Arc Light (94 page)

Lieutenant Commander Pearcy and another officer, the third-highest-ranking officer on board, arrived, and McKenzie removed the keys hanging from the lanyard around his neck and reached over to open his safe. The other two officers immediately went over to open their own safes at different places around the conn.

Unlike the firing procedures of the air force, whose nuclear-capable units were in constant contact with the National Command Authority, the procedures on a boomer were elaborate. Cut off from contact while on firing stations by the few feet of water through which high-frequency radio waves would not penetrate, and under standard orders not to risk raising an aerial during time of war, the subs were given broader discretion to fire than any other unit. The only messages they got were a slow series of extremely low frequency radio waves passed through the earth itself, which were picked up by an antenna trailed miles behind the submarine but now reeled in for the hover. The rate of transmission was so slow that all they had gotten was a short code, an Emergency Action Message, which interrupted the normal, continuous transmission of weather reports, enemy position data, and personal messages from family that were constantly emitted in order not to alert the enemy of a sudden burst of activity.

The number of officers required to concur in a launch decision was five: the two junior officers of the EAM Team and the three most senior officers who stood at the launch console. Any one of them, if they did not concur that authorization was valid, had one other order unique to submariners. They were ordered to resist a launch by all possible means, including deadly force, and they had access to personal sidearms at all times for that reason.

The two other senior officers converged on McKenzie with the firing keys they had removed from their safes, which the three men then exchanged with one another. Each then unlocked one of the three separate weapons locks.

“Cap'n,” the Officer of the Deck, who had been watching their progress, said, “pursuant to Battle Stations—Missile, Dive is in Condition 1-SQ.”

“Very well,” McKenzie replied. “Weapons Conn,” he said to the sailor standing next to him, “the printouts have been validated.”

“Weapons Conn,” the sailor said into the mike that was strapped around his neck and hung under his chin, “the printouts have been validated.”

“Mr. Pearcy,” the captain said, “what are the instructions in the CIPT?”

“The instructions are to launch on detection of electromagnetic pulse consistent with detonation of a nuclear device over North America,” Pearcy said.

Pearcy handed McKenzie the new fail-deadly orders printed from the laser printer after the last computer maintenance link with fleet headquarters, not one of the more rehearsed control orders. After hesitating a second, McKenzie raised the mike to his lips.

“Missile Room, standby Fire Order.”

“Standby Fire Order,” the Missile Room repeated over the speaker. The safety was off.

“The Fire Order will be: One through Twenty-four,' ” McKenzie read from the CIPT.

“The Fire Order will be,” the Missile Officer repeated over the speaker, “One through Twenty-four.” McKenzie could picture the Missile Officer quickly tapping the vertical row of twenty-four buttons, each in turn changing from a dim orange
HOLD
to a bright green
READY
. Each button opened the firing circuit to a single D-5, a Trident II submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missile. Atop every one of the twenty-four three-staged, solid-fueled missiles were eight W88/Mk5 reentry vehicles, each with a 475-kiloton thermonuclear warhead. Six thousand miles away sat 192 targets. The warheads would land within 400 feet of their targets.

“Fire Order verified, sir,” the Missile Room acknowledged.

McKenzie stared at the weapons console. The
READY
lights on the missiles all shone green. “Weapons Conn,” he said, “prepare to initiate fire.”

There was silence, and it was electric. It seemed like an eternity before the tinny voice came over the speaker on the weapons console, the tone low and mechanical, the speaker sounding as if he were miles and miles away. “Prepared to initiate fire.” Silence, stillness, and then the voice over the speaker: “Prepared One through Twenty-four.”

“Officer o' the Deck,” McKenzie said without turning, “raise the mast and monitor for electromagnetic pulse.”

“Up periscope,” the Officer of the Deck said as McKenzie and the four other officers of the firing committee who would vote on a launch under the fail-deadly nuclear control orders waited, each now waiting on one stray pulse of electromagnetic radiation from a nuclear detonation to tickle the antenna on the submarine's periscope mast and trigger launch of the boat's 192 warheads.

The scene reminded Melissa of a Fourth of July picnic as she searched for a seat on the crowded hillside. If it hadn't been for the whimpered tears into tissues and the radios blaring the horrible hum of the Emergency Broadcast System, everyone might have been awaiting a fireworks display, their heads tilted back and their hands shielding the afternoon sun from their eyes. She found an exposed rock and sat down not far from an old couple who held each other in their arms. The woman smiled sadly at Melissa, looking up at her from a quickly stolen glance at little Matthew.

Melissa scanned the hazy sky in the general direction of L.A. She pulled an increasingly restless Matthew up onto her shoulder and said, “It won't be long now, sweetie,” as the first tears rolled down her cheeks.

It was surreal. She felt like screaming—she thought she might at any second just stand up and scream at the top of her lungs like a madwoman—as she looked out at the sea of heads raised to the sky, searching for the first sign.
Why is this happening?
she raged.
What has gone wrong with the world?
The radio in her tent had that morning reported the war almost at an end, St. Petersburg and Moscow surrounded, and then the special bulletin.

“Turn that thing off!” someone shouted, and the loud hum from the radio fell silent.

It was peaceful, now—hundreds of people all huddled together, black, white, hispanic, Asian, all sitting calmly on a hill in the country on a Sunday afternoon.

“There!” a man seated down the hill shouted, his arm upstretched and pointing into the haze.

“There they are!” a woman cried, and there began a general buzz from the crowd, the most dominant comments heard being the sobbing cries of, “No, oh, no.”

Melissa looked up. The white vapor trails of the warheads broke into irregular dashed streaks as they passed through the wispy upper atmosphere—some patches dry, others wet. The farther the dozens and dozens of warheads fell, however, the thicker the water vapor and the more solid the contrail. With the exception of two or three outliers, most of the fifty or more warheads streaked down in a dense pack toward a single patch of earth in the far distance. Los Angeles.

The crowd all watched the climax of what, Melissa realized, had been building now for months, maybe for all the decades since
nuclear weapons were invented. She looked at the couple next to her, locked in their embrace, and wondered whether she would ever see David again.
Just once,
she pleaded.
I want to see him again just one more time.

As the first of the distant warheads sped down behind the tree-line on the hill opposite their ridge, she thought,
Why, God? Why did you run out of miracles for us?

Behind it followed the dozens of others. When nothing was left in the sky but the contrails that dissipated slowly in the winds, it was over. The couple in front of her rose from their place on the hill and brushed the dirt from their seats. The man looked at Melissa and her baby and said, “Not with a bang but a whimper,” about the anticlimactic conclusion to the show.

Everyone began to rise from their places, the “fireworks” over. She and the elderly couple hugging to Melissa's right stayed put: no place to go, nobody to see, nothing to do. The hillside cleared of people rather rapidly, some still with ears pressed to transistor radios, ever deluding themselves despite what their own eyes had told them.

Melissa kissed Matthew's head, which had been warmed by the sun. “It wasn't like this before,” she whispered, her lips pressed to his smooth skin and fine hair. He had that baby smell, his skin fragrant. “There were crowds of people who would go to concerts and baseball games and . . . and the circus.” Her tears left wet trails down her face. “And we had a house with a spe-e-cial room for you called the nursery.” Her lips quivered and she faltered. “And . . . and there were balloons on your wall, and clowns and sailboats!” She lay Matthew on her thighs, and he stared up contentedly at her face. “There was music, and laughter.” She forced herself to smile. She wanted him to see smiles.

The elderly couple next to her rose and gathered their heavy bag, still clasped in each other's arms as they walked off not up the hill toward camp but down the hill toward the mountain stream below.

“You forgot your purse!” Melissa called to the woman as she looked over at their place on the rock.

“You can have it, dear,” she said with a smile. It was a strange smile—peaceful, contented, fulfilled. Melissa watched them as they headed off, right and not left at the steep path to the water, and disappeared behind the outcropping of rock that jutted from the grassy patch of hill on which everyone had sat. Melissa looked over at the woman's purse. The man had even left his eyeglasses sitting on the rock, something that might prove difficult to replace in the changed world of the new millennium. She picked them up and started down the hill after them.

A gunshot rang out and echoed around the valley below. Melissa stopped in her tracks, holding the eyeglasses gingerly in her hands. A second and final shot rang out, and Melissa dropped the glasses and turned to stare off at the streaks in the sky.

Walter Livingston leaned out over the balcony to look down at the National Guardsmen on the street below. The shots had brought the former President and his wife out onto their balcony just before the first special bulletin on CNN's Headline News, and they had watched from their perch high above the abandoned city as two dramas played out. One below: the men in combat gear rushing from doorway to doorway as they chased a looter. The other above: the end of the world.

Twice they had seen the Guardsmen's prey, a young man with a bag filled with possessions he would never live to enjoy, as he peered out from around doorways and dumpsters. The Guardsmen even passed by him once, and he almost slipped away before they doubled back.

All of that had come to an end with the first eerie wail of the air raid siren. One by one the troops gathered on the street below, removing their helmets and dropping their packs and rifles as the persistent and unmistakable sound droned on.

All of this the Livingstons had watched, the only interruption being Walter's one departure to make martinis.

“Did I miss anything?” he asked as he handed Margaret her cool glass.

“They said that it looked like every major city was going to be hit,” she said, half turning to nod at the television.

“No, I mean down there?”

“Oh!” She smiled, and they both leaned out over the flower pots lining the railing. “He's down there, just behind the park wall beside the kiosk. Do you see?” She took a sip.

“Oh, yes! I see his back.”

“Walter, I think this is the very best martini you have ever made.” She smiled again, leaning into him on that flimsy pretense for a kiss. Her lips were cool from the drink, her soft mouth so familiar.

“And now”—the Livingstons turned to look at the anguished anchorwoman on television—“we here at CNN Studios in Atlanta
leave you and sign off to these scenes of America from before the war and to the music of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Goodbye and good luck.” The stirring music began, and Walter Livingston turned away from the first picture, a smiling young girl eating cotton candy on a sunny day at a country fair.

“Look!” they heard shouted from below, and they leaned over the rail to look down. The boy was running at top speed across the green, now overgrown grass of the park, but the soldiers paid him no attention. One man's arm was raised, pointing into the sky overhead.

Walter and Margaret Livingston looked up in unison. He felt her hand clutch his and a coat of rime cover his chest, sending a shiver across his shoulder blades. Dozens and dozens of wispy white tails trailed the plummeting warheads toward the island.

“Oh . . . my . . ..” Margaret's voice sounded distant and frail.

He turned her and hugged her tightly. Some would detonate midair, he realized. They didn't have much time. As she buried her head to his chest, he caught a brief glimpse of the smile that had been a constant with her throughout let go into a ragged quiver of her jaw and twisting of her lips. In the background Beethoven's Ninth played on.

On the street below, a hollow thonk drew his attention, and he leaned over the railing. One soldier's helmet lay spinning on the pavement. The bareheaded man standing over it twisted free of his rucksack and let it drop straight to the ground. Throwing his rifle down with the sound of a clatter delayed by the distance, he wound up and kicked his helmet down the sidewalk into the empty street.

Margaret squeezed her husband tight. He looked up into the sky one last time.
The end of the world,
he thought staring at the white vapor boiling fiercely off streaking warheads.
So this is what it looks like.
He buried his head in her white hair, which smelled of some fragrance, as it had for all the time he could remember.