"The phones. .?"
"Still out."
"Did they manage to plow. .?"
"No. But we're going anyway."
With Garth supporting me by the back of my shirt, I managed to walk up the ramp and into the plane. Garth steered me left, through a thick steel door that Nigel Fickley was holding open for us, into a spacious cockpit that was in semidarkness except for the light cast by a glittering array of instrumentation that seemed to be all around me. Jack Holloway was strapped into the pilot's seat, and he gave a thumbs-up sign to me as we entered.
"Strap yourselves in, gentlemen," Holloway said in his clipped tones. "And please allow me to apologize in advance for what may be a slightly bumpy takeoff.''
Garth and I sat down in two seats at the rear of the cockpit, on either side of the steel door, and strapped ourselves in. Nigel Fickley eased his lanky frame down into the copilot's seat, buckled himself in.
Holloway tilted his head back. "Ready, gentlemen?"
"Hit it, Captain," Garth replied evenly.
Holloway signaled to someone below him, and a few moments later the huge hangar door opened-onto a nightmare. In the glare carved out of the darkness by the plane's lights I could see that the snow-removing equipment had been removed-but it was almost as if nothing had changed; snow was everywhere, and I knew that in the darkness beyond the light there were huge drifts. Also, undoubtedly, there were trucks, perhaps even stalled planes-dozens of snowbound, buried obstacles that could kill us.
Holloway pushed the wide handle of the throttle forward, and I could feel as well as hear the power surging through the plane. But we didn't move.
"Release the brakes on my mark, Lieutenant, and raise the landing gear on my second mark."
"Yes, sir," Fickley said easily. "Luck."
"Luck."
Holloway eased the throttle even further forward, and the roar of the engines grew in volume; the plane began to vibrate as tens of thousands of horsepower howled in a kind of mechanical dismay and outrage, demanding that their awesome power be unleashed.
"Mark!"
"Aye!"
The screaming, gargantuan silver bullet that was the Concorde shot out of the mouth of the hangar into the maelstrom of night, wind, and snow.
"Mark!"
"Aye!"
For the first few seconds, before the landing gear came up into the belly of the plane, there was tremendous drag on the plane as the wheels ground through the snow. The muscles in Holloway's forearms bunched and stood out as he pulled back on a control. Then the wheels were up and the SST became an improbable ballistic sled catapulting us out across unknown territory.
Suddenly I suffered another dizzy spell; my vision blurred, and the cockpit began to spin. I screwed my eyes shut, opened them again just as the plane began to sideslip, its tail yawing over to the left. Holloway, his hands virtually flying from one control to another, struggled for control. I felt as if
I were hurtling down a roller coaster, and I was afraid I would vomit. The plane yawed sharply in the opposite direction, shuddered, then finally straightened out and shot forward with even greater speed; but now I was certain it was heading in a different direction, toward-whatever. Dark, terrifying black shapes that I was certain were planes or trucks or hangars flashed by, and great waves of snow splashed like water against the windows as we sliced through huge snow drifts. Again the plane yawed from side to side, again Holloway managed to correct.
Again, everything began to spin-but this time I was certain it was the plane itself, and not my head. We were out of control. The last thought in my head before everything exploded in brilliant flashes of red, black, and green was that this time Garth's nose had been wrong. We were about to die, only a couple of hours ahead of millions of other people.
15
"Hey, Mongo. Wake up."
Somebody, undoubtedly Garth, had unbuckled my seat belt, and I sat upright. My brother pushed me back into the seat, handed me a plastic cup filled with something that was redolent with the delicious aroma of, of all things, fresh coffee.
"What-?! Garth, what-?!"
"It's all right. Just sit back, relax, and think of me as your happy steward. I was a bit worried about you; your face was the color of those pills when you passed out. I do believe you're looking better now."
"I feel better," I said, sipping at the steaming coffee. It hit my stomach, spreading a warm, tingling glow throughout my body. The coffee was very sweet. "You look terrible."
"Now I'm ready for one of those pills. You got the bottle?"
I dug the bottle out of my pocket, handed it to him. He shook out one of the amphetamines, swallowed it with his coffee. When he proffered the bottle back to me, I shook my head. I'd had enough of the greenies, and would now settle for whatever energy I could get out of the sugar in the coffee. For however long we had left.
"What time is it?"
"Ten thirty."
"Could you get through to Lippitt or Shannon?"
"Yes. You passed out on us, so you missed the takeoff. Once we got off the ground, our good captain here took us right out over the ocean, and up. We cleared the storm in minutes. It was quite a ride."
"I'm just as happy I slept through it, because I certainly didn't care for the first part. But you did get through?"
Garth smiled. "I said I did. To both of them."
"And?"
"They're working on it."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"Lippitt brought up a good point, Mongo. We may have a problem."
I pushed Garth's hand aside, sat up on the edge of my seat. "What would that be?"
"First, he pointed out that the signal could be sent out manually-before midnight, Eastern Time-if the people inside that biosphere get wind that somebody's trying to interfere with their plans."
"You said Thompson and the other two ex-jocks told you they didn't know where the transmitter was."
"Other people will. Vicky Brown's father is a caretaker; he knows. A lot of people could know. We have to assume that every single person in there is as loony as the creeps we've run into, and just as dedicated to their Armageddon fantasy. Lippitt argues-and I agree with him-that somebody in there might just traipse off and trip off the transmitter prematurely if an Army battalion comes knocking at their door."
"Oh, Christ, you mean they're just going to go ahead and bomb the place with everybody in it?"
"No-not yet. He also pointed out that there's no guarantee that the initial bomb run would destroy everyone, or the transmitter. Assuming the transmitter can be manually operated, and somebody gets to it, that's the ball game. Ten acres is a lot of area; if the first bombs don't destroy the transmitter, the shocks might trip it."
I licked my lips, swallowed hard. "What about. . something nuclear?"
Garth shook his head. "I didn't even ask, and Lippitt didn't bring it up. If that's an option, he'll be talking it over with Shannon. Eden may be too close to Boise."
"So it's up to us."
"Right. Lippitt is counting on us to get in there, find the transmitter, and shut it down. It means we have a chance to save the girl."
I thought about it, shook my head. "Shit, Garth. That's too much responsibility. What if we can't find the transmitter?"
"The bombers start their run at five minutes to midnight, Eastern Time. If we're not out of there by then, we've celebrated our last New Year's Eve."
"What did you tell him?"
Again, Garth smiled. "I told him we'd take care of it, naturally, and that he should have somebody bring along a bottle of bourbon and a bottle of Scotch."
"That's cute, brother," I said tersely as I grabbed his wrist and twisted it around in order to glance at his watch. It was 10:40. "How long before we get to Idaho?"