Trinity's Child

by William Prochnau

  The cold air and the undulating orange alert lights hit him simultaneously. The orange lights played discolike on the neutered mockup of a symbolic Minuteman missile planted for tourists in the snow-covered front yard of the base. The missile seemed to point toward a heaven lost, and momentarily his mind tripped into disarray. The colored lights of a proud nation caromed off a different white symbol reaching toward a different heaven. He shivered, not from the cold but from the flash of the memory, a honeymoon many years ago. It had seemed the right place, the right time; Washington, Fourth of July, after his graduation from Annapolis. He and his bride sat on a Virginia hillside across the Potomac on a muggy night so unlike this one. The world lay at their feet, as did the majesty of a nation he would serve, the rockets' red glare splashing off the Washington Monument, dancing among the flags circling its base. They held each other very close. Life with a submariner, months away beneath the sea, was not going to be easy. Never say good-bye, she said as the sparks of the last rocket faded.

  Now she was asleep, alone four miles away in a mock-colonial home too large with their only son grown and gone. He shook his head, ducked it under the open doorway of the blue alert truck, and said, “Bust ass.”

  The President stood impatiently in the Situation Room, surrounded by oppressive gray file cabinets filled with background reports on trouble areas and the latest twenty-four-hour summaries of activities in every nation in the world. He was two floors below the Sitting Room, one floor directly below the Oval Office, having come here hurriedly in his bathrobe, but not for the security his staff had urged on him. He came for the telegram. He glanced at the clock: 0606 Zulu.

  The telegraph operator, an Army Signal Corpsman wearing a forced look of detachment, handed the message to his bathrobe-clad Commander-in-Chief. The President began reading quickly.

  “My dear Mr. President,” the telegram began. “By now you are aware that my government has launched a limited number of nuclear weapons at your country. The missiles are selectively destined for targets which will inflict minimal damage on your nation, its civilian population, and even your military resources. Your wisdom, at this delicate time, can minimize the consequences of this event, which the mistakes of both of our nations have made inevitable. I pray that this may not be another of those mistakes. . . .”

  The President let out a low whoosh of air. Mother, he thought bleakly, I'm dealing with a mad general, a rampaging computer, and now a commie religious nut who prays while he nukes me. The paper began to shake in his hand.

  “. . . While your warning system undoubtedly has described the attack which is about to arrive, I want absolutely no misunderstanding. We have struck all your bomber bases. There is no way to make a nuclear attack palatable. But these are the least reliable, most vulnerable, and most expendable of your forces. They also cost us billions to defend against, and we no longer can afford the cost. We have launched token attacks against a few Minuteman installations, away from population concentrations, and an attack on your Trident submarine base. These attacks show the obvious: all your targets, like all ours, are vulnerable. Omaha and Cheyenne Mountain will be destroyed. Your command facilities are undefendable, as are ours. I have attempted with great effort to limit civilian casualties. This has not been entirely possible, because your system has allowed civilian populations to thrive around strategic targets. We have never understood that peculiarity of your system. So be it. There is one final element. A single small warhead has been directed at Andrews Air Force Base. My generals promise me it will do little damage beyond the base. The target is symbolic, Andrews being the base from which you normally would leave Washington. We know you have other departure routes, just as you have command facilities that will take over from Omaha. I opposed the inclusion of this target, but in achieving far greater gains for both our nations, I was forced to compromise. Some of my colleagues demanded the inclusion of an intimidation factor. I doubt you will be intimidated. It will do you no personal harm. . . .”

  The President knew every eye in the Situation Room was on him. He did not like the feeling. He fought to control the shaking. Why? And why this way? His mind floated woozily back to his Inauguration Day and the ride up Pennsylvania Avenue with his predecessor. He did not like the man he had beaten and did not particularly respect him, a feeling he knew was mutual. The inaugural ride had been mostly silent. Then, as the procession made the final turn toward the Capitol, the outgoing President finally broke the silence.

  “What would you do if, the moment you took your hand off the Bible today, the Soviets hit you with a BOOB attack?” The question was quiet and serious.

  “I'm sorry, sir,” he had replied, not sure he had heard.

  “If the Russians hit you with a BOOB attack?”

  “A what attack?”

  “A BOOB attack.”

  He had turned away from the crowds outside the limo and met eyes that bored in on him, the way he felt other eyes boring now. “Afraid you've got me there,” he replied, the crowds smile still on his face. “Thought I'd been briefed on 'em all. What the hell is a BOOB attack?”

  “Bolt out of the blue. No warning at all.”

  “We both know that's the least likely scenario.” The President-elect didn't like his predecessor's tone. This was his day, dammit. “Guess that's why they gave it that acronym, huh?”

  “Don't kid yourself. You don't have the space to kid yourself now. We say it's the least likely because it's the only one for which we can conceive of no humanly acceptable response. Therefore it won't happen. We're very good at rationalizing. Everything nuclear is a rationalization. The Japanese started World War II with a BOOB attack.”

  “This is different. This is nuclear. Only a boob would do it.”

  “Maybe. We ended World War II with a BOOB attack. A nuclear BOOB attack. The Soviets reminded me of that many times. And don't kid yourself about our wonderful propensity for acronyms. For most of our political lifetimes we've been living with a nuclear policy known as Mutual Assured Destruction. If each side has enough to totally destroy the other, neither side will use it. Nice rationalization, that one. Nice acronym, too. MAD.”

  The President-elect had stopped smiling and stared eye to eye with the man he was succeeding. Then he broke into a grin again.

  “Well, at my age, I don't think I'll let boobs keep me awake nights,” he said, and turned to resume waving to the crowds.

  “That's too bad,” he heard over his shoulder.

  The conversation had confirmed his opinion of the man he had defeated. The man was damned rude.

  O'Toole collided with the raw outside air last but at full stride. The first icy assault froze the hair inside his nostrils, then seared the inside of his lungs. Jackhammer pain racked his head. Icy darts jabbed through the soles of his boots, slicing at the nerves in his wet feet. His brain, overwhelmed by the sensory overload, went blank as he careened down the out-ramp, only his instincts and training propelling him after his crewmates.

  Near the wingtip, Moreau edged past Halupalai, lung fog billowing over her shoulder. Kazaklis moved past, too, enveloping the Hawaiian in their mist. Moreau scrambled up the belly hole first, clambering up the inky stairwell toward the hypnotic lure of the dim red glow of the cockpit lights two levels above. Kazaklis entered next, his groping hand landing high on the inside of the copilot's leg before reaching the railing.

  “You bastard,” Moreau spat over her shoulder.

  “Move it, Moreau,” Kazaklis shot back. “I've felt better thighs on a Safeway fryer.”

  That wasn't true. But he had been regretting the foolishness of his move on Moreau for six long months now. There were plenty of pelvic bones. And she knew damn well there was nothing sexual about a stray hand in the chimney of the B-52. Not with the clock running.

  Moreau cursed herself silently. She was having a bad night. She knew the hand had strayed accidentally. She could have saved herself a lot of grief six months ago. But she wasn't a grief-saver. And when he cam
e at her with that Captain Shazam of the Strategic Air Command crap—the same line, she imagined, that rounded the heels of every female in the High Pine Lounge—she had shrieked in laughter. Not that any line would have worked. Moreau had been on the Kazaklis trip herself, matched him conquest for conquest, she was sure. But she had stopped a year ago, looking for a better hold on a very shaky life. Like everything she did, she also stopped with a totality bordering on obsession. She hadn't been with a man for more than a year, ending the earlier obsession with what might have been the consummate sex act in the history of SAC. In a No Lone Zone. Well, she hadn't violated security. She sure as hell hadn't been alone.

  At the top of the stairwell, Moreau glanced sideways at the code box on the jump seat and hurried forward to the right-hand seat. She pulled the white helmet over her head, adjusted the radio to all five channels. Kazaklis , immediately behind her, slipped into the left-hand seat and did the same, his mind as far from their flare-up as hers now.

  “Ignition,” Kazaklis said in a crackling, radio-warped voice, which Moreau echoed. Then the pilot's sinewy hands, covered in fireproofed gloves, began manipulating the eight white engine throttles between them and Moreau began the methodical activation of other instruments. The engine roar gradually accelerated.

  Kazaklis glanced at the luminous dial of his watch and mentally complimented himself. They had made it very quickly, under three minutes. Then he began to chafe, waiting impatiently for the codes. He turned and peered into the dark recesses of the back of the compartment. There, over the locked code box, he saw two vague forms. One, Halupalai, he thought, grabbed the other, O'Toole, and shook him violently. He saw Halupalai's arm rear back and then plunge forward toward O'Toole's face.

  “Codes!” Kazaklis said angrily into the radio. “Have you fuckers gone crazy back there? Codes!”

  The President's appointments secretary shook him gently by the elbow. “Finish it, Mr. President,” his old friend said. “There is so little time.” It was only then that the President realized his eyes had drifted away from the telegram. His aide smelled of bourbon. Lucky fellow.

  “. . . It is of epochal importance that you understand my rationale and recognize that this is not an act of aggression. Two weeks ago the Politburo voted to mount a full Counterforce attack against all your military and strategic targets simultaneously, with a second assault poised against your cities if you responded. It was the attack my country's military leaders have advocated for years—sudden, preemptive, and total. You would not have survived. We would not have survived either, although not all in my government agree with that assessment. I was able to delay that action. But I have merely bought us a brief moment for one last effort to halt the madness. Our meeting in Vienna was a similar effort. It failed. The misunderstandings ran deeper than my worst expectations. What you apparently perceived as my weakness was in reality an effort to warn you how fragile was the balance of the debate within my government over the threat of your massive arms buildups. The failure of Vienna tipped that balance. The cost of matching you weapon for weapon is far too great for the Politburo faction that sees our social fabric ripping because of the immense investments we made to draw even with you in nuclear weaponry after the Cuban debacle. The cost of allowing you to proceed unmatched is far too great for the faction that believes we cannot ever be at bay again as we were during the 1962 crisis. I must say that I see the point of both factions. I think we all, the leaders of both our nations, knew that someday something would have to give. . . .”

  Something would have to give. . . . The President read hurriedly, but part of his mind drifted to his triumphant return from Vienna and the summit meeting with the young, new, and presumably inexperienced Soviet Premier. On the flight over, the Secretary of State had badgered him for hours about being tough. The Soviets, the Secretary had said, are like burglars who walk down a hotel hallway trying every door until they find one unlocked. Lock every door on them, Mr. President. During the summit conference, the Premier had surprised him. He had almost pleaded with him to back down on the weapons buildup. The President had stonewalled, as prompted, telling the Premier to loosen his grip on Eastern Europe if he wanted to talk arms reductions. On the return flight the Secretary gloated ecstatically. This was a complete affirmation of the administration's policy. The new toughness had left the Soviets in an American policy pincer movement. The Soviets were trapped with an ailing economy, the Secretary beamed, and the Vienna meeting had forced them to make choices among escalating arms costs, the relentless ruble drain needed to prop up the satellite nations, and the increasingly tense internal pressure for consumer goods demanded by a deprived citizenry. Now something would have to give, the Secretary enthused, and it could even be the Soviet system itself.

  “... I confess, Mr. President, to a persistent fantasy. I had fantasized that proliferation of nuclear weapons among other nations was a good thing. Perhaps two less stable nations, with small arsenals, would use their weapons first and take the monkey, to use your idiom, off our backs. Perhaps a million people would have been killed, but the horror would bring both our nations to their senses. We had no such luck. The monkey remains on our backs, his claws dug in deeply. At best, now, we can become the symbols that my fantasy would have passed on to other nations. To be blunt, Mr. President, you have three choices, only two of which are acceptable to us. You can accept the damage and we will stop, the world divided between us as it is now. Like you, I am a politician. I cannot imagine my political system allowing me to accept that choice, as clearly as we would prefer it. Your second choice is to respond with a limited counterattack that inflicts upon my nation a similar amount of military damage and other losses. We will accept that, provided the world's spheres of influence remain the same and the arms increases cease. Our calculations show that you will lose six to nine million persons in our attack. We will accept a similar loss. It is a tremendous price to pay. But perhaps it can serve as the symbol my fantasy would have granted to Riyadh or Islamabad. Perhaps, without ending all our aspirations, it can show all factions in both our nations the madness of the game we have been playing. The losses are huge, but smaller and more survivable than the world's losses in earlier wars. It has a certain raw logic—considerably more than your third choice, which is not acceptable to us. You will be under tremendous pressure, as was I, to respond massively. If this is your ultimate choice, my government already has decided to reply in kind, even before your missiles land. I pray now, Mr. President, that the distrust is not total and that, through the pain of the next few minutes, you make the decision that can bring this to a less-than-perfect end, but an end.”

  Halupalai slapped O'Toole hard, very hard, the snapping impact of the blow cracking through the rising engine noise like shattering glass. O'Toole did not flinch. Halupalai's eyes adjusted slowly to the red night lights of the cramped upper crew compartment. At O'Toole's side, just below the code box, the young airman's underwear and flight jacket lay in a discordant heap. O'Toole stood woodenly over the box, his hands clasped between his legs, as if to warm them. Halupalai struck him again, his open hand whipsawing back and forth across O'Toole's face.

  “Mama,” O'Toole mouthed through the noise, his hands pulling up quickly, then dropping helplessly at his sides.

  The noise from the B-52's eight jet engines rose in a whining crescendo. Halupalai's mind cartwheeled in a jumble of thoughts. What was the matter with O'Toole? In the dim light he could barely see him. But this was such a routine function—a simple, simultaneous key turn with separate keys, then an elementary working of separate, but simple, combination locks. They had done it scores of times together, quickly and efficiently providing the data that enabled Kazaklis to say no-go and shut down the engines. Now Kazaklis was cursing at them on the radio. But O'Toole wasn't even wearing his helmet and couldn't hear the curses.

  Halupalai hit him again, a high blow above the cheekbone, and the Hawaiian felt a sharp splinter nick at his hand. His vision sharpening, he
saw that O'Toole's eyebrows were frozen white in ragged shards of ice. Halupalai winced for the poor bastard. He'd been in the damned shower again. He had to get out of here fast. But no one was getting out of the B-52, which was as cold as the freezing outside air, until the code box was open.

  “Gunner!” Kazaklis rasped into Halupalai's earphones. “Maybe you'd like a Russian heat-seeker up your rosy-red patooie? Get the codes! Now!”

  Briefly Halupalai bristled. “I'm dealing with a block of ice back here, commander,” Halupalai snapped. “O'Toole's soaking wet, frozen like a damned side of beef. I can't get him to move.”

  “Kick him in the balls. Do something. O'Toole, you son of a bitch, if Halupalai doesn't kick you in the balls, I'll come back there and you'll never use those precious jewels of yours again.”

  “He can't hear you, sir. His helmet's off.”

  “Jesus. Hook him up.”

  Halupalai jammed the white helmet over O'Toole's unmoving head and attached the radio joint.

  “O'Toole? Can you hear me, you icon-worshiping Irish potatohead?”

  “Mama,” O'Toole replied.

  “Oh, Jesus wept,” Kazaklis groaned.

  “As well He might,” Moreau added.

  “Shut up, Moreau.”

  “You're the aircraft commander, commander.”

  “And what would you do, copilot?”

  “Go back there and warm him up, one way or the other.”

  “That'll be the day.”

  Moreau unsnapped her shoulder harness, pulled off her helmet, reached in a pocket for the standard red-filtered penlight, and wheeled out of her seat. The tiny beam of light wobbled toward the two dark figures a dozen feet away. Approaching Halupalai, she motioned for his helmet. Then she turned on the immobile pillar of O'Toole.

  “Lieutenant O'Toole,” Moreau snarled, her voice grinding like a penny in a vacuum cleaner. “We are in combat conditions. Give me the key.”