The Day Before Midnight

by Stephen Hunter

  Peter had found a little room off Puller’s headquarters and there, with an old Coke machine moaning over his shoulder and girl scout mottos like “Always do your best!” on the rickety walls, he looked at a copy of the single communication Aggressor-One had sent from the mountain.

  I wish to say furthermore that you had better prepare yourselves for a settlement of that question that must come up for settlement sooner than you are prepared for it. The sooner you are prepared for it, the better.

  There was something tantalizing in it, ironic. A strange feeling he got, that it wasn’t a madman’s document, but something far subtler.

  It’s a game, he thought.

  This guy is playing a game.

  But against whom? And why? Why a game? Why now, a game? As if it’s not quite enough to blow the fucking world away, to turn us to ash and dust; he’s got to tweak our nose somehow.

  He looked at the “signature” at the end of it: “Commander, Provisional Army of the United States.”

  Well, your standard-issue right-wing nutcase psycho, staple of fifty bad movies and a hundred bad novels. It fits perfectly: the inflated rhetorical tone, the sense of epic proportion, the delusion of one self-styled “great man,” reaching out from his wisdom to twist history in the proper direction.

  Why don’t I believe it, he wondered.

  Because it’s too pat?

  Because it matches all our expectations?

  Because I’ve a feeling Aggressor-One has seen the movies and read the books too?

  He touched his temple, feeling his head begin to throb. Now, try to relate this, the screwball declaration of intent from Aggressor-One, up there with his MX, to this, the mountain of teletype printouts that were being sent from the FBI, at Dick Puller’s order, on the investigation into his identity.

  Quickly his eyes sped over the data. A crash team from the FBI special antiterrorist squad, working with the assistance of personnel officers at the Department of Defense and Defense’s big mainframes, had done a fast shakeout on military personnel with a certain pattern of experience in conjunction with a certain range of political belief, which itself had been extrapolated from a cluster of skills necessary to plot, stage, and execute the silo takeover and an assumed cluster of ideological beliefs necessary to provide the key ingredient: the will.

  Among the plotting coordinates in the search for Aggressor-One were one or more of the following:

  —Special Operations experience, including Special Forces (Army), Ranger (Army), Air Commando (Air Force), SEAL teams (Navy), and Marine Recon (Marine Corps); Central Intelligence Agency Special Operations Division (comprised primarily of veterans of the foregoing) and including those with experience in Operation Phoenix in Vietnam and counterinsurgency among the Nungs in South Central RVN; or experience in counterinsurgency operations in the third world, as in guerrilla hunting with the Peruvian, Bolivian, and Guatemalan rangers and paratroops; and other odd Agency scams, including the Kurdish incursion in 1975; and so forth and so on; OSS experience dating back to World War II, and including Jedburgh Teams who jumped into France immediately before D-day, and long-range operators among the Kachin tribes in Burma against the Japanese in World War II. Cowboys, Peter said to himself, God save us from cowboys.

  —public record or private reports regarding unusually fierce political opinions, particularly as regards the Soviet Union. Membership in groups in the FBI Index, such as the John Birch Society, Posse Comitas, the Aryan Order, so forth, so on. The fulminators, the sparkplugs, the geezers and winners, Peter thought, the Red haters and baiters.

  —professional officers with solid careers going who had somehow gotten off the track—a CO who screwed them on a fitness report, a program they were in charge of that was axed, a command that was riddled with drug abuse that fell scandalously apart, a stupid and unguarded moment with a reporter that wrecked their progress—who, surveying the rubble of their lives, might have ingeniously plotted some kind of revenge against Defense, using their clearances and friendships to acquire the necessary intelligence to stage the silo raid. The losers, Peter thought.

  —and finally, membership in what was called the strategic community, that weird agglomeration of inside-the-Beltway types who, unbeknownst to the world in general, went about their merry way planning its destruction. This meant familiarity with strategic thought and its particulars, particularly silo culture and technology, missile silo security, launch procedures, strategic targeting initiatives, the top secret Single Integrated Operation Plan (SIOP), the game strategy by which this country would fight a nuclear war.

  This was the big category. It was all well and good to know how to skulk through the night with a knife through your teeth, but in the end you had to know what Peacekeeper was, how it worked, where it was located, or there was nothing at all to the mission, it was just dreamy nonsense. For it all turned on the ability, once having gotten into a silo, to get the bird off its pad. And, in this silo, on knowing that it was even there—not a thousand men in Washington knew this—and that it was uniquely vulnerable, launch capable. He had to know so much, this Aggressor-One!. That was the tantalizing thing about it: whoever he was, he would almost certainly be someone Peter knew and had worked with.

  He has to be one of us.

  He looked at the list: Rand Corporation dropouts, disgruntled SAC colonels, embittered Pentagon jockeys with an intellectual bent, bypassed generals, flamed-out academics. All the names were familiar.

  Another document clattered out of the machine, and Peter examined it. It described a former civilian analyst for the Air Force of great promise who was intimately acquainted with Peacekeeper, particularly as it was to be deployed in the South Mountain installation. He was known for his hard-line attitudes toward the Russians and toward nuclear war in general and had actually published a famous essay, “And Why Not Missile Superiority? Rethinking MAD” in Foreign Affairs, making him a hot item on the Washington circuit, the man who believed war could be fought and won. He appeared on Nightline and This Week with David Brinkley and Face the Nation. He had eventually become head of the MX Basing Modes Group at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab out in Howard County. But his personal life had disintegrated under the pressure of his career, his marriage had broken up, his wife had left him. Now he taught at a prestigious institution and still consulted with the Pentagon.

  “Sir?” It was a young communications technician.

  “Yes?”

  “There’s some men from FBI counterintelligence here. They have a warrant for your arrest.”

  “Sir.”

  Alex blinked in the bright air and looked. He could see the vehicles lumbering toward him across the meadow.

  “No helicopters,” he said. “They are not using helicopters, they are using trucks.”

  He watched the convoy come.

  “All right,” he said, “stations, please. Get the men out from under the tarpaulin and to their combat stations.”

  A whistle sounded. He could feel men around him running to their positions, hear the clink and rattle of bolts and belts.

  “Steady, boys,” he cried. “We have all the time in the world.”

  He watched the trucks come up the mountain. I would have thought helicopters, he told himself. They could have gotten more people here faster with helicopters. But maybe the troops they have aren’t air-assault qualified and would have been more frightened of the flight than the fight.

  No, wait: one helicopter rose. It must be some kind of medevac chopper, for casualties.

  We’ll give you some business, fellow, he thought.

  He climbed atop a bit of ruin, and shouted, “All right, boys. Company coming for lunch! Lock and load.”

  “Sir—”

  The boy pointed.

  He could see them, low and whizzing over through the gap in the far mountains across the valley. Eight of them, low to the ground, clearly A-10s even from this distance.

  Well, he had this one figured too.

&nb
sp; “Planes,” he said. “Missile teams prepare to engage.”

  The first assault had begun.

  Gregor Arbatov took Connecticut Avenue out to the Beltway, headed east through thin traffic, then north down Route 95 toward Baltimore through even thinner traffic. He had plenty of time. He was not due until two and he had left at 12:30. The vodka had somewhat calmed him, and his call to Molly had left him with at least some hope for the future. Molly would help him somehow. His stomach churned; he wished he had a Turns, he lived on Turns, his fat tongue always glistened with the chalky residue of a Turns. But he was out of them.

  Whoa, there, Gregor, old fool. You are slipping. With a start he realized he’d almost missed his exit, and he had to make a sudden dart across the lanes of the expressway, took the ramp too fast, felt the whirl of gravity fighting him for control of the car and at last—though only in this one thing—regained control. He circled over a bridge to arrive at Route 175 for another less swift but equally sleek road, and after a few minutes of zipping through rather attractive Howard County and the suburban city of Columbia, came to a glass-topped pavilion glinting in the sun.

  The exuberance of the place did not faze him. He rather liked shopping malls; America at her glorious best, all glittery and shiny, all the people slick and sassy (the women, Lord, the thin, lovely, supple American women!).

  Gregor was familiar with American shopping centers—White Flint was a favorite, White Marsh out beyond Baltimore, the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, Owings Mills west of Baltimore, the new Marley Station south of it, Tyson’s Corners in Virginia—because it was Pork Chop’s vanity to be serviced in them. Pork Chop—whoever he was—boasted exemplary trade craft. Pork Chop hated solitude and privacy, finding safety instead in mass, particularly in the crowded, bustling venue of the American shopping center. This suited Gregor perfectly. If he could no longer justify his existence on the paltry gleanings from his girls, then he could by his ability to please Pork Chop, whom he had never made anxious, whose signals he never missed, and whose wants and needs supplied the pretext for his survival.

  Gregor never knew when Pork Chop would demand servicing. It all depended upon the Washington Post personal ads, which he checked each day. Most days there was nothing, sometimes weeks would pass: and then, as yesterday, it would be there.

  Darling, I love you. Meet me at D-13-3. Your little Pork Chop.

  The code was simple. Gregor simply referred to the previous Sunday’s Post, Section D, page 13. On that page would be an ad for some kind of chain bookstore well represented in the area, usually a B. Dalton’s or a Waldenbooks. At the bottom of the ad would be listed the various locations. The third of them—in this case the Columbia Mall, in a B. Dalton’s advertisement—would be the site for the beginning of the ritual of the meet on the next day. It was clever and simple and impenetrable, unless of course one knew the key, and only Gregor knew the key, which he had received on a special Eyes Only document two years earlier.

  Pork Chop had been quiet ever since a furious spurt of activity three months ago; therefore Gregor was somewhat astonished when he’d come across the message in yesterday’s paper. But it had made him happy, though it was his bad luck to draw the time-consuming and frequently exhausting job the same night he had communications duty in the Wine Cellar, and exactly when Klimov was so furious at him for so many other failings.

  Well, that was more of his rotten luck. He journeyed through the parking lot like a lost traveler, experiencing one of the real drawbacks of capitalism: lack of adequate parking places. It was, after all, near Christmas. The Americans would be out in force today, loading up on goods for their favorite holiday. But eventually Gregor found a spot in the far environs, and began the long trek to the building proper.

  Suddenly, there was a roar; involuntarily, he ducked, stunned at the noise. He looked up. Six jets whooshed overhead. So low! Incredible! They were a kind of thing Gregor had not seen before, like backward-headed flying crucifixes, their long prows so far ahead of their stubby straight wings. And they were green, not silver. Gregor shook his head.

  Should I know this airplane?

  But the jets were gone then, flashing over the trees.

  “They’re sure in a hurry,” a lady a few feet ahead of him said.

  “Must have a fire to go to,” Gregor joked.

  “Maybe,” said the woman with a laugh. “Or girlfriends to show off for.”

  Inside, it was like the spring, calm and pleasant, climate perfectly controlled. But Gregor immediately broke into one of his familiar shirt-drenching sweats, as if he were in the jungle. As he sailed forward, all business, something caught his eye; and then another thing and then another! Capitalism! It was a festival! He loved America! He stopped to admire a particularly nice sweater in Woody’s men’s department and they had some nice colorful ties there too. Then, it was time to eat. He bought a chocolate chip cookie and a peach yogurt and a bag of popcorn and a chili dog. Only eventually did he find his way to the store of the ad, B. Dalton. He stepped into it, browsed for a while, noticing the piles of best sellers up front. The big book was a lurid thing about a dark KGB plot to subvert America by infiltrating a television network. Then, there was a book about a Hollywood actress with the sexual desire of a stevedore. There was an inspirational volume by a millionaire businessman. There were books about ways to make money on the stock market and to make yourself thin and happy forever, about how to be aggressive and how to be sensitive and how to get people to like you better. That’s what I need, he thought.

  Gradually, he made his way to the back of the store, to the inevitable section marked Classics. Here, he dawdled a bit longer. He’d always wanted to study literature and still loved it, even if he’d actually been educated all those years back as a chemist. He examined Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Dostoevski’s Crime and Punishment and the great Tolstoi’s War and Peace and Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. Now, this was more like it! Then his fingers found the inevitable copy of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, exactly the volume that every bookstore in America would be certain to keep on its shelves. His fingers touched the fat thing, rubbing it softly. He began to feel excited, and sent a quick nervous look around the store. It was full of shoppers, of course, but as an experienced watcher himself, he could see no visible signs of observation.

  The ritual was exact: He would pick it up, turn to page 300 and there discover a very small piece of paper with one single number on it: 2 it might say, or perhaps 3. That was all.

  To anyone else it would be meaningless. Only Gregor knew that it indicated he must leave the store, turn to the right—always the right—and begin to walk through the mall counting exits, and at the second or the third, leave the building.

  Except that this time there was no slip.

  Gregor stared in stupefaction. He felt the bell tolling for himself in his own head. His heart began to break. The air was suddenly hot and gassy. Pork Chop was such a pedant! Pork Chop never made mistakes! Pork Chop was slow, calm, steady, patient!

  Gregor felt the panic come over him. Was he being set up? Was this some kind of ruse? A test? He swallowed harshly, feeling the book grow heavy in his hands. The damned thing weighed a ton.

  “That’s a wonderful book,” a woman said to him. “I’ve read it six times.”

  “Yes, it’s wonderful,” said Gregor, staring absurdly at her. Was she an FBI agent? He swallowed, waiting for her to speak again. He wished he could breathe, or charge his wan and twisted smile with some spontaneity. She looked at him with searching eyes, an attractive but unremarkable American. It was as if she were about to speak.

  But she merely smiled enigmatically as his heart pounded in his chest, and then walked away.

  He looked down at the book; it was shaking in his trembling hands. He began to flip through the pages while looting his memory for clues. Had he made some stupid mistake? Was it another bookstore, another mall, another day? The possibilities raced by like the rushing seconds on a digital
clock. He grew confused. His head ached.

  Think, you idiot!

  He knew he could not stand there holding the book until his beard grew and the world ended.

  He rifled the pages as his mind imploded on him and … like the dart of a white bird, quick and furtive … a little piece of paper from somewhere in the five hundreds broke free from the volume and began to pirouette toward the earth. Gregor watched it flutter, dip, then land. He could read the message: it was a single integer—4.

  Thank God, Pork Chop! You didn’t let me down!

  His relief was radiant with bliss. His knees shuddered in pleasure. He took a deep suck of air, felt it flood into his lungs. He put the book back on the shelf, and turned very adroitly and walked out.

  Light as a dancer, Gregor turned to the right, as the absolute rule of the code demanded. He continued to walk until he found the fourth exit on the right, and stepped out into the bright sunlight, which made him blink after the interior of the mall. The bitter chill attacked him also. He struggled with his sunglasses, then began to walk up the row of cars that was immediately in front of him as he clung to the right-hand margin of the sidewalk out of the mall.

  He walked on through the crisp air, examining the cars in the row to his right. At last he noticed a plaid scarf crumpled in a rear window well.

  In the summer it might have been a madras jacket or a picnic tablecloth or even, as it was once, a Scotch cooler: but always it was something plaid. And always the automobile was different, presumably something rented under a pseudonym. Pork Chop was very careful with details like this.

  Gregor looked at the vessel of his deliverance. It was a Ford. The bright sun burned down and the clouds of his own raw breath floated majestically before him. He could feel the sweat inside his collar begin to freeze.

  Yet he did not move forward; he could not. Something rapped in his chest. He could not deny that he was still extremely upset.

  But he could not just stand there either; nothing attracts attention in America more than a man standing still in a parking lot. Parking lots are a thing one goes through on the way to the other destinations; no one’s destination in America is ever just a parking lot. So Gregor continued his walk until he was out of acres of cars and headed into the woods, another extremely bad idea.