by Paul Levine
“Who’s there?” A commando’s voice, perhaps 10 meters away. The man is obscured by the heavy underbrush.
The boar gets a whiff of Jericho’s filthy pants, seems to like the rank odor, and begins licking. “Good, eh boy?” Jericho whispers. “Bacon grease, probably one of your cousins.”
The boar slowly moves up Jericho’s body, its mouth drooling, its tusks jabbing him. Finally, the boar begins licking Jericho’s face.
“Identify yourself!” the commando demands, his voice louder. “I hear you in there.”
Jericho listens to the sound of a magazine being clicked into place, the commando nervously checking and re-checking his rifle.
The boar lets out a grunt, then trundles off in the direction of the voice. It sniffs the air, getting the man’s scent. Jericho reaches into his rucksack and pulls out one of the bungee cords. Making a loop out of a small piece of the cord, he fashions a homemade slingshot. He picks up a small round stone and wedges it into the loop. “Sorry, boy,” he says, and lets fly.
Thwap! He nails the boar in the ass.
It emits a beastly roar and charges toward the commando.
“Last chance!” the commando yells. “Come out with your hands up.” He storms through the bushes toward Jericho. The boar bursts out of the bushes in an explosion of tusks and teeth and barrels into the man, eviscerating him with its razor-sharp tusks. The man’s shrieks cut through the woods.
Jericho gets to his feet and takes off across the dry river bed. In a few moments, he is trudging up a trail above the missile base toward Chugwater Dam. The sun has set, and the base is lit by sweeping searchlights from the Army’s base camp, plus the work lights at the ever-expanding front line of tanks, trucks and other military vehicles. He pauses, realizes how hungry and thirsty he is. The bologna sandwiches are gone from his pockets.
He knows that a river used to flow down the mountain, but the Army Corps of Engineers took care of that with Chugwater Dam. Now, the mountainside is inhospitable, unless you’re good at foraging. Jericho quickly locates some thistle plants, peels off the thorns and chews on the tender stems. It’s a watery snack he called “survival celery” back in West Virginia. He peels another and hands it to Ike, who stays at his feet. Ike chews the stem, keeping his eyes on Jericho.
After a moment, he continues up the trail in the dim light. Along the path are fir and birch trees. He finds a wild blackberry bush just off the trail and pauses to pick a handful. Sour but not bad. A few more paces, and Jericho comes across the fern called fiddleheads. Pulling out some young ones, he chews the leathery fronds that taste a bit like raw asparagus.
Looking up the mountainside, Jericho sees the night lights at the Chugwater Dam control building. He pulls out the cellular phone he had found in the security officer’s office.
* * *
The command tent at Base Camp Alpha is jammed with maps, charts and communications gear. Outside, the sound of heavy vehicles has faded, and the shouts of soldiers have quieted. It is dusk, and the Army is in place. Puffing a pipe, Colonel Henry Zwick fills the tent with cherry blend smoke, a trick the Armored Cavalry officer discovered years earlier to avoid the stench of diesel fuel, metallic lubricants, and too many men with too few showers. The colonel stands inside a semi-circle of Special Forces officers, using a wooden pointer to highlight sections of a scale model of the missile base.
“In conclusion, gentlemen,” the colonel says, “if every last one of you does exactly as ordered, and if every one of your men performs exactly as they’ve been trained, maybe – just maybe – we can end this without a nuclear catastrophe or the loss of the hostages.”
There is some mumbling among the officers, interrupted when an aide signals the colonel to pick up a red telephone. Zwick punches a button, activating the speaker and a tape recorder. After listening a moment, the colonel says, “What’s your name again, son?”
“Jack Jericho, United States Air Force, E-5.” For once, Jericho sounds like an airman. In the tent, the officers stop talking among themselves and listen. The voice is distant, and there is a sound of rushing water.
Colonel Zwick fiddles with his handlebar mustache. “You in the latrine, sergeant?”
Jack Jericho sits on a steel catwalk above a spillway at Chugwater Dam. Twenty feet below, water tumbles into an aqueduct which runs from the dam down the mountain and around the missile base. From his perch, Jericho can see the lights from the open missile silo. Every few seconds, searchlights sweep over the missile base from the Army base camp nearby.
“I’m on the dam, sir, above the aqueduct,” Jericho says. “I’ve got a cellular phone.” The Green Beret officers exchange looks. Base Camp Alpha is equipped with five military radio systems: UHF secure, HF secure, FM secure, SATCOM and VHF, and this dipshit is calling on a cellular, like some orthodontist in his BMW. A goofball kid with a scanner could pick up the call.
The colonel gestures to the miniature dam on top the scale-model mountain, then drags the pointer down the slope toward the missile silo. “How’d you get up there? Were you in the silo?”
Jericho hesitates. A faint notion of guilt clings to him, as if the colonel asked why he hadn’t died fighting the terrorists. “Yes, sir.”
At that moment, in the security building of the 318th Missile squadron, a commando wearing earphones sits with his hand on the dial of a radio frequency scanner. He listens to the scratchy voice of Jack Jericho. “I was there. I met the enemy, sir, and he ain’t us.”
“Sounds like you’re going to be of considerable help to your Uncle Sam, airman. We need you to brief us on Morning Star.”
“Sir, I know that hole better than anybody,” Jericho blurts out. “Every nook and cranny. I can help your men launch an assault. I’d like to go with the first wave.”
In the command tent, Colonel Zwick puffs at his pipe. Behind him, an Army Ranger captain whispers, “The first wave. Thinks he’s at Omaha Beach.”
“You’re not Air Force Special Ops, are you son?” Colonel Zwick asks.
“No, sir.”
“Have you ever seen death up close?”
Jericho’s eyes flicker, but he doesn’t answer. It is a question that defies an answer.
“Son, what is it you do for the 318th?”
“Maintenance, sir. I clean the sump, maintain the perimeter fence and keep the launch generator running.”
In the command tent, some of the officers – Delta Force, Rangers, and Night Stalkers – exchange crooked grins.
“That’s an important job, and I’ve got another important job for you,” the colonel says. “I want you to brief us on everything you saw and heard down there. I’ve got diagrams of the tunnel and the sump, but diagrams only get you so far. I want you to look my officers in the eye and tell ‘em what the hell’s going on down there. Then you’ll get out of the way, and we’ll do whatever we’re ordered to do.”
“Sir, I don’t think there’s time for all that. There are innocent hostages down there. There’s a woman they’re torturing. They’re trying to launch the missile, and maybe they can do it and maybe they—”
“Son,” the colonel interrupts. “If it were up to me, we’d have been down that hole faster than shit through a goose, but I follow orders. You get my drift?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Because I’m ordering you to get the hell off that mountain and make your way to the base camp. You’ll do us no good if you get killed. I’ll alert our perimeter. Give me your E.T.A.”
“It’s going to be a while, sir.”
“What does that mean, Sergeant?” The colonel has abandoned his avuncular tone. Now, it’s all business.
“I have a detour to make.”
“Sergeant! I want you off that mountain. I want you off the missile base. Do you read me?”
“Five by five, sir.”
“Good. Now, get over here where you’ll be of some use.”
“I’m afraid not, sir.”
“What!”
“I’ve got to go back
into the silo.”
“Sergeant!”
“I promised someone,” Jack Jericho says. “One of the hostages.”
Jericho stares across the pouring water of the spillway, pondering what he has just done. Refused a direct order, for one thing. The only comforting thought is that he can’t be court-martialed if he’s killed by Brother David’s maniacs. For a moment, he listens to the colonel yammering at him, then looks down at his filthy t-shirt and brushes at a pink spot, absent-mindedly trying to wipe it off.
The spot moves.
Jericho brushes at it again.
It moves again, centering on his sternum.
Jericho looks up. At the end of the catwalk, a commando aims a laser-sighted Mauser 66 at him. Ping! A bullet ricochets off the steel railing. The phone is still locked in Jericho’s grip. He can hear the colonel screaming, “Sergeant! You’ll be court-martialed.”
Jericho tucks and rolls across the catwalk. Ping! Ping! Two more misses. Jericho scrambles to his feet and begins running to the far side of the catwalk, zig-zagging away from the rifleman.
“I’ll lock the cell at Leavenworth myself!” comes the colonel’s muffled voice.
Jericho stops short. A second commando lies in the prone shooting position on this end of the catwalk, too. A shot misses. Then another. Jericho jams the phone into his rucksack and vaults over the railing. Kicking at the air, he tumbles into the spillway twenty feet below where he sinks into the cascading water. The force carries him under, smashes him against the bottom of the concrete spillway, then carries him to the surface and into the narrow aqueduct that curls down the slope. He sucks in a greedy breath of air and is swept under again. In seconds, he has traveled hundreds of feet down the aqueduct, and he can no longer hear the gunshots.
-42-
Let It Blow
Reams of paper spill out of the console computer in the launch control capsule. Eyes bleary, James works at the keyboard, occasionally lifting the pages to examine the scrolling numbers.
“Can you get the code or not?” David asks, his tone querulous.
“I th-ink I can, Bro-ther Davy,” James says, playing dumb, dragging out the words, having some fun.
“What’s taking so long?”
James takes off his glasses, rubs his eyes, then turns toward David. “It doesn’t help if you keep pestering me every fifteen minutes. Aren’t you supposed to have the patience of Job?”
“Right now, I have the wrath of Zeus!”
James turns back to his work. “Pagan. I knew it would come to this.”
David slides his flight chair down the railing. He knows when it’s best to let James alone. Behind him, Rachel keeps a watch over Susan, whose hands are cuffed behind her. Owens, also cuffed, sleeps on the floor, his head slumped against the capsule wall. “Let’s play, ‘Imagine,’” David says to Susan.
She looks at him through sullen eyes. “I’m tired of your games.”
“No, no, no. You must play with me. What do you imagine they’re doing at STRATCOM right now? And at Cheyenne Mountain and at the Military Command Center?”
“They’re talking about you,” Susan says. “You’re the center of attention. Does that make you happy?”
“Of course. But what are they saying? What are they doing?”
“Deciding how to kill you without killing us. Figuring out if you can launch the missile or detonate it if you can’t launch.” Her tone takes on an angry edge. “Trying to figure what makes a schizo like you tick.”
“Changing your diagnosis, eh doctor?”
“No. Just adding paranoid schizophrenia with delusions of grandeur.”
That brings a smile of mock disbelief. “Paranoid? My dear, doctor, as you have just acknowledged, the entire United States military is trying to kill me.”
* * *
Naked, soaking wet and shivering, Jack Jericho peers out of the underbrush near a concrete pillar of the aqueduct. The temperature has plunged as the sun settles below Rattlesnake Hills to the west. Over his head, water roars down the elevated aqueduct and around the missile facility.
“Guess I needed a bath, anyway,” Jack Jericho says to himself. Except for the survival knife strapped to his ankle, he could be Adam in the Garden of Eden. He wrings out his clothes and tests the cellular phone. The little green light clicks on, but he doesn’t feel like talking to Colonel Zwick and having his prison sentence increased.
Jericho hears a rustling in the underbrush, turns and looks straight into a glaring flashlight.
The man’s voice is urgent, perhaps a little afraid. “Who are you? Identify yourself.”
Jericho shields his eyes and sees a commando holding a flashlight in one hand, an Uzi in the other. The flashlight is pointed at Jericho’s face, the Uzi at his gut. “They call me Brother John,” he calmly tells the man.
The flashlight works its way down Jericho’s body. “You’re out of uniform,” the commando says.
“Occupational hazard, but I’m clad in God’s own garment.”
The commando regards him suspiciously. “I don’t recognize you, Brother John.”
“I am a recent convert, but I believe I have seen you at evening vespers.” Holding his breath, hoping to hell there are evening vespers.
The commando moves closer, studying Jericho. “Then you should have no trouble telling me the hidden meaning of the sixth seal of Revelations.”
“The sixth seal,” Jericho repeats, nodding appreciatively. Buying time now. “One of my favorite passages.”
“Mine, too.”
“Do you know it by heart?” Jericho asks.
“Who does not?”
“Indeed,” Jericho says.
“‘I watched as he broke the sixth seal,’” the commando recites with appropriate fervor. “‘The sun turned black as a funeral pall and the moon all red as blood, and the stars fell to earth, like figs shaken down by a gale. The sky vanished and every mountain and island was moved from its place.’”
“Sounds like a hell of a storm.”
“Do you joke about such things?” The commando moves even closer.
“No, I just thought the meaning was obvious.”
“Of course. But the hidden meaning. What does Brother David teach us?”
“Oh, that,” Jericho says. Their faces are just inches apart. “That’s easy. Do unto others…”
Jericho viciously head-butts the commando, breaking the man’s nose with an explosion of cartilage and blood. “Before they do unto you!”
The man falls backward and writhes on the ground, spitting foamy blood. Jericho picks up the Uzi and points it at him. “I want your clothes. We’ll finish the Sunday school class later.”
“My clothes?” the man says, the words barely audible. Disoriented from the pain, confused by the demand. “Do you wish to join us?”
“No, I want to join the circus. Now, c’mon. Give me your clothes.”
The commando strips out of his fatigues, and Jericho tears his own wet clothing into strips that he uses to gag the man, then ties him to a tree with another of Sayers’ bungee cords. Newly dressed, with the Uzi in hand, Jericho picks up his rucksack and heads through the dry river bed toward the exhaust tube. Peering through the underbrush, he sees a commando sentry standing at the outlet pipe. So they found it. Too late to trap him inside, but just in time to keep him out. Fifty yards away, three sentries patrol the circumference of the open missile silo.
“They don’t want me around for the party,” Jericho says to himself. He sits back on his haunches and thinks.
What would Special Forces do?
Call in an air strike.
But what can I do?
Diversion.
He grabs the cellular phone and calls a number he knows by heart.
* * *
General Corrigan, his cheeks flushed, is on the phone with Colonel Zwick. “A sergeant?”
“An E-5,” Colonel Zwick says from the command tent at the base camp. “He’s the maintenance man for the laun
ch generator.”
“What the hell can he do?”
“Nothing but get in the way,” the colonel tells him. “Special Ops is ready, sir, and awaiting your orders.”
“Thank you, Henry. You sit tight for now.” The general clicks off the phone and turns to his staff. “There’s one airman still roaming around the missile base, and naturally, it’s some swab jockey, second class.”
Professor Morton sits off to one side in his wheelchair. “Wasn’t it Clemenceau who said that war was too important to be left to the generals?”
“It was, Lionel, but do you think he wanted it left to the janitor?”
“Oh, I’m sure he can’t muck it up any worse than Special Ops.”
“Enough!” Corrigan says. He wags a finger in Professor Morton’s face. “Lionel, what the hell was that disk doing in your house?”
“I designed it,” the professor says, petulantly, turning his wheelchair away. “It’s mine.”
“Yours! ICBM Enable Codes and P.L.C.’s are yours? They’re U.S. government property. They’re classified! They’re Top Secret! What the hell’s wrong with you, Lionel?”
“I like to have my work close at hand.”
That brings a snort of disbelief from Colonel Farris, who has been observing from the circle of military brass surrounding the two men. “Did Eisenhower leave the plans for D-Day laying around the house?” he asks. “Did Westmoreland misplace maps of Cambodian air raids at the convenience store? Did Meade discuss plans for Gettysburg at the saloon?”
“There were no plans for Gettysburg, you ninny,” Morton responds. “Gettysburg was an accident of history, a mistake, like your commission.” He turns to General Corrigan. “Hugh, why do you surround yourself with these imbeciles?”
“Don’t change the subject,” the general says. “You’re a goddam security risk.”
“But you keep calling me back to upgrade your toys, don’t you?”
The general sighs. What’s done is done. “Is there any chance that lunatic son of yours can get the Secondary Launch Code?”