Well, that was a risk he had agreed to run all those years ago.
Thirty-five … no, thirty-eight years ago.
A long time.
There was a light switch by the door, and the old man reached for it automatically. He snapped it on. Before him were stairs leading down.
With one hand on the rail, he went down the stairs, now worn from the tread of his feet.
This door, these stairs … his whole life. Every day … checking, greasing, testing, repairing …
Once rats got in down here. He had never found a hole that would grant them entrance, though he had looked carefully. Still, they had gotten in and eaten insulation off wiring, chewed holes in boards, gnawed at pipes and fittings. He managed to kill three with poison and carried the bodies out. Several others died in places he couldn’t get to and stank up the place while their carcasses decomposed.
God, when had that been? Years and years ago …
He checked the poison trays, made sure they were full.
He checked consoles, visually inspected the conduits, turned on the electrical power and checked the warning lights, the circuits.
Every week he ran a complete set of electrical checks on the circuitry, checking every wire in the place, all the connections and tubes, resistors and capacitors. Occasionally a tube would be burned out, and he would have to replace it. The irony of burning up difficult-to-obtain electrical parts testing them had ceased to amuse him years ago. Now he only worried that the parts would not be available, somewhere, when he needed them.
He wondered what they were going to do when he became unable to do this work. When he died. Someone was going to have to take care of this installation or it would go to rack and ruin. He had told the Cuban major that the last time he came around, which was last month, when the technicians came to install the new warhead.
Lord, what a job that had been. He was the only one who knew how to remove the old nuclear warhead, and he had had to figure out how to install the new one. No one would tell him anything about it, but he had to figure out how it had to be installed.
“You must let me train somebody,” he said to the major, “show someone how to take care of this thing. If you leave it sit without maintenance for just a few months in this climate, it will be junk.”
Yes, yes. The major knew that. So did the people in Havana.
“And I am a sick man. Cancer, the doctor says.”
The major understood. He had been told about the disease. He was sorry to hear it.
“This thing should be in a museum now,” he told the major, who as usual acted very military, looked at this, tapped on that, told him to change a lightbulb that had just burned out — he always changed dead bulbs immediately if he had good bulbs to put in — then went away looking thoughtful.
The major always looked thoughtful. He hadn’t an idea about how the thing worked, about the labor and cunning required to keep it operational, and he never asked questions. Just nosed around pretending he knew what he was looking at, occasionally delivered spare parts, listened to what the old man had to say, then went away, not to reappear for another three months.
Before the major there had been a colonel. Before the colonel another major … In truth, he didn’t get to know these occasional visitors very well and soon forgot about them.
Every now and then he would get a visitor that he could not forget. Fidel Castro had come three times. His first visit occurred while the Russians were still here, during construction. He looked at everything, asked many questions, didn’t pretend to know anything.
Castro returned when the site was operational. Several generals had accompanied him. The old man could still remember Castro’s green uniform, the beard, the ever-present cigar.
The last time he came was eight or ten years ago, after the Soviet Union collapsed, when spare parts were so difficult to obtain. That time he had asked questions, listened carefully to the answers, and the necessary parts and supplies had somehow been delivered.
But official visits were rare events, even by the thoughtful major. Most of the time the old man was left in peace and solitude to do his job as he saw fit. Truly, the work was pleasant — he had had a good life, much better than anything he could have aspired to as a technician in the Soviet Rocket Forces, doomed to some lonely, godforsaken, windswept frozen patch of Central Asia.
The old man left the power on to the console — he would begin the tests in just a bit, but first he opened the fireproof steel door to reveal a set of stairs leading downward. Thirty-two steps down to the bottom of the silo.
The sight of the missile resting erect on its launcher always took his breath for a moment. There it sat, ready to be fired.
He climbed the ladder to the platform adjacent to the guidance compartment. Took out the six screws that sealed the access plate, pried it off, and used a flashlight to inspect the wiring inside. Well, the internal wiring inside the guidance unit was getting old, no question about it. It would have to be replaced soon.
Should he replace the guidance wiring — which would take two weeks of intense, concentrated effort — or should he leave it for his successor?
He would think about the work involved for a few more weeks. If he didn’t feel up to it then, it would have to wait. His health was deteriorating at a more or less steady pace, and he could only do so much.
If they didn’t send a replacement for him soon, he wouldn’t have enough time to teach the new man what he needed to know. To expect them to find someone who already knew the nuts and bolts of a Scud I missile was ridiculous. These missiles hadn’t been manufactured in thirty years, were inaccurate, obsolete artifacts of a bygone age.
It was equally ridiculous to expect someone to remove this missile from the silo and install a new, modern one. Cuba was poor, even poorer than Russia had been when he was growing up. Cuba could not afford modern missiles and the new, postcommunist Russia certainly could not afford to give them away.
Not even to aim at Atlanta.
Those were the targeting coordinates.
He wasn’t supposed to know the target, of course, but that rule was another example of military stupidity. He took care of the missile, maintained it, tested it, and if necessary would someday fire it at the enemy. Yet the powers that be didn’t want him to know where the missile was aimed.
So when he was working on the guidance module he had checked the coordinates that were programmed in, compared them to a map in the village school.
Atlanta!
The gyros in the guidance module were 1950s technology, and Soviet to boot, with the usual large, forgiving military tolerances. No one ever claimed the guidance system in a Scud I was a precision instrument, but it was adequate. The guidance system would get the missile into the proper neighborhood, more or less, then the warhead would do the rest.
The old warhead had an explosive force equal to one hundred thousand tons’ equivalent of TNT. It wouldn’t flatten all of Atlanta — Atlanta was a mighty big place and getting bigger — but it would make a hell of a dent in Georgia. Somewhere in Georgia. With luck, the chances were pretty good that the missile would hit Georgia.
The new warhead … well, he knew nothing about it. It was a completely different design than the old one, although it weighed exactly the same and also seemed to be rigged for an airburst, but of course there was no way for him to determine the altitude.
Not that it mattered. The missile had never been fired and probably never would be. Its capabilities were mere speculation.
The old man took a last look at the interior of the control module, replaced the inspection plate and inserted the screws, then carefully tightened each one. Then he inspected the cables that led to the missile and their connectors. From the platform he could also see the hydraulic pistons and arms that would lift the cap on the silo, if and when. No leaks today.