To Gene she said, “You’ve known him longer. He’s been in charge of operations like this before?”
Gene thought. “There’ve been no operations like this.”
“Smaller jobs than this?”
“Plenty.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Surprising.”
“Why?”
“He walks around using that mouth while he’s working?”
Gene chuckled. “ ’Fraid so. He gets the job done, though.”
“Still surprising.”
“That he’s the shooter, or—”
“That he still has all his teeth.”
* * * *
While Gene showered, she considered. Elinor figured Bruckner for an injustice collector, the passive-aggressive loser type. But he had risen quickly in the LifeWorkers, as they called themselves, brought into the inner cadre that had formulated this plan. Probably because he was willing to cross the line, use violence in the cause of justice. Logically, she should sympathize with him because he was a lot like her.
But sympathy and liking didn’t work that way.
There were people who soon would surely yearn to read her obituary, and Bruckner’s too, no doubt. He and she were the cutting edge of environmental activism, and these were desperate times indeed. Sometimes, you had to cross the line and be sure about it.
Elinor had made a lot of hard choices. She knew she wouldn’t last long on the scalpel’s edge of active environmental justice, and that was fine by her. Her role would soon be to speak for the true cause. Her looks, her brains, her charm—she knew she’d been chosen for this mission, and the public one afterwards, for these attributes as much as for the plan she had devised. People listen, even to ugly messages, when the face of the messenger is pretty. And once they finished here, she would have to be heard.
She and Gene carefully unpacked the gear and started to assemble the Dart. The parts connected with a minimum of wiring and socket clasps, as foolproof as possible. They worked steadily, assembling the tube, the small recoilless charge, snapping and clicking the connections.
Gene said, “The targeting antenna has a rechargeable battery; they tend to drain. I’ll top it up.”
She nodded, distracted by the intricacies of a process she had trained for a month ago. She set the guidance system. Tracking would first be infrared only, zeroing in on the target’s exhaust, but once in the air and nearing its goal, it would use multiple targeting modes—laser, IR, advanced visual recognition—to get maximal impact on the main body of the aircraft.
They got it assembled and stood back to regard the linear elegance of the Dart. It had a deadly, snakelike beauty, its shiny white skin tapered to a snub point.
“Pretty, yeah,” Gene said. “And way better than any Stinger. Next generation, smarter, near four times the range.”
She knew guys liked anything that could shoot, but to her it was just a tool. She nodded.
Gene sniffed, caressed the lean body of the Dart, and smiled.
Bruckner came clumping up the bus stairs with a fixed smile on his face that looked like it had been delivered to the wrong address. He waved a lit cigarette. Elinor got up, forced herself to smile. “Glad you’re back; we—”
“Got some ’freshments,” he said, dangling some beers in their six-pack plastic cradle, and she realized he was drunk.
The smile fell from her face like a picture off a wall.
She had to get along with these two, but this was too much. She stepped forward, snatched the beer bottles, and tossed them onto the love seat. “No more.”
Bruckner tensed and Gene sucked in a breath. Bruckner made a move to grab the beers and Elinor snatched his hand, twisted the thumb back, turned hard to ward off a blow from his other hand—and they froze, looking into each other’s eyes from a few centimeters away.
Silence.
Gene said, “She’s right, y’know.”
More silence.
Bruckner sniffed, backed away. “You don’t have to be rough.”
“I wasn’t.”
They looked at each other, let it go.
She figured each of them harbored a dim fantasy of coming to her in the brief hours of darkness. She slept in the lumpy bed and they made do with the furniture. Bruckner got the love seat—ironic victory—and Gene sprawled on a threadbare comforter.
Bruckner talked some but dozed off fast under booze, so she didn’t have to endure his testosterone-fueled patter. But he snored, which was worse.
The men napped and tossed and worried. No one bothered her, just as she wanted it. But she kept a small knife in her hand, in case. For her, sleep came easily.
* * * *
After eating a cold breakfast, they set out before dawn, two thirty a.m., Elinor driving. She had decided to wait till then because they could mingle with early-morning Air Force workers driving toward the base. This far north, it started brightening by three thirty, and they’d be in full light before five. Best not to stand out as they did their last reconnaissance. It was so cold, she had to run the heater for five minutes to clear the windshield of ice. Scraping with her gloved hands did nothing.
The men had grumbled about leaving absolutely nothing behind. “No traces,” she said. She wiped down every surface, even though they’d worn medical gloves the whole time in the bus.
Gene didn’t ask why she stopped and got a gas can filled with gasoline, and she didn’t say. She noticed the wind was fairly strong and from the north, and smiled. “Good weather. Prediction’s holding up.”
Bruckner said sullenly, “Goddamn cold.”
“The KC Extenders will take off into the wind, head north.” Elinor judged the nearly cloud-free sky. “Just where we want them to be.
They drove up a side street in Mountain View, and parked overlooking the fish hatchery and golf course, so she could observe the big tank refuelers lined up at the loading site. She counted five KC-10 Extenders, freshly surplussed by the Air Force. Their big bellies reminded her of pregnant whales.
From their vantage point, they could see down to the temporarily expanded checkpoint set up just outside the base. As foreseen, security was stringently tight this near the airfield—all drivers and passengers had to get out, be scanned, IDs checked against global records, briefcases and purses searched. K-9 units inspected car interiors and trunks. Explosives-detecting robots rolled under the vehicles.
She fished out binoculars and focused on the people waiting to be cleared. Some carried laptops and backpacks, and she guessed they were the scientists flying with the dispersal teams. Their body language was clear. Even this early, they were jazzed, eager to go, excited as kids on a field trip. One of the pilots had mentioned there would be some sort of preflight ceremony honoring the teams that had put all this together. The flight crews were studiedly nonchalant—this was an important, high-profile job, sure, but they couldn’t let their cool down in front of so many science nerds. She couldn’t see well enough to pick out Ted or the friendly woman from the bar.
In a special treaty deal with the Arctic Council, they would fly from Elmendorf and arc over the North Pole, spreading hydrogen sulfide in their wakes. The tiny molecules of it would mate with water vapor in the stratospheric air, making sulfurics. Those larger, wobbly molecules reflected sunlight well—a fact learned from studying volcano eruptions back in the TwenCen. Spray megatons of hydrogen sulfide into the stratosphere, let water turn it into a sunlight-bouncing sheet—SkyShield—and they could cool the entire Arctic.
Or so the theory went. The Arctic Council had agreed to this series of large-scale experiments, run by the USA since they had the in-flight refuelers that could spread the tiny molecules to form the SkyShield. Small-scale experiments—opposed, of course, by many enviros—had seemed to work. Now came the big push, trying to reverse the retreat of sea ice and warming of the tundra.
Anchorage lay slightly farther north than Oslo, Helsinki, and Stockholm, but not as far north as Reykjavík or Murmansk. Flights from Anchorage to Murmansk would le
t them refuel and reload hydrogen sulfide at each end, then follow their paths back over the pole. Deploying hydrogen sulfide along their flight paths at 45,000 feet, they would spread a protective layer to reflect summer sunlight. In a few months, the sulfuric droplets would ease down into the lower atmosphere, mix with moist clouds, and come down as rain or snow, a minute, undetectable addition to the acidity already added by industrial pollutants. Experiment over.
The total mass delivered was far less than that from volcanoes like Pinatubo, which had cooled the whole planet in 1991–92. But volcanoes do messy work, belching most of their vomit into the lower atmosphere. This was to be a designer volcano, a thin skin of aerosols skating high across the stratosphere.
It might stop the loss of the remaining sea ice, the habitat of the polar bear. Only ten percent of the vast original cooling sheets remained. Equally disruptive changes were beginning to occur in other parts of the world.
But geoengineered tinkerings would also be a further excuse to delay cutbacks in carbon dioxide emissions. People loved convenience, their air conditioning and winter heating and big lumbering SUVs. Humanity had already driven the air’s CO2 content to twice what it was before 1800, and with every developing country burning oil and coal as fast as they could extract them, only dire emergency could drive them to abstain. To do what was right.
The greatest threat to humanity arose not from terror but error. Time to take the gloves off.
She put the binocs away and headed north. The city’s seacoast was mostly rimmed by treacherous mudflats, even after the sea kept rising. Still, there were coves and sandbars of great beauty. Elinor drove off Glenn Highway to the west, onto progressively smaller, rougher roads, working their way backcountry by Bureau of Land Management roads to a sagging, long-unused access gate for loggers. Bolt cutters made quick work of the lock securing its rusty chain closure. After she pulled through, Gene carefully replaced the chain and linked it with an equally rusty padlock, brought for this purpose. Not even a thorough check would show it had been opened, till the next time BLM tried to unlock it. They were now on Elmendorf, miles north of the airfield, far from the main base’s bustle and security precautions. Thousands of acres of mudflats, woods, lakes, and inlet shoreline lay almost untouched, used for military exercises and not much else. Nobody came here except for infrequent hardy bands of off-duty soldiers or pilots, hiking with maps red-marked UXO for “Unexploded Ordnance.” Lost live explosives, remnant of past field maneuvers, tended to discourage casual sightseers and trespassers, and the Inuit villagers wouldn’t be berry-picking till July and August. She consulted her satellite map, then took them on a side road, running up the coast. They passed above a cove of dark blue waters.
Beauty. Pure and serene.
The sea level rise had inundated many of the mudflats and islands, but a small rocky platform lay near shore, thick with trees. Driving by, she spotted a bald eagle perched at the top of a towering spruce tree. She had started bird-watching as a Girl Scout and they had time; she stopped.
She left the men in the Ford and took out her long-range binocs. The eagle was grooming its feathers and eyeing the fish rippling the waters offshore. Gulls wheeled and squawked, and she could see sea lions knifing through fleeing shoals of herring, transient dark islands breaking the sheen of waves. Crows joined in onshore, hopping on the rocks and pecking at the predators’ leftovers.
She inhaled the vibrant scent of ripe, wet, salty air, alive with what she had always loved more than any mere human. This might be the last time she would see such abundant, glowing life, and she sucked it in, trying to lodge it in her heart for times to come.
She was something of an eagle herself, she saw now, as she stood looking at the elegant predator. She kept to herself, loved the vibrant natural world around her, and lived by making others pay the price of their own foolishness. An eagle caught hapless fish. She struck down those who would do evil to the real world, the natural one.
Beyond politics and ideals, this was her reality.
Then she remembered what else she had stopped for. She took out her cell phone and pinged the alert number.
A buzz, then a blurred woman’s voice. “Able Baker.”
“Confirmed. Get a GPS fix on us now. We’ll be here, same spot, for pickup in two to three hours. Assume two hours.”
Buzz buzz. “Got you fixed. Timing’s okay. Need a Zodiac?”
“Yes, definite, and we’ll be moving fast.”
“You bet. Out.”
Back in the cab, Bruckner said, “What was that for?”
“Making the pickup contact. It’s solid.”
“Good. But I meant, what took so long?”
She eyed him levelly. “A moment spent with what we’re fighting for.”
Bruckner snorted. “Let’s get on with it.”
Elinor looked at Bruckner and wondered if he wanted to turn this into a spitting contest just before the shoot.
“Great place,” Gene said diplomatically.
That broke the tension and she started the Ford.
They rose farther up the hills northeast of Anchorage, and at a small clearing, she pulled off to look over the landscape. To the east, mountains towered in lofty gray majesty, flanks thick with snow. They all got out and surveyed the terrain and sight angles toward Anchorage. The lowlands were already thick with summer grasses, and the winds sighed southward through the tall evergreens.
Gene said, “Boy, the warming’s brought a lot of growth.”
Elinor glanced at her watch and pointed. “The KCs will come from that direction, into the wind. Let’s set up on that hillside.”
They worked around to a heavily wooded hillside with a commanding view toward Elmendorf Air Force Base. “This looks good,” Bruckner said, and Elinor agreed.
“Damn—a bear!” Gene cried.
They looked down into a narrow canyon with tall spruce. A large brown bear was wandering along a stream about a hundred meters away.
Elinor saw Bruckner haul out a .45 automatic. He cocked it.
When she glanced back, the bear was looking toward them. It turned and started up the hill with lumbering energy.
“Back to the car,” she said.
The bear broke into a lope.
Bruckner said, “Hell, I could just shoot it. This is a good place to see the takeoff and—”
“No. We move to the next hill.”
Bruckner said, “I want—”
“Go!”
They ran.
* * * *
One hill farther south, Elinor braced herself against a tree for stability and scanned the Elmendorf landing strips. The image wobbled as the air warmed across hills and marshes.
Lots of activity. Three KC-10 Extenders ready to go. One tanker was lined up on the center lane and the other two were moving into position.
“Hurry!” she called to Gene, who was checking the final setup menu and settings on the Dart launcher.
He carefully inserted the missile itself in the launcher. He checked, nodded, and lifted it to Bruckner. They fitted the shoulder straps to Bruckner, secured it, and Gene turned on the full arming function. “Set!” he called.
Elinor saw a slight stirring of the center Extender and it began to accelerate. She checked: right on time, oh-nine-hundred hours. Hard-core military like Bruckner, who had been a Marine in the Middle East, called Air Force the “saluting Civil Service,” but they did hit their markers. The Extenders were not military now, just surplus, but flying giant tanks of sloshing liquid around the stratosphere demands tight standards.
“I make the range maybe twenty kilometers,” she said. “Let it pass over us, hit it close as it goes away.”
Bruckner grunted, hefted the launcher. Gene helped him hold it steady, taking some of the weight. Loaded, it weighed nearly fifty pounds. The Extender lifted off, with a hollow, distant roar that reached them a few seconds later, and Elinor could see media coverage was high. Two choppers paralleled the takeoff for footage, then go
t left behind.
The Extender was a full extension DC-10 airframe and it came nearly straight toward them, growling through the chilly air. She wondered if the chatty guy from the bar, Ted, was one of the pilots. Certainly, on a maiden flight the scientists who ran this experiment would be on board, monitoring performance. Very well.
“Let it get past us,” she called to Bruckner.
He took his head from the eyepiece to look at her. “Huh? Why—”
“Do it. I’ll call the shot.”
“But I’m—”
“Do it.”
The airplane was rising slowly and flew by them a few kilometers away.
“Hold, hold . . .” she called. “Fire.”
Bruckner squeezed the trigger and the missile popped out—whuff !—seemed to pause, then lit. It roared away, startling in its speed—straight for the exhausts of the engines, then correcting its vectors, turning, and rushing for the main body. Darting.
It hit with a flash and the blast came rolling over them. A plume erupted from the airplane, dirty black.
“Bruckner! Re-sight—the second plane is taking off.”
She pointed. Gene chunked the second missile into the Dart tube. Bruckner swiveled with Gene’s help. The second Extender was moving much too fast, and far too heavy, to abort takeoff.
The first airplane was coming apart, rupturing. A dark cloud belched across the sky.
Elinor said clearly, calmly, “The Dart’s got a max range about right, so . . . shoot.”
Bruckner let fly and the Dart rushed off into the sky, turned slightly as it sighted, accelerated like an angry hornet. They could hardly follow it. The sky was full of noise.
“Drop the launcher!” she cried.
“What?” Bruckner said, eyes on the sky.
She yanked it off him. He backed away and she opened the gas can as the men watched the Dart zooming toward the airplane. She did not watch the sky as she doused the launcher and splashed gas on the surrounding brush.
“Got that lighter?” she asked Bruckner.
He could not take his eyes off the sky. She reached into his right pocket and took out the lighter. Shooters had to watch, she knew.
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