by Ian Slater
The conversation he’d had with the outgoing pilot had unsettled him, not only because piloting Air Force One would mean he and Lana would be separated longer than he’d thought, but because if nuclear war broke out, the Aleutians, where America herself had tested the A-bombs on Amchitka, would be a prime target for the Russians’ ICBMs on Kamchatka Peninsula. Even those Americans, like Lana, at Dutch Harbor and the other easternmost islands of the chain close to Alaska which were not directly targeted would be in the path of the radioactive clouds, carried swiftly via the millimaws, engulfing the islands in the fallout. Lana and everyone else would the of radiation poisoning — a lingering, painful death which Shirer wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy — not even La Roche.
The young communications lieutenant aboard Air Force One was eager to show him the latest wizardry, pointing proudly to a signal jammer. “Course, we’d still use basic flares against heat seekers as the first line of defense against incoming. Trouble is, Russians have reportedly got the French R-50 Air-to-Airs. They don’t go for heat but home in on the radar beam.”
“No kidding,” said Shirer. The sarcasm was out before he could stop himself.
“Sorry, sir. Guess you’re familiar with all this stuff.”
“No,” Shirer answered. He pointed to a console that he knew was another radar beam jammer. “What’s that?”
“Echo delay mode, sir. Slows down the Bogey’s radar pulse — so he gets the echo later than he normally would. Thinks his target is further off than it is.”
“What happens if we’re in the missile’s path anyway?” Shirer asked.
“Console also has CDC — chaff-dispensing capability.”
Shirer smiled despite himself. Give the military manufacturers a simple idea and they’d give it a fancy name to impress the congressmen on the defense budget committees. “ ‘CDC— you mean it drops foil strips to scramble enemy radar?”
“Yes, sir. But we do have electronic jammer backups as well. This baby’s got over two hundred and forty miles of sheathed wiring. Sixty-one antennas.”
Shirer wasn’t sure an electromagnetic pulse could be prevented by sheathed or “condom” wiring, as the technicians called the pulse-resistant fiber-optic cable. It was certainly better than the old microchip circuits, which an electromagnetic pulse would certainly knock out and which had been replaced to some extent by gallium arsenide chips. But he wondered aloud whether the cables could survive a close-in nuclear air burst.
“Ah — manual doesn’t give minimum air burst radius, sir.”
“Didn’t think they would,” said Shirer. “Don’t think we’d like the answer.”
* * *
The lieutenant was quickly getting teed off with the new pilot, as he told the ground crew later. “He’s a moody son of a bitch,” the lieutenant charged.
“Heard he was an okay guy,” put in one of the electronic engineers. “One crackerjack of a pilot, by all accounts. An ace, my man!”
“Yeah — well, I’m not the fucking enemy.”
“Probably lonesome for his missus,” put in the engineer. “Though I thought they liked bachelors to drive the beast. No family to think about — might stop the trigger finger.”
“Dunno whether he’s married or not,” said the lieutenant disinterestedly.
“Well,” put in another technician. “Maybe something else is buggin’ him. Maybe he’s been drinking tap water.”
“Then he wouldn’t be sick,” said the engineer. “He’d be dead.”
“Could be he’s lovesick,” said another of the ground crew.
“I don’t give a shit,” said the communications lieutenant. “Whatever his problem is, I’d rather not be one of his crew if it hits the fan.”
“Don’t worry,” said the engineer, tearing open a sugar packet, letting it stream into his coffee. “It won’t go nuclear.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Normally David wouldn’t have shown such irritability. Maybe it was the bad weather, the overcast still so low, you could almost touch it, and the rubble from the Soviet rocket attacks still not cleared, partially covered by snow turned dirty from the coal fire pollution — or “bad ions in the air,” as his brother Ray would have said.
Whatever the reason for his mood, the Gallic shrug of the stationmaster at Ezemaal thirty miles east of Brussels bugged him. He suspected the man could speak English but was refusing to do so on principle, continuing to rattle away in either Flemish or French. As the unhelpful stationmaster walked on by them, a porter nearby told David slowly and clearly, “Un train est déraillé! Pres de Roosbeek.”
“Son of a bitch!” said David, turning and walking quickly back to the Humvee.
“Come on,” he yelled to his driver, Corporal Parkin, who had just started to relax with a cigarette. “Let’s go! They say a train’s been derailed.”
“Ours?”
“Don’t know — at Roosbeek. You know it?”
“Not to worry, chief. Got a Michelin in the glove box. Has to be on the line ‘tween here and Brussels, doesn’t it?”
“Right,” said David, with more optimism than he felt.
“Why don’t we just go on to Liege, guv?” suggested Parkin. “It’s not too far. Wait there. Nothing much we—”
“No!” said David. “Train’s full of wounded. Need all the help they can get. Besides, I know some people on it.”
“Oh. Yeah — well, that’s different, in’t?”
The stationmaster was coming back down the platform. Glancing quickly at them, his mood changed. “Be careful,” he told David. “You must have your identification ready. There will be many people there by now.”
“What you mean, guv?” put in the corporal, calling out over the rattle of the Humvee engine. “Lots of people?”
The stationmaster shrugged, as if the answer were surely obvious to all. “Police, the army — they might still be around, you see.”
“Why?” asked Parkin.
“The SPETS, of course. It was they who attacked—”
Before the Belgian could finish, Parkin had unclipped his seat belt, reaching down into the backseat. He produced a red light, its magnetic base thudding on the roof over him as he plugged its adapter into the dashboard lug.
As they sped back from where they’d come, having to use several detours because of rocket damage to the main Brussels road, David told himself it probably wasn’t Lili’s train anyway. There were dozens — goods trains, troop trains, passenger — every day. Had to be one of the busiest lines in all Europe.
The red light swishing in the mist produced a surreal pink glow. David wasn’t sure an illegal MP light was a good idea. It’d get them there faster, but if there were SPETS around, it could draw fire. Momentarily he was ashamed he was thinking about his safety rather than Lili’s, but then again, his marine training had conditioned him against drawing undue attention to himself in any battle zone.
“Don’t worry, sir,” Parkin assured him. “SPETS would’ve been after them for the front — the troops. Wouldn’t bother with anyone else on board. Anyway, this bird of yours — she’s a noncombatant. Right?”
As if that made any difference, David thought. “More non-combatants are killed than soldiers, corporal. Besides, you obviously don’t know about the SPETS.” As he spoke, David instinctively felt for his.45 sidearm. “You carrying any weapons?” he asked Parkin.
The corporal was shocked by the suggestion. “Only my rifle — in the back. Haven’t fired it since me national service. That was two years—” He paused. “Ah, not to worry, sir. The SPETS’re hit-and-run types, right? Won’t bother us. Hardly gonna go runnin’ around in uniform, are they? Civilian garb, most likely.”
“Allied uniforms,” said David, not taking his eyes from the fields, dim outlines of farmhouses, and gaunt, stripped poplars racing by. “They’ve got nothing to lose. They’d be shot as spies either way, in civilian garb or military.”
There was another flashing red light ahead and Parkin started pumping
the brake. The Humvee slowed and though visibility was poor, they could soon make out six or seven men, all with submachine guns, possibly in Belgian military uniform, waving them down. Off to the right ahead, David spotted at least fifteen more — spread out — the same number to his left — all in all, a U-shaped formation running down either side of the road, the road blocked by two 3-ton trucks parked so they overlapped each other in a tight V — so you’d be forced to drop to five kilometers per hour in order to negotiate the S-turn.
“Bound to be our blokes, right?” proffered the corporal unconvincingly.
“Don’t know,” said David softly, watching the officer approaching him. “You any good at reversing this jalopy?”
“Not now,” said the corporal. “No way.” He was looking in the rearview mirror. The U-shape had closed to an O, with three men about twenty yards behind them advancing, submachine guns at the ready.
“Out!” shouted the officer ten yards in front of the Humvee. “With your hands up!”
“They’re not Belgians,” said the corporal. “English is too bloody good.”
“Don’t know,” answered David quietly.
“I could try a run,” said the corporal, his foot hovering above the accelerator. “We’d hit the ditch but take a few…”
“Out! Turn off the engine. This is an order! You!” The officer in a black beret was pointing the gun directly at Brentwood. “The holster. Take it off!”
Parkin switched off and David did as he was told, slowly, while trying to make out the insignia of the Belgian regiment. He became aware of a faint tinkling sound, like an old steam kettle all but boiled dry, its metal flexing, giving off the most mournful sound he’d ever heard.
It was only as the officer moved forward that he saw what it was. Beyond the roadblock, across the canal, the locomotive sat deserted, derailed, its boiler punctured, steam bleeding from it like vaporous ghosts floating this way and that until the white became absorbed by the gray of the mist.
There were small groups of men watching, further back behind the locomotive, their figures fading in and out of view in the mist, which, rising for a second, revealed a line of khaki trucks. Further beyond the train, on the canal’s north side, off to his right, David saw a line of other figures, the sticklike projections of their rifles visible now and then as a breeze flustered the mist, which continued to roll across from the canal.
“Looks like a bloody firing squad!” said Parkin, joking uneasily. “Ah — bound to be our blokes.”
“Taisez-vous!”—”Silence!”—said one of the soldiers on the road.
“Venez avec moi!”—”Come with me!”
* * *
“What’s your business here?” demanded the senior Belgian officer, a colonel, his military police checking David Brentwood’s ID as closely as the railway inspector had at Ezemaal. The other Belgian officer who’d escorted him and Parkin down the road had now turned back to the roadblock.
“I’ve got a friend on the train,” David told the colonel.
The Belgian looked at David’s face and back at the photograph. “All right, you may pass through,” he said, returning the ID cards. “But don’t get in the way of the ambulance teams. Wait until they tell you it’s all right.”
“The stationmaster at Ezemaal,” said David, “told me SPETS had hit the train. Is that true?”
“Yes.”
Neither in the fright-filled, bloody, and often confused fighting at Pyongyang nor the bone-chilling terror of Stadthagen— the bared teeth of the German shepherd at his throat near the ammunition dump — had David Brentwood felt as he did now, standing on the platform of the first carriage of the still mist-shrouded troop train. As David moved aside while the stretcher bearers negotiated the tight right-angle turn from the carriage down the steep steel-grate steps to the spongy turf, Parkin was standing by the nearest of the six ambulances, talking to one of the Belgian drivers. First aid attendants, who had at first swarmed over the train, were now poking carefully through the chaos on a second sweep. “How many survivors?” Parkin asked the driver.
“Don’t know. We were among the last ambulances to arrive. But not many, I expect. When the SPETS hit, my friend, it is total.” He offered Parkin a cigarette, which the Englishman eagerly accepted. “They leave no one,” continued the Belgian, flicking open his lighter, “who might be able to identify them, you see.”
“Course,” said Parkin, cupping his hand around the flame. “Silly bloody question really.”
“Ja,” said the Belgian with a distinct Flemish accent. “They are marksmen, those ones, believe me. They are the best those bastards have got.” The Belgian nodded toward the canals and poplar woods beyond. “Probably miles from here by now.”
David overheard the conversation, but something, he couldn’t explain what, told him Lili was alive. The next stretcher he saw coming out had the military police sergeant on it — a neat hole above the left ear — the small hole and dark color of the blood telling David the sergeant had been killed by an expert shot, quickly and some time ago. It fueled David’s hope, for it meant the ambulance teams had probably left all the really hopeless cases till last, first having taken all the survivors, few though they may have been.
“Why aren’t they using body bags?” asked Parkin tactlessly but with the directness of natural curiosity. “Poor buggers can hardly get ‘round them corners with those frig-gin’ stretchers.” As if to underline his point, a swirl of thickening mist swept up against the carriage, momentarily hiding the ambulance team from view, the man carrying the front of the stretcher not having yet touched ground. The man stumbled for a moment, and had it not been for David helping the man at the rear of the stretcher to take the weight, the sharp angle of the stretcher would have caused the dead sergeant to slide forward beneath the restraining straps onto the sodden grass.
“Ran out of body bags,” explained the Belgian driver. “Used over sixty already. We’re running out of everything.”
“How come?” asked Parkin, surprised. “Thought ruddy Antwerp and Ostend were fair flowin’ over wiv supplies.”
“Some more trouble with the convoys from America, they say.”
“Blimey — I thought we’d fixed that lot.”
“So did everyone else,” shrugged the Belgian. “But apparently the Russians have something up their sleeve. New sonar, I guess.”
Parkin was watching the ambulance men bringing off more of the dead.
“Jesus!” said Parkin. “They wipe out all the reinforcements?”
“Ja. Shot every one of them. Train staff as well and the hospital cases — the wounded.”
Parkin could hear steam bubbling away, and he swung angrily toward the still locomotive. “Why the hell doesn’t somebody turn that friggin’ thing off?”
“The engineer is dead, too,” said the ambulance driver. “No one here, I think, knows how to shut it off.”
“I’ll have a go,” said the corporal.
A whey-faced ambulance man emerged from the end of the third carriage and began to negotiate the steep stairway.
“Excuse me,” began David.
“Je ne parte pas anglais,” said the stretcher bearer, using his head to indicate the driver who’d been talking with Parkin, who was now climbing aboard the engine whose mournful dying sound seemed to fill the forlorn field.
“Can I help you, sir?” the driver asked David.
“Is it all right if I go in now?” David told him. “Have a look around?” The driver spoke to one of the ambulance men, who managed to shrug despite the weight of the dead body — a marine, his arm in a cast, face jaundiced-looking and frozen in pain.
“They say you can have a look,” the driver told David. “But do not move anything. More ambulances are on the way. The police may want photographs.”
“What for?” put in Parkin, returning down the track. “Nothing to investigate, is there?”
The Belgian driver shrugged. “Regulations.”
Parkin drew hea
vily on the cigarette. “Regulations ain’t gonna help those poor bastards,” he said, looking at the ambulances filling up on this, their second trip, eight shrouds in each, dead laid out on the wet grass for the additional ambulances on the way.
David hesitated before going in as Parkin, heading on down to the other end of the carriage, called out, “Beg pardon, Lieutenant, but what’s she look like?”
“About five four,” said David, entering the second to last carriage, looking at the slumped bodies which the ambulance men still had to clear. “Blue eyes—” he told Parkin.
“Very good, sir, but I mean, what was she — is she— wearing?”
Brentwood tried to think, recoiling from the stench. “Well, she had a sort of yellow raincoat on — the kind fishermen wear over here—”
“Slicker,” said Parkin. “Right, but I mean, she wouldn’t be wearing a coat in the train — probably bit stuffy in here before— I mean, not when she was busy looking after the wounded—”
“Yes,” replied David, “I guess you’re right. I don’t know — a kind of floral patterned dress — skirt,” he said. “Red and yellow flowers — I think — white sweater. A bonnet. Blue.” David eased his way down the body-strewn aisle, each hand on the corner of one of the day-sitters, the upholstery torn here and there where the bullets had passed through, some of the beige-colored sponge rubber filler oozing from the seats speckled with blood. He remembered she was wearing a red poppy, too, for Remembrance Day, even though the actual day was weeks ago.
David paused, wiping the sweat from the cap’s band before he could bring himself to move deeper into the carriage. He could still hear the heavy, muffled tinkling of the boiler, steam still rising, floating back past the carriages even though Parkin had shut down the main valve.
He moved farther into the carnage, having to step over the bodies gingerly, trying not to disturb anything, finding a footfall wherever he could and using the web of the overhead luggage racks to keep his balance, recoiling one moment from pinkish-gray ooze of brains sticking to one seat, the upholstery black with blood.