Trinity's Child (35 page)

“So you want me to be remembered as an umbrella-totin' Chamberlain, buying peace at any price?”

Harpoon felt helpless. After all the combativeness of the briefing, he once again felt empathy for the unprepared human being in front of him. Perhaps he was asking too much, asking him to break out of a lifelong mind mold in mere minutes. In the seventies he had spent several months at the War College in Washington. One of the lecturers was a stooped old professor of philosophy from a liberal Ivy League college. One of Rickover's perverse tests, he and his officer colleagues had concluded. The professor had pushed them about the tree in the wilderness and they had perfunctorily debated whether it made a sound, missing his point. On his final day, the old man told them they were all left-siders, playing chess and war. Right-siders play different games and survive. In his final message—and Harpoon recalled each word now—the man said without enmity: “This generation of men may be the most shortsighted in history. It not only consumes the earth's resources, robbing the future of its heritage, it also toys childlike with a power that could rob the past of its existence. Chess is a simple game, gentlemen.” Only now did Harpoon realize that the tree was the earth.

“No, sir,” Harpoon said, “I want you to be remembered.”

The successor looked at him without understanding.

“I don't like you, Harpoon.”

“I know that, sir. I'm sorry, but it's not important.”

“Didn't say I didn't respect you.”

Harpoon was surprised, but he said nothing.

“We're down to it, aren't we?”

“Yes, sir. We have about thirty minutes.”

“And now you're going to ask me to surrender. Can't do that, you know.”

Harpoon looked at him with both consternation and compassion. “Surrender, sir? No. I want you to try—simply try—to use the pause. Try to turn this thing off till we can talk to the Soviets, talk to our submarines.”

“Talk to the Soviets.” The successor shook his head slowly at the thought, and his drawl disappeared immediately. “Dammit, Harpoon, we have been trying to talk to the Soviets for fifty years, and what good's it done us? Hell's bells, mister, we couldn't even talk to them during the Second World War. And they were on our side then. How the devil am I supposed to talk to them? You say I can't even talk to Minneapolis.”

“You can't talk to them now, sir. You may be able to in four or five hours if we don't blow the ionosphere to smithereens again and suck the guts out of our radios and computers.”

“Harpoon, you amaze me. Downright amaze me. You just said I got thirty minutes.”

“To talk to our bombers. Before they go down to low-level and the best communications system in the world couldn't get through to them.”

Harpoon paused once more. He felt the beads of sweat pop on his forehead. The map's blue ovals pulsated at him mockingly. Behind the successor the arms of the Zulu clock formed a haunting smile, the second hand relentlessly sweeping onward. He scanned the faces of his colleagues. All knew what was coming, but none, except the colonel, met his eyes. The colonel stared back in a mix of challenge and curiosity. Harpoon stared at his rival. My God, was this a chess game too? The colonel smiled. It was now or never. He drew his eyes away and riveted them on the successor, whose blank face seemed to miss the import of the moment.

“Bring them back, sir,” Harpoon said simply.

The words seemed to carom off the fluxing computer maps and echo in the sudden silence of the briefing compartment.

“Bring the bombers back,” Harpoon repeated quietly, trying to keep the pleading out of his voice.

The successor stared at Harpoon, briefly bewildered. Then his face slowly broke into a thin smile. “Now, that's a real good plan, Harpoon,” he said, his voice cutting with sarcasm. “You want me to call up the Soviet bombers and send them home too?”

“If we're lucky, very lucky,” Harpoon replied slowly, “the Soviets will do that themselves. If someone is in control over there. If they can see us. There are many ifs.”

“Yes, mister, there damned well are. And the biggest if is if I feel like surrendering. Which I don't.”

“Surrender?” Harpoon asked, his voice even despite his despair. “How in God's name is that surrender? You still have your submarines. Sixty percent of our strategic weapons are in those boats. Seven thousand city-killing warheads. Maybe, just maybe, bringing back the bombers would get us a truce.”

“Now it's a truce. That's a damned fancy word for surrender. Those uncivilized bastards started this and kicked the pucky out of us, Harpoon. We kicked them back. A relatively even exchange. Except there's ten million more Americans dead. Except we had a damned sight more to lose than those barbarians did. They just brought the United States of America down to their level, Harpoon. Now they'll just go out there and rebuild from the same point as us.” The drawl crept back, as if for emphasis. “That means losin', dang you. And quittin' means surrenderin'.”

“Good God, sir. Nobody's going to rebuild without outside help. Who would you rather be, us or them? Would you like to ask Poland for aid? Czechoslovakia? Hungary? Afghanistan?”

The successor looked around the table. The colonel still rolled his eyes. The others looked at him in solemn anticipation. He turned back toward Harpoon.

“Rebuildin' isn't the point anyway,” he said. “You tell me we only have twenty bombers left and maybe only a couple will get in. They got a hundred and fifty coming at us, soon to be roaming at will over our country, you say, because we haven't got any consarned peashooters. You're the military man. Would you make that trade?”

Harpoon sensed his last chance. “The bombers aren't the point either,” he said. “Even a couple could take care of Leningrad and what's left of Moscow, plus odds and ends. The subs are the point. They know we've got them. They know we'll use them. You're the politician. Would you take a chance to make that trade, saving your country from total annihilation?”

“A damned Indian smoke signal,” the successor said angrily. “That's what it is. Sounds like we're back in the nineteenth century already.”

“We are, sir.”

“And that's the Jericho decision? To call the bombers back and hope the Kremlin follows suit?”

“To use the pause in any way possible, sir, to settle things down.”

The successor slumped. He caressed the Seal, rubbing the lettering as if it were braille. “What lunatic designed this madness?” he asked disconsolately, the words directed at no one. “There's no way to win.”

“There never was, sir,” Harpoon said quietly.

Harpoon relaxed briefly. Foolishly, he recognized quickly. On the admiral's flank a clatter interrupted the silence as the colonel rose suddenly, pulling himself up so portentously the eyeglasses slipped on his nose. He cleared his throat in a high wheeze.

Harpoon looked at him with a wan smile. “Looks like the colonel has found the stolen overcoat,” he said.

The colonel glared at him. “Are you, or are you not,” the officer demanded, “going to tell the President about cutting the head off the chicken?”

Harpoon continued staring. “Promised to save that honor for you, colonel. Mister Burr will now yield.” The admiral handed him the light pointer.

Quickly the colonel signaled the projectionist, then turned his full attention to the successor. The map of the Soviet Union fluttered once more, a set of green dots appearing. Many were clustered near Moscow and Leningrad, but others were scattered in more remote regions.

“Unlike the admiral,” the colonel began, “I will keep my words brief, clear, and devoid of defeatist philosophy. Victory is possible, sir, and it is not that complicated.”

Harpoon's wan smile faded. Little bastard's got balls, he thought. Too bad somebody planted them between his ears instead of his legs.

“To call back our bombers would not move the Soviets. They would see it as a sign of weakness. They exploit weakness, as they did at Yalta and countless times at Geneva. But what if they did respond and turned their bombers? You observed, quite accurately, that we have lost. The Soviets have reduced us to their level. Their system and their philosophy are still intact. Is that an acceptable outcome for an American President?” He paused, peering in challenge over his glasses.

“Sir, it has been the well-conceived policy of this government to squeeze the Soviets until they collapsed from within. President Reagan predicted that fall. Your predecessor pursued the policy still further. The attack on us is the very proof that the policy has been working. The Premier's message to your predecessor, intentionally deceptive, acknowledged as much. You, sir, now have the opportunity to put the final nail in the coffin of aggressive Soviet communism.”

Harpoon looked at the colonel in fascinated disbelief, struggling between silence and grim laughter. Nail in the coffin. He's got his symbols right.

“I predict, sir, as President Reagan did, that the Soviet people will now throw off the yoke of totalitarian dictatorship which has oppressed them so long. They will do it as surely as they overthrew the czars during the First World War.”

Harpoon could not control himself. “In the next half-dozen hours?” he erupted. “For Christ's sake, colonel, they won't even be able to find them.”

The colonel turned toward Harpoon with a look of triumph. “No, admiral, they will not. But we will. And you want to withdraw the very weapon with which we can do it.” He abruptly turned away and directed the light pointer at the map.

“Mr. President, the green dots represent Soviet leadership bunkers. Inside those bunkers are the party hierarchy, the Presidium, KGB leaders, the military command, and almost surely the Premier or his successor. They are the head of the Soviet chicken. Cut off that head, and the body dies. The system dies. Forever.”

The colonel paused, gazing expectantly at the successor.

“You telling me that a handful of B-52's can do that?”

“The perfect instrument, sir.” The colonel smiled. “Those bunkers are hardened much like an ICBM silo. Submarine missiles are not accurate enough to take them out. B-52's are manned. Most of them are carrying at least four one-megaton bombs plus SRAM or cruise missiles. They can drop those babies right down the smokestack. One aircraft could take out half a dozen bunkers, probably more.”

Harpoon studied the successor's face carefully. The man seemed deep in perplexing thought. Suddenly he turned toward the admiral. “Harpoon?”

“It's madness, sir.”

“Well, it seems we just got madness piled on top of madness tonight, admiral.”

“The theory's been examined thoroughly and discredited thoroughly.”

The colonel blustered in, his voice venomous. “Discredited by men who insist on keeping communications lines open to bandits and murderers and assassins. Men who want to send smoke signals”—the words oozed animosity—“to barbarians who have perpetrated the most despicable, the most heinous act in the history of mankind.”

Harpoon shook his head. “Men who want some remnant of America down there when this plane lands, colonel. We can't stay up here in our splendid cocoon forever. For God's sake, man, what about the
Soviet
bombers? What about the thousands of warheads they have in land-based reserves?”

“Victory has its price, admiral,” the colonel replied coldly. “The Soviet forces are a reality. Your smoke signal isn't going to stop them. And, frankly, I believe you've been duplicitous about the Soviet bombers.”

“Duplicitous!” Harpoon started to move on the colonel, then retreated.

“They are not due for five hours. Our communications should be functioning at least minimally by that time. We
do
have some fighters. We also have thousands of commercial jets available. Use them.”

“You're joking.”

“Ram the bastards.”

Harpoon slowly seated himself. “Colonel, I cannot believe you are serious. I really cannot. Do you actually believe this country— a country full of panicked Baton Rouges—is in any condition to put together a plan like that?”

The successor suddenly stiffened. “Harpoon, are you implyin' that ramming is a possible defense against bombers? Damn you, are you saying that's possible?”

Harpoon was beginning to feel woozy. “Sir, for God's sake—”

“Are you saying that, damn you?”

“In isolated cases, sir,” Harpoon said wearily. “But a hundred and fifty bombers coming in low level from all directions? With our radar out? Even if we got ninety percent of them—which we wouldn't—do you know what fifteen bombers would do? Fifteen of those blue circles”—Harpoon gestured despondently at the map of the United States—”would instantly turn red.”

“Harpoon,” the successor said, his eyes gleaming angrily, “I don't think I've been getting the whole story. I don't cotton to that thought. Don't cotton to it at all.”

Harpoon bristled. “What you're getting now, sir, is maniacal nonsense. What the devil does the colonel want to do about the ICBM's? Call the goddamn CIA? Get all our moles to run around Russia putting their fingers in the silos? Good God, man, there is no defense against this stuff.”

The colonel methodically tapped the pointer against the map. “The defense,” he said confidently, “is the Soviet people. Take away those green dots—take away their oppressors—and they will stop the ICBM's. The defense is to cut the head off the chicken.”