Red Horseman

by Stephen Coonts

  He had given the other pilot explicit orders: if we don’t come back after six hours, you are to return to Moscow.

  The hour-and-forty-five-minute flight from Moscow had put a sufficient charge on the helicopter’s batteries that Goober got a start without using the external power cart. They had wrestled one of the carts into the passenger bay and Spiro Dalworth was outside standing beside the other, just in case.

  Jake strapped himself into the crewman’s seat by the rear door. He surveyed the compartment. Some of the other people had strapped in, some hadn’t. Yocke was playing with his buckle, toying with the adjustment catch. Perhaps each of them in his own way was pondering his karma.

  Jake looked forward and saw Toad looking back at him. He gave Tarkington a thumbs up.

  When the engine RPM had stabilized, Goober lifted the tail and the machine left the ground.

  All that remained of the Serdobsk fast breeder reactor was rubble arranged around a shallow hole in the ground. From a hover two hundred feet above the plant it was obvious that no one had survived the blast. Jake Grafton lay on his belly with his helmeted head poking out the open helicopter door. Seventy-five feet below him the radioactivity sensor was inscribing little circles in the air. Beside him people were taking turns snapping cameras.

  Jake felt a hand pulling him. It was Collins. They put their helmets together and Collins shouted, “We can’t stay here more than a couple minutes. It’s hotter than holy hell down there.”

  “What’s that stuff over there?” Jake pointed to the wreckage of a building several hundred yards away from where the reactor had stood. Numerous drums were visible amid the concrete rubble, some of them split open. The contents looked dark, almost black.

  “Plutonium. They probably had tons of the shit stored there.”

  “The containers have ruptured.”

  “Yeah, and the stuff is going to get blown away on the wind or washed into the creeks and rivers or soaked into the soil. Come on, Admiral, let’s get the hell outta here.”

  Jake went forward to the cockpit and tapped Goober on the shoulder. The pilot eased the stick forward and the helicopter left the hover.

  “Circle over that KGB troop facility.”

  Groelke did so. One of the buildings had burned and several bodies were visible, but nothing moved. Nothing.

  The helicopter flew in a gentle circle until it was pointed southeast toward Petrovsk. Goober Groelke climbed to several thousand feet to minimize their radioactivity exposure.

  Now the noise of the engines became mesmerizing, Jack Yocke thought. One listened carefully, anxious not to hear any change, any burble or hiccup or unexplained sound. With your life depending on the continued smooth running of these two engines, the sound captures your attention and holds you spellbound. The ruins of the reactor had been horrifying, but the sound of these engines was the promise of continuing life, a drug more powerful than anything a doctor could prescribe.

  Yocke tried to put his emotions into words, tried to string the words together as he sat with closed eyes and concentrated on that perfect humming.

  On the floor of the passenger compartment Tom Collins fiddled with his equipment and made notes of radioactivity readings from which he could extrapolate estimates of the levels present on the surface. Jake Grafton watched him. At times Collins shook his head. Finally he folded up the notebook and sat hunched, staring at the needles on the dials in front of him.

  The helicopter flew over a village, then a small town, then farther along another village. Cattle lay dead in the fields. Not a sign of life below, not even buzzards. They were dead too.

  All those people went to bed one evening and at dawn, or just after, the radioactive fallout arrived, an invisible rain that fell without noise, without beauty, without warning, and brought quick, gentle death. Most of the victims probably died in their sleep.

  Is that the fate of civilization? Is that the end that awaits our species? No bang, no warning, just death for every last man, woman and child as they lay sleeping on the dawn of the last day?

  Jake Grafton felt his eyes tearing over and blinked repeatedly.

  Collins had given up on the instruments and was standing beside Grafton looking aft, out the open door, when they saw the river, the Volga, broad and deep, the water reflecting the blue of the sky and the white of the clouds.

  “Let’s go down and hover just above the surface.”

  Goober turned the machine and went back. After twenty seconds of hovering, Collins signaled to fly on. Toad saw him and waved his hand at Groelke.

  Jake bent down to where Collins was making notes. He was not writing down radiation levels, but a sentence: “The Volga is now a river of radiation carrying poison to the sea.”

  They circled the Petrovsk Rocket Base while Collins took more readings. Jake looked out the window. The barracks and offices and hangars were all intact, but nothing moved. From this altitude the scene reminded Jake of a model railroad setup, complete with cars, trucks and several airplanes parked on the mat just off the runway, and a locomotive and flatcars near the biggest hangar.

  But his attention was captured by the empty transporters parked on the mat. There were three of them, green tractors with green flat trailers hooked behind them, all empty.

  Jocko West and the two European officers stood in the door looking at the transports, then Rheinhart began snapping pictures.

  “I think we can land, Admiral,” Collins shouted.

  “How long?”

  “As little time on the ground as possible.”

  “How hot is it?”

  “Unprotected, you’d be fatally ill in a half hour. Maybe less.”

  Groelke put the chopper near the main hangar and killed the engines to save fuel. Breathing pure oxygen, the people got out of the machine carefully, gingerly, conscious of anything that might rip or damage their antiradiation suit.

  “Goober, stay with the machine. Toad, stay with him.”

  Jake Grafton led the little party toward the open hangar door.

  The giant missiles riding on their transporters were stark, functional sculptures with the red star prominent upon their flanks.

  There was open space near the door, apparently enough for the three transporters that sat a quarter-mile away across the concrete. Impressive as the missiles were, the little group was soon standing gazing at medium-size wood crates arranged on pallets.

  One of the boxes had been ripped open, revealing a cylindrical-shaped device about twelve inches in diameter. Wires and electronic devices covered it like spaghetti. Yet just visible between some of the wire bundles was a dull black substance arranged in the shape of a ball. This black stuff, Jake knew, was the conventional explosive trigger. Upon detonation it would squeeze the plutonium in the core— the center of the ball—into a supercritical mass. There in that tiny space the plutonium atoms would have their electrons stripped away, an instantaneous rape that would release stupendous amounts of energy. E = MC2.

  Jake Grafton counted quickly. Four warheads on each pallet, how many pallets? Almost a hundred.

  The visitors were wandering away from the warheads when they saw the bodies stacked in one corner. Jake went over for a look, then found that only Jack Yocke had followed him.

  Blood everywhere. Blood? Jesus, these people were shot! Lined up and gunned down.

  Now he saw the spent cartridges that lay scattered around. He picked one up. Soviet. Not that that meant anything. The Soviets sold military equipment all over the world, just like the Americans, Germans, French and British. Superpowers do that, right? To keep the factories humming and the diplomats employed.

  How many people? Fifteen or so.

  There was a telephone on the wall and he went toward it. He held the handset against his helmet and tried to hear a dial tone. Nothing. He played with the buttons. Finally he replaced the instrument on its hook.

  He left the building and headed for the clean room.

  More bodies, all with bullet woun
ds. Some had died quickly, others bled a lot. There were bullet holes in the protective shield that sealed the room from the raw plutonium on the other side of the window. Even the flies were dead on the floor. Jake Grafton looked, then turned to find Jack Yocke staring at him through his faceplate. Yocke had a camera but he wasn’t taking any pictures. Jake brushed past him and headed for the door.

  He had seen all he wanted to see. The others were ahead of him, walking toward the helicopter. Yocke trailed behind. Jake counted. Everyone here.

  He climbed through the door and found Goober and Toad in the cockpit. “Crank it up,” he shouted. “Let’s get outta here.”

  Goober manipulated switches. Nothing happened. “Battery’s dead,” he announced.

  It took all of them to manhandle the power cart out of the helicopter. After looking all the controls over carefully, Toad Tarkington set the choke, turned on the battery, and pushed the start button. Nothing happened.

  “Fuck,” Toad said, loud enough for Grafton to hear. “Nothing in this fucking country works,” he announced, then turned back to Jake.

  Grafton looked at his watch. They had been on the ground for fourteen minutes. “Those transporters probably have jumper cables and some hand tools. Maybe. Go see.”

  Toad went trotting off, a silver figure laboring through the heat waves rising from the concrete.

  Time passed. Jake Grafton stared at the sky.

  There was a jet up there. He could see the contrail. There it was, a silver gleam coming out from behind that cloud.

  The mirror was in his pocket. Inside the hot suit.

  Well, there was no other way. He gingerly unzipped the suit enough to admit his hand, reached inside and snagged the mirror. Then he zipped the suit closed.

  The mirror was rectangular, about two inches by four inches, with a hole in the middle. Jake looked above him for the jet, then raised the mirror and tried to get the refracted spot of sunlight to come into the crosshair. Then he realized that a cloud had drifted between him and the sun. He put the mirror down and studied the clouds.

  A few minutes.

  “Those people were murdered.”

  Jack Yocke was beside him.

  “Everyone southeast of Serdobsk was murdered,” Jake Grafton said. “Those folks in there just happened to be shot.”

  “Why?”

  Jake flipped a hand at the empty transporters.

  “Somebody stole some missiles?”

  “Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

  “How are we going to get this helicopter started?”

  “I don’t know that we can.”

  Then the sun came out. And there was the jet, still high up there against the blue. Jake raised the mirror to his eye and moved it carefully to focus the light.

  Yocke began to understand. “Is that Rita up there?”

  “Maybe. I hope so.”

  “Goddamn it, Grafton,” Yocke began. “Why didn’t—”

  “We’ll get out of this or we won’t, Jack. That’s the whole story.” He was working the mirror. The sunspot was right on the crosshair. “Those people in there look like they are at peace.”

  “That’s a peace I’m not ready for yet.”

  “They probably weren’t ready either, but it came regardless. The one thing I can promise you—this is going to be one of the most peaceful spots on this planet for a couple hundred thousand years.” Jake removed the mirror from his eye and turned to face the reporter. “The peace that death brings is all any of us can count on.”

  Yocke was watching the jet high in the sky above. “I think maybe she saw you,” he said.

  One of the transporters rumbled into life. With diesel smoke pouring from the exhaust pipe, it slowly rolled toward the helicopter. “There’s a set of jumper cables in it,” Toad told Jake when he got down from the cab, “but no tools. The fucking Russians stole ’em or never put them in.”

  “Try to hook the cables up and get that power cart started. Rita’s coming but we may still need this chopper.”

  The jet was a three-holer, a Tupolev 154 with Aeroflot markings, a Russian ripoff of the Boeing 727 design. It wasn’t until it turned off the runway that Jake realized there was no hot gas coming from the center engine exhaust.

  Rita taxied up and gestured to him from the cockpit.

  “Everyone, we’re taking the jet,” Jake roared. “Help Captain Collins with his gear. Then get on the back of the transporter. Toad, when everyone’s on it, back that thing up to the door of the jet.”

  Two U.S. marines opened the door for them and they scrambled aboard. Toad came in last. “Do we need to move the transporter?”

  Rita was standing there. “No,” she told him. “I’ll back us out with thrust reversers. Close the door and let’s go.”

  They took off the hot suits and threw them into the back of the passenger cabin. Jake made his way to the cockpit and dropped into the copilot’s seat. “You got an engine out?”

  “Yessir. It was overheating. Maybe a bad thermocouple, but I don’t know. We got a heck of a takeoff roll without it, but I think we can make it.”

  “How much runway we got?”

  “About nine thousand feet. We’re light, nowhere near max gross weight. We’ll make it if the tires don’t blow. There’s no tread left and I could see cord in a couple places.”

  Jake Grafton looked down the runway at the trees beyond. Relatively flat terrain, thank the Lord! “Well, I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

  Toad stuck his head in. “Rita, you get more beautiful every time I see you.”

  She flashed him a wide grin.

  “Did you see the mirror okay?” Jake asked.

  “Yessir. I had a little trouble finding this place. Most of the Russian nav aids don’t work. I circled for about a half hour and had about decided you were going out on the chopper.” She was all business, relating it crisply, a matter of fact just to be reported.

  “There’s the gear handle and the flaps.” She touched each lever. “We’ll begin our takeoff roll with the flaps up so we’ll accelerate a little faster. I’ll call for takeoff flaps at about a hundred eighty kilometers per hour—the airspeed is calculated in clicks so don’t get excited. You put them down to the first detent, takeoff. When we’re airborne I’ll call for the gear, then the flaps.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  She taxied to the very end of the runway and held the brakes while she ran her two good engines up to full power. Then she released the brakes.

  The jet accelerated slowly. Jake could hear the thumping as the wheels passed over the expansion joints.

  Rita Moravia made no attempt to rotate, merely sat monitoring the engine instruments and the airspeed indicator between glances at the end of the runway, which they were stampeding toward at an ever increasing pace.

  “Flaps,” she called.

  Jake moved the handle to takeoff. The indicator moved. “They’re coming!”

  The airspeed needle kept rising, but oh so slowly. The end of the runway came closer, closer.

  Jake was reaching for the control wheel to rotate the plane when Rita eased it back and the nose came off, then the main wheels just as the end of the runway flashed by.

  “Gear up,” she called, and Jake Grafton raised the handle.

  When the gear was fully retracted the plane accelerated better. Still Rita kept the nose down and let the airspeed increase. “Flaps up,” she said at last, and Jake moved the handle.

  When they were climbing through three thousand meters—the altimeter was calibrated in meters—Rita told Jake, “This is the biggest plane I’ve flown. Handles better than I thought it would.”

  17

  When the airliner was level at cruising altitude, Captain Collins checked everyone for radiation. Jake had to part with his shirt. Colonel Rheinhart lost his trousers. “As soon as we get to Moscow,” Collins told them, “I want each of you to take a long shower. Wash your hair thoroughly. The stuff you want to get rid of is radioactive dust
and dirt. Stay in the shower as long as you can stand it and don’t come out until you’re as clean as a new penny.”

  When Jake had settled into a seat, Yocke came over and sat beside him. “Where’d you guys get this airliner?”

  “Aeroflot.”

  “Who’d you have to kill?”

  “Nobody. Toad told them we wanted to charter an airliner and waved American money. He got this one full of gas for seventeen hundred dollars cash and two bottles of mediocre whiskey that he stole out of Spaso House on the Fourth of July. The Aeroflot man insisted a Russian pilot come along, but he came down with something and got off when Rita gave him a hundred. She flew it out of Sheremetyevo.”

  “What about air traffic control?”

  “One of the enlisted marines speaks tolerable Russian. He’s up in the cockpit with Rita now.”

  Yocke shook his head. “It’s amazing what real money will buy.”

  “Ain’t it, now.”

  “Think that’s what happened to those missiles?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Now, Jake! Don’t start that crap! I’ve risked my butt this afternoon right along with you and Rita and all these other military heroes. It wouldn’t hurt an iota for you to come clean and tell me the whole truth. For once.”

  Jack Yocke got the gray eyes full face. There was no warmth in them. “That’s the second time you’ve called me Jake. You aren’t old enough or wise enough. Don’t do it again.”

  “Yessir. No offense. But I mean it about leveling with me. I feel like a kid in a haunted Halloween house. I’ve paid my buck and I keep getting the shit scared out of me even after it ceases to be fun. How about telling me what you know?”

  “I don’t know what happened to those weapons. I was as surprised as you were when I saw those empty transporters and the bodies.”

  “The story I heard that got me over to this country was that the Iraqis were trying to buy some nuke weapons. I heard they had three billion to spend for the right toys.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  Jack Yocke scratched his nose, then rubbed his face good. It went against the grain to reveal a source but he didn’t see any way out of it. Finally he said, “One of the ICB executives told me, off the record. He was sitting in a New York jail awaiting trial when I interviewed him.” The International Commerce Bank had recently been shut down worldwide for money laundering on a stupendous scale, that and a garden variety of other financial crimes.