Bombs Away (33 page)

You could say that area centered on downtown was a circle the twentieth century didn't touch. But the twentieth century had touched it pretty goddamn hard if you looked at things another way.

Jim Summers grumbled, “I oughta wear my lead-lined skivvies for a trip like this.”

“If you've got 'em, wear 'em,” Aaron said. As far as he knew—it wasn't as if he'd gone looking—no one had been selling lead-lined clothes before the war started. You could sure buy them now. How much good they did was a hotly, so to speak, argued question.

“I don't,” Jim said. “So the closer we go to downtown, the better the chance we got of fryin' our nuts. Or am I missin' somethin'?”

“Sounds about right,” Aaron said.

“What we oughta do, then, is go way the hell over to Pacific Coast Highway and head down it so we keep the hell away from them atoms,” Summers said.

“That's wasting an awful lot of time and gasoline,” Aaron said dubiously.

“Gas is cheap.”

“Not since the bombs hit. It's still over fifty cents a gallon. I've never seen anything like it.”

Jim Summers rolled his eyes. “Anybody'd reckon you was the Hebe, not old man Weissman.” He pulled his wallet from his hip pocket and took two singles out of it. “This oughta cover the difference.”

He was right; two bucks would more than take care of the gas for the extra distance. All the same, Aaron set his chin and said, “Can you pull two or three hours out of your back pocket the same way? We can get over the hill through Sepulveda, maybe even through Laurel Canyon.”

“I know what's eatin' you.” Summers wasn't smart, or anywhere close to it. He could be shrewd, though. “You want to see what the bomb wreckage looks like, from as close as you can git. I got news for you, pal—curiosity killed the cat.”

“Satisfaction brought it back,” Aaron retorted. He didn't like being so easy to see through.

“Not if it was glowin' in the dark to begin with.”

“Mr. Weissman said I should do the driving for this run.” Aaron didn't tell Jim that was because the boss didn't trust Summers not to make a hash of it.

“Says you! We'll see about that.” Jim stumped off to have it out with the boss. Aaron could have told him that wasn't such a hot idea, but he didn't think Jim would have listened to him. As Aaron expected, Jim came back in short order, more crestfallen than he'd set out. Aaron had pulled punches; Herschel Weissman wasn't the kind of man who'd see any reason to bother. After muttering to himself for a few seconds, Jim said, “Awright, smart guy. We'll do it your way. But if your next kid has green hair and eyes on stalks, don't say I didn't warn you.”

Aaron didn't worry about that. From what the doctors said, Ruth was lucky to have had Leon. She'd lost a girl before she managed to do it. They said she'd have to be
meshiggeh
to try again. Aaron didn't love rubbers, but he didn't want to endanger his wife. Rubbers it was, unless they did something that didn't risk getting her pregnant.

As for the green hair and the eyes on stalks, Aaron couldn't imagine Jim reading a science-fiction pulp with a story about mutants. That had to come straight from the comic books.

Aaron did decide to go as far west as Sepulveda before turning south. Laurel Canyon and Coldwater Canyon might still let out into bomb-damaged parts of town. Before the bomb fell, it would have been an easy trip. The Pasadena Freeway—people also called it the Arroyo Seco, the Dry Wash—had been there for a while; they were calling its southern extension the Harbor Freeway even if it hadn't come close to the harbor yet. After it ended, Vermont or Western would have finished the route. Now they were finished. The newer Hollywood Freeway met the Pasadena downtown. That would have worked, too. No more.

The Blue Front truck chugged up to the top of Sepulveda Pass, then down the other side. As the Santa Monica Mountains shrank to foothills and then flatland, Aaron craned his neck so he could look east. So did Jim, for all his complaining.

“Oh, Lord,” he said softly. Aaron nodded. They couldn't see well, because closer buildings that still stood kept getting in the way, but the background to those buildings that should have been there…wasn't. It had been swept away, as if by the fist of an angry child—an angry child who happened to be several miles tall.

At Sunset, Aaron resisted temptation. He got his reward, if that was what it was, by driving past an enormous refugee encampment. National Guardsmen patrolled a barbed-wire perimeter. People dejectedly mooched about from one tent to another. The wind came out of the west, from the direction of the camp. Despite a cigarette in his mouth, Aaron made a face.

“Pew!” Jim Summers said. “Buncha stinking skunks. Don't they ever take a bath?”

“I wonder how often they get the chance,” Aaron said.

“If they ever get it, they don't use it,” Jim said.

At Wilshire, Aaron yielded, turning left. Jim called him some amazing things when he did. “I love you, too,” he answered, deadpan. That produced more creativity from Summers. Aaron kept heading east, toward the blast zone, anyhow.

Wilshire stayed open for some distance. Even when buildings had fallen down, the ruins were bulldozed off the street. Finally, at Crenshaw, sawhorses kept him from going any farther. A sign declared that it was
A FEDERAL RECLAMATION PROJECT
. Under the stenciled words, hand-painted letters added
WE SHOOT LOOTERS! NO QUESTIONS ASKED FIRST!
To drive home that point, more National Guardsmen and some cops prowled the area. All of them, men in blue included, carried rifles with fixed bayonets. Aaron turned right and headed south.

Bulldozer crews kept shoving rubble out of the way. Like most of the soldiers and policemen, the drivers and a lot of other workers wore masks like the ones doctors used in operating rooms. Seeing that, Aaron thoughtfully rolled up his window. It might not help, but it couldn't hurt.

He rolled it down again when they got farther south. He could look east and see what was left of the Coliseum. It had hosted the 1932 Olympics; the Trojans and Bruins and Rams played there. Or they had. The great stone-and-concrete bowl looked more battered than pictures he'd seen of the ancient Colosseum in Rome.

“What a mess!” Jim said. “What a fuckin' mess!”

Aaron nodded. That he could see what remained of the Coliseum said that everything in the two or three miles between him and it had been knocked flat. Farther north, City Hall, which had been by far the tallest building in an earthquake-wary town, was only a melted stump.
If the earthquakes don't get you, then the atoms will,
he thought. Los Angeles would be a long time getting back on its feet, if it ever did.

The farther south he went, the easier that was to forget…for a while. Then the truck passed a lamppost with a body hanging from it. Around the dead man's neck was a placard: THIEF. Jim Summers whistled softly. “They ain't fuckin' around.”

“No,” Aaron said in a voice quieter than he'd looked to use. “They aren't.”

Damage from the downtown bomb faded as they kept on; they hadn't come far enough to see any from the one that took out the port. Mrs. O'Brynne of Torrance was lucky. Her little suburb, full of fig and orange orchards, seemed untouched.

Aaron and Jim lugged the refrigerator inside, being careful to keep it upright while they did. They plugged it in. She signed the paperwork. A baby started to cry while she did. “My little girl,” she said.

“They do that,” Aaron agreed. “Not very old, is she? A couple-three months? I've got a little boy who'll be two in May.” She handed him the clipboard. He checked. She'd put her Jane Hancock everywhere it needed to be. “Much obliged, ma'am.”

“Purty gal,” Jim said when they got back in the truck. “Reminded me a little o' that Katharine Hepburn.”

“If you say so.” Aaron didn't want to argue. Mrs. O'Brynne wasn't bad, but he didn't think she was in that league.

“A little, I said.” Summers changed the subject. “When you head back north, can you kindly stay farther away from the bomb, huh? You seen what you wanted to see.”

“Oh, all right.” You had to give to get. Aaron put the truck in gear.

A TRAIN WHISTLE BLEW,
off to the north. Along with the other laborers who'd worked so hard rebuilding the rail line through Harbin, Vasili Yasevich stood by the track and waited for the train to roll by. Like his comrades in socialist labor, he wore a padded cap and a quilted jacket. But he was pink and fair and round-eyed, so he stood out in spite of his ordinary clothes.

“Here it comes!” Somebody pointed. All the workers craned their necks up the line.

Here it came indeed, black smoke puffing from the locomotive. The engineer leaned out the window and waved to the crowd. He looked no more Russian than Vasili.

A claque set up a cheer: “Long live Sino-Soviet solidarity!” The engineer couldn't possibly have heard them over the din of the mechanical monster he controlled. Even if he had heard them, he wouldn't have understood what they were saying. The cheer was for the benefit of the Chinese onlookers.

He tried to keep his breaths as shallow as he could. Maybe that wouldn't do any good, but it couldn't hurt. He hadn't wanted to come into the blast zone to greet the Soviet train. When your gang boss told you to come, though, what you wanted stopped mattering.

The train was a long one. Some of those tarpaulined shapes lashed to freight cars had to belong to tanks. They would help Mao and Kim Il-sung twist the Americans' tails down in Korea.

Those covered tank shapes looked to be the same T-34/85s that had driven the Japanese from Manchukuo with their tails between their legs in August 1945. Vasili had heard that the Russians had a new model, bigger and lower to the ground and generally meaner than their old warhorses. People who knew about such things—or made noises as if they did—complained that Stalin was giving his allies the junk he didn't use himself any more.

Vasili had no love for the Soviet Union. With his upbringing, it was unlikely that he should. But he didn't have anything in particular against their Chinese allies. Mao's men made better overlords than the Japanese had.

They did unless they decided to give him to the MGB, anyhow. It hadn't happened yet, and they'd seized control of Manchuria well before they took the rest of the Chinese mainland. Vasili dared hope they would keep leaving him alone. If they didn't actually like him, indifference would do.

He also didn't have anything in particular against the United States. Even if the Americans had wrecked Harbin, they were the biggest reason Manchukuo was no longer a going concern. The Chinese Nationalists and Communists could have fought Japan for the next hundred years without beating it.

More flatcars rumbled past. If
those
tarp-shrouded mysteries weren't airplane fuselages, he couldn't imagine what they would be. And if they were fuselages, the flat things strapped down by them would be wings. Could you bolt them on and start flying? He didn't see why not. Maybe not flying saved wear and tear on the engines. Maybe it just gave the U.S. Air Force less of a chance to shoot down the Russian planes.

Then again, the U.S. Air Force might shoot up the train, or bomb it, or fire rockets at it. Vasili was glad none of the cheering Chinese around him could tell what he was thinking. He'd go to the MGB in a hurry if they could.

Another Soviet railroad man waved to the crowd from the caboose. That seemed to be what he was there for: waving to the people he passed. It was a nice, easy job—unless you happened to run into American planes.

A Chinese man next to Vasili nudged him and said, “You're the round-eyed barbarian who sells
ma huang,
right?”

“That's me,” Vasili answered with a mental sigh. If you were Chinese, anyone unlucky enough not to be was a barbarian by definition. And the man was right about which kind of barbarian he was.

“I want to buy some,” the fellow declared, as if sure Vasili had brought some to the ceremony to cater to his needs.

But Vasili had come to the the ceremony because he got a day off from work and because he was ordered to show up, not to do business. By Chinese standards, that made him a lazy man. The Chinese were ready—eager—to do business anywhere, any time. “I'll sell you some tomorrow after work. Where do you want to meet?”

“I need it. I'll come home with you now,” the man said.

“No.” One of the things Vasili had learned was that there were times when Chinese were the most formal, flowery people in the world. There were others when nothing but out-and-out rude got through to them. This looked to be one of
those.
“Tomorrow after work. Where?”

“I'll come home with you now,” the man repeated.

“I said no, you stupid turtle. Do you think I want you in my house?”

The Chinese man's eyes opened so wide, they almost went round themselves. He hadn't looked for a round-eyed barbarian to behave—and to sound—like one of his countrymen. Then he bristled, as if getting ready to fight.

Vasili reached inside a jacket pocket. He carried a straight razor in there, just because you never could tell. He didn't threaten with it. He didn't even show it. He had no intention of starting anything. But if the Chinese man did, Vasili aimed to finish it.

The man didn't know what he had in his pocket. A knife? A pistol? Nothing at all—only a bluff? The Chinese decided he didn't want to find out. He stomped off, cursing as he went.

“Good job,” another man told Vasili. “I know Wu there a little bit, I'm sorry to say. I wouldn't trust him inside my house, either. You may be a round-eye, but you're nobody's fool.”

“Thanks.” Vasili wasn't ready to take this stranger on trust, either.

“Being a round-eye, do you know how other round-eyes think?” the man asked him.

He shrugged. “I don't know. Being a Chinese, do you know how other Chinese think? That's the kind of question you're asking.”

“Is it? I suppose it is.” The man chuckled. “A lot of the time, I do know how other Chinese would think—they'd think the way I do. Isn't it the same with round-eyes?”

“A lot of the time, it is,” Vasili admitted. “Not always, though. Different kinds of round-eyes often don't think alike, any more than Chinese and Koreans and Japanese do.”

“Koreans?” The stranger sounded dismissive. “Japanese?” He sounded disgusted. But then he nodded to Vasili. “All right. I see what you mean. What I wondered was, when the Americans find out the railroad line through Harbin is fixed, will they drop another one of those terrible bombs on the city?”

“Oh.” Vasili shrugged again. “I can't begin to guess. I hope not. They're busy over on the other side of the world. Maybe that will keep them from noticing Harbin—for a while, anyhow.”

“Ah. Yes, that makes sense.” The Chinese man nodded. Around them, the crowd that had come out to celebrate the railroad's reopening was breaking up. Men who had the day off were probably looking for ways to enjoy it as best they could. The stranger changed the subject: “Was nasty Wu there right? You have
ma huang
to sell?”

“A little,” Vasili answered. “My father trained me as a druggist. He knew what an excellent medicine it was. When I have the chance, I follow in his footsteps.” Chinese honored and respected their parents more than Russians were in the habit of doing. Putting it like that was calculated to please.

And it did. “Will you sell
me
some?” the man asked. “I'll meet wherever you want.”

Vasili smiled. Even if Wu hadn't listened, this fellow had.

The
Independence
touched down at Los Angeles International Airport, a landing as smooth as a baby's cheek. “Well, we're here,” Harry Truman said. A cross-country flight, even on an airliner as luxurious as this one, was always wearing.

“Quite a view, wasn't it?” asked Joseph Short, who'd taken over from Stephen Early as Truman's press secretary. His deep-South drawl made Truman's Missouri twang sound almost New England-y by comparison.

“It was, yes. The kind I hope I never have again,” Truman said. Sitting on the right side of the DC-6 as it descended across Los Angeles from east to west, he'd got a good look at what the Russian bomb had done to the heart of the city. After a moment, he went on, “Who was that guy who captured their flyer and turned him over to the cops?”

“His name is Finch, Mr. President. Aaron Finch.” As a good press secretary should have, Short had the facts at his fingertips. “He drives a truck and installs appliances for a local company called Blue Front.”

“Oh. Blue Front. That's Herschel Weissman's outfit, isn't it?” As a good politician should have, Truman recognized a prominent contributor to his party.

Short nodded. “I believe it is, sir.”

“Okay. Maybe we can play it up. Is this Finch a veteran? That'd help.”

“No, sir. He served in the merchant marine. The military wouldn't take him—he can't see past his nose without Coke-bottle specs.”

“He served his country, anyhow. That'll work,” Truman said.

As the plane taxied over to the terminal and stopped, the props spun down to stillness. Airport workers wheeled a portable stairway to the door. Truman expected it to be warm when that door opened. This was Southern California, after all! But it was still only April, and the airport lay close by the Pacific. The air that came in was chilly and moist. He set his fedora on his head before he stepped outside.

Reporters and photographers stood on the runway. So did National Guardsmen. The military was practically running the West Coast these days. It was in decent working order and could get directions straight from Washington. That put it several steps ahead of the battered state and local governments. Putting the Humpty-Dumpty of civilian administration back together when peace came back—if peace came back—might not be so easy. Well, the country had managed it after the Civil War. It could again.

Truman shoved such worries out of his mind—one more time. Flashbulbs popped. The President waved to the members of the Fourth Estate. “Hello, boys!” he called. They were vultures, hoping he'd trip halfway down the stairs or do something else stupid so they could write a story about it.

A couple of Secret Service agents pushed past Truman, hurried down the stairs, and took stations near the base of the wheeled platform to keep the newshounds from coming too close. They no doubt felt virtuous about that. But if one of the gentlemen of the press pulled out a pistol and started shooting, he could fill the President full of holes before the Secret Service men knocked him down with their guns.

No one fired. Truman had been seventeen, almost a man but not quite, when that crazed anarchist shot William McKinley. No one had assassinated a President since then. A nut had taken a shot at FDR, but he'd only managed to kill the mayor of Chicago. And those Puerto Rican independence fanatics had hunted Truman himself, but they hadn't made it into the White House.

Truman's mouth twisted. Other, even worse, madness was running wild now. He wouldn't be visiting this ravaged city if that weren't so. How many had died here, in the two blasts? Hundreds of thousands. Put a President's life in the scales against so many and it didn't seem like much.

“How did those Russian bombers get through, Mr. President?” a reporter called. “Up and down the West Coast, sir, how did they get through?”

“I wish I had a good answer for you,” Truman said, a reply that came from the heart. “I wish I did, but I don't. The best I can tell you is, they must have used the same kind of tricks we've used to strike at their territory. And I promise you, we've hit them harder than they've hit us.”

“That doesn't do people here a whole lot of good,” another man said.

“I understand that. I've come to see the damage with my own eyes. I'll go up to San Francisco and Portland and Seattle afterwards, too,” the President said. “I want to make sure this can never happen again.”

“The Russians are still advancing in Germany, too,” said a fellow with a loud necktie. “How can they be doing that if we're hitting them with fire and brimstone like you claim?”