“They didn’t have the right gear to withstand the radiation.”
“Looks that way.”
“General, somebody is going to have to destroy those missiles before any more of them are carried away. Those missiles are too big a temptation.”
“I’m going over to the White House in about fifteen minutes. I’ve already talked to the secretary of defense. He and the national security adviser will meet us there. Why don’t you be in Ambassador Lancaster’s office about an hour and a half from now? Someone will call you.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Jake hung up the phone and switched off the crypto device.
“Someone went back?” Yocke asked.
“Apparently. They carried off at least three missiles before the meltdown. That night. The radiation was supposed to cover up the fact the missiles were missing, for a while anyway. But someone got careless and left the transporters outside.”
“Why didn’t they take the transporters too?”
“Too big. Too heavy. Oh, maybe they took one or two, but they opted to leave at least three behind and take the missiles instead.”
“And someone went back last night?”
“And maybe got a couple more missiles. Left at least two dead people on the mat and one more empty transporter.”
“Satellite?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Just how good are those satellites?”
“They can see something the size of a pack of cigarettes. The problem is that we only have so many satellites. Right now we’re trying to monitor every base in Russia where nukes are stored.” Jake started to add something, then just shook his head.
“So what are we going to do?”
“If you mean the United States, Land is going to see the president now.”
“Who got the missiles?”
“Saddam Hussein.”
“Oh, hell.”
“That isn’t the worst of it. Remember all those warheads stacked around? Those are highly portable. Odds are that for every missile they carried away, they took half a dozen warheads.”
Jake Grafton headed for the bathroom to shower and shave. He decided to put on his uniform. It looked like it might be that kind of day.
“What?” said Ms. Hempstead, her brows knitted.
“I expect the ambassador will be getting a call in a little while from the White House. General Land asked me to be here when it comes.”
“Have a seat, Admiral. I’ll talk to the ambassador. He’s on the telephone right now with Yeltsin’s aide, trying to arrange an appointment.” She whirled and marched for the door to the inner sanctum.
Jake Grafton picked a seat and settled in. The secretary thought she could spare him a smile, then thought better of it and went back to pounding the keyboard of her computer terminal. Jake picked up a three-month-old copy of Southern Living and began to leaf through it. There were articles there on a couple of houses he wouldn’t mind living in if he ever inherited five million dollars.
Ten minutes later he tired of the magazine. He checked his watch. The ambassador’s door was firmly closed. The secretary was pretending to work on something on her desk.
He was examining the paintings on the wall thirty minutes later when the door opened. “Would you come in, please, Admiral Grafton,” Hempstead said. She stood aside and he walked in.
The ambassador was on the telephone. He was listening. Every now and then he said, “Yessir.” Finally he said, “He’s here now with me, sir… Yessir… If you think… I’ll let you know immediately. Yessir. Good-bye.”
Lancaster hung up and looked around blinking. His eyes settled on Grafton, then moved to Hempstead. “Agatha, please use the telephone in the other room to get me an appointment with Yeltsin. Tell the aide I have an oral message from our president that I must deliver immediately. Have a seat, Admiral.” Jake did so.
When Hempstead was gone, Lancaster said, “It would have been nice if you had given me some warning about this last night.”
“I thought I’d better talk to my boss first, sir.”
“So you didn’t level with me. I’ve been an ambassador on and off for over twenty years. I was talking to presidents about affairs of state when you were a lieutenant filling out fitness reports on drunken sailors. I was helping prevent World War III when our new president was smoking pot without inhaling.”
Owen Lancaster got out of his chair and walked around the desk. He leaned against the mantel of the fireplace, then half-turned so he could see Jake.
“I’ll tell you right now that the United States has no business taking sides in the Russians’ political battles. We have no money to offer them. We have no bottled cure for all the problems they face. All our crowd knows how to do is jack the interest rate up or down a half a point and hire another ten thousand bureaucrats to manage the social problem de jure. These people are going to have to solve their own problems.”
When Jake said nothing, Lancaster came over and dropped into the adjacent chair. “The president wants me personally to brief Yeltsin on the goings on at the Petrovsk military base. I am to give him two options. A—he may order an air strike on the missiles and warheads still in the hangars at Petrovsk. The weapons must be destroyed by noon tomorrow, or B—the United States will do the job for him. His choice.”
“I doubt if he will accept either option,” Jake murmured.
“That is also my opinion. He doesn’t have enough clout with the Russian military to enforce an order telling them to blow up their own base, and it would be political suicide to allow American war-planes to fly across Russian territory to make an attack on a Russian military installation. The president and national security adviser see this the same way. So…if he refuses both options, I am to give him a third, a compromise. He will supply two airplanes and weapons and two of your test pilots will fly to Petrovsk and destroy the base.”
“I see.”
“I wish you did, Admiral.” Owen Lancaster levered himself from the chair and went to the window. With his back to Jake he said, “The Russians are a proud people. We are going to force Yeltsin into doing something that will probably sink him politically. To get rid of what?—a hundred or so nuclear warheads?—we are going to run a serious risk of putting a military dictatorship into the Kremlin. A hundred weapons—a drop in the bucket. Our president made this decision in less than an hour after talking with only Hayden Land and the national security adviser, who six months ago was preaching the big ideas to pimple-faced fraternity boys at a college in New England, kids who are still carrying their first condom in their wallets.”
“Yeltsin is no liberal Little Rock Democrat, sir. He’s half dictator. Any government Russia gets will be a dictatorship to some degree.”
“Admiral, I quit listening to that isolationist apologia when my hair started falling out. The Russians have gone from tyrant to tyrant since the dawn of time. They like tyrants—someone to do the thinking for them. But Yeltsin…he’s trying to force these isolated wood hicks into the world economy, the world culture. Boris Yeltsin may be Russia’s last hope. And ours.”
Lancaster headed for the door. As he went he muttered, “You knot-heads don’t seem to understand that you can’t go off half-cocked when the whole goddamn planet is at risk.”
18
It was three in the afternoon when Lancaster informed Jake by telephone of Yeltsin’s decision. “He’ll make two Su-25s available at the Lipetsk air base.”
“Where is Lipetsk?”
“About two hundred miles south. There will be a helicopter waiting for your pilots in two hours at Domodedovo. It will take them there.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, Admiral…I don’t know what story he is telling the air force.”
“Uh, are you trying to say we’re on our own?”
“Precisely.”
Jake hung up the telephone and looked around at his little staff. “Okay, gang. Here’s the plan. Rita and I will catch a chopper in two hours at Domode
dovo that will take us to a Russian air base. They’ll make two Su-25 Frogfoots available. Rita and I will bomb the base at Petrovsk. Any questions?”
“Uh, CAG,” Toad began, glanced at Rita and cleared his throat. “Why Rita?”
Jake was genuinely surprised. Toad was not in the habit of questioning Jake’s decisions. “Well, she flew F/A-I8s for several years before she went to test pilot school. Goober Groelke has a helo background, and Miles”—the third test pilot—“came out of antisubmarine warfare. This job is dropping bombs and getting hits the first time around.”
“Oh.”
Jake looked expectantly at Toad.
“Just curious, that’s all.”
Rita was looking at her husband through narrowed eyes. A domestic matter, Jake decided, and forgot about it.
“Frogfoots. Those will be good planes for this job,” Groelke said.
“Should be,” Jake acknowledged. “We’ll find out.” He knew the Frogfoot from its reputation. A Russian close-air support and anti-armor weapon, the plane was a close copy of the Northrop A-9, which had lost the U.S. Air Force’s competition for a tank killer when flying against the A-10 Warthog. The Soviets used Frogfoots in Afghanistan and supposedly they were good airplanes.
“Brunhilde Tarkington,” Toad said to Rita when they were alone.
“What?”
“A name for the kid. If it’s a girl.”
“Don’t you ever, ever do that to me again, Toad. I don’t question your professional assignments. Don’t you question mine.”
“I’m not pregnant. Nor am I ever likely to be.”
“And don’t get cute with me, Bub!”
“I just love it when you talk dirty.”
She gave him her coldest stare. “I wear the uniform, I got the training, I take the pay—I will fly the missions when they come.”
“Brunhilde.”
“Not on your life.”
He watched her walk away with her shoulders slightly hunched, her head down, as if she were walking into a strong wind.
This fatherhood bit…it was awful sudden. Of course, when you’re married and do all the conjugal things, parenthood is one of the risks. Or rewards. Whichever. Still, it would have been nice to have a few years to think about it before it became a fact. Why didn’t she say, Maybe we ought to think about being parents? Why didn’t she say that?
Perhaps, he thought, she assumed I was thinking about it all along. Women are big assumers. The biggest assumption of all is the one they routinely make, that men think just like they do. And they are tortured by disappointment when it is proven for the umpteenth jillion time that men don’t.
Because he hadn’t been thinking about it. In fact, the possibility had never once crossed his mind. Kids are little people who wail in supermarkets, get beaned by baseballs at Little League, and ride in the back end of station wagons making faces at people in other cars. Other people have them. Usually other older people. The fact that he had been a kid once upon a time had never inspired him to want one of his very own or to even contemplate the prospect.
Of course he knew the theory that sex causes kids, but he had assumed Rita was taking care of everything. After all, she never got pregnant before.
Surely Rita would not have made a decision like that on her own. Would she?
Maybe there had been an accident. Toad Tarkington, professional naval flight officer, knew a great deal about accidents. A little dollop of carelessness could cause you to crash, burn and die. Sometimes even without the carelessness you crashed, burned and died—at a level too deep for philosophers, luck was involved. Life is a grand game of chance. This kid must have been an accident, he decided. Not that it mattered.
Diapers. They were extremely messy and smelled to high heaven. Of course he had never actually seen or smelled a loaded diaper or wiped a baby’s bottom—he knew from listening to adults who had taken the parental plunge. As he contemplated the messy prospect now, he shuddered. And washing clothes in the same machine used for diapers! Do people get two washing machines? His mom had never owned but one… Funny, he had never thought of that before. He would have to ask somebody.
He wondered if Rita would want to nurse. There’s something…not obscene…jarring, yes, jarring, about watching a woman open her blouse and do something to her bra and plug a kid in. Seeing a woman nurse gave Toad the same sensation he got watching a sword swallower: the sight jolted him right to his toenails. These modern women have waited so long for kids they do it everywhere—in cars, restaurants, theaters, stores, hair places—not just in the ladies’ room like their grandmas used to do.
And somebody once said that babies don’t just eat three squares a day—they are hungry every two hours. That seemed like a lot, and he frowned. Every two hours couldn’t be right. That guy must have had a fat kid.
His kid wouldn’t be fat. He would speak to Rita about that. Eat right and get plenty of exercise, throw the ol’ ball around, climb trees and play tag and all that stuff. He would see to it.
Boy or girl, he would raise this kid right. Help with the homework and stories at night, lots of sports…
How in the heck had his parents done it?
He recalled some spankings and flashes from holidays and picnics, and some run-ins with the little girl who lived next door—Becky or Rebecca or something like that—but it was precious little when he tried to add it up. That stunned him. Shouldn’t he remember more? God, he hadn’t tried to dredge up this stuff in years, not since…well, he had never tried.
And now he needed it. Slam bam thank you ma’am and he was going to be a father.
Maybe he ought to write to his mom and get some sort of operator’s manual, something in writing.
Rita wouldn’t like that, might get all huffy.
Did she remember more about being a kid than he did?
Probably not, but she would confidently assume that since she wasn’t cursed by the Y chromosome she would instinctively know the right things to do.
Why couldn’t he remember?
Jake Grafton used the phone in the office after the senior chief had rigged the scrambler. He reached General Hayden Land at the Pentagon.
“The real problem is Iraq,” Land told Jake after he had related Ambassador Lancaster’s little speech. “Missiles armed with nuclear warheads in Saddam Hussein’s arsenal is something these people in Washington don’t want to face.”
“The Iraqis only took a few missiles,” Jake informed him. “Apparently they elected to take warheads instead.”
“I think so too. The president didn’t have any problem putting the wood to the Russians to destroy Petrovsk. He was ready to use U.S. assets to bomb it if the Russians refused. Almost too ready.”
“What do you mean, General?”
“He hasn’t got burned yet by one of these military adventures blowing up in his face. So he’s ready to damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.”
“What did CIA say to all this?”
“They told the president to go slow. That he risked making an enemy of Russia. They were about to threaten World War III but he shut them up before they got it out.”
“General, now is the time to go get those weapons in Iraq. Every day that passes means we are one day closer to a desert Armageddon.”
“I’m listening,” Land said.
“We’re going to have to go into Iraq. An airborne assault. We’ll go into Hussein’s backyard, take or destroy the missiles and warheads, and leave as quick as we can. We’re going to have to do it before he uses those weapons.”
Silence. “That won’t be easy.”
“Yes, sir. I know that.”
“Saddam may bag the whole lot of you.”
“That’s a possibility. But we’ll destroy the missiles first. General, we’re going to have to pay a little now or pay a lot later—there are no other options. Any way you cut it, we’ve got to get the jump on him. We have to take the initiative while there is still time.”
“I don’t l
ike it. It’s too risky. Too many things can go wrong, then you’ll be stuck on the ground with a lot of casualties. The Iraqis may bag the whole lot of you, then we have a political prisoner situation. No, the way to do this is an air strike. We’ll bomb that base into powder and that will be the end of Saddam’s nuclear arsenal. We might lose a few pilots, but not a whole bunch of people.”
“If destroying the missiles were the only objective, I would agree with you,” Jake told the chairman. “But it’s not. We must prove to the world that Saddam has the weapons. We’ve got to show the world these missiles and warheads. Here’s what I want to do.” Jake laid it out. His explanation took almost five minutes.
When Jake was finished, Land didn’t say anything for several seconds. Finally he said, “Well, maybe. I’ll think about it. Present it to the president. As a soldier, I’ll tell you right now that all that is too complicated.”
“It’s our best shot, sir.”
“I’ll think about it. What time frame are you thinking about for this operation?”
“As soon as humanly possible, sir. As soon as we can plan it. The sooner the better. I’m going to be flying one of these Russian jets down to Petrovsk tomorrow. We’re flying out of the Lipetsk air base. We leave here in about an hour. I figure we’ll get a checkout on the planes tonight, then fly first thing in the morning. Tomorrow night I can go to Arabia.”
“The weather people say that you can expect scattered to broken stratocumulus in the Petrovsk area, maybe fifty percent coverage, bases around three or four thousand feet, occasional rain showers.”
“That’ll be good enough.”
“Who is the other pilot?”
“Lieutenant Commander Moravia, sir.”
“Okay. Take your scrambler with you and call me from Lipetsk before you take off. I’ll go back to the White House and see what they think about Saddam Hussein.”
“Yessir.”
“Good luck, Jake.”
“Thanks, General.”
Only two options left to stop Saddam Hussein—an air strike or an airborne assault. Jake thought about that after he broke the connection. When you are down to just two options in this dangerous world, you are in deep and serious trouble. He knew that and Hayden Land knew it, but did the president?
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