“A pleasure,” said Clayton, a dignified man with silver hair, in suit and tie.
“And Claudia Cummings, Grumman’s public relations manager for space systems.”
Cummings, thought Rasmussen, looked more like a dressed down fashion model, in red jacket, pink blouse and dark skirt. Unlike Conklin’s rather severe pageboy, Cummings’s lustrous black hair reached to just above her shoulders. Her handshake, however, was as firm as Conklin’s.
Rasmussen and quarrelsome Earnest Schmidt, also an alderman, already knew each other.
When everyone was seated, Jackson thanked the group for its generosity. They already had a busy schedule, after all.
“Working Group A has been so supportive of the base, its planes, and it’s ICBM’s over the years,” said Conklin, “that we didn’t want to miss out on meeting even a single member of the group.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it,” said Rasmussen.
“Let me catch you up a little,” continued Conklin, who was clearly in charge.
“The air force will replace the Minuteman missiles one-for-one with the GBSD between 2028 and 2035. It wants the next generation ICBM system to be adaptable to changing threats over time so we’ve made it modular. You can update one part of the system without rebuilding other parts. The entire system, missiles and infrastructure, should be good until at least 2075.
“Sounds expensive,” said Rasmussen.
“The cost is estimated to be between $85 and $140 billion and another $150 billion to maintain and operate over fifty years,” said Ms. Conklin.
“But it’s worth every penny to deter nuclear war,” interjected Jackson, “and Minot is proud to do its part.”
“Technology maturation and risk reduction was phase one, which has been completed,” continued Conklin. “Phase two is engineering, manufacturing and the initial installation of some missiles. Phase three is full production and installation.”
“I’ve read that some people have spoken against replacing the ICBMs,” said Rasmussen, “Even against maintaining them. What can you tell us about that?”
General Clayton inhaled deeply and exhaled. “Yes,” he said, mildly annoyed. “There are a few of these anti-ICBM people around but they’re small in number and have no traction in Washington and certainly not at the Pentagon.” He crossed his arms across his chest and shook his head. “Nothing to worry about.”
“I agree with General Clayton,” said Claudia Cummings, “but it’s still very important that we—everyone involved with the GBSD program—bring the modernization story to the public. We want as much support from ordinary people—”
“Taxpayers,” interjected General Clayton.
“—as possible,” concluded Ms. Cummings.
“I am in full agreement with Ms. Cummings,” said Clayton. “Even a little bit of negative publicity is a bad thing.”
“I don’t think that will be a problem,” said Jackson. “Last time anyone protested the missiles was ten years ago when a loony scaled the fence of one of our silos wearing a feathered headdress and a neckless of crystals around his neck. I don’t think he changed too many minds. Certainly not mine.” He laughed. The others smiled.
“They all have razor wire up there now, I hope,” said Clayton.”
“Forgive me for saying so,” said Rasmussen, “but not everyone opposed to the ICBMs is a loony. Chuck Hagel considered eliminating some of them and he was secretary of defense.”
“And you may remember what happened,’ said Clayton. “The Defense Department planned a study of the environmental impact of eliminating the ICBM silos. Your senators and the rest of the Senate ICBM coalition put a stop to it. There is no significant organized opposition to the GBSD program, nor would we allow anyone to put our nation at risk by amputating one leg of the nuclear triad.”
Jackson’s secretary knocked at the door and then peaked in. “I think you should look out the window,” she said smiling. “I think it’s Professor McGonagall.”
They stood at the window in two rows. Clayton, Cummings, and Conklin in front, Jackson, Rasmussen and Schmidt behind them. “GBSD” was visible on the sign.
“Does anyone know them?” said Clayton.
“No one else in town has hair like that,” said Jackson. “That’s Edna O’Hare.”
“Oh, crap,” said Schmidt, “she’s my sister-in-law.”
“I wonder why she’s dressed like a witch?” said Cummings.
“A gimmick to get attention,” said Clayton. “Who’s Professor McGonagall?”
“She’s a witch from the Harry Potter books,” said Rasmussen, wondering how it was possible that Clayton, who had children, did not know.
After the meeting Cummings got Earnest Schmidt’s telephone number.
“Is she a member of an organized group?” asked Cummings.
“No,” said Schmidt, “She’s had this bee in her bonnet for a while now but is totally inept. Everyone thinks she’s a little cuckoo. You really shouldn’t be wasting your time thinking about her.”
“Thank you. I was just curious, that’s all.”
Schmidt had maintained a nonchalant tone on the phone, but cursed O’Hare’s name after they hung up. He wondered if there was anything to do to silence her.
Chapter Twenty
In the launch control room again, Makenna briefly wondered why their chairs were on rails. Was it to prevent them from being knocked over, to make movement quicker, to keep the two launch officers on their side of the console?
It was like this down here. Her mind tended to wander when the work had been done. She picked up her book, a sui genesis supernatural crime novel about the Devil coming to earth to revenge himself on God. Lucifer’s Revenge was quirky, but suspenseful. It kept her interest though she didn’t believe in the Devil and, even occasionally, questioned her faith in God, but not usually for long.
Nor did she believe in witches. She had recently seen Edna O’Hare in downtown Minot dressed as a witch. The woman had seemed perfectly normal when they’d had coffee and cookies together. Well except for her misguided ideas about ICBMs.
But lurking below these thoughts was another from which she wished to free herself. Joe Calderone had appeared to be reading test questions and answers from his watch. To ask him about it, though, seemed impossible. Even to mention the rumor that some airmen cheated on the proficiency test was taboo.
So she changed the subject in her own mind.
“Joe, has anyone ever complained to you about the GBSD?”
“What? Are you kidding?”
“You’ve heard about that woman, Mrs. O’Hare. Well, I paid her a visit and I have to say it was very nice. She has some off-beat ideas though, like we don’t need our missiles, the ones in silos, at least.”
“Oh, I’ll bet there are lots of so-called peace groups that say the same things. And hell, who wouldn’t like to get rid of all the nukes, but you have to be realistic.”
“She mentioned that land-based missiles would have to be fired even with an ambiguous warning because otherwise they risked being destroyed. We’ve talked about this in class but never got much of an answer, just reassurance that we’re constantly improving our surveillance systems.”
Joe Calderone swiveled himself twice around in his chair.
“This stuff makes me dizzy,” he said. “And I think it makes you dizzy, too. Best not to think too much about it, if you ask me. Think about something else.”
“Like the exams,” said Washington. It had come out after all.
“Sure, like the exams.”
“Joe, I saw you looking at your watch during the exam.” She’d stepped onto a fast-moving escalator now and couldn’t get off until it reached the top—or the bottom.
“Huh? Don’t you check your watch?”
“I saw a list of numbers and letters.” She paused for a response before continuing. “They were the questions and answers.”
Was Calderone’s expression one of indignation? Anguish? He punched his left p
alm a few times.
“Yeah,” he sighed finally, “it was a one-time thing. I got panicky because I hadn’t done so well on the last exam. What are you going to do about it?”
“You could have been caught if someone else had seen you looking at that damn watch. Amazingly stupid. Why didn’t you just memorize the answers? How did you get the answers? Man, oh man. I’m buffaloed.”
Joe said he’d only done this once because his last two grades had been too low, and he panicked. He had some trouble at home and had been unable to study enough.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“I know what I should do.”
“If you’re thinking of reporting me, think again. Even the brass doesn’t like a snitch, and you’ll hurt some of us pretty bad. Keep it to yourself and I’ll pass the word that someone knows about it and it’s got to stop.”
She clasped her hands, her fingers interlocking, like a thoughtful judge, sitting at the bench, and pushed her chair a couple of feet away from Calderone, more perplexed.
Chapter Twenty-One
It was unusual for commissioned officers to strike up friendships with non-coms but when Calderone heard the rumor that Charlie Forster was some kind of drug king-pin, he approached him to talk, and soon he, Caulfield, and Forster were smoking weed together when they could arrange it. Maria Calderone had forbidden smoking at home. He’d kept her ignorant of these occasional get-togethers.
They rented a cottage on the outskirts of Minot, a safe house where they could smoke marijuana. The three of them held the secret of their meeting place as tightly as they could, but many on the base knew that Charlie Forster could discretely supply marijuana.
Early one afternoon Charlie Forster, Jake Caulfield, and Joe Calderone, gathered to try a freshly acquired sample of LSD, the first LSD any of them had ever tried. The house was well suited for this experiment because the closest neighbor was a quarter mile away, so if someone needed fresh air, he could, without fear of being observed, be dazzled by the cloud formations during the day or by the stars during the night.
They sat, circling a small round coffee table on which lay a sheet of LSD, divided into thirty-six ¼ inch squares, each square stamped with a whimsical image of the mad hatter from Alice in Wonderland, not a copy of Tenniel’s original drawing.
Forster did the honors, cutting out three squares with a scissors, not daring to trust the perforations to do their job. Before handing out the tabs like communion wafers, he crossed himself, a bit of sacrilege that did not sit well with Calderone.
“There’s some beer in the fridge,” said Forster, “some chips, dip, and eggs if we really get hungry, but nobody gets the munchies on this stuff.”
“You always have a supply of something,” said Calderone. “Where do you get it?”
“Sorry. Can’t reveal my sources, but I’ll say this, if you ever need acid or Mary Jane, I just got a big load from my suppliers.” He laughed, pleased with himself. “And I didn’t even pay cash this time. Okay, I’m talking too much. Let’s get down to business.”
Forster thought about his stroke of genius. When the loss of the box of grenades was discovered, he’d wasted no time borrowing a car and heading back to retrace the route they’d taken out to a silo over a hundred miles from the base.
He remembered a short stretch of uneven, bumpy dirt road that they’d mistakenly taken thinking it was a short cut. After they’d turned around, the song lyrics on the radio had seemed clearer to him but he quickly realized that was because the rattling in the back of the Humvee had diminished. So that’s where the tailgate had opened and the grenade box had slipped out.
He parked and walked for hours before finding the box in a rut at the side of the road. He put it in the trunk and returned to the base. The official hunting party didn’t begin until the day after he’d found the box.
He didn’t need a whole box. One or two should be enough.
They sucked on and eventually chewed and swallowed their bits of blotter paper, each tab presumably containing about a hundred micrograms of lysergic acid diethylamide. Joe noticed the effects in about forty minutes, the rug’s floral patterns now kaleidoscopic pinwheeling eddies of iridescent color. A half hour later he dared not look at his colleague’s transmogrified purple alligator-like faces.
He went for a walk.
Bloated clouds silently mouthed words through puffy, parted lips. He wondered what they were trying to say until distracted by thousands of brightly smiling round yellow faces, which swelled and shrunk rhythmically.
Did anyone go permanently crazy from this stuff? He walked a little faster as if to put the unhealthy thought behind him. And it worked for a while.
Approaching a lone elm, he was dazzled by the light’s reflection from its leaves. He stroked the trunk’s elephantine bark and thought he felt the tree sway in response, frightening him. He continued his walk. The hallucinations were more vivid now. With its empty window frames growing larger and smaller, an abandoned shack appeared to be chewing on something.
Now with each step he took, he felt the road push back.
He passed the edge of the sunflower fields into an expanse of a brown crop cut uniformly flat at two feet. The image of the earth as a disembodied head with brown hair in a crew cut came to mind, but it was not amusing. And then the hair was gone, and the fields were brown oceans on either side of the road, rolling toward him in waves. But he felt his chest swell, ready to resist. If the waves reached him, he would be swept into a parallel universe. He was flushed with excitement, but a moment later he was fearful, his hands having transformed into shimmering purple, webbed claws.
He approached a farmhouse, itself phantasmagorical, every window moving, the entire façade awash with changing colors and grotesque shapes.
It was better than looking at his hands so he just stood their gaping.
An old woman came out of the house, appearing angelic at a distance, surrounded by a rainbow aura, but as she came closer, she appeared demonic, though the aura remained. It was hard looking at her scaly red face with its elongated nose and protruding eyes.
She looked him in the face, then at his fidgeting hands, which he put behind his back when he saw her. Then, thinking they really weren’t claws, tried to let them hang at his side, but now that he was no longer walking he could not do so for long, so he clasped them together and pressed them to his chest.
“Is something wrong? You look worried.”
“I do?”
“Would you like a glass of water? Why don’t you come in for a minute? It’s hot out here.”
Maybe getting out of the sun would help. He was frightened just standing here, the thought of insanity, of permanent brain damage, hard to escape.
She had him sit at the bright yellow kitchen table, like an egg yolk lake, its surface undulating. All he wanted was water. He grasped the glass with a claw, the colors still remarkably bright, though he was indoors. He had a few gulps, put the glass down, then put his hands under the table. He averted his eyes from her.
“You’re not well, are you?”
“Doctor gave me a new medicine for my…blood pressure. He said it might make me dizzy.”
“You’re just dizzy? That’s all? Are you having trouble with your car?”
“Why do you ask?”
He hadn’t meant to be brusque. He was worrying about what he might say or do in front of her.
“Well,” she said, “there’s nothing out here but farms. I doubt you walked from town so you must have driven. But here you are on foot. So I thought your engine must have died or something.”
After a pause she added, “You’re not out here to visit me, are you? I know I invited people from the base, and you’re welcome to stay for a while, but I don’t get the feeling that you’re here for a visit.”
Metal pots, their rims wavy, hung on hooks over the kitchen sink. The pots looked okay, friendly enough, simple to understand. He gazed at them as O’Hare gazed at him.
> “How’d you know I’m from the base.”
“You’re a young man, with short hair and a certain shade of Khaki pants. It was just a guess. Are you a pilot?”
He finished his water. His soul was expanding from within his chest, growing larger than the house, larger than the sky, melding into the background of existence. He would be absorbed, and all worry would vanish. He was flushed with euphoria. The woman’s face had become angelic. He no longer had to keep his eyes on the dangling pots.
“Better than a pilot. I’m a missile launch officer.”
He took his hands from under the table and examined them, moving his fingers as if he were playing a piano whose keyboard was a foot above the table. They were no longer webbed claws, their changing colors beautiful now.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
Later, when his mind was clear, he would wonder what sort of impression she’d gotten of him. Would she deduce the truth? She couldn’t see him having hallucinations and his speech was unaffected. He didn’t say anything outlandish. Had he looked at those pots for five minutes? Why didn’t she speak?
“I have never felt better.” And to show it, he arose from the table and bowed.
“Thank you for the water.”
“You’re very welcome. Come again when your blood pressure isn’t so low.”
He headed back to the rental house. The hallucinations strong as ever but his fear gone, feeling that his essence had expanded to fill the universe and made him one with it. He was at peace and enlightened.
A half hour away from his destination, he turned away from the friendly sunflower faces and thought of Makenna Washington. What was she going to do?
When he arrived, he found Forster sitting in a chair in the back yard drinking a beer with two empty bottles on the ground.
“Where’s Caulfield?”
“Went for a walk,” said Forster.
Shadows Page 10