The Day Before Midnight

by Stephen Hunter

  Impulsively, he turned and stood.

  “You guys are Russians!” he shrieked. “I heard you. That’s Russian. You’re fucking Russians!” His heart pounded in the awful loneliness of the moment. He couldn’t believe he was defying the general.

  The general looked at him, and for just a moment Jack saw a hint of surprise flicker across the man’s smooth, handsome face.

  “And so if we are, Mr. Hummel? What possible difference could that make to your family?”

  “I’m not helping any Russians,” Jack said with absolute finality, feeling that he’d somehow made his breakthrough and had located sufficient grounds upon which to make his stand, though he felt his heart’s thudding go off like a jack-hammer and his knees begin to knock.

  The general spoke quickly in Russian, and instantly two of the young troopers ducked into the room, their weapons aimed at Jack.

  “Let’s end the farce, Mr. Hummel, without any silly fuss. If I say the word, my men fire. Then I’ll have to put a message through to the men at your family’s house and your wife and children die. There can’t be but an inch or two of metal left in there. Well get through it, with or without you. Your sacrifice accomplishes nothing; the sacrifice of your family accomplishes nothing.”

  “Oh, no? Buddy, you may know missiles, but you don’t know welding. I give a yank on the tubes here”—he yanked the rubber hoses that ran from his torch to the cylinder of gas nearby—“and rip the sealers out, and you lose all your gas, then you’re out of fucking luck until you get a new cylinder in. Like, say, by noon tomorrow, huh?”

  Jack’s knees shivered with desperate bravado. He felt the torch trembling in his hand. But he was right, of course; the whole crazy thing depended on nothing more than the seal between the hose and the tank; give it a hard yank, and this was all history.

  The Russian understood immediately.

  “Mr. Hummel, don’t do anything foolish. I haven’t lied to you, I guarantee it. Your wife and children are safe. Listen, you’ve been working hard. Take a break. We’ll leave you alone. Think about it, then give me your answer. All right?”

  He smiled, spoke to the two soldiers, and the three of them exited. Jack felt a surge of triumph. It had pleased him to see the suave general suddenly at a loss, scuttling backward absurdly. But the triumph turned quickly to confusion. Now what should he do? Pull the hose? Boy, if he did that, they came in and blew him away and blew away his family. The world lived, the Hummels died. Fuck that. As long as I hold this goddamned tube, I got some power. It occurred to him that he could hold them off. He looked and saw the big metal door to the center. If he could get that locked, then maybe—

  Then he saw the yellow sheet from the teletype lying on the counter and picked it up.

  * * *

  Arkady Pashin, First Deputy of the Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye, you are hereby directed to cease operations within the South Mountain Silo Complex. The following conditions are offered:

  1. You and all men of Spetsnaz Brigade No. 22 will be given safe escort back to the Soviet Union. Soviet authorities have not yet been notified of your identities or the extent of your operation or your connection to the group PAMYAT.

  2. All your wounded will be tended and returned to the Soviet Union at their earliest convenience.

  3. No intelligence interrogations or debriefings will be held.

  4. If the condition listed in paragraph 1 is unacceptable, the United States will also guarantee your delivery (and delivery of any men who chose to accompany you) into neutral country of your selection.

  5. A tender of asylum is also hereby offered for you or any of your men who chose to so decide, and with it the offer of a new identity in comfortable surroundings in this country.

  General Arkady Pashin, the mission which you have planned cannot succeed. I implore you, in the name of our common humanity and your code of ethics as a military professional, to cease and desist before the gravest possible consequences result.

  It was signed by the President of the United States.

  The President! The President was involved. This really impressed Jack. His spirits burgeoned. If the President was involved, that meant it was just about over. The Army would be here at any moment! If I can just get the door sealed, I can—

  He looked up and the world disintegrated in red dazzle and befuddlement as a dot of gunsight laser struck his eyes, blinding him.

  Yank it! he thought, and pulled on the hose, but something exploded in his leg and he fell yelping as his leg collapsed. The pain was extraordinary, but even as he fell, the torch slipped from his fingers, and as he hit the deck he rolled, scrambling, full of athletic passion, to reach it and yank that son of a bitch. But the commando who had shot him was through the opening of the capsule and on him. It was over in seconds.

  “Stop the bleeding,” said the general.

  “You’re crazy,” Jack Hummel shouted. “You’re fucking crazy, you’ll—”

  People were all over him. He lay flat on his back. Somebody shot something into his leg, and it stopped hurting and began to feel as if it were filling with whipped cream. A bandage was applied.

  “He shot you very cleanly, Mr. Hummel. Right through the meat of the thigh. You’ll live to be a hundred.”

  “You’re crazy,” shouted Jack again. “You’re going to blow up the world. You’re a fucking screwball.”

  “No, Mr. Hummel, I’m quite sane. I may be the sanest man in the world. Now, Mr. Hummel, you’re going to have to go back to the torch, and as you cut, bear in mind that this man here will have a pistol on the back of your neck every second of the time. One slip and you’re dead and your family is dead. They will go unmourned in the funeral pyre of the world.”

  The general leaned over. His charm ducts opened and Jack felt the scalding bliss of attention rush across him.

  “But listen here, young man. When you get the key loose and we do what we must, I’ll let you call them. There’ll be time. I’ll have my men bring them up here. Don’t you see, Mr. Hummel. In here, in this mountain, it’s the only safe place. Mr. Hummel, think of the world you’ll inherit. It’s all yours for a little bit of further effort.”

  It wasn’t that the guy was nuts that was so unsettling to Jack Hummel; it’s that he seemed sane—that he knew, absolutely and without doubt, what must be done.

  “Think of your kids, Mr. Hummel.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Jack blurted out involuntarily. “Jesus, why? You’ll kill a billion people.”

  The general smiled bitterly. Jack had the sense he was really seeing the man for the first time.

  “The fact is, I’ll kill only a few hundred million. I’ll save billions. I’m the man who saved the world. I’m a great man, Mr. Hummel. You are lucky to serve me.”

  The general gave another little smile.

  “Now, cut, Mr. Hummel. Cut.”

  Jack felt himself surrendering again. What could he do against such an operator, so much better than he was, so much stronger, smarter, who had it all figured out.

  The flame ate into the metal.

  Scurrying like a swift night lizard, Alex moved from position to position with a sweet word, a pat of encouragement, an invocation to patriotism and sacrifice, a reminder of the traditions. He was not an eloquent man and certainly not a glib one, but his blunt simplicity and, most of all, his belief, did what it was supposed to.

  “How are we here, boys?” he said, glad to be speaking in Russian again.

  “Fine, sir. Ready. Ready as we’ll be.”

  “On our nightscope we picked up their trucks moving toward the mountain. Our infrared also picked up the heat of their helicopter engines turning over. The Americans will be here soon, boys. And this time there’ll be lots more of them.”

  “We’re ready, sir. Let them come.”

  “Good lads. This isn’t Afghanistan now, where the issues grow hazy and you wonder why the fellow next to you has to die. This is the battle we all trained for.”


  He believed it. The general had explained it all to him, and he believed in the general. The general was a great man, a man who understood the whole world and what was best. You could believe in the general. Alex had come back from Afghanistan hungry for a fight to believe in: he’d seen too much meaningless death in the gulches and canyons and enfilades, too many guts spilled out on the rocks, seen too many black flies corpulent with Russian blood. Yet he came back, like the veterans of many another war, unappreciated and unloved, to nothing except a bitter peace. He came back needing a faith, a redeemer, a confessor, a messiah, and he’d found them all in the general.

  “It’s changing,” pointed out the general. “This Gorbachev, with his damned glasnost, is turning the country your men fought and died for into a little America. We are becoming soft and bourgeoisified. We are becoming our enemies, even as our enemies are preparing to destroy us. In America this second they are preparing to deploy a new generation of missile that dooms us, the madmen! And this fool Gorbachev has stripped us of mid-range nuclear weapons and hints of yet broader initiatives. Jews are brought back from the Gulag and allowed to become celebrities for their antisocial tendencies! American music is played on the radio. Our teenagers no longer join the Party, they are too busy dancing. And all this was going on while your men were bleeding slowly to death in Afghanistan. Only a few of us have the memory to understand this. Memory, Alex, that is the key. From memory, Pamyat, comes everything, a belief in our land, the courage to do something about the unpleasant present. Few enough have the guts to realize this, and fewer still the guts to do anything about it. Where is the leadership, the passion, the courage?”

  “Sir, it’s with one man. It is with you.”

  The general especially hated America. He called it “One big moral and intellectual concentration camp.” Only men of courage could stand against the hated America and its plans to destroy Russia.

  “Alex, did you know that Ghengis Khan had a special operations team, a Spetsnaz himself, under the leadership of a brilliant young officer who refused all promotion? Do you know what he said? I offer you this to think about: he said, ‘Give me forty picked men, and I will change the world.’”

  Alex nodded.

  “I will change the world, Alex. With you and forty picked men. Or, rather, sixty.”

  They were a perfect team: the general the father who saw and knew all, the major a son who made his father’s vision possible with his own willingness to sacrifice.

  “Now, boys,” he said to his children, the tough young heroes of 22 Spetsnaz, who would change the world from the perimeter defense of South Mountain, “think of your fathers scrambling through the wreckage of Stalingrad in the subzero weather, throwing themselves against the SS juggernaut all those long and bloody years. Then think of your grandfathers, who made a revolution and fought great battles against the West to save the world for you. Then be thankful that your test isn’t half so severe as theirs: you’ve only a single night to fight, on a mountaintop in America.”

  “Let them come,” said a boy. “Ill talk in bullets.”

  “That’s what I like to hear. And remember this: you’re Spetsnaz. No men on this earth have trained as hard or learned as much or given as much to become as good as you. You are the very best in the world. You carry your country’s destiny because you’re strong enough. Your shoulders are broad, your minds clear, your wills strong.”

  Alex paused in his thoughts and a twitch played across his face. He realized that it was a smile.

  God, he was happy!

  He couldn’t wait for it to begin. It was the battle every professional soldier since the time of the Legions had dreamed about: a small-unit defense with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. But only one soldier of all the millions had gotten a chance to fight it, and that was Major Aleksandr Pavlovovich Yasotay of 22 Spetsnaz.

  And one other: the unnamed American assault team commander, whom he would soon be meeting.

  Skazy was alone with Delta now. He checked his watch and saw that it was 2145; the plan called for them to onload the choppers at 2150. Puller had gone back to the command headquarters to work up his nerve or whatever; and the guy Thiokol, gone too, back to his anagrams and code sequences, tensing up to crack the door.

  There was one outsider here, Skazy knew, but said nothing. The young federal agent Uckley, who’d fucked up at the house, had arrived a few minutes ago in Delta cammos, presumably borrowed from one of the men he’d cracked the house with. Somewhere he’d got an MP-5 and an accurized 45. Uckley was here to tag along. All right, kid, thought Skazy. It’s your party too.

  “Okay, guys,” Skazy said, “your attention please, just a sec.”

  They turned to look at him, faces now blackened, gear checked for the thousandth time, the very best guys there were, weapons cocked and locked, boots tied, all concentration and intensity.

  “Guys, it’s just us. Some of you were in ’Nam in the Airborne or the Rangers or out in the boonies in an A-team detachment and you remember how it came apart in the end despite all the blood you and your buddies poured into it. And some of you were on the fucked-up Iranian mission with me and remember how it came apart, and how we left bodies burning in the desert. And some of you jumped into Grenada with me, and remember being pinned in that ditch during that long night. Well, the truth is, Delta’s had its ass kicked each time out. Now, right now, I know there’s a guy on that mountain who’s a lot like us, hardcore, pro military, lots of ops under his belt. The Spetsnaz commander. Right now he’s telling his guys how good they are, and how Delta will be coming and how they’re going to kick more Delta ass. Okay? That doesn’t make me too happy, and I don’t think it should make you guys too happy. So no matter what happens, I just think we ought to have a little moment of seriousness here for a moment before we get on board the slicks. I fully expect to die tonight and that doesn’t scare me a bit, because I know if I do, some Delta asskicker is going to come in the hole I opened and finish the job I started, right? So let’s just shake hands, clear our minds, and concentrate on our profession tonight. In other words, guys, let’s just get it done. Tonight, Delta gets it done. Tonight, Delta kicks ass. Fair enough?”

  The roar was an explosion.

  Skazy smiled. God, he was happy!

  Peter stared at the face. It was a shrewd, wary face, cosmopolitan, comfortable, sure. It was also handsome, radiant with confidence. You could almost feel the charisma leaking from it. The eyes were bright and hard.

  Arkady Pashin, he thought. I never even heard of you. But you certainly heard of me.

  His eyes scanned the biographical data. Military and engineering all the way, another smartest boy in the class.

  He tried to see a pattern, a meaning, in the Agency information. But he found nothing—it read like your run-of-the-mill defense pro, like any of a hundred generals he had known, only Russian style, with one of those famous cold, hard, serious defense minds, with the inevitable right wing twist, the Pamyat thing.

  But there was this one peculiarity: “In November of 1982 Arkady Simonovich Pashin formally notified his headquarters that he would henceforth be known simply as Arkady Pashin. No information is available as to the reason for such an unprecedented decision. None of our sources have any idea as to its meaning.”

  Why on earth would he have done this?

  A weirdness passed through Peter, some twisted nerves firing, and the strange sensation that the name alteration had to do with him too. It was connected to him. He shivered.

  Peter tried to think about the Russian thinking about him and realized how important he was to the guy. He sends a guy to fuck my wife and then he himself comes over to this country and he charms her. He has her in that room in that fake Israeli embassy, and he looks at the woman I’m in love with. He’s probably seen movies of her fucking Ari Gottlieb.

  Peter shivered again; it was so intimate somehow; he felt hideously violated. His most closely held vulnerability—Megan—had been taken from h
im, turned, and used against him, used as a weapon. He had an image of this guy going through telescopic photos of him, going through the detritus of his life, trying to figure it all out, trying somehow to enter Peter—to, in some perverse and pathological way, to become him.

  He reached back, pulled out his wallet, and got out his wife’s picture. She still looked good to him. He set the photo down next to Pashm’s and looked at the two of them together. Megan’s shot was a head-on, without angle, casual. It caught her grace and the brains behind her ears and maybe just a little bit of her neuroticism. Looking at her, he suddenly acquired a terrible melancholy.

  God, baby, I set you up for them, didn’t I?

  I made it so easy for them.

  He looked at Pashin, the man in the mountain.

  Your whole thing is that you think you’re smarter than me. You and your little tribe of cronies, what’s it called, this screwball outfit, Pamyat, Memory. He felt a little twist of shame. He knew himself he had no memory, no sense of the historical past.

  It doesn’t mean anything to me, he thought. Only one thing means anything to me.

  Megan.

  And you took her from me.

  He looked again at the picture. No, Comrade Pashin. I’m smarter than you. I’m the smartest guy in the class. I’m the smartest guy you ever met.

  He began to doodle with the name, Arkady Pashin and the name Peter Thio—

  He stood up suddenly. A terrible excitement came over him, and a terrible pain. He had some trouble breathing, and yet at the same time he filled with energy.

  I think I have you, he thought. The only thing I have to do is look where you think I don’t have the guts to look. But I’m a realist. And this is how I beat you.

  I can look at anything. Even if it kills me.

  He left his desk, strode through the operations room, not seeing Dick Puller or the others, and pushed his way to the Commo room.

  He picked up a phone.

  “Is this a clear line?”