“Terminal countdown has commenced,” said the white bitch, snooty and far off and so much better than him. He wanted to kill the white bitch.
“Yes, suh,” he said. “I know my letters pretty good.” He was speaking slow, like a goddamn houseboy.
“Ah, good, great, God, terrific,” came the voice. “Now, if we work together and trust each other and don’t panic, well be okay, we’ll have plenty of time, we can do it by the letters. Okay, son. We can get it done, there’s still time, okay?”
Walls could feel the panic flashing quick and bright under the man’s voice as it fought through his Adam’s apple and throat full of gunk.
“Yes, suh,” he said, yassing the man to death, giving him what he wanted to get him smiling, like he was five again, just yassing and yassing him to death, all smiles and charm and secret shame. “We do it real slow, don’t panic, we be okay, fine, yes, suh.”
“Okay,” said the voice, “now, if you’re at the phone, you’re sitting in the chair, right?”
“Yes, suh,” said Walls, sliding obediently in the chair.
“Now, start at the phone jack, where the cord fits into the wall. Look at it, okay?”
“Yes, suh.” He fixed his eyes on the plug where the cord went into the wall.
“Now lift your eyes about two inches. To the left is a little handle. Then there’s a ridge. And at the ridge the control console sort of leans away from you. It’s not a straight angle, but it’s leaning away, right?”
“Yes, suh.”
“Okay, now, on that leaning part—you’re looking at its extreme left-hand side now—on the leaning part there are all kinds of switches. There’s five groupings of two columns, ten columns in all. The column groupings are broken down so that there’s a group of six—three and three in two columns-then a group of eight, that’s four in each column, then a group of four, two in each column. And there’s five sets of them, right?”
Fuck you, Jack, thought Walls. Wrong. Wrong and wrong again, sucker. It was a maze, a gibberish of little white boxes, and switches and wires, a nightmare. He closed his eyes, hoping it would go away, or that it would become clear. When he opened them, he was still in the maze.
“Do you see?” demanded the voice.
“I don’t see nothing,” he said.
“Look at it! Goddamn you, bastard, look at it!”
He could hear sobbing on the other end, hysteria, panic, terror.
Walls looked back, tried to see—the switches dazzled and flickered before him, seeming to squiggle into shapes like some kind of strange animal, a shape changer, a germy thing in some movie where people got whacked and cut.
“Terminal countdown has commenced,” came the voice of the white bitch, sweet as sugar. “Terminal countdown has commenced.”
Then, yes, he had it! Goddamn motherfuck yesyesyes! he had it. The columns, two of them twinned, and each of them broken down into little groupings, five of them, each to its board.
“Goddamn, motherfuck!” he shouted. “Hey, man, I got the bitch, I got the motherfucker!”
“Great! Great, great, great!” shouted the voice. “Terrific. Now, it’s—”
And the line went dead.
“It’s dead, it’s dead, it’s dead,” Peter screeched. “Jesus, it’s dead.”
“Terminal countdown has commenced,” came Betty’s voice on the loudspeaker.
Someone grabbed him, a sergeant, to calm him down.
“Just take it easy,” he said.
Peter looked into the dead military eyes. Don’t you understand, he thought, don’t you see what’s happening? Do you realize what’s at stake here. It’s—
“They hit the phone juncture, Doctor. Look.”
It was the officer, pointing to a box high up on the wall exposed to Soviet fire. It had been mutilated by a burst, hinges blown off, the mechanical guts of the switching mechanisms shredded so that they hung out like entrails.
“Is there another phone?” the officer asked. “A phone inside that connector. Anything outside of it’s dead. But maybe there’s something inside.”
Phones! Who remembered phones! Peter, who’d once lived his life in the maze of the blueprints of the South Mountain installation, tried to sort out his phone memories, something he’d never looked at. But it was there! He remembered, it was there!
“Down the hall,” he said. “About twenty feet. There’s another phone. It’s just a little ways.”
Their unbelieving eyes looked at him.
“You’re wide open to the Soviet guns there, Doc.”
“The bird is going to fly, goddammit!” Peter said.
“Man, they’ll cut you apart.”
“I just need a minute on the damn phone.”
“We’ll give you covering fire,” said the officer. “We’ll give you all we’ve got.”
“I’ll go with him,” somebody said. “He’s going to need somebody up with him firing too.”
Peter looked. The soldier had a sheepish look under his filthy face, and some semblance of familiarity. Then Peter realized: he wasn’t a soldier at all, he was that young FBI agent Uckley. Now, what the hell was he doing down here?
“Let’s go,” said Peter.
He ran to the corner; around it was the Soviet gun position and the telephone. Across the way Delta operators were firing on the Soviets. The noise of the fire was loud and percussive and frightening. Peter hated it, hated it all: the guns, the loudness, the sense of danger heavy in the air, and most of all he hated his own fear, which was like a living presence within him. And he hated her, Betty who was Megan, who loved him and hated him and whom he could never please.
“Terminal countdown has commenced,” Megan said.
Uckley was next to him. He had two of the little German machine pistols with long clips, one for each hand. He looked scared too.
The Delta troopers on this side of the hall were busy clicking their bolts or whatever they had to do to fire.
“You ready, Doc?” came the call.
Peter could hardly find his voice. “Uh-huh,” he squeaked.
“Okay, Delta, on my mark,” said the young officer. “Go!”
The Delta operators jumped into the hall and began to fire down it. The noise rose and to Peter it sounded like someone rolling an oil drum half full of nuts and bolts down a metal stairwell. He had the impression, further, of dust gushing and roiling. He ran in panic, splashing through the water. The air was full of streaks and flashes. Clouds of mist rose. The corridor filled with screams. None of this made the slightest sense. He reached the niche in the wall where the phone was mounted, and attempted to squeeze into it. A bullet hit close by, evicting a plug of cement from the wall, which stung him. Bullets were striking all over the place. There was something freakish, almost paranormal, in their rapidity. They flittered like insects, popping off the walls and kicking up gouts of water on the floor. Next to him the man Uckley was firing bursts from both guns simultaneously, and squeezing in on him, putting his body between the Russian fire and himself. He was squished into the darkness of the wall by Uckley’s warmth.
He picked up the phone.
It was dead.
He panicked, then thought to look at the receiver, saw that it was on a different line, punched the button, and the dial tone leapt into his ear.
“Hurry,” screamed Uckley, firing.
“Terminal countdown has commenced,” said Megan.
Shut up, Megan!
Peter dialed.
Somehow, Gregor made it to the table itself. It surprised him not to be dead. Now, however, he had the problem of rising to it. His two wounds bled profusely. He’d left a liquid trail upon the floor, and his pants were damp and baggy with blood. An odd noise rose to his ears, in syncopation with the diminishing raggedness of his breathing. It sounded like an accordionist whose instrument had been perforated. Then he realized it was his own body that issued the groaning sound: he had a sucking chest wound, and the air was leaking out of the ruptured bladder
of his lungs with a pitiful squeak. He tasted blood in the base of his throat, swallowed it.
Then he rose. Where the strength came from he could not fathom. It was just there, in his fat, chalky, clumsy body. He fought through oceans of pain to get up off the floor until he tottered shakily over the infernal machine. He breathed in sobs, his chest bubbling greedily. His head ached and pounded. Most of his body was numb. His fingers were clumsy. He didn’t trust them to do what he ordered. His tongue felt like a dry lizard in his mouth. His lips had turned to limestone.
He put a paw on the machine. It simply lay there, though he fancied he could feel just the faintest thrum of vibration.
2358:35
2358:36
2358:37
The numbers flickered by. No power on earth could stop them. He stared, almost mesmerized as they dove toward the ultimate, the 2400, when the bomb would detonate and the world would become midnight.
Gregor started to weep.
What chance had a mere man against such magic?
His thick and sad fingers made an awkward stab at the gibberish of buttons atop the machine, but he couldn’t even coordinate their movements and get them to touch where he directed them, not that he really understood where they belonged. He almost passed out.
A tear fell upon the black, blank surface of the bomb console. It lay there, picking up the flicking red of the rushing numbers. Other than the timing device, there was only the arming button, its safety pin long since removed. It had been pushed, and sat, recessed, in its little receptacle.
He imagined what would happen. It was an implosion device. A sphere of high explosive packed around a sphere of plutonium around a core of beryllium as its neutron source. The explosive would detonate, all its force impelling the plutonium onto the beryllium in the crucible of the nanosecond, achieving critical mass and chain reaction.
What can I fight it with?
2358:56
2358:57
2358:58
The phone rang.
Walls looked at it in shock, then picked it up.
“Yo?”
“Walls,” it was a shriek, “you there?”
“Shit, yes.”
“We’ve only got a few, oh—ah! Oh, sorry, I just—oh, shit, that hurts, my leg, oh, Christ, look out, get—okay, you okay? It’s kind of hairy here.”
“Go on, man,” said Walls.
“Okay, listen to me. You find the columns yet?”
“No sweat, man.”
“Great, okay, great. From the left, count over to the third one, okay.”
Walls did it.
“Got that motherfucker.”
“Okay, now lean forward, I want you to look at the first letter on each label, okay. Just the letter.”
“No sweat.”
“Find the one that starts with a P.”
Walls fingered each one until he came on P, for Practical Electrical Guidance Check.
“Yo.”
“Press it.”
Walls pushed it.
“Now find the one for A.”
Walls’s eyes passed over the letters.
A. For Advanced Circuitry Mechanics.
“Yo.”
“Punch it—oh, shit. Oh, Lord, punch it, God, they just hit this guy. Christ, punch it!”
Walls hit it.
“Now an I.”
Walls found an I, for Inertial Navigation Circuitry Check.
He pushed it.
“God, great, almost there. Oh! Oh, fuck, God, that was close.”
Walls could hear noises and screams in the background.
“The M. Find the M, man.”
Walls found it easy. M. M, for Manual Recharge Override.
He pushed it.
“Done!”
“Great, now a B. Find the B and we’re done.”
Walls read the letters on the labels. His eyes flew down the column, panicked. He felt a stab of pain. His eyes flooded with tears, blurring and spangling what he saw.
“Find it? Find it, goddammit, you’ve just got that one button, come on now, it’s about halfway down.”
Walls was sobbing.
“Ain’t no fucking B here.”
“Goddamn, find it. Find it! A B, goddamn you, find it!”
Walls went over it again.
“Ain’t no B here,” he cried, hating himself for his inability to change the hulking reality of the actual, “ain’t no B here.”
“Final launch sequence commencing,” said Betty reasonably.
Puller was hunched up near the shaft doors, listening as one of the Delta men narrated the events. He could hear the rush of the gunfire as it filtered up the long tunnel. It sounded like the surf.
“Okay, Delta Six, the doc is on the phone, he seems to have made contact, the Soviet fire is picking up around them. Oh, Jesus, he just hit that guy near him.”
“Give them covering fire!” Puller snapped.
“We’re giving it everything we’ve got, Delta Six, I can see the doc on the phone, he’s veiling and—oh, shit—”
“Hit?”
“No, it’s the voice, she’s saying they’re going into terminal countdown, oh, shit, I don’t think—”
Puller could hardly breathe. His chest felt as if he were about to have a heart attack, stony and constricted. He looked away, into the cold darkness, and suddenly there was an explosion off to the left. Its force, even from here, was considerable. Puller fell back, momentarily stunned, and the men around him recoiled against the sudden pressure of the blast. But it wasn’t a bomb.
“The silo door just blew,” someone said. “The bird is going to fly.”
Indeed, the heavy silo door had just detonated itself into a shower of rubble. That meant thirty seconds until launch.
From the silo itself there now issued a shaft of light, high and straight, like a sword blade, narrowing as it climbed in the dark night sky, laying out the course of the missile that would follow.
“Shit,” somebody said. “We didn’t make it.”
Men were running from the light, scurrying over the ragged face of the mountain. Now came the roar as primary ignition began; from the exhaust vanes, four plumes of boiling white smoke billowed out into the night.
“She’s going, she’s going, she’s going,” rose the cry.
Puller wondered what it would look like, saw in his deepest brain’s eye the thing emerge, driven skyward by the bright flare at the tail, knew that it would first be majestic, stately almost, and then would gather speed and climb skyward with psychotic urgency, rising, its brightness diminished, until it was gone and the sky was black again.
“We didn’t make it,” said someone with a ludicrous giggle that Puller realized was a sob. “We didn’t make it. They beat us, the motherfuckers.”
“All right,” yelled Peter, squashed in darkness under the body of Uckley, Uckley’s blood dripping down into his face, “now I want you to read me the first letters on the column. We can make it, Walls, read them.”
“S,” came the voice.
Software Integrating Interface Check.
“Yes.”
A bullet hit near Peter’s arm.
Practical Electrical Guidance Check.
“Yes.”
“A.”
Advanced Circuitry Mechanics.
“Yes.”
“I.”
He could hear the Delta automatic weapons rattling away. Guns were so loud. When they fired, he felt the hot push of the exploding gases. And they were firing all around him. Another Delta team had worked its way down the hall and clustered about him. Their spent brass shells cascaded down upon him and he thought they looked like raindrops as they bounced on the floor.
“No, I think that’s an L. Look closely.”
“Fuck. An L, yeah.”
Launch Gantry Retraction Mechanism.
“Yes.”
“I.”
Inertial Navigational Circuitry Check.
“Yes.”
“S.” r />
One of the Delta team was hit and fell with a thud in front of Peter.
Shroud Ejection Mechanism Check.
“Yes.”
“A.”
Peter tried to think of the next A.
A?
A bullet hit two inches from his head, its spray lacerating his face. The pain was sharp. Jesus! He winced.
What the fuck was this A?
“Read me the letters.”
He heard the voice move so slowly through them.
A-N. D-H-E-E. E-E-R. E-S-M. I-R-V.”
Now, what the fuck was that?
Gregor felt like a fool. He was fighting an atom bomb with a Swiss army knife. His mind wandered in and out. He looked at the rushing numbers. He wondered if he’d feel a thing when the bomb detonated.
He’d had some trouble with his thick fingers getting the blade opened. He remembered how just a few hours ago he’d used it to spring the car window! How different a world that was! He began to grow woozy with blood loss. The blade probed stupidly at the arming button. It didn’t seem to make any difference. Yet there came a second when the blade seemed to lock under something, seemed to hold steady, and Gregor leaned against it.
There was a pop, and the button itself flashed out of its receptacle and disappeared. He’d pried it loose! He bent, saw nothing, only a wire lead headed through a hole down through the armored case.
He stared at it.
His lungs issued the moan of a leaking organ, a last long grace note falling out of the riddled apparatus. He felt like a fool, an oaf. What could a man do in the face of such madness?
The numbers flashed ever onward, pulling the world toward fire and nothingness. He heard himself screaming at the insanity of it. His rage grew until it was animal, and from all that he had left he screamed again and again, as if the volume of his voice could somehow halt the rush of the numbers.
The numbers fell out of focus.
He blinked and they were back.
2359:18
2359:19
2359:20
He screamed again.
Then he lifted the pistol and set its barrel into the receptacle out of which he’d plucked the button.
He fired.
The gun bucked in his hand and flew free, out into space. The smell of powder rose to his nose.
Gregor laughed.