Tomahawk (22 page)

“Peace flyer.”

“What are you reading it for?”

“They looked cold,” Dan said. “The sooner they give ‘em all out, the sooner they can go warm up.”

“Why don't they get another hobby?” said one of the others. Dan looked for a moment longer at the flyer, at the damp, cold, soggy paper, then folded it and put it away.

“Five Hangar” turned out to be a bar called Shank's, at the Grand Centre Hotel. It looked like a set from
Gun-smoke.
The oak walls were covered with crests and plaques. Wooden beams braced the darkness overhead. At the far end, a big TV was on. Players glided about, muffled and padded, in a sport midway between ballet and brutality: the Edmonton Oilers versus Detroit. The Air Force officers ordered beer and Canadian Pride. Dan started to order whiskey, then remembered and asked for a LaBatt's instead.

“Not so bad. Just like home.”

“At least it isn't Wednesday. I hate that karaoke shit.”

“Hey, Dan, ever heard drunk-on-their-ass Canadians doing karaoke? How about it, K. T., want to give us a sample?”

“You fellows will have to provide the entertainment yourself.”

Dan watched the game for a while, then looked around the bar. There were two groups. First, young guys with crew cuts who were wearing combat boots and short jackets and had big watches. Fighter pilots, he guessed, though they might be ground crew. Second, older men in rough boots, plaid shirts, Imperial ball caps, and heavy belts with fancy-worked knife sheaths. The two contingents avoided each other, oil and water.

“Speaking of snow, we're going to have to get you cold-weather gear,” Thompson told Dan. “What you're wearing's not gonna cut it. We're gonna be deep in the field tomorrow.”

Decker said, “I'll take care of that for him, K. T. Have you got long underwear, or do we need to scramble some of that, too?”

“I could use a spare pair. How're we getting there?”

“Base Flight's got an Iroquois laid on for zero-eight-thirty. Sounds late, but it's gonna be right at dawn. We're only getting about seven hours of daylight.”

Dan asked Manhurin what he'd done before GLCM. The major said he'd been a missileer since he graduated from Auburn.

“You guys are divided into pilots and missilemen.”

“Uh-huh, but everybody plays second fiddle to the pilots. Anyway, I went to undergraduate missile training at Vandenberg. Was a crew dog at Grand Forks, the Four hundred forty-sixth Strategic Missile Squadron of Three hundred twenty-first Strategic Missile Wing. Minuteman II.”

“What's Minuteman duty like?”

“You stand duty down in the center, where you have like—you've seen it in the movies—the two-man launch procedure. ‘Three, two, one … mark…. I have a tile; release.' Right now, I'm attached to HQ, Tactical Air Command, as GLCM program manager. As well as commanding Flight One of the Eight hundred sixty-eighth Tactical Missile Training Squadron. Sixteen nukes, sixty-nine people, twenty-three vehicles.”

“That's what you're calling a ‘flight.' “

“Right, we're modeled on the Army Pershing battery. Two launch control centers, four transporter-erector-launchers with four all-up rounds each.”

Dan said, “I got the impression from that SAC guy at dinner—”

“What SAC guy?”

“Some light colonel. Anyway, I got the impression they barely knew you were here.”

Manhurin said, “Well, it's a flyboy-missileer kind of thing. Like iri Grand Forks—there're even two bars, but you'll never see a fly guy in one or a missileer in the other.” He swigged his whiskey and inspected the glass. “Should I have another? Probably not.”

“That sounds like the black shoe-brown shoe squabbles we have in the Navy.”

“Yeah, but you guys have had a lot longer to grow apart. Sometimes I think they just should have given all the missiles to the Army. Or do like what the Russians
did, set up a separate branch of the armed forces. Call it Space Command, like in Heinlein.”

Dan almost agreed, then remembered all the missiles aboard the subs. He got up and went in search of the head.

When he got back, they were discussing the Strategic Defense Initiative. Pop-ups and X-ray lasers and kinetic kills. Till Decker said, “Uh-oh. Here they come.”

He looked up, to see another handbill, this time being held out by a hefty blonde in a figured Indian sweater. “We got one at the gate,” Decker said. Dan tracked her on and off as she worked her way around the room, getting rebuffed or ignored. One of the pilots caressed her ass; she pushed his hand away. They laughed as she left.

“Excuse me a minute,” said Dan. He got up and went after her.

They sat apart from the rest, parkas hanging off the backs of their chairs, steam rising from mugs. Two guys, three gals. One was so bone-cold, she was shuddering even in the hot air of the bar.

“Hey. You the folks from the gate?”

“That's right. Just came in for the night.”

“I've got some friends in Plowshares in D.C. Where you folks from?”

A young guy with a mustache said, “Oh, here and there. Mainly from Canada, but we've got some imports. Even a fella from Britain, from Greenham Common. Sit down, have a LaBatt's.”

“Thanks, I can only stay a minute.” He pulled over an empty chair as they introduced themselves, setting it on the far side so Manhurin and the others couldn't see him. The young guy was Holden Murdoch, the coordinator. The woman in the sweater was from British Columbia, a member of Peace Caravan. Another man was a Minnesota native, born in St. Paul, but had put in four years in the Canadian armed forces. Catherine was from Halifax. Nancy was from right here in Grand Centre.

Murdoch was saying, “We call it the Cold Lake Peace Camp. It's small, but it'll grow. We've got a house downtown we stay in when we're not actually taking our turn on vigil. Cramped, but warm. We've got a storefront on Main Street, too. You might have seen it.”

“Not yet. How long are you planning on staying?”

“As long as they keep testing, we'll keep protesting.”

“You really think you can stop the flights?”

“We've got to try. Actually, when they were going to fly it in Utah, so many people showed up, they moved the site up here.”

“I thought it was because the terrain was better.”

“No, it was the protests. So it's not impossible. We've just got to get people to say enough's enough.” Murdoch flicked the stack of flyers. “We're going to saturate the place with these. We've done press releases. And we started fasting. We'll each do a week, have a rotating thing. We're going to do a rally. People from the Lakeland area, Alberta, Saskatchewan. Soon as the weather lets up, we're planning a three-hundred-kilometer walk from Cold Lake to Edmonton. We've got fifteen groups signed up for that.”

Nancy said, “We'd be glad to have you, if you wanted to come.”

“I won't be here then. And I wouldn't march with you if I was.” He hesitated. “I'm actually here with the military side.”

They looked doubtful. Jeanne said, “And you said you had friends in Plowshares?”

“Uh-huh. Carl Haneghen, Kerry Donavan—”

“I know Kerry,” said Jeanne. “She was on the Griffiss action. They're facing federal charges, aren't they?”

“That's right. I'm surprised you know them.”

“Word gets around,” Murdoch said. “Look, even if you don't want to be part of the vigil, you could pass out leaflets inside the base. Or just put a stack in the chapel, or the cafeteria, anywhere people could pick them up.”

“I don't think so. I'm not really on your side.”

“Are you in favor of nuclear war?” “No.”

“Then we're on the same side.”

“I don't think it's that simple.”

“Oh, you can't get much simpler than nonviolence and cooperation,” said Murdoch. He gave Dan a smile. “Now, depending on weapons to give you peace—
that's
complicated.”

Jeanne, the one in the sweater, said, “You're obviously doubtful. You know Carl and Kerry. What are you doing on the other side of that fence?”

“My job.”

“Developing the weapons that will kill millions?”

“The weapons that will keep the peace.”

“Even you can hear how absurd that is,” Murdoch told him. “That's why you came over to talk to us. Your heart's gradually leaving the side of war and coming over to the side of peace. Someday you're going to have to decide. Why not now, when you can make a difference?”

“I don't think so,” he told them again.

“Well, as long as you're here, let me ask you something. About blockading the gates.”

“I wouldn't try that. They'll probably just arrest you.”

“I already talked to the base administration officer. They'll arrest us all right. But if that's what it takes to get heard . .. Anyway, my question—when should we do it? We're reading in the papers they're going to start the tests soon.”

“I don't know,” said Dan. “I mean, I know the tests are starting, but I don't know when the best time would be to schedule your … action.” He thumbed through his wallet, saw a twenty, and passed it to Jeanne as he got up. “To help out. Anyway—maybe I'll see you again at the gate. Good luck on your vigil, and on your march.”

He was standing outside with the others, waiting for Ged-

des to bring the Jeep around, when Decker put his arm

around his shoulder and walked him a couple steps away.

“What?” Dan said.

“I saw you talking to them. The peaceniks.”

“Oh. I just had a friend I thought they might know.”

“Hey, I plan to forget it. Although if I'd seen you grab

a bunch of leaflets, maybe plan to distribute them on

base—”

“I didn't take any leaflets.”

“I said no problem, okay? I just want you to know

these creeps aren't what they tell you they are. We have

some interesting intel on them.” “Intel? What kind of intel?”

“All the anticruise groups are funded from the East Bloc. There're trained agitators at Greenham Common.”

“One of these guys is from Greenham Common.”

“Is that right? Interesting. Another thing: This ‘peaceful protest* stuff is bullshit. The Germans found weapons when they raided the ‘peace camps.' I expect an attempt to disrupt the tests here.”

“Wait a minute. Are you trying to tell me these people are Communist-funded? That's why they're standing around out there freezing their asses off, putting up with pilots groping them? I don't know if I can buy that, uh, Gene.”

“Not all of them. But there are those with other motives there, too. Just to help you decide which side you're on.”

Dan glanced at him. Had he heard that last part of the conversation with Murdoch? The security officer didn't give him any indication, just slapped him hard on the back as the Jeep drove up. “Remember, base flight out in the morning. Be at the hangar, zero-eight hundred.”

14

 

 

 

They were airborne at the first suspicion of dawn, despite a threatening overcast. The Huey lofted them out over hills and lakes and rivers, miles of frozen marsh, then more lakes and more forest. They floated and vibrated at three thousand feet as light came to a bleached-out world. In the latter part of the flight, Dan made out targets below them as they windmilled onward, make-believe aircraft and pillboxes. But nothing moved, not even a deer. Isolated by the roar of turbines, buckled so tightly that he could barely shift his weight, he thought of what Murdoch had said last night in the bar. And suddenly it seemed as if the desolation below was a warning, a foreshadowing of the future men were bending all their inventiveness and skill toward.

A world at peace at last, because every living thing was dead.

They pitched down and dropped, descending to five hundred, four hundred, three hundred feet. He saw what it must look like to the missile, hurtling between hills, pulling g's as they banked, the forest speed-blurring below. Then the chopper slowed and drifted gentle as a falling marshmallow toward a tracery of wheel ruts. Not till then did he realize that what his eye had taken for irregular protrusions of forest and snow were actually vehicles concealed beneath camouflage nets.

The skids thumped down in a rolling cloud of blowing snow. Grabbing his bag, he ran after the others toward a dimly seen pair of Hummers. Got there, damn near frozen,
to be handed clothing and boots. He pulled them on in the close quarters of the vehicle: woodland cammies, parka, brown leather gloves with wool inserts, green mukluks—canvas rubber-soled boots with heavy felt inserts. He rolled his steel-toes inside his reefer and thrust them into his bag.

Not long after, he followed Manhurin up steel steps into a camouflaged van. Stamping snow off his boots, he looked around the interior of the Launch Control Center.