  The PK is cold launched, ejected from the canister by pressure created by a mixture of water and gases in a generator. The missile literally pops up out of the silo when the pressure in the sealed canister reaches three hundred twenty pounds per square inch, and something’s got to give. What gives is the missile, all one hundred ninety thousand pounds of it.

  There is that moment, less than one second, when the PK hangs there, one hundred feet above the ground. If a ground-to-air rocket launcher could acquire the target, if the gunners knew precisely the moment the Peacekeeper would be there, maybe it could be shot down. But there is no time. In that next second, the rockets ignite with the roar of an angry god, and in the next sixty seconds, they catapult the missile to eighty-six thousand feet.

  The first stage peels off, and the second stage fires up, again burning brightly for just a minute, but carrying the missile to a height of three hundred seventy-thousand feet. The third stage is not much longer lived, giving its all in less than ninety seconds, but by this time, the missile is in space traveling at an incredible fifteen thousand miles an hour. It has gone ballistic.

  Everywhere at Base Camp Alpha, there are the sounds of chugging diesel engines and spinning rotors, the shouts of men hard at work building and digging. The fragrance of the trees and rich brown earth is mixed now with the pungent smell of diesel fuel and wet canvas and lubricated metal.

  By nightfall, there will be enough firepower here to overthrow a healthy number of third-world countries. Whether it is sufficient to take over a missile silo without killing half-a-dozen foreign ambassadors or causing what the Atomic Energy Commission would blithely refer to as a nuclear incident is another matter.

  Half a mile above Base Camp Alpha, on an old logging road whose ruts are now overgrown with sunflowers and bright red Indian paintbrush, a lone rider in buckskins sits astride a golden Palomino. Motionless, Kenosha watches as the elaborate war machine is assembled. Then, with a tug of the reins, man and horse turn and make their way higher up the slope, through strands of white birch trees, across a plateau of sagebrush, then higher still through a stand of fir trees. Kenosha works the horse farther away until he can no longer see or hear the grinding engines below him, until he is
swallowed by the ancient forest itself.

  * * *

  In the launch control capsule, James works doggedly at the computer as Rachel watches over his shoulder. Brother David enters the capsule from the tunnel, and Rachel glares at him.

  “How was your proselytizing? Did you convert her?” Rachel’s tone is sarcastic, and she shoots an angry look at Susan Burns, who is handcuffed and sitting on the floor against the rear wall of the capsule. The psychiatrist wears a blue flightsuit, her hair flowing over her shoulders.

  “The woman is not important,” David says, “but something else is. We seem to have a stray airman who refuses to either die or see the light.”

  Susan looks toward him, and then away, trying not to reveal her interest. Still, David catches the look in her eyes. “Yes, doctor, I refer to your favorite patient, the cowardly coal miner from Shitkicker, West Virginia.” He turns toward Rachel. “Have Matthew’s men above ground scour the river bed. He’ll be there presently.”

  “Armed?” Rachel asks.

  “Only with a knife. Matthew will dispose of him.” He looks back to Susan who gives no reaction. “Other than the vexatious sergeant, everything is under control. The ambassadors are confined in the equipment room, and the loud-mouthed sergeant has his own quarters.” He walks down the rail toward the launch commander’s console. “James, how goes it?”

  “Damn slow.”

  “What can I do to help you?”

  James lets out a mirthless laugh. “Bring me the President.”

  “Why, looking for an appointment to the cabinet? Secretary of geekdom, maybe.”

  “No. I want to ask him the Secondary Launch Code.”

  “I doubt he’d tell you.”

  James laughs but there is little humor in it. “Yeah, but he told the missile, didn’t he?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The PK’s computer has been programmed to recognize the slick, so in a sense, the President told the missile the code.”

  “Right.” The shadow of an idea crosses David’s face. “Forget the President. You’ve got it. The missile will tell you.”

  David turns and bolts out through the blast door, leaving James and Rachel to exchange puzzled looks.

  * * *

  Jack Jericho has worked his way up to the final turn in the exhaust tube. Around the bend, he can see light coming through the screen where the outlet pipe empties into the dry river bed. He wriggles ahead and brings a knee up toward his chest.

  And gets stuck.

  His knee is lodged against his sternum, his combat boot propped against the side of the tube. His head and back are pressed against the opposite side, so that he cannot move.

  He tries wriggling backward. No dice.

  He tries wriggling forward. Nothing.

  He tries working his knee free from his chest but cannot. He fears getting a cramp in his calf and begins to massage it. Sweat drips from his forehead and plops off the metal tube.

  Then he hears a voice and freezes. At first, he can’t make out the words. Then, louder, “Over here!”

  The voice comes from the river bed. Jericho doesn’t know if he’s been discovered, but there it is again, even louder. “Jeptha, over here!”

  Jericho squeezes his eyes shut and hears another voice. His father’s.

  “Over here, Jack! Help me, son.”

  In the collapsed mine shaft, Jericho squirms on his stomach through a nightmarish web of fallen timbers. Water pours through a crevice over his head, dousing him.

  His father’s voice is desperate, pleading. “Jack! Where are you?”

  Jericho opens his eyes and wipes the sweat away by brushing his face against his shoulder. He sucks in a deep breath, exhales, and lets his body go limp, willing himself into a state of relaxation. Closing his eyes again, he fights off the visions and lets his mind see the exhaust tube expanding while his own body shrinks. He continues to exhale until he has no breath left.

  Suddenly, his foot slides free, and he straightens his leg, then crawls a few feet to the screen.

  He looks outside. The exhaust tube ends in a clump of underbrush. Jericho can see the shapes of two men moving slowly across the dry river bed, poking at the brush with their rifles. They are doubtless looking for the exhaust tube’s outlet pipe. If he kicks out the screen and jumps into the river bed, they will see him. If he stays put and they find the tube, he’ll be trapped. Courage is so often the choice between equally unappealing risks. He cannot decide, which is a decision in itself. Jack Jericho stays right where he is.

  * * *

  The gantry moves up the silo wall, then stops level with the fourth stage of the Peacekeeper. David hits a button, and the work cage extends horizontally until it is just inches from the missile. Wearing thin white gloves and a headset, David carefully loosens the first of four bolts from a metal plate in the deployment module, just below the titanium shroud of the nose cone.

  In the launch control capsule, James watches David on a TV monitor. Rachel sits in the second launch chair. Behind them, Gabriel keeps watch over Susan Burns and Lieutenant Owens.

  James speaks into a microphone. “Once you break the seal, you’ve only got ten seconds before auto-lockdown.”

  His feet planted firmly on the gantry, David removes the second bolt from the metal plate. “Be still, Brother James. We’ve been over this.”

  “Godspeed, David.”

  “Precisely.”

  David knows they are watching. Enjoys it. He is the center of their universe, and indeed, the center of everyone’s universe at this moment. If he fails and the system shuts down, they will be locked out of the command data buffers and the launch control computers. If he succeeds, they will have broken the system, will have the Secondary Launch Code, and nothing can stop him.

  If he can freeze the lockdown, he will extract the computer containing the Multiple Guidance Control System. The computer is the brains of the missile. It arms the warheads, measures inertial flight distances and performs a host of other functions. For David’s purpose, the most important is that it reads the S.L.C. to determine whether to accept a launch command. To recognize the code, David reasoned, the computer must know the code. If it does, James can work his wizardry and find the damn thing. Once they have the code, they will enter it on the console and the re-installed MGCS will happily confirm the S.L.C. is correct.

  David removes the third bolt and gently places it on the floor of the work cage. He crouches down and opens what looks like a laptop computer, punches a few keys, then stands up again, holding a multi-pinned plug attached to the computer by a ten-foot cord. He holds the plug between his teeth, then uses both hands to remove the last bolt from the metal plate. He slides off the plate and looks inside the computer box. An LCD display on an interior gauge flashes the countdown as David searches for the female receptacle.

  10-9-8…He jams the plug into a hole, but it doesn’t fit...7-6…Another try, and the plug catches, but the clock keeps clicking away...5-4…David drops down to his laptop again, punches in a dizzying combination of letters and numbers…3-2-1…The LCD display freezes at 1. He’s done it.

  David exhales a deep sigh, then reaches into the deployment module and pulls out the computer.

  Watching on the monitor in the launch control capsule, James excitedly pounds out a drum role on the console. “Awright! That man has the touch!

  “He will never fail us,” Rachel says. “He is truly the chosen one.”

  Behind them, Susan Burns feels a chill. Who will stop this maniac? Not Jack Jericho. Not Captain Pukowlski. Special Forces? The only means of access is to rappel down the silo wall or the elevator shaft. The men would be sitting ducks for the well armed commandos.

  Halting the greatest tragedy in the history of civilization, Susan Burns thinks, will be entirely up to her.

  * * *

  In the river bed, one of the commandos pushes away the pungent leaves of a sagebrush plant. Hidden behind the plant is the U-shaped outlet pipe of th
e exhaust tube. “Jeptha! Over here.”

  In the exhaust tube, Jericho is startled by the commando’s voice. So close. He removes the knife from the sheath on his leg. If one of the commandos ventures inside, Jericho will gut him. Then be shot to ribbons by the other, he knows.

  Now, two voices from outside. “Use your bayonet to pry off the screen.”

  Jericho can hear the scraping of the bayonet blade against the metal of the screen. He inches backward just enough to be in the shadows of the bend in the tube. If they come into the outlet pipe, he’ll have to crawl back down toward the silo. The screen clatters to the ground, and the men’s voices are louder. Jericho knows they are poking their heads into the outlet pipe.

  “Dark as Hades down there.”

  “You’re smaller, Jeptha. You crawl inside, and I’ll stand watch here.”

  “Stand watch? For what?”

  “For other infidels.”

  “Isn’t that just like you, handing off the dirty work?”

  “What’s the matter. You afraid of some spiders?”

  To Jericho, it seems, there is no clean line of command beneath Brother David. For a moment, he wonders if maybe the military has the right idea about discipline and command control. These bozos wouldn’t know Reveille from Rachmaninoff. Suddenly, there is a sound behind Jericho, farther down the tube.

  Trapped.

  He freezes and listens.

  A squeak, then a scraping sound, then another squeak, only louder.

  “Jeptha, did you hear that? In heaven’s name, what—”

  “Rats! Satan’s own pets. I’m not going in there.”

  Jericho stiffens but as the sound gets closer, he recognizes it. A moment later, Ike the ferret is nuzzling his leg. “Here boy,” he whispers, grabbing the animal and placing him in the deep pocket of his fatigues.

  Above him, the two commandos continue to argue. “Brother David ordered us to find the infidel. He won’t care if rats or elephants are in that—”