by Paul Levine
-52-
Rotate and Hold
Water overflows the spillway and pours down the mountain. Captain Clancy stands on the dam’s observation deck, listening to gunfire from the missile facility below.
Caged.
Crazed.
Missing the fight, the kind of fight he lives for. And would die for.
He stalks back and forth, pounding his fist against the deck’s railing. Knowing his mood, Clancy’s men give him distance. Oblivious, Jack Jericho works his survival knife into the latch of a storage locker at one end of the deck. Clancy stomps toward him.
“You stupid son-of-a-bitch! You horse’s ass worthless scum-sucking, shit-eating son-of-a-bitch.”
Jericho ignores the captain and cracks open the locker.
Which only makes the captain angrier. “Didn’t you know that big cock is cold launched?”
“Yeah, I know. I run the generator that compresses the propulsion gases.”
“Then what did you think? That you could drown the missile?”
Jericho digs a coil of heavy rope and a tool belt out of the shed. He tosses a couple of screwdrivers out of the belt, leaves two wrenches and a gas-powered stud driver in, then fastens the belt around his waist. “I thought I could foul them up, make that lunatic think it was a Biblical flood, Noah or somebody. I don’t know, I just thought I should try to stop them.”
“You stopped us, you pathetic excuse for a soldier, you worthless piece of whale shit.”
“I need a gun.”
“What!”
“Or just some clips for the Uzi.”
“Are you out of the mind? You’re under arrest! You’ll be court-martialed.”
With the rope coiled around his shoulder, Jericho crawls over the deck railing onto the jagged rocks. A few feet away, a vicious torrent of water surges down the mountainside.
Clancy yells over the noise of the rushing water. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’ve got an appointment with my psychiatrist.”
“The hell you do!” Clancy menacingly gestures with his M-16. You think you can surf the mountain? If you didn’t drown, you’d find a way to fuck up the rest of the operation. You’re staying put, sergeant.”
Jericho takes a first step on the rocks, then drops to all fours. He reaches out toward a fallen tree trunk as thick as a man’s waist. “Can’t do that, sir.”
“What!”
“I promised.”
“Yeah, well here’s another promise. You take one more step, I’ll shoot you. I’ll blow your kneecaps off.”
“That’s pretty much what he said,” Jericho says.
“Who?”
“His name was Matthew. Everybody wants to kill me. You, him, Brother David, and all of you seem to prefer the most painful method possible. I guess I bring out the worst in people.”
Clancy is livid. He wants to shoot somebody, and if it can’t be the terrorists, it might as well be Jack Jericho, who deserves it just as much. Maybe he is a terrorist. Maybe he’s one of the crazies, and this was just a cover. The Indian could have been wrong about his old fishing buddy. Clancy clicks off the safety on the rifle. “I’m ordering you to stand down, sergeant. Disregard the order at your own peril.”
Jericho has his hands on the tree trunk and is tying the rope around a gnarled branch. “I’ve followed orders before, captain. I’ve done the right thing, and the safe thing, and it didn’t work out. I’m through following orders. I’m doing what I think is right. You do what you have to do.” Jericho leans down over the tree trunk and ties an end of the rope around his waist.
“Halt!” The rifle is at Clancy’s shoulder, and he squeezes his left eye shut. “Last warning. Halt!”
Clancy knows his men are watching him. He’s never backed down from anyone. He also has never shot an American before, not even a worthless airman.
Jericho shoves the heavy trunk toward the rushing water. It catches on a rock.
Clancy has a clear shot at the back of Jericho’s skull. He drops the rifle lower until he can put a bullet through the meaty part of Jericho’s hamstrings. Cripple but not kill.
Jericho braces his legs and pushes against the trunk, clearing the rock.
Clancy tightens his finger on the trigger. Then eases off.
The tree trunk slips over the side of the rocks, and Jericho with it. In a second, they are swallowed by the raging torrent.
Clancy lets the rifle fall to his side. “Go get ‘em, Noah,” he says with resignation.
* * *
David and Rachel sit in the flight chairs. James stands behind them, excitedly pacing. Susan, her hands cuffed behind her, nervously watches from her position on the floor.
“Time and target complete,” David says.
“I have good lights,” Rachel responds.
The console printer unleashes a blizzard of paper as the launch commands are confirmed and recorded on printouts.
“Lock your board,” David says.
Rachel hits a switch. “Board locked.”
David pushes down the Enable switch. “Insert your key,” he orders.
Simultaneously, David and Rachel slide their keys into the slots twelve feet apart on the console.
“Key inserted,” Rachel says.
David scans a security monitor showing his men falling back toward the elevator shaft as the Army troops advance. Calmly, he says, “Key turn clockwise…on my mark.”
From behind them, James watches the console as if hypnotized. He does not see Susan roll to her feet, drop into a crouch, then bring her arms underneath her, stepping through her clasped hands. She is still handcuffed, but now, her arms are in front of her chest.
David counts slowly, “Three two, one…”
Suddenly, Susan dives forward, loops her cuffed hands around Rachel’s neck. Rachel’s right hand reflexively releases the key and claws at Susan’s arms. Susan roughly pulls Rachel sideways out of her chair.
“Rotate and hold,” David says, as if nothing has happened. “James, take over the deputy’s chair and be kind enough to rotate and hold.”
James reaches for the key, but Susan kicks him in the groin, doubling him over. Rachel is on the floor, holding her neck, gasping. The key remains in the slot, unturned.
“Susan, please turn the key,” David says. “And hold on my count.” His voice is confident, the voice of a man whose orders are obeyed without question.
She stops, thunderstruck at his words. “What!”
“End your pain. End your anger. It can all be over. Let us welcome the Apocalypse together.”
James gets to one knee and is ready to tackle Susan. “No!” David commands. “She is one of us. Only now does she realize it. My will has triumphed over her secular pseudo science.”
Susan looks deeply into David’s penetrating stare. She reaches for the key, her hand resting on it without moving. Their eyes are locked on each other for a long moment.
“Rotate key on my command,” he says softly.
She breaks his hypnotic gaze. “Like hell!” She yanks the key from the slot and dashes toward the open blast door. David scowls and hits a red button. The door begins to slowly close. Susan sees it, thinks she can make it.
Rachel gets to her feet, grabs for Susan but misses her. James comes from behind and dives at Susan, taking her down at the ankles, a desperate cornerback tripping up the receiver who has broken free. As she falls, Susan whips her cuffed hands forward. The key sails out the narrowing opening of the door and skitters across the concrete floor of the tunnel, sliding …sliding…sliding until it comes to rest at the edge of a metal grate where it balances for a precious second, then plops into the black water of the sump.
David glares at James. “Get it! Now!”
Her face flushed, Rachel stomps toward David. “And you thought she was under your spell,” she says, bitterly. “Vanity of vanities. Even with you, David, all is vanity.”
-53-
Fire in the Hole
The Army troops work their way across the grounds. In minutes, they have taken the security building. No commandos surrender; no one survives.
The troops head across the bridge toward the elevator housing where the himself Ezekiel and four of his comrades have retreated. One-by-one, the commandos fall under the ferocious attack. Propping up a bulky M-60 machine gun, Ezekiel stands with his back to the elevator housing door, spraying lethal 7.62 mm. shells across the bridge. He cuts down half-a-dozen soldiers and pins down the rest.
* * *
Driven by the fierce current, a tree trunk rushes down the flooded river bed toward the open missile silo, bouncing over rapids and banging into boulders. The trunk spins in the water, collides with more flotsam, then turns over, exposing a man’s hand.
Then an arm.
Then a head.
Jack Jericho appears lifeless as the heavy tree trunk continues to twirl, helpless against the forces of nature unleashed. Finally, it comes to rest against a wedge of concrete, a six-feet thick chunk of the silo cap which was blown off during the first countdown. Jericho stirs from semi-consciousness, opens his eyes, coughs and sputters, then returns a few jiggers of muddy water to the river. He unties the rope that binds him to the trunk, coils it over a shoulder, climbs over the concrete slab, and splashes into the water. Still wearing the tool belt, he paddles along. Battered and bruised from the ride down the mountain, he half swims, half body surfs in the current. In a few moments, he is at the edge of the open silo. A lip five feet high has kept the first surge of water out, but now, the swelling river laps over the top and pours down the walls.
Slivers of light appear on the horizon as the sun peeks over the mountains to the east. In a moment, the dark water takes on a pink glow. Jericho rigs his rope around a metal stanchion barely visible under the rising water and climbs over the lip and into the silo. As the water cascades over him, he lowers himself into the opening. Looking down, he sees the nose cone of the Peacekeeper directly below him. He remembers dangling from a line, much like this, scrubbing the walls of the silo. He remembers many other things, too, the beauty of a fall day in the mountains, the fallen leaves crunching underfoot, his mother’s sour apple pie, a white-tailed buck drinking from a cool stream. He remembers his father and brother and their endless card games on the front porch. And now, with his butt hanging over the nose cone that contains ten nuclear warheads, he says a brief prayer aloud, “Lord, I’ve always believed in you, though sometimes, it may seem like I forgot. I’ve believed you made the mountains and the rivers and the yellow tulips in the Spring. I know you’ve got a lot to worry about, but if it isn’t too much trouble, I’d surely appreciate it if you didn’t let them launch that missile just now.”
* * *
In the launch control capsule, David watches the security monitors. One camera at the elevator housing catches Ezekiel’s heroics, holding off the first of the forces of Satan. David knows he has little time. The troops will be down the elevator shaft in minutes. There are still commandos in the tunnel and outside the capsule. He yells into a mike. “Everyone with a weapon to the elevator shaft!”
His men tromp from the silo through the underground tunnel and take up positions on the catwalk outside the elevator door. The first of the Special Forces will be cut down when they emerge from the elevator. There will be more, though, David knows. Too many. On another security monitor, he sees a waterfall surging into the silo. He hits a button and speaks again into the mike, “Make haste, James.”
In the drainage sump just outside the capsule, James shines a flashlight into the water. He speaks into his headset, “The Bible advises us to ‘run with patience the race before us.’”
“Screw the Bible! Find the key!”
There is nothing David can do. He looks at the key still in his slot, then shoots a look at the deputy’s slot, as if miraculously the other key might appear there. No miracles today. Frustrated and angry, he gets out of the flight chair, turns around and approaches Susan. Rachel watches over her with a rifle. David leans down and grabs Susan’s cheek, pinching her jaw muscles hard. “And you, Dr. Burns, are the biggest fool of all. Bigger even than the sergeant who cares so much for you.”
He releases his grip and she just stares at him defiantly, not saying a word.
“Thou could have shared my throne,” he says to her.
Glaring back. Unafraid. “I wouldn’t even drinketh from the same cup.”
* * *
Ezekiel’s —60 jams, just for a moment. Which is long enough.
The troops pour onto the security bridge, firing M-16’s from their hips. Ezekiel is struck more than thirty times in the chest, a cluster of wounds opening a gaping hole the size of a basketball. Another burst of direct hits to the head and neck nearly decapitate him. His body does a macabre dance backward into the elevator door, a red smear left behind as he crumples to the metal floor.
The troops rush across the bridge, and a mustachioed lieutenant wearing a sidearm and carrying a briefcase approaches the keyboard at the elevator housing. He pulls a card from the briefcase, studies it a moment, then enters the PAL code. The heavy door slowly opens, and the lieutenant jams a detonator into a wad of Semtex, tosses it into the empty elevator, hits the down button and steps back. “Fire in the hole!” he yells at his men.
As the soldiers back away from the opening, sporadic gunfire comes from the surrounding woods, the remaining commandos gamely fighting on. The Army, though, now controls the bridge, the security building, the barracks, and the elevator housing.
In the capsule, David watches a monitor as a mechanical voice intones, “Elevator Access Granted.” David yells into a mike: “They’re coming! Send them straight to hell!”
At the foot of the elevator shaft, Gabriel commands half a dozen commandos. They know their friends above ground have been annihilated. They know they will die, too. First, though, they will dispense punishment to the minions of Satan’s army. “Hold your fire until my order!” Gabriel commands, listening to the elevator descend.
The elevator clunks to a stop, and the door slowly opens. Gabriel’s men obey, peering suspiciously into the compartment which appears empty…until Gabriel sees something on the floor. The Semtex.
Oh shit.
Oh holy shit.
The sound of the explosion is magnified by the close quarters, and the reverberations from the rocky cavern produce an ear-shattering, disorienting echo. Blood streams from both of Gabriel’s ears, and a soaring cloud of dust fills his nostrils. His men stagger backward into the twisted railing of the catwalk. Knowing they cannot hear him, Gabriel simply motions for them to get into kneeling position, rifles pointed at the gaping opening of what had been the elevator car.
At the top of the elevator shaft, the soldiers push a prisoner to the lieutenant. The commando, wearing a black hood, stumbles and is held up by a sergeant who is bleeding from a bayonet wound to the shoulder. “He’s the only one who surrendered, sir,” the sergeant says.
“What’s your name, jerkoff?” the lieutenant says, yanking off the black hood.
“Danny Price, but they call me Daniel.” It is the pudgy, peach fuzzy commando who let Jericho escape.
“How would you like to help your Uncle Sam, Danny boy?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Yeah, you can help dead or help alive.” The lieutenant nods, and his men begin stripping off Daniel’s camouflage garb. Quickly, they re-dress him in Army Ranger combat fatigues. “Do you know the Rangers’ creed, Danny boy?”
A nervous shake of the head, no.
“‘Never shall I fail my comrades.’”
“You’re a Ranger now, Danny. And I’m sure you won’t let us down.” They slip him into a metal harness, thread a black rope through the a metal clip and gag him. “Of course, we’re going to let you down.” The lieutenant nods, and two soldiers push Daniel into the shaft. The soldiers let out the rope, and Daniel disappears into the darkness below.
“Let’s see if this baby�
��s still hot,” the lieutenant says.
The descent takes only thirty seconds, the soldiers not particularly concerned about their bait bouncing off the walls or being cut up as he’s lowered through the blown roof of the elevator. A moment later, Daniel is dangling in the opening of what had been the elevator door.
Gunfire from Gabriel’s men virtually cuts him in two.
At the top of the shaft, the lieutenant grimaces. “Yep, the baby’s still hot.” He speaks into a radio transmitter. “This is Beta. Come in Alpha. We got a problem here.”
BOOK SEVEN
END GAME
-54-
Die a Hero
Jack Jericho is drenched.
And exhausted.
And bloodied from bouncing off rocks and trees on the way down what used to be – and once again is – Chugwater River.
Rappelling down the silo wall, the adrenaline ebbs, and he feels his arms give out. He hangs there a moment, then kicks off the wall, letting yards of rope escape. Without gloves and a harness, the rope burns a trail around his waist and tears skin from the palms of his hands. He swings lower, strikes the wall with his boots and kicks off again, teetering into space.
Clang, he bangs into the missile, rebounds like a pinball back into the silo wall and off again. This time he desperately reaches out and grabs the nose cone. Hugging the missile. Struggling to hang onto the top of the titanium shroud with one hand, he uses the other to dip into his tool belt where he comes out with one of the wrenches. Too big. He tries the second wrench, adjusts it, and goes to work.
A moment later, in the launch control capsule, David is looking at a monitor showing water pouring into the silo. He hits a button, and a different camera shows the missile. The shot pans from the floor of the silo, where the water is now three feet deep, up to the burners, suspended another seven feet higher. The camera moves higher, showing the shaft of the missile to the fourth stage where David sees a sight that freezes him.