Ground Zero

  “Mine the thought which blows the Trumpet of Doom,” Lucy said around a mouthful of jerky. There was something there, something that felt like cold fingers pressing along the bottom of her spine.

  A cartoon police cruiser suddenly howled across her screen, tiny lights flashing, and skidded to a stop at the bottom of her screen.

  Denver Animal Shelter

  Fancy lay in her kennel with the sound of dogs howling all around her. She whined every once in a while, but she wasn't a howler. The kennel keeper, Debbie, was a stout young woman with short black hair. She fed Fancy and patted her on the head.

  “I'm sorry your owner had to move away, Fancy,” Debbie said as she hosed the kennel. “He was cute, wasn't he? What a pretty set of eyes, all that blue with those thick brown lashes.” She sighed, rubbed Fancy's ears, then moved to the next kennel.

  Later that day a puppy was adopted by a young boy. His parents stood and talked to Debbie.

  “Good choice, those pups are a good mix,” she said approvingly.

  “How big will he be as an adult?” the mother asked.

  “He's a blue heeler mix. No more than forty pounds or so.”

  At closing time, Debbie walked down the kennel corridor and took away a German shepherd. Her face was set and sad as she walked the dog towards the back of the kennel. When she returned, alone, she hosed out the empty kennel and hung the leash on a hook by the door. She moved two dogs from an overcrowded kennel into the empty space. She turned out the lights.

  Fancy stopped pacing. She laid down on the bare concrete and put her head on her paws. The silk of her fur was already getting matted and dull. Fancy, like Eileen, like Lucy, had only two more days to go.

  Oklahoma

  The Chinook developed engine trouble over Oklahoma. The pilots weren't happy about the performance of the new helicopter before they'd gone a hundred miles, but they weren't paid to be finicky. They had to have a reason to ground a helicopter that cost over a million dollars. To say “It just doesn't feel right” wouldn't do.

  But the engines didn't feel right. They responded sluggishly in the thick Alabama air, and the pilots knew how helicopters did in the thin air of Colorado. In a word, terrible. Stillwell, in the back, had a sickening headache from the ill-fitting flight helmet. It felt like a blunt drill was being ground slowly into his head. But taking off the helmet would be suicide to his eardrums. The noise of the twin rotor helicopter was unbearable. Stillwell hung miserably on, unaware of the pilot's increasing nervousness.

  Right around noon the oil pressure in the main engine sank. The pilot was paying very close attention to each gauge and dial in his complex aircraft. Things weren't right and he was expecting trouble.

  “Oil pressure!” he shouted over the comm. link. “Auto rotate!” He started the auto rotation process. The auto rotation of a helicopter consists of disengaging the rotor system from the rotor blades. The rotor blades can then spin free like the propellers of an aircraft. The free spinning blades should provide enough lift to set the helicopter down, although roughly, in one piece. Stillwell, hearing the shout over his flight helmet's headset, clutched his flight bag to his chest and closed his eyes. Brightly printed on his mind's eye was the sight of two dead pilots whose auto rotation system had failed. In that incident the controls of the aircraft were seized out of the pilot's hands as the rotor system locked up, ripped out of the bottom of the aircraft as the system disintegrated. There were blank looks of astonishment on the pilot's dead faces.

  This time the auto rotation didn't fail. The system disengaged and the ungainly Chinook dropped out of the sky and came to an abrupt, jarring landing in an Oklahoma field. Corn stocks rustled and crunched under the helicopter's landing skids. There was silence, and a series of rapid clicks as the pilots shut down their system.

  “She'll be good to go in a week, I'd say,” the pilot said cheerfully. “No systems are damaged.” The copilot nodded and clapped the pilot on the shoulder.

  “Damn nice landing, Richard,” she said. “You okay back there, Major?”

  Stillwell nodded, unable to speak. He still couldn't believe he was down safely.

  “You wouldn't happen to have any shorts in that bag, would you?” The pilot said, unhooking his helmet and placing it on the floor of the aircraft. He turned towards Stillwell and climbed into the seat next to his.

  “Let me take this off for you,” he said, and as he removed the helmet Stillwell could hear him again.

  “You have any shorts in that bag?” the pilot asked again, patiently.

  “Yes,” Stillwell whispered. His lips felt icy and numb. “Why?”

  “Because I pissed myself,” the pilot said.

  “I'll borrow some if you've got three pair,” The copilot said, removing her helmet and revealing a pug-like, cheerful face. “I knew I should have worn my diaper today.”

  Stillwell looked out the windshield of the helicopter, and all he could see was corn. He looked to the sides, and when the three of them got out of the helicopter he looked to the rear of their landing, and in all directions the only thing he could see was unending rows of fresh growing corn.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Turtkul, Turkmenistan

  Muallah felt a lift of his heart as well as his stomach as the Hind swooped over a low, scrub-covered hill. Beyond was a stretch of barbed wire dotted with weeds. Within the fencing the huge concrete covers to the missiles looked like unfinished building foundations. There was one small building at the center of the six concrete pads, a building with clean white curtains and flower boxes outside the windows. The windows were clean and the building was freshly whitewashed. It looked like a farmer’s cottage instead of a missile base command center.

  But of course, the command center would be underground. Muallah resisted an impulse to rub his aching forehead under the heavy Russian helmet. Flying in the Hind was exhausting. The noise was overwhelming, the seats were wretchedly uncomfortable, and the helmet was insufficient protection from the noise. He did not rub his forehead because he was Fouad Muallah, the Chosen One. His people needed to see his absolute confidence. And he was confident.

  Muallah leaned forward and gave a thumbs up to Assad. Ali, who was at the door of the Hind with his Uzi at the ready, nodded tensely as Muallah turned to him. He was ready. Rashad, at his left, was beaded with sweat and miserably pale. He’d been sick twice on the trip. Muallah nodded at him and he squared his shoulders.

  Below, Muallah could see two men leaving the house and running to the helicopter pad. They were pointing and shouting. Unbelievably, they appeared to be unarmed. Their uniforms were patched and well-worn, and one of the men had no hat.

  The situation was better than Muallah thought. These soldiers had made a home out of their missile silo. They were stranded by the decay of the Soviet machine, left behind as the old country was going through its difficult transformation. They probably had wives and children in the whitewashed cottage, vegetables planted around the missile silo caps. Muallah started to grin.

  This was going to be easy.

  Colorado Springs Investigations Bureau

  “I need to talk to Sharon Johnson again,” Eileen insisted to Rosen. The shooting range had been a fine distraction but the day was getting along. The usual afternoon thundershowers were moving down Pikes Peak. “Maybe she'll give me some ideas. Then I need to talk to Lowell. After that, I'm out of ideas.”

  “I've got a request in to Major Blaine for the contents of Terry’s desk,” Rosen said. “I'd like to look though what she had there.”

  “That's something,” Eileen said. “I'm going to make some phone calls.”

  She called Sharon Johnson and caught her just as she was leaving her house. Sharon was going to her Network class at the University. She agreed to meet Eileen after her class let out, at the Student Union. Eileen hung up the phone, glanced at her watch, and called Joe Tanner.

  “Think of anything?” Eileen asked.

  “Nothing so far,” Tanner said.
“How about dinner again? Nelson won’t let any of us go back to work and I’m driving myself crazy at home.”

  Eileen was astonished at the feeling of pleasure this gave her. It worried her.

  “Come on,” Tanner said soberly. “You can keep an eye on your suspect this way, can’t you?”

  “Six o’clock. I’ll pick you up,” Eileen said.

  “Done,” he said cheerfully, and hung up the phone with a crash. Eileen sat for a moment staring at her phone, then turned to see Rosen looking at her with his blank, impassive face. His Navaho face, she was beginning to think of it.

  “A personal call,” she said defensively. Rosen nodded without saying anything and turned back to his computer screen.

  Oklahoma

  “My goodness, look at you,” the woman cried, and started laughing. “You're all sunburn and mosquito bites. You from that crash? What was that thing, anyway?”

  “A Chinook helicopter, ma'am,” Richard, the pilot, said politely. “May we use your phone?”

  “Well we don't have a phone this week since that tornado took out the lines. My husband should be back tonight around six o'clock. I would have come out to get you but as you can see --” She gestured at her leg, encased in a bright blue cast. She was plain and brown haired and young, with a handsome smile.

  “But come in, come in,” she said, and gestured them into the house. “I'm forgetting my manners. I saw you out there coming so I've been cooking. I've got iced tea for you and there's some fresh chicken I've done up myself. Tornado broke my leg and killed some of those blasted chickens. Proves some good comes out of every bad.”

  “How about some Calamine lotion?” Stillwell said ruefully, scratching, and she laughed her pretty laugh again.

  “Plenty of that, too,” she said. “Come on in.”

  Turtkul, Turkmenistan

  Anna Kalinsk figured she might be a genius, although she could not be sure. She had finished only secondary school. College was a luxury beyond her family’s reach or influence. She regretted that. Anna felt she would have done very well in college. Concepts and ideas that others seemed to have trouble grasping came leaping to her, complete and whole. Math was a joy to her in school. Literature wasn’t much fun, since books were heavily censored. Now that the Soviet Union was Russia again, Anna had hopes that she might get her hands on some real books. Eventually.

  She read her husband’s missile command center handbook more or less out of boredom. Soon he was coming to her for advice, though he never saw it that way. She made sure he never saw it that way. A merely smart woman would have made Dmitri feel uncomfortable at her intelligence. Anna was not merely smart.

  Therefore it was Dmitri’s idea that the four wives move onto the base with their children. Dmitri divided up the underground into sleeping and living quarters, and put his wife in charge of turning the cottage into their communal living room and kitchen. Dmitri had a brilliant idea that they should grow a vegetable garden. Next year, Dmitri was going to have another great idea and build a barn. Then they were going to get some dairy cattle.

  As long as the Russian Republic remembered them with monthly paychecks, Anna was happy to baby-sit the old missile silo. She knew there was no radiation danger to the children -- not only had she read the missile command center book, but she had a Russian’s adeptness at reading between the lines. Only the open silos were dangerous. The little missile base was a fine place to raise her boys and grow her vegetables while the old Soviet Union slowly decayed. And, like her compost heap by her vegetable garden, she was sure the new Russian plant was going to be strong and fruitful.

  Right now, though, the Russian Army was in horrible disarray. Many soldiers found themselves with no skills and no jobs, in a country that had only the most rudimentary idea of capitalism. Anna did not want that fate for her Dmitri or her boys. The new Republic realized the importance of keeping control of the old missile silos until they could be safely dismantled. Thus Dmitri and his fellow officers received paychecks where thousands of soldiers did not. Anna was happy to live here in the middle of Turkmenistan, far from her Ukrainian home, as long as the money kept coming and they were left alone. Eventually the silo would be dismantled, but by then Anna was sure Mother Russia would be on her feet. Mother Russia, like Anna, was a survivor.

  Everything changed for her in a single instant. She’d been doing dishes when the helicopter arrived. She was standing at the door of the cottage, wiping suds from her arms with her apron, when the chatter of the Uzi blew Dmitri backwards. He had an expression of surprise and dismay on his dying face as he stumbled back from the open door of the helicopter.

  Anna felt her mouth open in a soundless cry of denial and grief. Dmitri was dead. Her husband, full of sternness and unexpected laughter, putting on weight as he aged and developing a touch of gray in his hair, was dead. Dmitri was dead. Anna looked at the Hind and saw the patches, the faded Red Star on the side. All this while Dmitri was still stumbling backward and the Uzi was aiming at Serenko. Anna saw the black hair and the dark complexions, and all computations came together in a flashing instant.

  “Downstairs!” she cried. Boris Berezovo ran to the doorway instead. Luckily the other women and the children were downstairs with their after-lunch stories. The little ones would be put down for naps and the older ones settled with books or quiet chores. Anna ran for the stairs and ignored the chatter of weapons fire that meant Boris had not listened to her and was now dead. She threw the bolt on the inside of the door and ran eight flights of stairs as though she were still a fleet footed girl. The door would hold them for a little while. It was steel, and the bolt was good. But it wouldn’t hold against a grenade. She heard the first bullet thumps booming down the stairs after her as she reached the bottom.

  The door at the bottom of the stairs was also merely steel. Anna threw this door too, and bolted it. Dmitri, Serenko, and Boris, all dead. She had to tell their wives. She had to make the younger Boris, whom they all called Boriska, understand. Somehow, she had to get everyone to a place the terrorists could not come. She knew where that place was.

  “Anna!” The frightened face of Ilina peered around the corner of the Children’s School, a long tube in the ground that had once held ordinance.

  Boriska came running from the command center. Today had been Boriska’s watch in the center. Anna felt a brief burst of hate for Boriska. Why couldn’t today have been Dmitri’s turn?

  “What is going on?” he shouted.

  “Listen to me,” Anna panted. “We don’t have much time. There are terrorists outside. They killed Dmitri and Boris and Serenko.” Ilina made a grotesque face, her mouth pulling down and her eyes squinting shut. Her hands went to her hair and tugged as though she were going to pull her hair out by the roots. But she made no sound. Anna looked away. She had no time for grief, either.

  Boriska went pale.

  “They want the missiles?” he choked.

  “I don’t care what they want,” Anna said. “We can get into silo number six, the empty one. We can bar it from the inside with a metal bar and they’ll never be able to spin the door lock. All the grenades in the world won’t break that door, either.”

  “I’ll get the children,” Ilina whispered.

  “We have maybe ten minutes,” Anna said, closing her eyes for an instant and visualizing bullets, grenade, careful negotiation of the eight flights of stairs, and another grenade or two. “Ten minutes.”

  “I will send out the warning,” Boriska said stiffly. “It is my duty.”

  “Come to your wife, Boriska,” Anna said. “Don’t be a hero.”

  “I will come if I can, Anna,” Boriska said. His face was ashen white but he was not trembling. “Take care of my babies.”

  “I will, Boris,” Anna said, and turned away. She did not look back.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Central Intelligence Agency, Langley Virginia

  “I’d like to speak to Lieutenant Jefferson, please,” Lucy said. Her finge
rs clenched the phone. Sweat beaded her hairline yet again.

  “He’s not at his desk right now. Would you like to leave a voice-mail?” the voice said cheerfully.

  “No, this is very important. Can you page the Lieutenant and tell him Lucy Giometti from the CIA would like to speak to him?”

  “Well, all right,” the voice said, not as cheerfully. “But you’ll have to wait.”

  “I’ll wait,” Lucy said. She massaged her temple with her finger, switched the phone, and massaged the other one. She’d never felt so angry in all her life. She was sure Mills was feeling just grand.

  Mills had refused to take her report to higher levels. It was too much of a leap, he said. The potential attack on a missile silo was not confirmed by any other source except an Iranian fuel clerk’s gossip, he said. The idea that Muallah was going to attack an American city using nuclear weapons because of a poem written in 922 was ridiculous, he said.

  Lucy had watched the smile bloom into a grin on Mills face as her frustration became apparent. Her logic was infallible. The report from Mashaad fit in perfectly with everything she’d learned. But Mills was not going to take her analysis and use it.

  Finally she realized why Steven Mills was grinning. He had her, finally, and he knew it. She could quit, she certainly could, at any time. Steven Mills had never been able to have power over her, the way he longed for power over his subordinates. Now Lucy had handed him a collar and leash. She desperately wanted to complete her case, and only Mills could do that for her. He finally had power over her, and he loved it.