Trinity's Child (21 page)

Moreau was silent for what seemed an eternity. She wasn't afraid of the pilot's .45. She wasn't afraid of the refueling, the Russian interceptors, the SAM's, or the low-level run over Irkutsk. She was afraid of the logic. She knew Kazaklis was right and she didn't look at him as she finally spoke.

“Understood, commander,” she said, not making an excuse of how difficult it was to lose her religion, all her belief in the Tightness of her dedication, in one brief wail of a klaxon. “I'm sorry. No more mind-fucking. I'm with you one hundred percent. Mind and body.” She stopped abruptly, and swiveled a quick and challenging look at him. “Kazaklis,
please
don't smart-aleck that one.”

Kazaklis chuckled, an honest, straight, relieved chuckle. “No,
sir,”
he said. “I won't. Tonight I'm going to need both. A mind and a body trained like yours. I'm going to need them badly.” He paused. “Thank you, captain,” he added.

The two of them could feel the tension flow out of the cockpit of the giant bomber. Then the radio started squawking and the tension was back instantly, but of a different kind. Even through the static, the anxiety in the voice from
Elsie
crackled like sparks from a broken power line.

“Polar Bear! Polar Bear.
Do you read,
Polar Bear?
Acknowledge. Closing on your position. IP estimated nine minutes. Do you read,
Polar Bear?”

The voice was female. It also was urgent and brittle, but not frightened.

“Read you loud and clear now,
Elsie,”
Moreau answered. “
Polar Bear
here.” The incoming voice had been so taut and clipped, she added, “Are you Mayday?”

For a moment only the strange radio sounds of the Arctic night—huzzes and snaps from the aurora borealis, whoosh warps from the nearby magnetic pole—danced into Moreau's headphones. The sounds mesmerized her, tapping a momentary Morse code of guilt against her eardrums. She asked herself if she had been as professional as this pilot, a woman, too, flying in circles for hours now, waiting for them, following a duty that doomed her. She didn't answer herself.

“Thank God in heaven,” the radio finally whispered in relief. “We found you.”

Moreau asked: “Repeat. Are you in a Mayday situation?”

“Negative,
Polar Bear.”
The voice was loud and clear this time. “Not yet.”

Moreau looked over at Kazaklis, who seemed deep in thought. His face was furrowed, his eyes staring over the instrument panel into the dull gray of the flash curtain. For no apparent reason he reached forward and ran a finger down a curtain crease. Suddenly Moreau knew what he was thinking. They had to see for this one. She rubbed her good eye, her only eye, and cursed herself for the involuntary display of weakness.

“Elsie,
we need a precise rundown on your condition.” Moreau thought her voice sounded hollow.

“Precision isn't our game tonight,
Polar Bear.
Our fuel gauges are bouncing like jumping beans. We might have 100,000 pounds. We should be able to make a precise connect. But I tell you this: we gotta get that probe in the womb fast. No foreplay. This one's gotta be slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am. How much jizz you need?”

Moreau turned to Kazaklis, who looked unnecessarily at their fuel gauge and shrugged.

“All we can get,
Elsie.”

“Okay. Now, get this and get it good.” The voice turned to stone. “When I say breakaway, I mean breakaway. No questions. No good-byes. No screw-ups. One of us is going in anyway. Screw up and we take you with us.”

“We read you,
Elsie,”
Moreau said. “Thanks.”

“That's what we get paid for,” the tanker pilot replied tonelessly.

“Well,
Elsie,”
Moreau continued, trying to sound upbeat, “you got the biggest runway in the world below you. Great Bear Lake oughta be frozen twelve feet thick.”

“Oughta be,”
Elsie
said. “At sixty below zero. But this big baby ain't a glider, honey. And you hotshots got the ejection seats. Not us. It's a little chilly down there for a San Diego girl anyway. And the nearest hot tub is in Fairbanks.” The radio went silent for a moment, only the haunting huzzes and whooshes echoing in Moreau's ears. Then
Elsie
added flatly: “Was in Fairbanks.”

“That bad?” Moreau asked painfully.

“That bad,” Elsie repeated simply.

“Damn, I'm sorry.” Moreau's words sounded hollow.

“Don't be,” Elsie replied with a tinny nonchalance. “In a way, it makes all this easier. We were on our way back, couple hundred miles away, when it went. Looked like the northern lights. Didn't believe it at first. So we started on in. Then we got the call from the
Looking Glass.”

Kazaklis cut in. “What did the
Looking Glass
tell you?” His voice was urgently curious.

“Oh, Lordy, a male voice. How nice. Had me worried there for a minute. It's bad enough for the last one to be a flying fuck. But for a while there I thought it was gonna be with another broad. That's adding insult to injury.”

“The
Looking Glass,”
Kazaklis repeated.

“Said go for the IP and wait. Orbit and wait until we found you or ran out of gas. So we been waiting.”

“That's all?”

“That's it. Haven't heard a peep since.”

“Seven minutes to IP, two minutes to radar contact,” Moreau cut in. “Estimating arrival zero-eight-four-niner, Zulu.”

“Roger,
Polar Bear,” Elsie
said. “We got a little housekeeping to do here. Let's get back together on radar contact. Commander?”

“Elsie?”
Kazaklis came on.

“We were flying a routine proficiency mission. The
Looking Glass
also ordered my B-52 to head south.”

“South?” Kazaklis sounded puzzled.

“To pick up armaments, I guess.”

“I'll be damned,” Kazaklis said absentmindedly. But it made sense. At least the B-52 was aloft and safe, which most of the bomber force almost certainly was not. “Must be figurin' on a long war.”

“Yeah, twelve, fifteen hours at least.”

Kazaklis stifled a chuckle. He decided he liked
Elsie.

“Now, listen, commander.” The tanker pilot's voice turned deadly serious. “We're going to stick with you down to the last drop. There's no way you're gonna get all the fuel you want. But breakaway means breakaway. Got it? Coitus interruptus, pal. On the first word.”

“Got it,
Elsie.
Back to teen time.”

“No, this is kiddie time,” the refueler said solemnly. “Anybody who'd let this stuff go is loonier than Captain Kangaroo.”

“Yeah,” Kazaklis said. “See you soon, mate.”

“Propositioned at last. Okay.
Elsie
out.”

For the next minute no one said a word in
Polar Bear One,
as each crew member steeled himself in his own private way for minutes of sheer terror. Moreau felt her nerve endings begin to scream beneath the unheard din of the engines. She took her left hand and clenched her right elbow, pulling the hand tightly down toward the wrist as if to force the nerves back down where they belonged. Ironic, she thought, that this moment would produce more palpable fear than the bombs going off. But she could feel the fear in the plane, wisping up out of the basement, spreading to Halupalai and then edging forward into the cockpit. The bombs had come at them out of the blue—theoretical death dancing in unseen particles that might be eating at the marrow of their bones, rolling shock waves that could crush them or massage them, take your pick. But this was no theoretical terror. This was known. And there was no one in the B-52 who wouldn't admit to being petrified with fright the first time they went through a midair refueling, and few who would deny being scared stiff each time since.

In the
Looking Glass,
Alice flinched. The white light had suddenly begun blinking at him. He stared at it, mesmerized. The blinking continued insistently.

“General, for Christ's sake!”

Alice flinched again, turning to look vacantly at Sam. The colonel's eyes were riveted on the light.

“General!”

Alice shook his ruddy head, as if to clear it. He reached slowly for the persistent phone, lifting it gingerly. “Alice,” he said cautiously into the speaker.

“Harpoon,” a voice crackled instantly back through the void.

Alice slumped over the phone, the tension oozing out of him. “Jesus,” he muttered. “Sweet Jesus.”

“No, old friend, but we might need His help,” the phone voice replied. “Do you have anything working?”

Alice relaxed, and shook his head ruefully. He gazed down the aisle. His eyes stopped on his chief communications officer, a chunky young woman. She was intently prying into the bowels of a teletype machine with a hairpin.

“Harpoon, you old sea dog, we're patching things together with hairpins.” Alice paused and winked at the communications officer, too roguishly from one officer to another, too blithely for the circumstances. “Had to be some reason for letting women into the Air Force.”

Harpoon chuckled—his first laugh, half-laugh that it was, since 0600 Zulu. His crew was using everything available, too, amid curses and whistles of amazement at the damage a few high-energy pulses could do to the best communications equipment a technological society could produce—and had spent billions to protect. Slowly, very slowly, some of the gear was coming back. “Did you ever dream EMP could be this bad?” the admiral asked his Air Force counterpart.

“I dreamed a lot of things, Harpoon.”

“Yes.”

“You getting anything from the ground?”

“An Arkansas radio station. Some good hillbilly music.”

“Hmmph. We got Kansas. They're still quoting cattle prices.

Did you know on-the-hoof is down to seventy-one bucks a hundred?”

The phone seemed to go dead for a moment, cracks and pops mockingly interrupting the silence of the two men. Then Alice continued. “Crazy, isn't it? It's so random. We knew EMP would knock out damn near everything. It musta burned out every power grid in the country. I can't even find a staff sergeant down there. But I get a goddamn cowboy quoting yesterday's cattle prices . . .”

“A tape recording ... an alternate generator . . . some warp in the effect ... we didn't expect to understand it.” Harpoon paused. “But there's still a helluva lot of people alive down there. . . .”

Alice suddenly banged a beefy hand down on the desk-console in front of him. “Not for long, dammit! Not if we can't talk to anyone!” Alice thought he heard a sigh over the phone.

“Okay,” Harpoon said. “So what have you been able to do? Can you talk to the bombers?”

“You kidding? Maybe in an hour or so, using the ultra-low-frequency trailing wire. It's the only thing that seems to be working halfway right. We haven't exactly got an armada up there anyway.” Alice shook his head at the thought of the number of B-52's that had been caught on the ground. He looked questioningly down the aisle at a major. The major nodded affirmatively. “We may have found an eye,” Alice said into the phone. “That'll help.”

Far to the south of the
Looking Glass,
Harpoon thought a moment. So some of the camera satellites had survived. That would help. “What about refueling?” he asked.

“A few tankers got off. We had a handful of others up on training missions. We got through to them, and some ground stations, before the EMP explosions. Some of 'em will be able to rendezvous with the bombers. We had to use the by-guess-and-by-golly plan.” Alice swiveled in his seat and stared at a wall map of the Soviet Union. “And what the hell would you suggest I tell the bombers?” Alice asked tensely.

“I'm afraid that's your job, Alice,” Harpoon said evenly.

The tension erupted. “The hell it is!” he shouted into the phone. “It's the Commander-in-Chiefs job! And gettin' him's your job! What the hell are you doing? Taking the scenic route?”

“I have an appointment in sixty-plus minutes,” Harpoon replied emotionlessly.

“Sixty-fucking-plus minutes!”

“Alice,” Harpoon said, the first sign of irritation creeping into his voice, “the man was out in the boonies. We have people after him. I got the word the same time you did. They said it would take four hours. You want me to put this big bird down on that runway and wait? How long you think I'd last?” Harpoon paused, sympathetically, but for emphasis. “Then you could have the submarines and the bombers.”

Alice slumped again over the phone. The submarines. Jesus. “I'm sorry, Harpoon,” he finally said. “Bad night.”

“Yes, bad night,” the admiral's voice huzzed back. “I want him as much as you do, Alice.” Then the two officers disconnected, the
Looking Glass
continuing its slow orbit over the plains, the
E-4
moving over the Mississippi River north of Baton Rouge.

“Radar contact!”

“Ready, Tyler?” Kazaklis asked.

“Hell, yes. Let's get this refueling done right.” Tyler sounded aggressive and blase at the same time. “Then we can move on to the low-level and get this harebrained stunt over.”