It befuddled him. He felt his reactions slow way down, as if he’d been drugged. It had a weird radiance, a kind of halo. It almost felt as though it came from some dead religion or something; he’d once come across something just as strange in the ’Nam, a giant stone head with thick lips and staring eyes amid the bougainvillea and the frangipani, and you could look at it for a century or two and not learn one thing from it.
Tentatively, he walked its circumference, though there wasn’t much room between the skin of the thing and the concave of the cement wall that encircled it. His head was back, his mouth was open. It never changed. From any angle it was the same.
His head ached. He became aware of small noises, tickings, pingings, obscure vibrations. At the same time he smelled the odors of wiring and cement and wax. It smelled like electricity in there.
He looked at it again, in wonder. It wasn’t at all like the rocketship he’d imagined, to the degree that he’d imagined rocketships at all. It had no fins, for one thing. How could they steer it without fins? It had no numbers either, and he had the vague supposition that it should have black and white checks on it somewhere, as well as big fat USAF initials, like the Tac ships in ’Nam. He also had this idea that there’d be a huge superstructure like a battleship’s control tower up next to it, and lots of guys scurrying around: nope, nothing. It was so huge it didn’t look like it could fly at all. The big tube just sat on a tiny framework of girders, nothing elaborate, and its exhaust cupolas extended beneath that, into a pit. As he looked up it, it disappeared, yielding some seventy feet up to nothingness. Then, another hundred or so feet up was the circular image of the sealed silo hatch, which appeared from down here to resemble a manhole cover.
He wondered what to do. Should he blow it up? He wasn’t sure. He tried to remember. Goddamn, if that Witherspoon were here, he’d know what to do. But Walls wasn’t at all sure if he should blow it up. He might get in big trouble. And even if he was supposed to blow it up, there was the problem of how to blow it up. He had no grenades left. He had no C-4 left. He could see no cables to cut or hoses to rip. He didn’t think firing a few Mr. 12s into a thing this big would do any damage. And anyway, wasn’t there an A-bomb in there? He wondered where it would be. He didn’t think it would be a terribly good idea to shoot the rocket and make the bomb blow up, because wasn’t that what they were trying to stop?
Shit, he thought, baffled by it.
At last he stumbled on a ladder. It was really a series of rungs in the concrete and, craning, he saw that the rungs led a perilous way up the yawning side of the concrete tube to a very small door, halfway up to the silo hatch.
Walls tried to figure out what to do. A certain part of him said, just wait here until they come get you, you’re okay now. But another part said, they wanted to get into this place real bad, only way to get into this place is up that ladder.
Maybe you’re the only dude get into this place. The onliest.
He laughed at that. All those white motherfuckers running around with their helicopters and shit, and here little nigger Nathan Walls, Dr. P of Pennsylvania Avenue, son of Thelma and brother to James, both dead, but Nathan, Nathan, he the onliest peoples to make it in. And what then?
Then you kill more white boys, he thought.
He had at that second just the briefest animal sensation of warmth and motion, and then he was hit hard by a flying bunch of muscle, yanked down, as if under the pounce of a cat, and pinned against the cement. And he felt the blade come up hard and tight against his throat, and he knew he was going to die.
In the first slick, Skazy was on the radio.
“Delta Six, this is Cobra One, I’d like an amplification of that last order, please.”
“Cobra One, hold tight in your ships, that is all.”
Skazy sat, breathing hard, feeling it all come apart in his mind. He remembered Desert One, the confusion of rushing men, out-of-control machines, and unsure command. He remembered Dick Puller off on his own like some kind of moody Achilles, out of reach.
Colonel Puller, there’s rumors all over the—
It’s an abort, Frank. Get Delta on the—
An abort! We can still take these motherfuckers! Goddamn, we don’t need six chops! We can do it with five, we can get in there and blow these motherfuckers away and—
Back to the ship, Major!
That’s when Skazy had hit him. Yes, he’d hit a superior officer in the face, and remembered the shock, the totality of it, when Puller fell back, his face leaking blood, the unexpected look of hurt on it.
Someone grabbed him.
Frank, get out of here. Dick’s decided. Get back to your people.
You cowardly motherfucker, you don’t have the guts for this kind of work, he remembered screaming, the wounded, enraged son who’d just learned his father was merely a man.
“Delta Six, Cobra One, what the hell is going—”
“Off the net, Cobra One, you’re in a holding position until release, out.”
Goddamn, said Skazy to himself.
“I’m going back to command,” he told McKenzie, and disengaged himself from the chopper, dipped under its roaring rotor, and headed back to Puller.
There were fifty-five of them and they were lost and had been lost and they were way behind schedule, and it was cold as shit and even if the world was hanging in the balance, they didn’t care, they just wanted to be warm. Sure, okay, you can make so many speeches, but the guys had been shot at today and most of them were still in bad shock from the first fight. These guys had been playing at war and they’d never seen anyone die and suddenly they’d seen a whole batch of people die, mostly their friends.
“Lieutenant, I think we’re lost,” said the sergeant.
“We can’t be lost,” said Dill. “It’s just over here.”
“I’m afraid some of the guys may have wandered away.”
“Goddammit,” said Dill, “they were supposed to stay in close. You get lost on this mountain, you could be in real danger.”
He looked back. Bravo was spread out through the trees; he could see the blurry shapes against the white of the snow, each trailing a bright plume of breath, each groaning laboriously, each cursing under the discomfort, strung out, uncoordinated. Jesus, what a parade to save the world, Dill thought. You poor guys. You couldn’t lick a stamp to save your life. He almost laughed.
“Tell the sergeants to get the guys together. I mean, we’re just supposed to wait is all, in case they need us.”
Jesus, he thought, poor Bravo can’t even wait right.
“Yes, sir. But we’re already way behind. Like, it’s quarter after and those guys should have started shooting and I don’t hear a damn thing.”
“Yeah, well,” said Dill, not sure what to do, “I’m sure they have their reasons.”
It had seemed so easy in the briefing. Bravo was to move up behind the Rangers and Third Infantry, then peel off to the left to get out of the way of the support groups, the medics, the ammo carriers, that sort of thing. And just wait in good order in case they were needed. So they were essentially out of it. The ones that were here, they’d made it. They were alive! Whatever, they had made it. It was time for the pros to take over.
But he was anxious that he hadn’t heard anything on the radio for a while.
“MacGuire?”
“Sir?”
“You sure that thing is working?”
He heard fumbles, mumbles. MacGuire was new to the PRC-25. Huston, his regular, was dead.
“It’s not working.”
“Oh, shit,” said Dill. “Can you fix it?”
“Uh, sir, it’s the batteries. They’re dead. We’ve been out of contact now for about ten minutes.”
“You got any extras?”
“Yes, sir, in my pack.”
“Great. Maybe they’ve surrendered and we don’t know it yet.”
He crouched as the boy struggled first with his pack, then with the radio. Dill thought he ought to say something
to the kid about checking stuff like that before they started out. But Dill was gentle; he was good with kids, and they responded to him, which is why he coached basketball for a living at a high school outside Baltimore.
In a few seconds there was a gravelly growl as the boy got the walkie-talkie back in working order, and then handed it over to Dill, who hit the receive button to hear himself being vigorously paged by the old bastard colonel who was running things.
“—vo, goddammit, Bravo, this is Delta Six, where are you, Bravo? Goddammit, where—”
“Delta Six, affirmative, Bravo here, do you copy?”
“Dill, where the fuck have you been?”
“Ah, sorry, Delta Six, we had a temporary malfunction and lost contact there for a second or so, over.”
“You were out of contact for nearly ten minutes, soldier. Are you in position?”
Dill grimaced.
“Well, not exactly, sir. Tough going up here. We’re more or less where we’re supposed to be, about halfway up. I can’t see the Rangers or Third Infantry. But it gets real steep ahead, I can see that, and I—”
“Dill, there’s a change in plan.”
Dill waited. The colonel said nothing.
“Delta Six, I don’t read you, ah, over.”
“Dill, I’m advised that ahead of you there’s a creek bed.”
“Sir, I don’t recall any creek bed on my map. I really looked hard at it, too, sir.”
“I am advised that it’s there, nevertheless, Dill, and that you ought to be able to get a raiding party up that—”
Raiding party?
“—up that groove in the rocks and onto the perimeter flank pretty easily.”
“In support of the main attack, Delta Six?” asked Dill, computing the problem.
“Negative, Bravo. You are the main attack.”
Dill looked at the little box in his hand. Goddamn that kid, why hadn’t he discovered his dead batteries ten minutes from now rather than where he was.
“Sir, I don’t think my men are—”
“Bravo, this isn’t a request, this is an order. Look, Dill, sorry, but it’s how things have to go. The Rangers will never make it in the face of the heavy fire without help from the side. The front is too narrow and we believe there’s a network of trenches in their position. We have to take this fucking place in one stroke. You guys are it. Get humping, Lieutenant. It’s time to go to war.”
Tagged again, Dill thought.
He wished they’d leave him alone so he could get at the vodka in his pocket. At least with vodka he’d have a chance or something. But no, the Americans just kept drilling him, going over and over it again, where the bomb was, its fusing mechanism, the disarming steps, just in case, a crash course in nuclear technology, all a blur to him.
I want vodka.
But now the van had stopped. They were out of time.
“Okay, Greg,” said the FBI agent called Nick, “we’re on I Street, two blocks down from the embassy, right in front of the MPAA. You know the neighborhood. Just a few feet down to Sixteenth, then your left and there you are. We’ve halted traffic, we’ve got the place sealed off, and we’ve got enough SWAT people around to crack Nicaragua. But we’ve been feeding cars along so they won’t catch on. Okay, the street is clean, it’s sanitary, no mugger’s going to knife you on the way in.”
Gregor thought the man was hyperventilating. He looked as if he were going to have an attack of some sort. He looked as if he needed a bottle of vodka himself.
“Greg, you paying attention here, fella?”
“Yes, of course,” said Gregor.
“You sort of looked like you were dreaming about what was between Molly Shroyer’s legs there for a sec, old guy.”
“Actually, I am fine.”
“Good man, Greg. Anybody going to give you a hard time getting in? You code-cleared, all that?”
“I’m known. No difficulties. Well—”
“Well what?”
“I have been out of contact for twelve hours. It is not possible to know how they’re going to react. There might be a few questions, maybe an unpleasantly or two. But nothing I cannot handle.”
“Great. In other words, these guys may roust you just going through the door?”
“No. No, I am a trusted man. Nothing will happen.”
The American looked at him with great doubt on his plump, tough face. Then he said, “You want a piece, Greg, in case it should get hairy down in the Wine Cellar with this Klimov? I’ve got a nice H and K I could lay on you.”
“There’s a metal detector. If KGB security finds I am armed, it will be the end, There will be no way to get downstairs.”
“Sure?”
“Certain.”
“Now, don’t rush it, guy. That’s how these things fall apart. You get anxious, you try and force it, bingo, it’s history. There’s plenty of time. Hell, it’s not even eleven. You’re just old Gregor, in from the cold, looking to relieve your pal Magda downstairs. Okay?”
“Okay,” said Gregor.
“Time to go, guy.”
“Okay,” said Gregor again. Somebody slid thë van door open and out he stepped into amber light. It was moist and chilly; the streets glowed; the air was filled with sparkly mist. When Gregor breathed it felt like ice sliding down into his lungs, a great feeling. It made him feel alive. He shivered, drawing the cheap little overcoat around him, but took comfort from the weight of the vodka in the pocket. Once he got inside, he promised himself a nice hit, a drenching, gushing gulp of it, to send all his demons away.
He walked on down to 16th Street, turned left. He could see the building up ahead on the right, just past the Public Television Office, which looked far more totalitarian than the Russian building. The embassy was a big old place, Georgian, once upon a time a capitalist millionaire’s playpen. Up top, the complicated mesh of aerials, microwave dishes, and satellite communication transmitters looked like some weird spiked crown.
Gregor crossed the street. Two American cops—the executive protection service—at the embassy gate watched him come, but they didn’t matter. They were nothing. He knew once he was inside the gate, KGB would be on him.
Who? Who was captain of the guard that night? If it was Frinovsky, he’d be all right. Frinovsky was an old man, a cynic like himself, another secret drinker, a homosexual, a man of appetites and forgiveness. On the other hand, in KGB as in GRU, these kids were taking over. Ballbusters, show-offs, zealots, Gorbachev’s awful children, all with their pretend birthmarks. Gorshenin, perhaps. Gorshenin was the worst, a little prick who kept names and Wanted to Rise. He hated those like Gregor, who only Wanted to Stay. He was young Klimov’s pal too.
Gregor arrived. He flashed his embassy ID to the two cops, who stood aside, and then he stepped through the gate and headed up the walk toward the door, toward the bronze plaque, CCCP.
He was back in Russia, and scared shitless. The door opened, a blade of orange light spilled across the pavement.
It was Gorshenin.
“Arrest that man,” the awful Gorshenin shouted.
So very deep now. He couldn’t have much gas left in the cylinder at all. The angle was torture. It was like surgery, he was so far inside. The light from the torch was far, far away, a blur of bright flame through his black lenses. He could see only more metal. He withdrew.
“What is wrong?” the general said.
“My leg, Christ, it’s killing me.”
“Get on with it, goddamn you.”
“My leg’s bleeding again, Jesus, can’t you—”
“Get on with it.”
“Maybe we missed it or some—”
“No!” screamed the general. “No, you did not miss. The center, you went into the center. I saw, I measured myself, I know exactly where the cut should go and how it should proceed. I monitored. You have not failed. Cut, Mr. Hummel, goddamn you, cut, or I’ll have you shot and your children’s bones ground to fertilizer.”
Jack looked at him. Craz
y fucker, he now saw, crazy underneath, crazy as a goddamned loon.
The general pulled out a pistol.
“Cut!” he said.
Jack turned, and again thrust the torch into the deep gash in the titanium. The bright flame licked at the far metal, licked and devoured, drop by drop, and the metal fell away.
Then—pinprick, BB, cavity, Cheerio, nailhead—a minuscule black hole began gradually to appear in the metal at the end of the tunnel. He saw it expand as the titanium liquified and fell clear. Jack’s heart thumped and, goddamn him, he couldn’t help the excitement.
“I’m there. I’m there,” he shouted, giddy with joy. The long journey was almost over.
Dick Puller hunched over the microphone, sucking on a Marlboro. He drew the smoke deep into his lungs, held it there, absorbed its heat, and hissed it out in a flare from his nostrils. His face was bleak and set and ash gray. Before him stood the map on the wall, with its brave little pin reading BRAVO, the radio transmitters, ashtrays, cigarette packs. Around him nervous staff guys, Commo clerks, state cops holding cups of coffee, talking quietly, just staring out into space. The air was heavy with tobacco smoke and pointless, dry chatter and despair.
And there was Peter Thiokol, who’d changed totally. He wore commando gear now, black field pants and a black sweater, the black knit watch cap down over his ears so that they were too hot. His glasses looked fogged.
Peter stood with his arms crossed, trying to get his thoughts assembled. Hard, under the circumstances. It was like a waiting room outside the maternity ward in an old Saturday Evening Post cartoon. There was no real sound in the room, no meaningful sound. He could hear the creak of boots as the men swayed their weight from foot to foot, or scuffed their heels against the floor, or exhaled loudly or sighed tragically. Occasionally, the crackle of static leaked from the speaker of the radio.