Arc Light (24 page)

Chandler realized for the first time that these guys must be a good crew.
Fifteen miles from nine nuclear detonations,
he thought for a moment before the pictures of home, of Melissa sitting in their family room . . . He jammed his eyes shut and tried to force the thoughts from his mind.
Later,
he thought.
Not now.
When he opened his eyes he had to grab onto the flight engineer's desk.

“You all right?” the crewman asked, almost whispering.

Chandler nodded. He looked back at Golding as a wave of nausea swept over him, and he willed himself to ignore it. He took a deep breath of air filled with the smell of burnt plastic. “So why the patch?”

The copilot looked at Golding and then back around at Chandler. “In case it happens again,” he said. “So he'll still have one eye left.” The copilot's head suddenly jerked to look at his hand on the radio. “Got something!” Golding and Gator quickly looked at the frequency and rolled their own tuners to the same number. Chandler watched as the flight engineer pressed his headset closer to his ears.

“What?” Chandler asked, and Gator held up his hand to silence him. “What is it?”

Gator opened a drawer and handed Chandler a headset, plugging it into a jack just behind the pilot's chair as Chandler put the headphones on. There was nothing but a hiss, and Chandler reached out to roll the volume dial by the jack all the way up and pressed the headphones tightly to his head.

“ . . . the blackest of nights in human history . . . ” The signal faded out, but the voice had been unmistakable: President Livingston. “ . . . can cry, we can grieve, but now is not the time for revenge. I have been assured,” the President said as the signal rose, “that the Russian attack was an accident, an accident caused by a tragic chain of events as the Russians' war with the Chinese entered a nuclear phase.” The signal was slowly beginning to fade again, and Chandler again pressed the headphones painfully to his ears to chase it. “At this very moment, as our armed forces are taking appropriate retaliatory measures, to you, the great and generous American people, I have this to say. I believe that the attack was a mistake. The Russians will pay dearly for that mistake, as have we, but we are not
at war with Russia, and . . . to discuss a cessation . . . bless the United States of America. Good night.”

Chandler and the others were silent. Chandler removed the headphones and leaned in emotional exhaustion against the bulk-head behind him. He looked around at the cockpit door and said, “Somebody ought to tell the others.”

Golding lifted the microphone from the dash and instead of raising it to his mouth held it over his shoulder to Chandler.

“Push to talk” was all he said.

O God! O God! that it were possible

To undo things done; to call back yesterday

That Time could turn up his swift sandy glass,

To untell the days, and to redeem these hours.

—T
HOMAS
H
EYWOOD
A Woman Killed with Kindness
Act 4, scene 6

“No, sir.” The tinny voice came over the speakerphone, the constant whine of engines evident in the background. “I can see where 1-80 and 1-25 come into . . . where they came into Cheyenne, but . . . the junction itself is gone.”

“Are there fires?” General Starnes asked.

“Not really. There's smoke, but everything on the ground is all burned out already, it looks like,” he said, obviously fighting the growing quiver in his voice. “The light's”—he cleared his voice—“the light's still pretty dim, but I've got the belly lens on high, and all I can see is rubble. Charred rubble.”

Several heads turned to look at each other. Lambert had thought he had heard something in the pilot's voice earlier, but now it was clear. Lambert felt his eyes begin to droop. It was early morning Washington time, and he had had only a couple of hours' sleep the night before. He caught his sagging chin with a jerk of his head that woke him with a start. The headache, the fatigue—it was something more than just ordinary sleepiness. It was tension. Hours of unrelenting tension. It took its toll.

“Sorry, sir.” The voice returned, weaker now. “There's still a lot of haze . . . but the . . . the cloud's moved on off to the southeast, maybe eight or nine miles already, over Orchard Valley. Everything in Cheyenne is . . . ”

Lambert and the others waited a second for the pilot to finish his statement, but he never did. A sound—just the hint of a sound, really—was again emitted over the speaker. Lambert was already familiar enough with the system from listening to the earlier reports to know that the pilot's microphone was activated by sound, any sound.

“Is he sick?” the President asked in a voice too low to be picked up by the speakerphone. “Radiation?”

General Starnes shook his head. “He knows what he's doing,” he said in a similarly low voice. “Our TR-1A pilots practice it all the time. He'd never go near the cloud.” Then, lifting his voice, Starnes said, “Major . . . uh, where're you based, son?”

“Warren, sir,” the distant voice said, calmer now.

The President mouthed the question “There?” as he pointed down. Starnes nodded.

I wonder how many times he's looked for his house?
Lambert thought, shaking his head as he thought about the faceless pilot.
How does he do it?
Lambert wondered.
How do you go on?
Lambert knew his wife was safe—Washington had been spared—but this man?

“Where are you headed, Major?” General Starnes asked, the tone of professionalism breaking the spell.

After an audible sigh, the pilot said, “I gotta take a drink over Baffin Island and then shoot some spotlight imagery of Thule. Then it's another sip and on to do some standoff strips of Magnitogorsk with the SLAR.”

“Side Looking Airborne Radar,” Starnes translated in a low voice for the President. “The Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar System—ASARS-2—will give us some strikingly clear images. Just like a black-and-white photo, only in any weather, day or night.” He then spoke loudly into the microphone. “You've got a long day ahead of you, Major,” Starnes said. “Good luck to you.”

“Thank you, sir,” the pilot said. “Sir?”

“Yes?” Starnes replied.

“Make ‘em pay, sir. Make ‘em pay.”

Lambert felt a chill tingle his spine.

“They're coming,” General Mishin reported to General Razov from PVO-Strany's Alternate Wartime Facility over the speaker on the BTR-80's radio. “PKO's antisatellite and PRO's antiballistic missiles are still operational, but Radio-Technical Forces reports loss of all of their long-range radars. Every time one of our IL-76s turns on its radar they sprint a flight of F-llls or F-14s in to knock it down. The navy keeps putting up Ka-25s to patch in holes, but helicopters are sitting ducks. We're working on establishing our mobile groundbased
radars into some sort of cohesive grid, but it's going to take time.”

“So we don't know what's going on?” Razov asked.

“Well, we get snapshots. It looks like they've got everything in their arsenal headed in—B-52Hs, B-1Bs, FB-111s, cruise missiles from standoff aircraft, plus their air defense suppression packages, tankers, everything. We can only assume that the B-2s are out there somewhere too, maybe even F-117s, but they're ‘stealth' weapons so we can't see them. There are even A-6 strikes under way from their carriers off the coast of Korea and F-16s from some of their NATO forces in Europe, plus cruise missiles from submarines and surface ships.”

“Are you saying that we're unable to put up any meaningful air defense?”

“General Razov,” Mishin said slowly, “we've had every single air defense facility of any significance hit with nuclear warheads. Every single one. We're now operating out of civilian airports. As long as the Americans can run offensive operations out of the U.S. unhampered, we're going to be rocked back on our heels.”

“What are you suggesting?” Razov asked, knowing full well the position of the air force.

“We have to take the fight to them. Hit back. At least their carrier battle groups and NATO facilities.”

“General, need I remind you who started this war?” Razov said, mustering a stern edge to his voice despite the depression into which he had sunk. “You're just going to have to do your best. Reestablish air superiority over the perimeter first, then we'll worry about force projection.”

“Perhaps, General Razov,” Mishin's response again came slowly over the radio, “I haven't been clear enough about how grave the air situation is. By our last count, they've put up seventeen
AWACS
aircraft to direct their traffic spread from the Kola Peninsula up over the Laptev Sea and down as far south as the Cherskiy Ranges.”

“Do you mean they have
AWACS
orbiting over Russian territory?” Razov asked, astonished.

The roof hatch on the BTR opened, and Razov's aide dropped into the vehicle, clearly desiring to get Razov's attention. Razov held his hand up to silence the officer.

“There's one airborne just a few hundred kilometers north of your position right now,” the air force general replied, “complete with tankers and fighters. We've lost everything other than purely local air supremacy over the civilian airports from which our fighters are operating, and even that might not last. If we don't strike back, General, we need to consider conserving our air resources.”

“Conserving them for what?” Razov asked.

“For what might,” he said, again slowly, “be coming next.”

Razov thought for the first time about the possibility that this might not cool off immediately after the Americans exacted their terrible revenge. “What about Zorin?” Razov asked.