“They Were Expendable,” Eagle said.
“They were. We were,” Nada said. “Still are.”
“It’s a movie,” Eagle explained. “About PT boats in early World War II. John Wayne. You get the idea.”
Nada snorted. “Ever notice how John Wayne never hooked up when he pretended to jump in The Green Berets? Splat.”
“It’s a movie,” Eagle pointed out. “Suspension of disbelief.”
“He couldn’t hook up?” Nada said. “How hard is that to do?”
“Pinnacle,” Kirk said.
Everyone turned to look at him. He had a penchant for noting what passed others by. “You said it was on the board with the warning light,” he said to Nada.
The team sergeant nodded. “Written in marker on brown masking tape.”
Ms. Jones spoke up. “It was also written on the warning light at the old underground bunker for SAC. In the same way.”
“What is it, Ms. Jones?” Kirk asked. “You told us about Ortsac. What does Pinnacle stand for? The fact it was in both places and seems to be written rather informally is significant. I think,” he added, hedging his position as the newest member of the team.
“We’re checking on it,” Ms. Jones said, “but an excellent observation.”
Mac pursed his lips at Kirk and imitated a smooch.
“And Mister Mac,” Ms. Jones said, as if she were watching them, “your effort with the hatch was noble. We had a man at Chernobyl who did the same. He died.”
Mac frowned, uncertain if he were being praised or reprimanded.
Ms. Jones continued. “As Ms. Moms has noted, there have been breaches of Protocol on this mission. There were breaches on your previous mission in North Carolina and all turned out well in the end. All has turned out satisfactorily here, but not due to your efforts. I would like everyone to take some time to reflect on what it is we do.”
Nada turned to Moms with a wry smile and everyone on the team knew what was coming: Why We Are Here in some version. It was to be expected after a failure and it was a mantra Ms. Jones repeated over and over to the team, not because she believed they forgot it, but because working in the black world of covert ops, it was easy to lose track of the larger picture.
“The missile you just dealt with, the entire complex, the nuclear arsenals of every country that has the technology, are part of man’s insanity and also the peak of our genius. Scientists were able to split the atom, to gain power over an elemental and powerful force and at the same time give mankind the capability to annihilate itself. It seems the nature of man that we can do both at the same time. It is not just in the field of nuclear engineering, but, as we have discussed, the same is being done in genetic engineering, where scientists will develop cures for many ailments and afflictions. Yet at the same time, we know there are those in deep, dark labs who are working on genetically coded, biological weapons. They are the two edges of the same sword.
“We are here,” Ms. Jones finally got to her catchphrase, “because of that and more. We are here because as mankind advances scientifically, we also teeter farther and farther over the abyss of self-extinction.”
The sound of the lonely Nebraska wind filled the cargo bay for a few moments, and then they realized Ms. Jones was done.
“Let’s look at the bright side,” Moms said. “We have two weeks off when we get back.” She paused. “Correct, Ms. Jones?”
“Yes. After debrief. That’s two weeks away from the Ranch on two-hour recall,” Ms. Jones clarified. The only way Nightstalkers ever really got true time “off” was when they retired, were medically or mentally disabled, or died.
“Everyone enjoy the holidays,” Moms said, signaling for Eagle to get into the cockpit and power up the Snake.
“Bah, humbug,” Mac said.
“You know,” Kirk said. “Those carolers always sing about peace on earth, but they never say where it is.”
“Nowhere we’ve been,” Mac said.
“I celebrate Festivus,” Eagle said as he banked the Snake and gained speed, racing along just above ground level.
“Ah!” Nada was animated for once. “The airing of grievances! Feats of strength!”
“Forget I brought it up,” Eagle said.
“Hey!” Roland said, as if a major synapse had just fired.
Everyone in the cargo bay looked at him as he sang: “Always look on the bright side of death. Just before you draw your terminal breath.” He began whistling and it took a few seconds, but then they caught on.
As they flew away from the site where they had almost died, the Nightstalkers all pursed their lips and whistled away: Always look on the bright side of death.
“We were lucky,” Pitr said. Ms. Jones sighed, which was difficult to do with all the tubes stuck in her body. Any movement brought discomfort; a lot of movement brought pain. She’d lived with the situation for years and she hoped, but did not pray, that she had several more years. Unfortunately, she was a realist and she knew time cared as little for her hopes as it would for her prayers. She kept the speaker on, and in the background they could hear the team whistling that part of “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” but there was that edge to it. It was forced.
“Was it luck the warhead was activated?” Ms. Jones asked her assistant. “If we say there is luck, then isn’t one as likely to have bad luck as well as good luck?”
“It was those fools who bought the silo that caused the problem,” Pitr said. “More so, it was whoever left that warhead in the silo.”
“Which brings up an interesting point,” Ms. Jones said. Her office was dimly lit and was actually a room behind the office where she “met” each new Nightstalker and in-briefed them and held debriefings with Moms and Nada. She’d been impressed when Doc had quickly surmised that the shadowy image sitting in the dark shadow on the other side of the desk was usually just an image, not a person. Not that it mattered. She always said what she needed to and she could see and hear everything pertaining to the Nightstalkers from her hospital bed.
“And that point is?” Pitr pressed, making her realize her thoughts had drifted off, which concerned her as it was happening more and more. It was a luxury of the elderly, but a person in her position could not afford that luxury.
“What if the nuclear warhead being left there wasn’t a mistake?” she asked. In the background, the whistling had petered out and there was no sound coming out of the speaker except the muted roar of the Snake’s engines. Ms. Jones turned the speaker off. “Here in the Nightstalkers we are so used to ascribing incidents to mistake or oversight or scientific malfeasance, we rarely consider that often there are those who scheme and plot and act. Sometimes in ways counter to what we believe is in our country’s and mankind’s welfare.”
Pitr frowned. He glanced over at the machines helping to keep Ms. Jones alive, scanning their various lights and indicators. He’d been doing this for so many years that anything amiss would have screamed out at him. All was within normal parameters. Pitr spoke with less of a Russian accent than Ms. Jones, but that was because he left Area 51 and interacted with other Americans. Ms. Jones had not left the Ranch in eight years. Pitr was a former Russian helicopter pilot whose life Ms. Jones had saved by stopping him from overflying Chernobyl, telling him it was a one-way mission even while she risked her life to save the man who’d started the chain reaction of that disaster back in 1986. Pitr was a tall, rugged-looking man with graying hair. He had perfect teeth that he revealed often when he smiled.
That was why Ms. Jones knew he could never replace her: the smile. The person who ran the Nightstalkers rarely had anything to smile about. He was good at his job as her assistant, but the mantle of leadership was not something she could drape around his shoulders.