Trinity's Child (48 page)

Earlier, the bureaucrat had seen the instructions from the computerized Presidential Successor Locator sending the
E-4
after the Secretary of the Interior. Now, for the first time, it occurred to him that the United States actually might have two Presidents. It also occurred to him that he was the only person in the world who was aware of that awkward possibility. However, he didn't have the vaguest notion what to do with the information. There was no one to tell—not even this President, who was semiconscious and loopy on the painkilling morphine. It did not occur to him that it might be unwise to allow the nurses to administer the morphine.

Nearby, the Olney radio operator was growing increasingly frustrated, downright angry at times, with his superior's casual indifference to the radio traffic he now was receiving. Dammit, they had the President of the United States back there, even if the poor bastard was in no shape to talk to anyone.

Transmissions were moving between NATO countries, although he couldn't hold them for reasons that were beyond his understanding. The radio traffic between the
Looking Glass
and the
E-4
had fallen off to rare, brief messages and he still had not been able to get a response from them. But it was the stuff out of the Soviet Union that fascinated him. Maybe the source was a CIA spy, but he certainly had access to good equipment. He was trying everything under the sun—very high frequency, ultra high frequency, very low frequency. It all seemed directed at the Midwest, perhaps at the command planes. And now the spook had tapped into a Molniya II satellite. The radio operator shook his head on that one. Molniya II was the Soviets' hot-line link. The hot line was deader than a doornail. He would have sworn that Molniya, a satellite with a perigee of only three hundred miles, was dead by now, too. But it wasn't. The guy was one smart spook—and desperate, too, using the Soviets' own satellites.

On his own, without informing his uninterested boss, the radio operator tapped out a brief response. “This is Pit Stop Two,” the low-frequency telegraph message said. “Do you read?”

In another of the world's modern mole holes, beneath Cherepovets, the harassed Soviet communications operator felt a brief moment of extraordinary excitement and relief. Then he sagged in despair again. The American message, still encoded, had come from the insignificant bunker in Maryland. He angrily kicked at his radio.
Prokliatia mashinal
Damned machine! He despondently handed the message to the equally harassed cryptographer. The cryptographer, perspiring so steadily he had begun taking salt tablets, worked hurriedly over the short message. He turned wearily toward his colleague and arched his bushy eyebrows.
Pit Stop Two
? But they moved the message up channels, knowing they would feel the Premier's wrath whether they moved the message or whether they didn't.

“Halupalai?”

In the lonely seat in the back of
Polar Bear One's
upper compartment, the big gunner turned slowly, his eyes straining in the redness for a look at Kazaklis. Halupalai smiled and the pilot smiled back. “We're almost there, aren't we, commander?” he asked.

“Almost there, pal,” Kazaklis replied. The two stared at each other, Kazaklis probing for anything in his friend's face that would flash a warning that the risk was too great. He saw nothing. “We've been worried about you, old buddy,” Kazaklis said.

“I know, commander. I listened to part of it. Sorry.”

Kazaklis shrugged at the admission of the eavesdropping. “Should we be worried, pal?”

“No, commander.” His voice was calm and certain.

“It's going to be awfully beat up, Halupalai. Like nothing we ever saw before.”

“Honolulu wasn't my home. Not even on my island. Please don't worry, commander.”

The pilot continued staring into the Hawaiian's tired but open face. “Kauai,” Kazaklis acknowledged, and Halupalai's face brightened like a birthday child's.

“We take one quick look-see?” Halupalai asked expectantly, his voice reverting to the simple, chanting tones of the islands. “It's the charmer, boss.”

Kazaklis tightened. “No,” he said flatly.

“Won't be beat up like Honolulu,” Halupalai pleaded. “No way will it.”

Kazaklis felt an alarm run quickly through him. “No,” he repeated, with a bite this time. But Halupalai did not protest further.

“Okay, commander,” he said. “You're the boss-man.” The smile faded slightly and the sad brown eyes held on Kazaklis. “You didn't need to take my alert bag, commander,” Halupalai said reproachfully. “I wouldn't hurt either of you.”

“We know that, pal. We aren't worried about us,” Kazaklis looked at him closely. “We're worried about you.”

Halupalai smiled again. “Thanks,” he said, and he meant it. No one had said that to him for a long while. “Don't you worry about me. I'm okay.” His smile grew wider and he gave Kazaklis a friendly fist jab in the ribs. “Now get your ass back up front, Kazaklis,” he said, “and do what you have to do.”

Kazaklis reluctantly turned back toward the cockpit. The worry still nagged at him faintly, but Halupalai seemed nothing like the two crazies he had dealt with earlier. And, about that, the pilot's perception was accurate. Halupalai was neither violent nor spooked. He just wanted to go home.

The
Looking Glass
flew almost aimlessly now, no bombers and no missiles left to command. Alice and Sam talked to each other vacantly, each having fought his own private war and each arriving independently at the same outcome. But they had developed a deep sense of mutual embarrassment, as if the other's eyes were a mirror reflecting a man who had violated the most elemental rule of the code by which he had lived his life.

After abandoning all his West Point training by openly defying his Commander-in-Chief and taking it onto himself to turn the bombers, Alice made a few halfhearted attempts to call the
E-4
and reason with the successor. Each time, the reply returned tersely: “You're in deep shit, Alice.” Then the phone clicked off. He had searched his soul desperately for a feasible way to prevent the submarine launchings but could find none. His only hope was Harpoon, but their last conversation had been hours ago and nearly incomprehensible. Almost four excruciatingly long hours after his decision, Alice was quietly despondent, as was Sam, who had gone along with the mutiny.

Aboard the now impotent SAC command plane, only two other members of the crew of twenty spoke to Alice unless he spoke first. Smitty, the pilot, understood the decision in some deeply forlorn way. He occasionally tried to make small talk. And the communications officer reported to him regularly, but she averted her eyes as she spoke.

Communications were improving methodically but slowly. They had intercepted some clear messages moving within Europe, including some between NATO facilities. Alice was not surprised. Europe had received minimal physical destruction and that made the electromagnetic damage from the high-altitude EMP explosions somewhat easier to repair. The Soviets had used EMP in detonations high over the NATO nations, just as the United States had used it over the Warsaw Pact countries.

What did confuse the general was the nature of the occasional direct communication they now were able to establish with a few NATO bases. The conversations were as abrupt as those with Condor. And the operators at the other end, even though they all understood English, spoke to him only in their native languages— German or Norsk ... or Flemish. Where were the American commanders, for Christ's sake? Alice also knew Condor had to be making the same connections. If he were so single-mindedly determined to hit the Soviets, why wait for the submarines? Why not order the NATO forces into it, even if that meant the suicide of Europe? The successor's decision meant all was lost anyway. And he could always follow with the submarines.

The lieutenant also reported that garbled messages now were arriving from a handful of sites around the country. She had identified the site of the original messages as a regional civil-defense bunker in Maryland. Those messages, still garbled, were arriving more regularly now. Alice waved her away. He simply wasn't in the mood to worry about a lonely civil-defense station wet-nursing a few governors. If they got through, fine. If not, fine.

The Zulu clock stood at precisely 1700 hours, four hours before the submarines would unleash most of America's remaining nuclear arsenal, when Alice finally realized that winning his own private war simply wasn't enough. The realization arrived abruptly as he stared at the perfectly synchronized hand of his watch edging relentlessly past the marker. He knew it would move just as relentlessly past the next hour markers, till it passed 2100, and then it would stop. All watches would stop.

The general harbored no illusions. If Condor were somehow taken away, there would be no one to talk to the submarines and the result would be the same. If he tried to fake contradictory orders from the
Looking Glass,
at best TACAMO would be confused and go with the original SIOP plan. It was a hopeless dilemma. Nevertheless, as he watched the second hand move steadily onward, Alice concluded that at least he could remove control from one totally determined man and place it in the lap of fate. Fate seemed equally determined. But he decided, quickly and simply, that he liked the second option better. Even so, Alice reached one more time for the phone.

“Ummmmm?” the voice responded impatiently.

“Alice here, Condor.”

“You're in deep shit, Alice.”

“Don't hang up.” The general's voice was a command. “You will not allow me to dissuade you?”

“No.”

“You will not allow Harpoon to dissuade you?”

“Harpoon's dead.”

The general's hand tightened, white-knuckled, over the phone. But he did not pause. “It is beyond debate?”

“You and I will settle up on the ground, Alice.”

“I think not, Condor.” This time Alice disconnected and turned immediately to Sam, who had watched the drama closely.

“Where is the
E-4,
Sam?” he asked. “Precisely.”

“Four hundred fifty miles southeast, sir,” Sam answered immediately.

“Order a new course for an intercept point,” Alice said routinely.

The two old friends locked eyes for a moment. Sam's mind spun. Intercept point, hell. The general was asking for a collision point. He could not see how that would do any more good than turning the bombers. But Sam did not think long. Just as routinely, Alice's old friend replied, “Yes, sir,” having also concluded that a private war was not enough.

Condor was furious. The abortive NATO conversations had been going on for an hour now. The
E-4'
s radio officers reported that whenever they broke through the garbles to a NATO facility, a clearly military voice would speak briefly in a NATO-country tongue and then the conversation would break off. The words were always the same, regardless of the language: “Sorry, sir, we are instructed to say nothing to you.”

Finally, at shortly after 1700 hours, Condor took to the radio himself in exasperation. A proper Italian voice babbled at him in a short sentence he didn't understand. “You little wop bastard!” Condor exploded. “This is the President of the United States talkin' to you! Who do you think bought your fancy fuckin' uniform? You talk to me in English and put an American officer on! On the goddamned double!” The Italian did not hesitate, breaking from his native language into flawless and unalarmed English. “Your officers are not available, sir,” he said. Then the man disconnected.

Condor, his mouth gaping open and his face almost apoplectic, turned toward the Librarian. The Librarian's face furrowed grimly. “Frankly, sir,” he said, “I believe the Europeans have our boys in the tank.” Condor continued to stare at him, his mouth still agape. “It was damned foolish of us to tie up NATO in a nuclear war,” the Librarian continued. “Now the Europeans seem to have it tied up for us. At least part of it.”

Condor seethed. He was fully committed now, and the frustration left him barely able to speak. “Those ingrates!” he finally flustered. “Don't they remember the Marshall Plan?”

“They are playing their old game,” the Librarian said. “Trying to protect themselves by not provoking the Soviets. It is a sad, sad error. In the end the Soviets will obliterate them anyway.”

Condor stormed out of the compartment, convinced that he could trust no one, that the United States was utterly alone, and that he most certainly had made the correct decision.

In the gunner's seat, Halupalai's back remained to the cockpit window. He had felt the aircraft's first maneuverings but had made no move to go up front. He felt no foreboding. Kazaklis felt the foreboding, but he couldn't pinpoint the cause. Halupalai was neither suicidal nor maniacal. The foreboding had to come from anticipation of the grim new world they had decided they must approach.

The pilot gradually edged the aircraft lower, passing through fifteen thousand feet. The northern edge of Oahu, Kahuku Point, lay perhaps fifteen miles distant, slightly off Moreau's side of the aircraft. Kauai, which Kazaklis was trying to ignore, sat shrouded in the rainy island's usual clouds about seventy-five miles directly out Moreau's side window. He did not like what he could see of Oahu, with Honolulu still forty miles away on the far side. The clouds ahead, usually billowing white playthings or dark gray rain pouches hanging over the leeward side of the island, blew brown and thick in the early-morning sun. They spread over most of the island and wafted high and far to the east, where the westerlies had carried them. Kazaklis looked at Moreau and shook his head.