A Vial Upon the Sun

by James Codlin

  Major Soto took a sip of water and adjusted his glasses. “From earlier intelligence, we know there were Russian and Iranian nuclear weapons scientists and engineers under the employ of this revolutionary group. There does not appear to be any way to destroy the missile without extensive civilian collateral casualties.”

  “‘Extensive civilian collateral casualties,’” Ishikawa recited, mocking the dry delivery of the officer. “How long until it is nuclear capable?”

  “All they have to do is remove the communications satellite and replace it with the warhead. Two hours.”

  President Ishikawa steepled his fingers and looked up at the fluorescent lights. He thought of the last twenty-four hours, and how many times the Japanese ambassador and foreign minister had called him to demand that no air strike be launched against the missile. The opportunity for a strike was now lost, of course. Ishikawa saw clearly in this moment that it had always been Waro Moto, manipulating him and his government.

  The president reflected on his audiences with Pope Pius and King Carlos during the past day and night, when they had also appealed to him for restraint and inaction. Their complicity was clear now too. Professor Lenin and Gina had been right from the beginning. Ishikawa had been duped into delivering a political union and its people to the conspiracy of a dead monarchy, a theocracy, and a technocracy.

  Ishikawa sensed the dead silence around him. General Mello stared down at a pad of paper before him. The other officers looked anywhere except into the president’s eyes.

  “General Mello,” the president said. “Prepare as many fighters as are available with the best pilots from the combined Union air forces for a strike against the missile if it launches.”

  “Impossible, sir,” the general replied.

  “We are dealing with the impossible now. We will not strike it on the ground, but if the rebels decide to launch, we will at least have a chance to destroy it in the air.”

  Mello looked agitated. “Sir, I cannot—”

  “You’re fired, General Mello,” Ishikawa said evenly. “General Hidalgo, you are now chairman of the Joint Chiefs. You have your orders.”

  The army general looked at each of the other service chiefs and at General Mello. They gave no response.

  Ishikawa stood. “I see.” He adjusted his coat, walked out of the operations building, and stepped into his limousine. As the car pulled away, heading for the executive complex, he pulled out his phone and thumbed a number.

  “Colonel Kobe,” a voice answered.

  “Colonel, this is the president. I want Captain Fujiwara to report to the presidential aircraft in fifteen minutes and to prepare the aircraft for flight.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  *

  The first slug had slammed into Nicolás’s chest, spattering his face with his own blood and nearly dropping him. The priest’s eyes glowed red with the light reflected from a trackside signal. Nicolás’s vision blurred, and he knew that his life was about to end right here in a Mexico City subway tunnel. Everything he had ever been, and would ever be, was now coming down to these last seconds. He would not be denied this final act.

  Nicolás willed the energy that came from the sum of all the hatred, love, nightmares, and dreams of his life into his leg muscles. From his genuflected stance only a meter from the priest, he lunged toward the outstretched gun. His peal of laughter echoed in the confines of the tunnel and grew into a roar as he crashed into the priest and threw his arms around the inquisitor.

  Nicolás felt hot breath on his cheek as his face touched the priest’s, smearing the holy man with his blood. He heard the deafening roar of the gun and was distantly aware that his body was being torn apart by bullets fired at point-blank range. But Nicolás’s momentum continued to carry into Serrano, and he felt the moment that Serrano’s feet lost their purchase on the ground and he began to fall backward.

  Nicolás’s laughter turned into a shriek of triumph as they toppled toward the third rail. As they fell, Nicolás stared into Serrano’s horrified eyes and relished this final moment of victory.

  Then the blinding flash washed everything away.

  *

  “What, what?” Martín cried out.

  He had heard a snap like the sound of a whip, followed an instant later by the crackle of raw meat being dropped into a searing-hot skillet. His nostrils filled with a stench.

  The work lights and signals went dark. Dennis and Lenin staggered to their feet.

  “What’s happening?” Martín shouted again.

  “That short on the third rail tripped the current to this block section of the tunnel,” Dennis said. “The third rail is cold now. We have to get those bodies off the tracks.”

  “Bodies? Is Nico—?”

  “I am so sorry, Martín, but Nico is gone,” Lenin said. “He died to protect you and to try and end this madness.”

  Lenin looked around and saw a hatch to a maintenance access. He opened it and helped Dennis carry the two smoldering corpses into it.

  Lenin helped Martín to his feet and said, “I am sorry I can’t do more for your brother right now, but we have to get out of here. All hell is breaking loose, and we need to see what we can do to stop it.”

  Dennis lifted his microphone. “Gina, both Marty and I are a bit worse for wear, so we need all the help we can get. Do you have a safe path between here and the next subway station?”

  The voice that came back was grave but resolute. “If there isn’t one, Alejandra and I will make one.”

  Dennis managed a wan smile. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

  *

  Lenin, Alejandra, and Gina supported Dennis and Martín as they struggled along the subway tunnel. The trains were running with additional frequency now and they constantly had to flatten against the wall to let them pass. Eventually they saw the fluorescent lighting of a station ahead.

  There were only a few people in Piño Suárez station. They watched with silent, wide-eyed amazement as three relatively healthy people climbed up from the tracks and then hoisted two injured, bedraggled men to the platform. Without acknowledging their audience, they staggered through the station and up to street level. Gina hailed a cab, and once she had pulled its right-side doors open, the others crowded in with Dennis taking the front passenger seat.

  “Get us to the airport,” Dennis told the driver. “There’s a little extra in it for you if it’s a quick trip.”

  The cab driver looked puzzled, and Alejandra translated for him. He grinned at the beautiful woman in his back seat, slammed the car’s transmission into drive, and bolted away from the curb.

  Gina watched the opposite lanes and saw a black Lexus shoot by at high speed, brake hard, and make a fishtailing U-turn into their lane. She elbowed Alejandra, who turned around and watched in dismay as the Lexus accelerated, quickly shortening the gap on their cab.

  “Driver, five hundred U.S. dollars if you lose that Lexus!” Alejandra said. She reached into her bag and found what remained of the cash that Gallego had given to Lenin. She pulled a handful out and waved the bills in the air.

  The driver cut the wheel hard to the right. The cab streaked down a narrow side street. Trashcans flew as the car smashed into them and a pedestrian dove out of the way. The car came to another wide street, turned onto it, and cut left and through the traffic. Dennis craned his neck around and still saw the Lexus several cars back. It was gaining, and they heard muffled pops as men fired guns from the windows. Bullets thunked into the cab.

  “Make it a thousand!” Lenin shouted, and Alejandra dipped her hand back into the bag for another handful of bills. The cabbie and Lenin’s eyes met in the rearview mirror and Lenin was startled to see nothing short of unbridled exuberance. The cabbie flattened the accelerator and the cab lurched forward.

  Another Lexus passed from the opposite direction. It made a violent U-turn and joined the first one, zigzagging between cars to catch up.

  Dennis pulled his phone out and tapped the screen. />
  “Dubronski,” he said. “We’re on our way to the airport. I’m hurt bad, we got one blind guy, three are okay.”

  He listened to the response and looked at Gina. “Tell him to take us to something that sounds like ‘hangers avian.’”

  “Hangares de Aviación,” Gina said to the driver. “Hurry!”

  The car jerked left and slid sideways through an intersection as another Lexus tried to cut it off from a side street. The driver laughed maniacally and the taxi roared ahead. He turned left, jumping the curb and speeding the car across a small grassy park and into another narrow street.

  Dennis shouted, “Dubronski better have the plane ready to go!”

  The cab’s rear window shattered, showering the backseat with safety glass pellets. Three Lexuses pursued. The cabbie steered onto the sidewalk, drove a full block there, and then thundered out into a large intersection just as the light changed. Behind them, the lead Lexus screeched to a halt as traffic flowed in front of it.

  Gina saw the speedometer reach one hundred fifty kilometers on the wide boulevard, and the driver only slightly reduced the speed to make a careering turn onto a side street. They crashed over speed bumps that bottomed the suspension. A Lexus flashed from a side street and caught the rear fender of the taxi with its front bumper, spinning the cab three hundred and sixty degrees. Bullets smashed into the windows, blowing them all out as the cab’s occupants ducked. The driver reoriented himself and sped off again. “Two thousand American, don’t you think?” he shouted over the roar of the wind rushing through the shattered windows.

  “Yes!” Lenin called, bracing himself as they streaked between a tanker truck and a city bus.

  The car made a series of turns at full speed and suddenly braked hard. The passengers looked out through the glass-free windows and saw aircraft hangers and a long cyclone fence. On a taxiway a hundred meters from the road a lumbering Antonov 124 rolled along at low speed. Lenin looked up and down the fence but didn’t see a gate.

  “That’s our plane!” Lenin shouted, leaning forward. “Smash through that fence and we’ll give you another five hundred American!”

  “With pleasure,” the driver replied, smiling as he shifted gears. He cut the wheel hard to the right and smashed into the cyclone fence. It bowed ahead like elastic and the car’s rear tires spun until they smoked. Finally, the fence gave way. The car rolled over it and onto the grass. The cab accelerated, heading straight for the giant aircraft. In the distance they saw the flashing lights of official vehicles racing across the airport’s maze of runways and taxiways. Behind them, two of the Lexus automobiles drove across the flattened fence.

  “Martín, be ready to run,” Gina yelled. “We’ll have to break for it!”

  Bullets snapped through the passenger compartment, wiping out the windshield, the only remaining glass. A Lexus was twenty meters behind and police cars were several hundred meters down the taxiway and coming fast.

  Dennis’s phone rang. “Yeah?” he answered.

  “This is Dubronski,” the voice barked. “Mexican officials have a problem with me leaving without a flight plan or tower clearance, so get behind me. We have the ramp down—get your asses on board!”

  Dennis told Lenin what Dubronski had said and he relayed it in Spanish to the driver, with yet another five-hundred-dollar sweetener. The man grinned, skidded into a ninety-degree turn, and accelerated to match the increasing speed of the mammoth transport aircraft. The two Lexuses were gaining and the pistol fire continued unabated. The police cars were 30 meters behind the Lexuses, sirens bawling. The Antonov turned from the taxiway onto the active runway where it began to slowly gain speed.

  “Are you guys out for a Sunday drive or do you want to get the hell out of here?” Dubronski roared through the phone. “Punch it!”

  The driver floored the accelerator and the car covered the last few meters separating it from the transport’s steel ramp, which was kicking up a rooster-tail of sparks as it dragged on the asphalt. The front tires of the taxi climbed up the ramp. Bullets raked the back of the car and one rear tire exploded, sending a hubcap pinwheeling away. The taxi fell back off the ramp. The driver goosed the pedal and the front wheels again climbed upward. The smell of smoke filled the air as the flapping, punctured tire heated to the point of combustion. Inch by inch the cab moved up the ramp until the rear wheels spun onto the steel ramp, gained traction, and the car shot forward into the cargo hold.

  As Gina looked out, she saw two Russians with fire extinguishers spraying a dense fog onto the smoldering tire. Another team jumped forward and locked the disintegrating cab into place with huge hooks and chains. The loadmaster sprinted around the vehicle, checked the restraints, and then barked into his headset while giving a thumbs-up to the other crewmembers around him. The giant doors closed and the taxi’s occupants could feel the 124 vibrate all around them as it accelerated down the runway and lifted off. The plane banked into a hard-left turn, then finally rolled its wings level.

  Inside the cargo hold, the occupants of the taxicab regained their breath, and silence filled the interior of the car. The driver let out a shriek of pure exultation, pounding his hands against the steering wheel and whooping joyfully. No one joined in the celebration, and after composing himself the driver looked around at the remains of his vehicle. His manic grin faded just a bit. He made eye contact with Lenin, who shrugged apologetically.

  The driver beamed again. “I’ll leave the meter running, no?”

  *

  Waro Moto sat on an easy chair, speaking in Japanese on the telephone while King Carlos and Pope Pius talked quietly to each other. The industrialist savagely sucked air into the corners of his tightly closed mouth. He slammed the phone down, causing Carlos and Pius to jump.

  “I am surrounded by idiots!” he barked.

  “What happened?” Carlos asked.

  “Your damned fool Inquisition guards let Ibarra and Ishikawa get out of the subway tunnel. They made a break for the airport. My people had to intervene—” He again stopped to suck in air. “But they also failed. Ibarra and the others are airborne in that damned Russian transport plane.”

  Carlos clicked on his phone and demanded to be put through to the president of Mexico. The two conversed, and the king hung up. He rose and began pacing a different part of the room.

  “The Mexican air force will immediately scramble fighters to intercept the transport,” the king said. “But he did say that they haven’t picked the plane up on radar. They don’t know where it is.”

  “More incompetence!” Moto cried. “How can they miss the world’s largest airplane?”

  *

  Dubronski squinted, his face glistening with a sheen of sweat. He gingerly worked the control yoke as his copilot locked his eyes on the radar altimeter. The tops of trees were a mere foot or two below the belly of the Antonov as it hugged the ground while flying at three hundred and fifty knots.

  The navigator had his face buried in the visor of the radar screen. “I see the coast,” he said by intercom to the Dubronski. “Feet wet in two minutes.”

  A new voice came over the radio, saying in accented English, “Antonov transport, this is Mexican Air Force Inca-Zero-One on guard channel. Reduce airspeed and fall into my six o’clock or you will be shot down.”

  “Góvno!” the copilot exclaimed, looking out of his windows. “I don’t see the son of a bitch.”

  “Antonov transport, do you copy?”

  “Don’t answer,” Dubronski said. “Engineer, get ready.”

  “Thirty seconds to coast,” the navigator said.

  “Antonov, I will commence firing in five seconds if you do not comply.”

  “Ready defensive systems,” Dubronski said on intercom.

  “Antonov, Inca-Zero-One has command clearance, commencing fire.”

  “Flares now!” Dubronski said.

  The flight engineer threw a toggle switch, ejecting two blazing phosphorous flares from the rear of the plane. At that sa
me instant Dubronski hauled back on the control yoke and, after a moment’s climb, snap-rolled the aircraft violently to the right.

  The copilot twisted his neck and looked out the window. “First missile’s following the flare—clear!”

  Dubronski rolled back to the left, held a fast climb, and then dumped the control yoke forward, dropping the nose into a dive.

  “Chaff and flares!” he called. He looked toward the left wing and saw a missile streak past, turning wide of the transport.

  “Number two followed the chaff cloud. Flares!”

  The Antonov’s fuselage creaked as the aircraft porpoised rapidly, with the nose alternating between snapping up toward the sky and then back down to earth.

  “Feet wet!” the navigator called.

  The Mexican fighter plane flew past, taking a position off the nose of the 124. Dubronski gently pushed the bank of throttles forward, dropping the nose to gain airspeed, and then gently pulled back up until his wings were level and the transport plane was just aft of and below the fighter. The jet filled the windscreen, causing the flight engineer to look away. Dubronski eased the transport forward under the fighter’s elevators. Suddenly the fighter plane seemed to lose control and rolled onto its right wing. The fighter’s nose tucked under and the plane ripped away, disappearing aft.

  “Twelve-mile limit, international waters!” the navigator called.

  Dubronski and the copilot scanned ahead and as far aft as their side windows permitted.

  “Nothing here, chief,” the copilot said.

  “Clear here,” Dubronski said.

  “I got streaks in my shorts,” the flight engineer said. “What’d you do to that guy?”

  “Bow wave,” the copilot said, looking at Dubronski with admiration. “A huge rush of air three meters out in front of this big motherfucker. Threw that fighter off like the wake of a supertanker wiping out a rowboat.”