The Day Before Midnight

by Stephen Hunter

  “Yes! Something from the Americans would do nicely.”

  “Well, actually, it’s a fallow time. You know how it is in this business, young Comrade Gorshenin. You plant a thousand seeds and then you must wait to harvest your one or two potatoes.”

  Gorshenin appeared disappointed.

  “A shame. You know I’d hate to have to turn you back to Klimov with a bad report on our interrogation. He’d not see the humor in it.”

  “Hmmm,” said Arbatov, gravely considering again. “KGB has the GRU code book, of course.”

  The idiot Gorshenin swallowed and the greed beamed from his eyes like a television signal. The code book was the big secret; it was the treasure; if KGB could get its hands on just one code book for just one hour, it would be able to read GRU’s cable traffic for years to come. And the man who brought it in … !

  “I’m sure we do,” said Gorshenin, poorly affecting nonchalance. “I mean the things are left around in installations all over the world.”

  Such a terrible lie, so thin and unconvincing. The books were, of course, guarded like the computer codes that launched the SS-18s.

  “Yes, well, a shame. You see, though the book is locked except when the communications officer uses it to decode or to encode high priority messages, he’s an old friend of mine, and one night he called up and realized he’d left delicate medicines there. Barbiturates, did you know the poor man was addicted? Anyway, in his despair he gave me the combination. I was able to retrieve his drugs for him. I actually committed the combination to memory.”

  “Surely it has been changed,” said Gorshenin too quickly.

  “Perhaps, but not the last time I had communications duty.”

  The two men looked at each other.

  A small object was pushed across the table at Arbatov. It was a Katrinka camera.

  “Aren’t you late for your duty in the Wine Cellar, comrade?” Arbatov glanced at his watch.

  “Very late,” he said. “It’s nearly midnight.”

  The hole glistened open, dilating as the metal around it liquified. Jack thought of a birth: a new world would come out of this orifice. The black hole would spread and spread and spread, consuming all. A terrible sadness filled him.

  “There, go on. Go on,” insisted the general. “You’re almost there, go on, go on!”

  The flame ate the metal, evaporating it.

  Suddenly there came the sound of the opening of the elevator door and the rush of boots. Men raced down the outside corridor. Shouts and alarms rose. For just a second Jack thought the American Army had arrived, but it was only the Russian. The language rose and yelped through the halls. Orders were hurled at men by NCOs. Jack heard ammunition crates being ripped open, the clank and click of bolts being thrown, magazines being loaded, automatic weapons being emplaced. He heard furniture being shoved into the corridor as barricades were hastily erected. The atmosphere seethed with military drama; Jack was in the middle of a movie.

  The general was talking earnestly in Russian with the tough-looking officer who’d come to Jack’s house that morning. They nodded their heads together, the younger man explaining, the general listening. Then the two of them departed from the capsule to check the preparations.

  Jack stood. He was alone with the guard who’d shot him. His leg had stiffened and the pain was immense. He had a throbbing headache.

  “You speak English, don’t you?” he said to the boy who stared at him with opaque eyes, blue as cornflowers. He had a rough adolescent complexion and teeth that could have used braces. But he was basically a good-looking, decent kid, a jock, maybe a rangy linebacker or a strong-rebounding forward.

  “Do you know what they’re going to do?” Jack said. “What have they told you? What do you guys think is going on? You guys must not know what’s going on.”

  The guard looked at him.

  “Back to work.”

  “These guys are going to fire the rocket. That’s what’s in here, the key to shoot the missile off. Man, they’re going to blow the world away, they’re going to kill mil—”

  The boy hit him savagely with the butt of his AK-47. Jack saw it coming and with his good athlete’s reflexes managed to tuck his face just a notch and take the blow at the hinge of the jaw rather than in the mouth and cheek, and though he knew in the instant the pain and concussion erupted in his head his jaw was broken, he had a perverse pleasure in the fact that his teeth hadn’t been blasted out. He sank with a mewling scream to the floor, and the boy began to kick him in the ribs.

  “No, God, please, no!” Jack begged.

  “American pig shit motherfucker, kill all our babies with your goddamned rocket!” the boy howled in pain as genuine as Jack’s.

  Jack thought he’d blacked out, but the kicks stopped—the boy was dismissed to the tunnel defense team by the tough major or whatever—and the major pulled Jack to his feet.

  “Watch what you say, Mr. Hummel,” he said. “These kids know their pals are upstairs getting killed. They’re in no mood for charity.”

  “Fuck you,” Jack screamed through his tears. “The Army’s coming in here and they’re going to kill your asses before you get this goddamned key, and—”

  “No, Mr. Hummel,” said the general. “No, they’re still hours away. And you’re minutes away.”

  The major raised his pistol and placed it against Jack’s skull. His eyes were drained of emotion.

  “Do you wish to say ‘fuck you’ now, Mr. Hummel?” he asked.

  Jack wished he had the guts to say it. But he knew he didn’t. It was one thing to be brave in the abstract, it was another thing with a goddamned gun up against your head, especially when everything about the Russian suggested that without blinking an eye he’d pull the trigger. Hell, they could cut the last inch or so of metal away with a Bic lighter, that’s how little was left.

  The general leaned over, picked up the torch, and placed the sputtering thing in Jack’s hand.

  “We’ve won, Mr. Hummel. We’ve done it, don’t you see?”

  He turned and crossed the small room to a radio set between the teletype machines. He turned a few buttons and knobs, then looked back.

  “It’s all history, Mr. Hummel. We’ve won.”

  Dick Puller had left the command post and was airborne in a command chopper with his radio, hovering out of range, watching, giving orders over the radio.

  “Cobra Three, you people have to bring more of your automatics into play. I can see a slacking off there, do you copy?”

  “Delta Six, goddammit, I have four men dead and nine wounded on this side!”

  “Do the best you can, Cobra Three. Bravo, this is Delta Six, any movement there?”

  “Delta Six, their fire isn’t dropping a goddamn bit. I’ve still got people coming in.”

  “Get ’em in and get ’em shooting, Bravo. It’s the guns that’ll win this thing.”

  It was a question of which the men hated more, the Soviets dug in at the ruins of the launch control facility who would not stop firing, or the dry voice over the radio, clinical, impatient. The bird floated tantalizingly beyond them all, its lights running insolently in the night.

  The Soviets were firing flares, which hung in the air under parachutes leaking flecks of light down across the scene, giving it a horrible weirdness. It looked like some musty nineteenth-century battle painting: the flickering lights, the heaps of bodies, the gun flashes cutting through the drifting smoke, the streaks of tracer darting about, tearing up the earth wherever they struck. All of it was blue with a smear of moonlight, white with a smear of gun smoke, dark where the mud and blood commingled on the earth.

  And there were extraordinary moments of valor. A Soviet trooper crawled out of the perimeter, stood, and rushed into the American lines. He had nine grenades in his belt, and when he leapt among the Americans—he’d been hit three times but he kept coming—he detonated himself, killing eleven Rangers and quelling the fire on the front for three long minutes. Then there were the t
hree Spetsnaz gunners on the right, isolated from the larger body of troops and unable to resupply themselves with ammunition. Down to a single magazine apiece, they mounted their bayonets, climbed out of their trench in a banzailike charge, and, screaming as they came, ran at the Americans, shooting from the hip. One was hit immediately, center chest, by a burst of MP-5 fire from a Delta; but the other two leapt like fawns as the tracers searched them out. As they came they fired, but as they came they were hit, and eventually the bullets dragged them down, but the last one got into a Delta hole and killed a man with his bayonet before his partner fired the full mag of 5.56mm into him.

  Another hero turned out to be Dill, the gym teacher. He took his leadership responsibilities overzealously. He led three assaults from the left side, from which his unit had come. He killed nine Russians and was hit twice. His men kept up the fire and by this time the stragglers had joined them.

  The wounded crawled among the besiegers, handing out ammunition. James Uckley, with no place else to go, had separated himself from the Delta troopers with whom he’d flown in and taken up a position on the right. He had a CAR-15, and with little regard for his own life he lay in a shallow trench close to the Soviet position and fired magazine after magazine into it. He couldn’t see anything except the answering gun flashes and had no idea whether or not he was helping. He just had the sense of the weapon shaking itself empty. Still, he kept firing, feeling his skin turn to black leather as the powder rose and sank into it. Overhead, the bullets whistled close and at least three times he’d felt zeroed as the bullets struck close, kicking up a spray of snow and dust. But everything had missed so far. On his left were two state policemen and two Hagerstown policemen, each with shotguns; they fired too.

  Now the inevitable progression of the battle was in the American favor, no matter the ferocity of the Soviets. The Americans had more weapons and with each passing minute more were brought into play. The reserve companies of the Third Infantry got in close and with their heavier M-14s began to raise the volume of fire. Additional elements of Bravo staggered in through the woods. State and local policemen, a few FBI men, some of Bravo’s walking wounded, most of the Delta intelligence staff, all arrived, found some kind of weapon, and struggled up in the dark to the firing line, found a scrap or bit of cover, and commenced fire.

  Only one man in all this did not fire. This was Peter Thiokol, who lay on his face about two hundred meters off the site of the battle, feeling useless. He was terrified, yet his mind did not associate what was going on with any notion of war, which he had seen only represented on television or in the movies, where everything is clear, the relationship of friend to foe, the layout of the terrain. Now everything was strange. He could make no sense of it. An odd idea leapt into his head: he felt present at some ancient religious ceremony, where priests were sacrificing young men up there at the vivid altar with crude, cruel bronze blades. The young men went willingly to their doom, as if in doing so they guaranteed themselves a place in heaven. It had a late Aztec feel to it, or a sense of the Druid’s return—the devil was here, Peter knew, looking over the shoulders of the priests up there with their bright blades, laughing, urging them on, congratulating himself on having a nice day with an idiot’s drooling, half-moon smile. Tracers filled the air; he could hear them cracking. Occasionally, they’d hit close, driving him back. But he kept peering over the lip of his trench, fascinated.

  “Better stay down, doc,” someone said. “You get killed peeking and all this ain’t worth shit.”

  Peter shivered, acknowledging the wisdom in the advice, and hunkered down, wishing he could make the noise go away.

  Finally, the Russian response seemed to falter. Skazy, noticing the decrease, led a Delta party of six men and breached the final Soviet trench on the right side. It was a terrifying run up the hill, and all around him the fire flicked out, yet he jumped into the trench, and discovered only corpses. With an M-60 he began to pour fire into the Soviet position from up so close that the Russians had almost no chance. With his gun working from almost zero range, it ceased to be a battle and became a butchery.

  There was a pause in the firing.

  Smoke licked the battlefield’s horrible stillness.

  A Delta interpreter asked through a loudspeaker if the Spetsnaz people wished to accept an honorable surrender and medical attention. The few Russians responded with gunfire.

  “Delta Six, this is Cobra, there’s no answer.”

  “Do you have targets?”

  “Most of them are down.”

  “Ask ’em again.”

  Skazy nodded to his interpreter. The man spoke again in Russian. A burst of gunfire responded, hitting him in the chest and throat, knocking him down.

  “Christ,” said Skazy into his hands-free mike, “they just hit our interpreter.”

  “All right, Major,” said Dick, “body-bag ‘em.”

  Skazy finished the job.

  Walls beat the tin door off the junction box with the stock of the Mossberg, badly chewing the wood in the process. No time to worry about that now.

  The box, ripped open, yielded a terrifyingly complex mesh of wires crowding in on the junctions. It made no sense to him. It was like so much of the world: all wired up, all fixed, all fancy and complicated, beyond him. It could have been the same old sign.

  FUCK NIGGERS it could have said.

  He looked at it, feeling the rage grow and seethe. He’d felt this way on the streets sometimes. Hey, he was a hero, goddammit, he went into tunnels for his motherfuckin’ Uncle and did what Uncle said and killed yellow people and did shit no man should have to do and was hit three times and almost killed a hundred more times and then it was, thanks Jack, and good-bye to you and good luck to you.

  NO BLACK BOYS NEED APPLY it could have said.

  NO BLACK TUNNEL RATS NEED APPLY.

  NO SILVER STAR WINNERS NEED APPLY.

  NO THREE-TIME PURPLE HEARTS NEED APPLY.

  FUCK NIGGERS.

  That was some sign.

  The Vietnamese woman said something and it pissed him off. It was that singsongy shit they all had, you couldn’t make no sense out of it. She thought he knew what the fuck to do. Like he was some kind of while guy, he had all the goddamn motherfucking answers.

  Hon, it don’t mean shit to me. It’s just some wires from white boys, that only white boys can figure out.

  He felt like crying. He felt trapped in the tiny little space. Come all this way for nothing. Grief beat at him. But then he figured, fuck it, got to do something. He pulled out his knife. Hey, he was going to use it to stick in some guy instead of sticking it into some wires.

  He was just going to stick it in, fuck the wires up, see what happen. But then he remembered the word DOOR from the front of the tin box. He stared at the wires coming into the box. They came out of the walls, most of them, through little tubes. Let’s see, door be that say, let’s see if we can’t find some goddamned wire come from that way. He looked. Sure enough, most of the wires came from some other way, but one trace of wires plunged outside toward the box from his left, from the direction of the duct entrance. Walls hacked at the tubing covering the batch of wires, chipping away little nuggets of rubber that fell like raisins to the floor, until he had some bare wire revealed. He was acting just like he knew what the fuck he was doing.

  The woman was so close in the little chamber. She looked at him like he knew what he was doing too. He laughed again. She didn’t know shit either. He thought it was pretty funny, the two of them in a little space off a rocket that was going to end the world, hacking on some wires like they knew what they were doing, a nigger boy and a gook girl, the two lowliest forms of scum on the earth which was going to be blown to shit if they didn’t stop it. She laughed too. She must have been in on the joke, because she thought it was funny too.

  They both had a good laugh as Walls chopped his way through the wires. Then, just for the fuck of it, he cut through some more wires. With the blade of his knife as a
kind of stick, he lifted one tuft of wires over across the gap and shoved it against the other wires and—

  Walls shook the spangles from his eyes and found himself against the wall. Felt like his old daddy had whacked him upside the head one. His nose filled with an acrid odor. His head hurt. When he blinked he saw blue balls and flashbulbs. His teeth hurt. Someone was playing music inside his head. His knife lay on the floor, smoking. What the fuck had—

  But the woman was at the mouth of the duct, screaming.

  Walls crawled over. Man, he felt smoked himself. Could hardly remember who he was, Jack.

  But he remembered when he saw the door into whatever the fuck else was down here: it was open.

  Jesus fuck, he’d done it. He’d gotten into whitey’s secret place.

  He grabbed for his shotgun, seeing that it would be easy to reach the open door, swing over to the ladder, then get inside.

  He pulled the Taurus 9-mm automatic out of his holster and handed it over to her.

  “You know how one of these things work, hon?”

  He pointed to the safety lever locked up.

  “Push that down, babe,” he gestured with his finger, “and bang-bang! You got that? Down and bang-bang!”

  The woman nodded once, smiled. The gun was big in her tiny hands, but she looked as though she’d been born with it there.

  He reached, and the shotgun came up into his hands. It felt smooth and ready and he still had a pocket full of twelves.

  The woman looked at him.

  “Ass-kickin’ time,” he said.

  The shooting had stopped. Peter looked up. There seemed to be some kind of delay, some sort of hassle up at the launch control facility, and then he heard a roar and looked up as the command chopper, beating up a screen of snow and dust, lowered itself awkwardly from the sky and he saw Dick Puller leap out. The chopper zoomed skyward.

  He heard his name called then.

  “Dr. Thiokol. Where are you? Where the hell is he? Anybody seen that bomb guy? Dr. Thiokol?”

  Shivering, Peter rose.