by Ahern, Jerry
Annie Rubenstein stood up, tried the light switch beside the bed. It still worked.
There was a banging on the door at the far end of the small sitting room. “Mrs. Rubenstein!” It was the voice of one of the Shore Patrol personnel assigned to stay with her.
“Mrs. Rubenstein!” “Yes!”
The rerrycloth robe. She grabbed it up, stuffing her feet into her slippers.
She ran across the room, into the sitting room, across that, opening the door. The female Shore Patrolman
shouted at her, “Hurry!” and then grabbed her arm. Annie started to run. The dream.
Her father hadn’t made it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was cramped beyond the access panel for the computer linked launch controls of the missile battery.
John Rourke’s gloved hands were stiffening in the cold. Wires. The A.G. Russell Sting IA black chrome. He cut wires with the knife.
Reconnect wires.
He reconnected wires with the pliers he’d found on the floor beside the access panel, with the electrical tape that had been there as well.
After the first few seconds with the access panel removed, John Rourke realized there was no way to stop the launch. The size of the missiles, their obvious intent. They had to be fitted with nuclear warheads. With no way to abort the launch, the only alternative was to accelerate the destruct sequence which had been partially disabled.
He bridged a circuit, moved on to the next. If he could wire the launch sequence into the destruct sequence, there would be enough time. Perhaps.
The eight men he and Paul had killed clearly had been, impossibly ignorant. With the missiles set to launch, the destruct sequence activated, they had killed their leaders and cut through the destruct circuits with a bayonet or something, perhaps a saw of some kind. But all they had really done was to disconnect the destruct sequence controls.
At least one of them evidently realized this, because there was a clear and clearly botched attempt to reconnect the destruct sequence controls. With the destruct sequence which they so feared disabled, they had to have realized what they had done, made launch of the missiles inevitable. They ran, not knowing where, not knowing what would happen, only that somehow they had caused it.
Activating the destruct sequence had been a command decision, perhaps at this level or some higher one. Rourke was second-guessing them, but the logic of what he saw dictated nothing else. There was a degenerative fault in the wiring of the launch circuits. It was clear, as he bridged another circuit, that the system had several times started its own launch sequence and been shut down, only to start up again. A fault in the logic circuits of the computer through which the system was run. He didn’t know and there was no time to find out. The destruct sequence had been activated to prevent the missiles from self-launching, as they were about to do now.
But it was also clear, no one had known enough about sabotage to properly abort the launch sequence. The launch sequence was run through alternating circuits to prevent sabotage, and so complicated that attempting to disassemble it might override the proper launch sequence and simply launch. To disconnect the system would clearly trigger a launch, approximately an amount of residual electricity needed equivalent to that required for the simplest memory circuit in something as mundane as the videotape players he used at the Retreat. There was no way to dissipate the charge,
hence no way to kill the electrical supply and thereby cancel the launch.
The circuit boards which were the heart of the system were self-healing. When a circuit was damaged, electricity run through the system was used to bridge around it.
If he connected the wrong wires, at the stage he was now, both launch and destruct would be instantaneous and the missiles would get away.
Rourke’s back ached, cramped in the small compartment.
As he made another bridge, the self-healing process within the circuits activated and he started to move his hands away… .
People moved everywhere under the indigo dome of one of the two primary living areas. It was the best section of Mid-Wake in which to live, she’d been told by the two female Shore Patrol officers who’d brought her here. Senior officers of the submarine fleet used apartments here when they had shore leave or assignments keeping them at Mid-Wake. The better family residences were here as well. Everywhere she looked as she moved quickly beside her guardians across the grassy parkways there were women in nightclothes, men in hastily put on slacks and shirts, barefoot or in slippers, carrying shoes or boots, dragging small children by the hand, burdened with sheets and pillowcases turned into sacks for a few precious belongings.
United States Naval and Marine Corps personnel were everywhere as well, directing foot traffic, helping the elderly and infirm and the young. The hospital. Natalia.
Annie Rubenstein shouted over the cacophony around her, all the while the so-calm female voice ordering the emergency evacuation, “I’ve got to get my friend!”
“The hospital is being evacuated, ma’am, don’t worry.”
“But you don’t understand—Natalia’s so confused!”
The female Shore Patrolman holding her arm held to it more tightly. “We have to evacuate now, ma’am.”
They were moving along a walkway toward a monorail station, the yellow sphere in which family services, central education facilities and medical and dental services were headquartered in the next dome. Natalia.
The second Shore Patrol officer bent over to snatch up a bag a man had dropped, putting it into his waiting hands as he moved on.
Already, there were lines at the monorail station, but her guardians passed ahead, their uniforms all the badge of authority needed to take them to the head of the line.
A woman with two small children was boarding ahead of them, the one child who was walking, dragging behind. “Let me,” Annie offered, sweeping the child—a little boy—up into her arms.
They were inside now, the car doors closing, a hum as the monorail train powered up, a so slight as to be almost unnoticeable lurch, the train moving. She stood, the two Shore Patrol officers on her right, the woman with her other child on the left. The central hub of the wheel would be crowded, she’d realized, but as the train pulled in along the platform, she hadn’t realized how much. There were people everywhere, looking for other people, she realized.
There were no living quarters here, only communications, administration and energy facilities, but these were staffed twenty-four hours a day and shift workers were trying to find loved ones who had evidently promised to rendezvous with them here in the event of_
disaster. Confusion was everywhere.
The train stopped. The doors began opening. “Don’t worry ma’am,” one of the Shore Patrol personnel told her. “We don’t have to change trains.”
The doors were fully open, people leaving, people entering. “Why are trains going that way?” Annie asked, gesturing with her head toward the rail on the other side of the platform. “And they’re all empty?”
“Returning from the sub pens, ma’am, to get more people.”
“I see.” The doors were starting to close.
Annie Rubenstein shoved the little boy she held into the arms of the Shore Patrol officer nearest to her and jumped for the doors, her robe caught as the door closed. She jerked it free, running for the opposite side of the platform. She had left an indigo-colored train and she was looking for a yellow one… .
He was soaked to the skin, sleet mixed with snow blowing across the flat rocks on which the helicopter had come to rest. But the moorings were released.
As gusts buffeted the helicopter, it seemed to tilt, first in one direction and then another. If it overturned—Paul Rubenstein, wet, cold, racked with chills, buckled in at the controls.
He checked oil pressure, fuel mixtures, tried remembering everything John Rourke had taught him.
And a smile crossed his lips. “Trigger control, trigger control,” and he throttled out, the helicopter slipping
, a tearing sound as ice beneath the floats cracked and separated and metal strained, a gust slamming the aircraft on the port side.
“Trigger control,” he hissed, his hands like vises as they held to the controls and the chopper gradually started to rise.
John Rourke opened his eyes. The klaxon was sounding. His fingertips tingled.
Mechanically, he checked his watch. The Rolex seemed unscathed. He would heal. It wouldn’t. He sat up. An electric shock. “Dammit,” Rourke rasped.
He’d been thrown half out of the compartment behind the access panel. He crawled back inside, finding the pliers and the tape.
Wires to cut.
Already, some of the circuits he’d disconnected had re-routed themselves. The countdown was continuing. And there was no time to even check how much time was left… .
Annie Rubenstein was alone on the monorail train, the voice here, too, piped in over speakers inside the car. “Emergency …” She focused her attention on the waste processing plants the train passed in the tunnel leading toward the yellow dome. Some Mid-Wake people called the city itself the “octopus” even though there were only six “tentacles,” each tentacle a tunnel and, rather than a sucker at the end, a dome. The head, where she had escaped her guardians and boarded the yellow train, was the central core.
The yellow station was coming up. Natalia …
Wind sheer, he thought they called it, but whatever it was the wind was suddenly there and the German helicopter gunship was no longer under his control, banking hard to starboard, nose down, a sickening roar out of the rotor blades overhead, the gunship
vibrating, shaking, trembling—like his hands. Paul Rubenstein tried to remember what John had told him. He didn’t know if he remembered or was guessing, and there wasn’t time to think.
He gave the gunship full power, pulling back on the throttle, trying to bring up the nose… .
The klaxon stopped.
John Rourke’s hands froze over the wires. In the curiously accented Russian of the Soviet domed city under the ocean, a pre-recorded voice—female—an^ nounced, “Launch imminent. Launch imminent. Evacuate immediate launch area. Seal the bunker. Launch imminent.”
“Shit,” John Rourke snarled.
The destruct system was almost wired into the launch system. Almost.
A length of blue wire traveled now from the destruct controls into the launch controls.
To activate the destruct sequence, he had to fool the timer.
To his feet, his legs and back cramping from having been crouched and bent so long, his fingertips still tingling from the electric shock.
His eyes found the timer readout; time until launch was ninety-three seconds.
No time to unscrew the housing around the timer, Rourke drew the Crain LS-X knife from the sheath at his hip and used the butt cap like a hammer, pounding out the housing, shattering the timer readout as he did, counting the seconds in his head now.
With the pliers, he peeled back more of the housing around the timer.
He dropped to his knees, climbing back behind the access opening to reach the blue wire. He. lifted it, careful not to jerk it and disconnect it where he had bridged it.
“Eighty-seven seconds,” John Rourke said under his breath.
The female voice was still reciting the warning. He fished the blue wire upward, toward the timer housing.
An arc of electricity. John Rourke fell back.
His head slammed against the flange for the panel. He saw stars, shook his head to clear it.
To his knees, regrasping the blue wire. He started fishing it upward again… .
In the distance, there was a shaft of yellow light and Paul Rubenstein could see smoke emanating from the tail sections of missiles.
Where was John Rourke?
As slowly as he could, he started to maneuver the gunship downward, lest he lose control in the next gust of wind… .
Annie ran across the grassy area fronting the hospital, men and women in military uniforms and hospital uniforms carrying patients on stretchers. The tie which closed her robe came undone, but there was no time to retie it. She ran.
A woman in white nurse’s uniform and cap was directing human traffic from the head of the steps. Annie shouted toward her as she ran. “Where is Major Tiemerovna?” The woman turned, looked astonished to see her. And Annie recognized her, the charge nurse from Natalia’s floor. “Where’s Natalia Tiemerovna? Have you gotten her out yet?”
The nurse ran down the steps, meeting Annie at
their center. “Thank God you’ve come. The German officer. He’s trying to get her out of the room. She came out of the coma when the alarm was sounded. I don’t know how. She had all those sedatives—” “What’s happening?”
“She grabbed an orderly. He was about to give her an injection. Somehow, she got hold of his trouser belt and she has it around his neck. She’s telling everybody to stand back or she’ll kill him. She’s laughing and crying at the same time. The German is — ” Already, Annie was running past her, up the steps. “The German officer is trying to reason with her! But she won’t listen. We have to finish the evacuation and we—” Annie couldn’t hear the nurse any longer over the sounds of the evacuation, over the blaring of the recorded message, over the heaviness of her own breathing… .
John Rourke connected the blue wire into the timer, then advanced the timer by ten seconds.
Twenty-six remained to launch of the missiles.
Sixteen seconds until the destruct mechanism detonated.
He hoped.
He left the M-16, the arctic gloves, more of both aboard the aircraft. If he didn’t reach the aircraft, he’d never need anything again. He ran, reaching the doorway.
Rourke stopped. He looked back.
On the counter beside the control panel was his knife.
“Dammit,” Rourke rasped. He ran back, grabbing up the knife, no time to sheath it, running for the bunker doorway now, into the cold, slipping, catching himself, counting in his head as the seconds ticked away. “… nine … eight …”
Overhead, almost as soft as an imagining under the howling of the wind, he heard it. He looked up, waving the knife in his hand as he ran.
Paul. The helicopter.
“… six… five …”
The helicopter was coming in, sweeping over the fenceline, slipping toward him. He had the knife sheathed.
“… four … three …”
John Rourke hunched his shoulders, ducking his head, throwing himself onto the port side float, shouting to Paul, hammering his fists against the fuselage. “Take her up! Take her up now!”
The helicopter lurched, lifted.
“… one-“
It came like the crackling of thunder, the vapors rising from the engines which would propel the missiles skyward forming a cloud around them, swirling cyclon-ically in the helicopter’s downdraft, a buzzer sounding, ringing, all around the aircraft, pulsing, and then the buzzer lost in the rumble and crackle, the ground on all four sides of the missile complex seeming to buckle, fire belching skyward, John Rourke turning his face away, the helicopter lurching, flames visible reflected off the chin bubble.
The winds tore at him, numbing him, the heat up-draft stifling him. Rourke held his breath and looked down.
Rippling outward from the missile complex in four directions the explosions came, the center of the small island seeming to collapse.
One of the missiles seemed to rise from its launching pad, then another.
John Rourke watched them, powerless.
The center of the compound seemed to drop, into the flames of the explosions, the missiles toppling one by one, the flames ricking upward toward the gunship, Rourke’s numbed hands clawed into the helicopters floats.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Annie tied her robe as she walked into the room.
Otto Hammerschmidt, looking as if he were about to keel over from pain or exhaustion, sat on a plastic chair near the foot of the bed.
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Natalia stood, on top of the bed, back to the wall, half kneeling in front of her, a black man of about Annie’s own age, terror in his eyes, hands outstretched before him, a webbed belt twisted around his head like a noose, its end held in Natalia’s upraised left hand, her right hand at his chin, ready to snap the neck.
Natalia’s hospital gown was half off her body, her left shoulder completely bare, the hem of the gown nearly up to her crotch.
There was a look in her bright blue eyes Annie had never seen there before. Panic.
“Natalia,” Annie almost whispered.
Otto Hammerschmidt looked up, turned around. “Frau Rubenstein!”
“Otto. It’ll be all right. How are you?”
“I am—I will be all right.” But he sounded as if he were about to pass out.
Annie focused on Natalia’s face. “Natalia. It’s me. Annie. And Otto’s here, too. That man. He wasn’t trying to
hurt you. He was trying to help you.”
“Don’t move!” And Natalia’s right hand flicked the orderly’s chin upward, the man’s eyes bulging under the strain, and the webbed belt went tighter.
Annie licked her lips. “Wait a minute, Natalia. You know me, don’t you? I mean, we’re friends. Good friends.”
Natalia said nothing.
Her hair needed combing. She wore no make-up. But she was still so very beautiful.
Annie kept talking as she took a step forward, only then realizing that somewhere along the way she’d lost the slipper from her right foot, the floor cold against her bare skin. The female voice of the recorded message droned on about evacuation. “If you kill this man, it would be a waste, Natalia.” She took another step. “He’s on our side. We’re here at Mid-Wake, together. You’ve been very sick. When you spoke to me,” and she took another step, “those were almost the first words you’ve said in a long time. Daddy’ll be so happy to—”
And Natalia’s eyes went wider than they were and her fingers tensed.