Arc Light (27 page)

Home,
Solomon thought.
If we make it, if it even exists.
After the third target, the B-1B would have five SRAMs left on the first rotary launcher and another sixteen in the two weapons bays behind the first, in case ACC called in any new targets of opportunity. Solomon focused again on his job: monitoring the electromagnetic spectrum for hints that they had been painted by Russian radar. Once detected, he would pull out the B-lB's enormous bag of expensive
tricks and go to work, lighting up the Russian radar screens with snow or dozens of bombers all headed in the same direction or two bombers whose paths diverged slowly—one phantom, one real.

“SRAM Run—Nuclear,” the copilot said.

Solomon's skin tingled as he heard the words he had never thought he would hear. He saw the boldfaced heading in his mind. All the words beneath it were in stark red letters, so completely unlike the businesslike black of the other checklists that filled the ordinary routine of their jobs.

“SRAM Inhibit Switch?” the copilot asked.

“Off,” Solomon's rear seatmate replied.

“Special Weapons Lock Indicators?”

“Indicate unlocked.”

“Release Circuits Disconnect?”

“Connected—light on.”

“SRAM Release Indicator Circuit?”

“Select—light dim.”

“Master SRAM Control Switch?”

“On,” the Offensive Weapons Officer's voice broke, and he cleared his throat. “Light on,” he said rapidly, and then there was a pause.

“All right, girls,” a new voice—the pilot—said. “It's time to break things and hurt people. Let ‘er rip.”

“Bombs away” were the OWO's only words, and with the words he released hell incarnate.

“Nex-s,” President Livingston continued, the hands under his chin distorting his speech. Lambert surreptitiously looked at his watch. The President had come to expect Lambert's attendance at all his meetings, even meetings on “housekeeping” such as this that took Lambert from the more pressing responsibilities of his role as national security adviser.

“Health and Human Services, sir,” the voice came over the speakerphone. “We're charged with the sanitary disposition of the dead. Plan D, which will be approved by the Executive Order, authorizes the omission of embalming, the use of caskets, lying in state, and individual religious ceremonies.”

“N'kay,” the President said, his chin weighing heavily on his
hands and his elbows on the conference table.

“I'm sorry, Mr. President,” the man said, “but I wasn't through. Because it's June, bodies will be buried on the later of the fourth day following death or the date of recovery. The bodies not buried immediately will be laid out in lots by date of death—10,000 per 5.5 acres—for public viewing and identification. Three-person identification teams will sift through personal effects, document identifiable features, take Polaroids, et cetera. They should each be able to handle about ten bodies an hour. Ultimate disposal will be in mechanically dug continuous trenches—side-by-side if equipment digs a wide enough trench, otherwise head-to-toe.”

There was silence. The President finally asked, “Am I supposed to approve that or something?” He looked at Lambert aghast.

“Yes, sir,” the man from HHS said over the phone.

“Okay,” Livingston said. “I approve.”

“Uh, Housing and Urban Development, sir,” the next voice said. “We're providing emergency housing to displaced persons and de-housed workers in essential industries. Rents will be set at prevailing prewar comparables but will be suspended if a failure to pay is beyond the control of the occupant. Initially, housing would be in requisitioned tents, hastily constructed barracks, or privately owned homes whose owners have disappeared. If the homeowners show up, the tenants will have thirty days to vacate. Housing standards will be relaxed to allow units without windows as long as they are covered with paper, board, plastic, or similar material. We'll inspect for radioactive contaminants, obviously, and we'll also inspect the electrical wiring even if there is no electrical service because—”

“Okay, okay,” the President said. “I approve. Who's next.”

“Department of Agriculture, sir,” a woman said. “Our main crop losses will be our corn crop in the Midwest, which will suffer organic damage because of the radioactivity. If the attack had just been in August, the crop could have been salvaged, but the young plants won't be able to survive. Moving on, we propose to direct that all contaminated milk be processed into cheese, which could be stored for a few months until radioactive decay rendered it safe for human consumption. In addition, Plan D would declare effective five Defense Food Orders to provide for rationing and emergency distribution. They're designed to maintain a twenty-five-hundred-calorie-per-day diet, which is two thirds the prewar American average. The National Emergency Maximum Food Distribution Allowance under Defense Food Order Number Two would limit weekly sales to three pounds of boneless meat or four with bone or thirty-six eggs or eight and one-quarter pounds of potatoes or three pounds of dry peas or—”

“Jee-sus Christ!” the President exploded. “I don't have time to get bogged down in all that detail. I approve. Let's get on with this. Who's next?”

“The Postal Service, sir,” a very timid voice said. “The Postmaster General's Standby Emergency Actions as published in the ‘Postal Service Emergency Planning Manual' direct the burning of all stamps to prevent them from falling into enemy hands, the—”

“Wait!” the President yelled. “Don't burn the damn stamps, for Christ's sake! Jee-sus!”

“Y-yes, yes, sir,” the man said. “How about first class mail deliveries only?”

“Fine,” the President replied. “Next.”

“Oh—oh,” the Postal Service representative said. “What about a halt on all money orders payable in Russia, Ukraine, or Byelarus?”

The President took a deep breath and said in a calm voice, “That's okay too.”

There was a pause, and Lambert could hear some papers rustling over the speaker. “I guess, well,” the man said, “there's just authorization to print up Forms 809, which are emergency change-of-address cards, safety notification cards, well . . . that kind of stuff.”

“It's approved,” the President said. “But don't burn anything. Everybody listen. Don't burn any money, or break any mint plates, or do anything stupid. Now, I know you are all being asked to assume responsibilities that are a little greater than you're used to, but just use your common sense, don't just do whatever your manuals say. Now, who's next?” the President asked, his hands pressed palm down on the table in preparation to leave the conference room and doubtless get some sleep before the military grabbed him for another briefing.

“I'm the director of the General Services Administration's Relocation Team B,” the speaker said. “There's one agency that wasn't discussed, the Cultural Heritage Emergency Preparedness Group, which we oversee. It's charged with preserving the nation's museums, libraries, archives, monuments, et cetera. We have a problem. Several years ago, we contracted with the Underground Vault & Storage Company in Hutchinson, Kansas, to store the fifty most culturally valuable paintings in the country in the Carey Salt Mine. When the paintings started showing up on military flights, it turned out that the company had gone bankrupt, and—”

“Just deal with it, will you?” the President said, standing.

“Can I use one of those Orders of Taking someone was talking about earlier to requisition mine space?” the man asked. “The mine's operator said we'd have to get approval from the bankruptcy court,
and I'm worried about some of the oils. They're out in the weather, and—”

“Look! I don't care!” the President yelled. “Get the military to seize the damn mine, or piss on the fucking paintings. Whatever! Who gives a shit? Meeting adjourned.” With that, he turned to leave.

“But, sir!” the man from GSA said. Lambert winced as the President turned to face the speakerphone.

“Whoever the hell you are,” the President yelled, “if you say one more word you're out of a job!”

“But the National Archives, Mr. President,” the man burst out. “When the war started, the duty officer at the Pentagon telephoned the guard's office at the Smithsonian. As per the rules, the guard went to the main display room and turned a key to fire four explosive charges destroying the hydraulic shuttle mechanism over the main vault.”

“What the
hell
is your point?” the President growled, his teeth grinding and his hands, knuckles white, grasping the back of his leather chair.

“The vault weighs fifty-five tons,” he said. “We'll need special heavy equipment and personnel to get down to it. Military engineers, we were thinking.”

“Oh, for God's sake!” the President shouted, turning for the door. “I don't have time for this!”

“But, Mr. President!” the man shouted. “The Declaration of Independence! The Constitution!”

The President stopped dead in his tracks at the door and after a few moments slowly turned. “What do you need?” he asked quietly, returning to his seat.

Melissa had towels stuffed under the door to the hotel room, and had filled the bathtub with water. They said there was no radioactivity, but she was taking no chances. She didn't trust tap water anymore. She didn't trust anything or anyone. She was on her own.

The single room was already a mess, and a sign at the front desk on check-in had said there would be no maid service. Matthew was falling asleep at her breast as Melissa watched the weatherman for NBC.

“There are rainstorms forecast for eastern Colorado and western
Kansas. We remind you again that rain through the nuclear cloud is very,
very
dangerous. If you are in one of the areas experiencing fallout that we went over earlier and it begins to rain, you are to take shelter immediately. The concentrations of radiation that rain will bring down are many tens of times greater than ordinary fallout. The rain literally washes the air clean of the tiny particles that carry the radioactivity—or that are radioactive themselves, I guess. After a rain, avoid puddles or runoff or places where puddles or runoff might have been. Even a couple of dozen feet or so away from the radioactive debris and it's relatively safe, but the low-lying areas where the rainwater will carry the fallout and concentrate it are particularly dangerous.”

“Thank you,” the anchorman said. “We go now to Jim Luciano at the Greenbriar resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, underneath which Congress is now meeting in its secret underground bunker code-named Casper. Jim?” The still picture of a resort appeared on the screen.

“Congress is still trying to gather a quorum to meet in Special Session. The Senate is just a couple of Senators short of the fifty necessary, but apparently the House is far short of its quorum requirements. Already, however, the House and the Senate have convened an extraordinary joint committee, the Ad Hoc Committee to Investigate the Nuclear War, to begin looking into the causes of the war. It will also recommend certain actions to the two chambers—including whether to declare war on Russia, NBC News has been told—once quorums are obtained.”

A chill shot through Melissa.
David!
she thought.
Where are you?

After the report on Congress was over, the picture switched to the NBC studio. “Some of our local affiliates have conducted a random sample of man-on-the-street interviews around the country,” the anchorman said, “and here are our unscientific results.”

The images shifted to a middle-age man with a big mustache, and the text along the bottom said “Atlanta.” “I think we oughta turn those mother”—the electronic tone masked the man's next word—“into a”—another tone—“crematorium.”

The next person, a woman from Los Angeles, said, “I saw the flashes from Riverside. It was just a-awful what happened to those people. We ought to do something about this nuclear situation so that it just doesn't happen ever again.”

The off-camera reporter asked, “Do you think we should declare war on Russia?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I don't want a war. It's already been so terrible.
I just think we should make the Russians get rid of all their nuclear weapons.”

Next, a handsome young unshaven man from Chicago wearing a Northwestern T-shirt said, “We're goin' down to sign up right now.” He turned, and the camera panned the group of several men and two women, all of college age. “We gotta get in there and finish the Russians off!” the boy said. “Just wipe ‘em out!” a girl in the background said.
“Yeah!”
a third student shouted, and they all began a chant of “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!”

Melissa looked down to see that the baby was fully asleep, his lips sucking now into thin air. She held him tight, using his little body's warmth against the cold air and trying not to let her sobs wake him.

“But it was an accident!” the President shouted even though the speakerphone was directly in front of his chair.

“But, but, but,” the Minority Leader of the Senate broke in. “But nothing! The Russians attacked our country, the country that
we
were elected to protect, in an unprovoked and massive nuclear attack that killed millions of people. Radioactivity covers half my state
right now!
And those bastards' submarines in this . . . this Bastion threaten our very
survival
as a nation!”

“Bob—” the President began, but was cut off.