Fire (14 page)

As word of the nuclear explosions — and of the military uprising — spread through Moscow, the people had taken to the streets as well, whole mobs of them ripping political officials and soldiers — especially soldiers — limb from limb. There was word, unconfirmed, of similar uprisings in Vladivostok, St. Petersberg, Murmansk, and Tbilisi.

Green’s own government was in little better shape than the Russians’. Congress was in hiding — as it had been since he’d tried to have the Speaker of the House arrested — and the riots had most of Washington on fire. The military had its hands full keeping the mobs outside the gates of its bases.

Eight hours!

Eight hours, and every semblance of world order had disappeared. Most of Europe was still intact. Japan, too. But the superpowers were at their knees. At least for the moment. Word from Intelligence was that the leaders in Europe were going into hiding, too. They weren’t taking any chances.

Air Force One touched down, its landing gear thumped and skidded three hard beats along the runway.

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. How were they ever going to live out the prophecy if it kept going like this? How were they ever going to bring on the Rapture? How could they have a nuclear Apocalypse if there wasn’t anybody else to fire missiles at them?

He had to talk to Herman about this.

Part of the prophecy was that the armies of Gog and Magog were supposed to do battle with the legions of the righteous. Gog and Magog were in Russia, that was clear as crystal. All you had to do was look on any old map from Bible times, and there Gog and Magog were, smack in the middle of Russia. That was Armageddon — the battle outside the gates of Jerusalem. How were they supposed to have Rapture without Armageddon — much less the nuclear Apocalypse?

The problems were getting tougher and tougher.

Praise God for foresight, Green thought. Months ago, when it first became apparent that there were forces in the government that would do anything they could to stop the Rapture, Green and his closest, secretest advisers (all of them were people from his church) had begun trying to place their own people in command of the bases in the Midwest where the nukes were kept. There weren’t enough of his people in the Air Force, or in the Army, to give Green real control of any of the bases. But if he could get his people in command, Green figured there were ways to get control of the bases. And his people would have their orders. As soon as Green had ordered the missiles out of their silos, his commanders would confine the soldiers to their quarters, and bring in the armed militia from the church. Once everyone was in place, the officers would be dismissed, the enlisted men would be given the option of becoming soldiers in the army of the righteous.

Their only real success so far had been at Eidner Air Force Base, out in Cheyenne County, Kansas, where they’d managed to put Bruce Thompsen in charge. He’d be enough, if they played their cards right.

It was a dangerous plan, but it was working. Bruce Thompsen had even managed to get a couple of his people down into the missile silos. That had to be why those few missiles had been launched, and no others. It was a real accomplishment on Bruce’s part, too: the men who worked down in the silos were watched and screened very closely, very carefully. And screened from the Pentagon, not just by their base commanders.

Whiteman AFB, here, wasn’t anyplace Green could feel secure — no more than he could back at Andrews, in Washington. That didn’t worry Green in any special way. He was President, and because he was President there were some things that no one in the country — military or otherwise — could deny him. No matter how bad things were, no matter what they felt about the things he was doing. His personal safety. This plane. Air time on the television, during moments of legitimate crisis. Oh, maybe they could’ve tried to stop him — certainly the Army had guns enough to do whatever they pleased. But the moment it raised a hand against him, the Army would be by definition in a state of mutiny. What American general could defy the Constitution and still live with himself? Paul Green couldn’t even imagine it; the sort of man who was apt to become a career officer in the United States’ military was too steeped in the tradition of civilian control to even see his own bias. Even the fact that the Chiefs of Staff were ignoring his orders was unprecedented. No matter how the events of the next few days unfolded, no matter what the nation thought of their acts, the careers of the men responsible were at an end.

The plane taxied to a remote corner of the runway and came to a stop. Two minutes later Green saw the fuel truck coming toward them. Another ten minutes and the tanks would be full and he could get back in the air. Another hour — certainly not more than two — and they’d land at Eidner.

That was where he’d decided to go, as soon as he’d realized that it was Bruce Thompsen’s men who’d launched the missiles. Herman would be there too, soon enough, and so would the others. And somehow they’d find a way to bring on the Rapture, no matter what it took.

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PFC Bill Wallace was in a deep, cold sweat, in spite of the fact that the morning was the hottest in this part of Missouri yet this spring. There’d been rumors all over the barracks, all over the base, for weeks. Rumors about the President, and the Pentagon not listening to him. About nuclear war, and the fact that the generals were trying to stop it. The President, the rumors said, wanted a war for the war’s own sake.

Bill shuddered, reached into the breast pocket of his uniform for a cigarette. Remembered that he was driving a fuel truck on the air base’s runway, and swore at himself for nearly blowing himself and the truck to kingdom come.

Last night there’d been the explosion, far on the western horizon. Everyone who’d been awake had seen it, like a new sun rising from the wrong part of the compass, and that sun had burned long and bright enough to wake almost everyone before the sound and wind of the atomic explosion had reached the base — maybe a minute or so after the false sunrise.

Bill Wallace had been awake to see it all. He shouldn’t have been. His duty-shifts had been in the day for a couple of weeks now. But he hadn’t slept well these last few days; no one had. Three days ago General Simpson, the base’s commander, had canceled all leaves and passes, closed and locked the base’s gates. He hadn’t stopped at that, either; he’d had every radio and television on the base collected and locked up for safe keeping, and that cut everyone off from the news. None of that had stopped the rumors about what was happening in the rest of the country. Crazy, self-contradictory rumors that had to come from people’s nightmares. None of them were real enough to believe in.

The last certain thing that anyone had heard was that the President wanted to atom-bomb the Russians because they caught some friend of his trying to smuggle in a backpack nuke.

The man really wanted to put an end to the world. He was crazy, he had to be.

And now here he was, right here on this base, refueling Air Force One. You couldn’t mistake that plane, sitting right there in the middle of the runway. Not that anyone was saying that was who it was.

And Bill Wallace was the one who had to refuel it.

It was a grave responsibility, and a terrifying one. And in a way, Bill thought, carrying it out was going to make him one of the most horrible war criminals in the world.

Maybe that was taking it too far.

Bill Wallace didn’t have the world’s largest sense of social responsibility. When he thought about global thermonuclear war, the thing that came to mind first was his own death. And still — and still —

This man was killing the whole goddamned world, killing it for no fucking reason Bill could see. And here he was, up to what evil Bill couldn’t imagine, and all Bill Wallace could do was give fuel to the man’s fire.

That thought made Bill feel sick with himself. Very sick. Which probably meant that he had a larger sense of responsibility for his world than he liked to admit. And he deserved to feel sick with himself, too, he thought: if he wasn’t a part of a solution, he was a part of the crime.

Bill parked the truck a few yards from the plane’s fuel intake, killed the engine. Two minutes later he had the hose out, the spigot clamped in. Turned the pumps on and let the tanks begin to fill. Which left nothing for him to do but wait the twenty minutes or so that the process took.

The tanks were half-way full when the escape door swung open over the plane’s near wing. For a moment he was afraid that it meant some sort of trouble, that maybe someone was going nuts from having to cope with the ape-crazy President, and that Bill would suddenly have to get his gun out of the truck and rush to the defense of a man he thought a villain.

Then he heard the President’s voice from inside the plane — he’d heard it often enough on TV and radio to recognize it anywhere — heard the President saying something about fresh air being an improvement, even when it did smell like fresh kerosene.

Momma in heaven, Bill thought, save us all from that crazy man.

Another voice, farther inside the plane: “Yes sir, Mr. President.” Probably, Bill thought, it was the pilot. Or even more likely, one of the plane’s crew.

“You tell me something, son,” the President said. “I want you to tell me something, and I want you to answer me honestly.”

“Yes sir?”

“How come, when I pushed that button there in the situation room — and God damn it, I know it was the right button — how come when I pushed that button only three of our rockets got fired? And how was it that both of the ones that were headed toward where they were supposed to go just happened to fall into the ocean? Did you Air Force boys abort my missiles? Did you do that to me?”

My God, Bill Wallace thought, the lunatic is really trying to do it. He really is trying to blow up the world. He tried to swallow, reflexively, but his mouth was too dry and the contraction of his throat made him choke. Beside him, the fuel pump ka-chunked itself to a halt as the valves inside it realized the plane’s tanks were full. At least someone’s trying to stop him. Maybe we’ll all be alive tomorrow after all.

The sound of the airman inside the plane gagging on his own tongue. “I wouldn’t know, Mr. President, sir. I’m not cleared for that sort of information.”

President Green cursed at the airman, and then Bill heard a banging sound that must have been the President pounding his fist on the plane’s hard-plastic wall. And Bill thought: Wasn’t President Green supposed to be some sort of a Bible beater? What was he doing cursing like a pimp? “Well then, son, you tell me, why don’t you tell me: who the fuck do I got to talk to? Who the hell do I got to talk to around here to get a straight answer to a serious question?”

“Honest, sir — I haven’t got the clearance for that kind of information. I’ve barely got enough need-to-know to get us around the hot spot out in Kansas.”

“Well then, why don’t you get yourself on that radio of yours, and find out who the hell was responsible? And when you find out who it was, I want you to tell me his name and put him on the radio with me.” A pause. “Don’t just stand there — this is an order, son, from your President. Do you understand me?”

My God, Bill thought. There isn’t any hope. There really isn’t. Somehow that man is going to get his hands around the right general’s throat. It’s going to happen — sooner or later, it’s going to happen. And once he does, he’s going to blow every last living one of us to kingdom come. Through his mind’s eye Bill Wallace saw the world that Green would leave behind him — a dead, dry, barren earth, scarred a hundred thousand times by glazed and glowing nuclear craters. And he hurt so bad inside at the sight of that world that all he wanted to do was curl up someplace and die, right then and there.

There wasn’t time to curl up and die. There was a job in front of him to do. He reached over the plane’s fuel tank, unfastened the clamp that held the hose in place. As he did, his left arm brushed against the cigarettes in his uniform pocket.

Cigarettes.

And matches.

The rich chemical smell of kerosene welled up through the intake valve.

Inside the plane, the President was shouting again. “Well, soldier? Do you have the man’s name for me yet?”

And suddenly Bill Wallace realized that he was reaching into the pocket of his shirt. Taking out the matches. The cigarettes, too — if he was going to die he owed himself a last drag or two of smoke. Even if he had condemned himself.

What was he doing? This wasn’t him. Bill Wallace didn’t want to die. He wanted to finish this hitch and get himself out of the Air Force.

From the open door, above the wing of the plane: “Hey you — airman — what the hell do you think you’re doing?” The man was in civilian clothes — Secret Service, most likely. Already he had his gun out. In less than a moment it’d be aimed at Bill.

Which meant that there wasn’t time for cigarettes, or thinking, only for lighting the match, dropping it into the fuel intake, and —

Fire.

Fire everywhere, exploding, consuming, burning such fast, incredible pain, ruthless pain . . .

It was over for Bill before the explosion finished. He was the first to die by a second or two at least. The President and the eight inside the plane with him all were dead three minutes later; only the Secret Service man who’d tried to stop Bill Wallace survived the fire — the explosion threw his body much more than it engulfed him. The air base’s fire trucks found him lying on the runway, and they did what they could for him, but it might have been kinder if they’d left him to die — the man spent his last twelve hours in a long quiet agony of burned away skin before his infections finally killed him.

The base’s fire trucks were fast, and they did as best could be done, but even as soon as they reached the plane they weren’t any use. The fire burned too hot, too bright. The chemicals and foams they had to fight it were too insignificant to choke a flame that raged so hot. Twenty minutes after Bill Wallace had dropped his match, the bodies of the President and the eight men with him were reduced to microcosmic dust, indistinguishable from the ash and fused metal that surrounded their remains.