At the rear of the Snake, a crack of late daylight appeared as the back ramp lowered until it was horizontal. Very cold wind swirled in and the sound level increased accordingly.
Roland yawned and stretched his massive arms wide as he walked onto the ramp, stopping a foot short of the edge of the drop into potential oblivion. He’d been fast asleep at the Ranch when the Zevon alert came in, and he hated having his sleep cycle interrupted. Even for a nuke.
Especially for a nuke. You can’t shoot nukes and Roland lived to shoot things. Roland was a large man, four inches over six feet, with the build of an athletic middle linebacker. The scar that curved along the right side of his head from temple to behind his ear hadn’t been earned on a football field, though, but in combat during his first tour with the Eighty-Second Airborne in Iraq. Years ago and miles away.
“Eagle?” Mac asked.
“At the height of the Cold War, the United States had thirty-one thousand, two hundred and fifty-five nuclear weapons,” Eagle said, drawing on his vast reservoir of useless information. Useless until they needed it to save their asses. “It is not improbable that our government lost track of some. This is the fifth Bent Spear we’ve been on this year, which is a two hundred and fifty percent increase from last year.” The Bent Spear was a reference to a nuclear event that did not involve the possibility of nuclear war. “My summation,” Eagle continued, “is that there was a paperwork error and the missile and warhead were simply left behind.”
“Yeah, but that don’t explain why it’s going off now,” Mac said.
“It’s old,” Eagle replied. “Old things malfunction.”
“Like Nada,” Mac said with a grin no one could see but everyone knew he had. Mac liked to push everyone’s buttons. Usually for fun.
Nada was indeed old, in military terms, having passed his fortieth birthday several years ago, the oldest member of the team and the longest serving. He was of Colombian descent, although many mistook him for Mexican, with graying hair poking straight out his skull as if seeking to escape his head, and a pocked, dark-skinned face. He’d plowed through a stellar Special Ops career: Rangers, Special Forces, Delta Force, Black Ops freelancer… and now he was a Nightstalker. It was either the tip of the spear, or the shit depth of the ocean depending on which day of the week it was. Today it plunged toward the latter.
“Three minutes,” Eagle announced and Roland shuffled another inch closer to the edge of the ramp.
“O-L-D,” Mac spelled out as he wrote it on his sleeve. “Old what? You always say it’s old with nukes and there’s no way we can really pin that down. You gotta pick something specific.”
“That’s because pretty much our entire nuclear arsenal is old,” Eagle said. “Old and falling apart.”
“That’s the reason,” Moms said, “they’re going to sign the SAD treaty at the United Nations soon.” She was referring to the Strategic Arms Disarmament Treaty, in which all nuclear powers were pledging to work to zero weapons in ten years. At least those countries that acknowledged actually having nuclear weapons. It was what Reagan and Gorbachev had come within one word of achieving in Iceland in 1986.
“And pigs will fly,” Nada muttered.
“They do if you toss them out of a plane,” Mac observed. “It’s just the landing that ain’t pretty.”
“I’ll be glad when they get rid of all the obsolete material,” Doc said. “Both hardware and software,” he added.
“I’ll be glad when we don’t get called out on these anymore,” Nada said.
“I’ll be glad to get some dinner,” Eagle muttered from the cockpit.
“Roland?” Mac asked, ignoring all of them.
“Something broke,” Roland said simply. “And we’re going to fix it.”
“B-R-O-K-E,” Mac wrote on his arm. “I think Roland, once more, in his finite yet elemental genius, will win theoretically.”
“Did you just insult me?” Roland asked, a scowl crossing his ugly mug.
“It’s not just the aging arsenal,” Moms said, stepping into the banter because Roland and Mac sometimes went a bit too far turning banter into something darker. “Remember what’s in your nuke briefing book? The ’95 Black Brant scare?”
“Norwegian clusterfuck,” Nada corrected. “Fucking scientists launched a weather satellite and forgot to tell the fucking Russkies. It went right into the flight corridor a missile from a silo in North Dakota would be on to hit Moscow. Yeltsin had his nuclear football open and was ready to toss the damn thing by pushing all the right buttons.”
“Only time a world leader has ever activated its nuclear suitcase,” Eagle threw in, because Eagle always threw in knowledge… and history… and movies. “Never even happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
“We were lucky Yeltsin was probably drunk,” Mac said. “That’s one thing you can at least count on with the Russians. Remember in Albania with the biological—”
“Eagle,” Moms cut in, “inform the personnel on the ground we’re coming in and they can disperse.”
Mac snorted. “Run for the fucking hills more like it. They only took an outer perimeter, anyway.”
“One minute,” Eagle announced.
“Thirteen on the countdown,” Doc added, still typing away.
“Going to jump soon, Doc,” Moms said. “Secure the computer. Kirk, when we touch down, I want you working with Doc to figure out that second code.”
Roland moved to the very edge and looked down. The sun was setting in the west, casting long shadows across the high plains. Snowdrifts were piled here and there, but at least they weren’t at the height of winter, with Christmas not far away.
“Go!” Eagle announced as the green light flickered on above Roland in the tail section of the plane. The verbal prompt wasn’t necessary as, like Pavlov’s dogs, Roland was gone at the green.
Roland let gravity take charge. He spread his arms and legs to get stable. Then he pulled his arms to his sides, tucked his head into his chest, and missiled down toward the target.
“Clarence?” Peggy Sue knew exactly how to slide her husband’s name under his rib cage by putting the emphasis on the second syllable.
Her mother had taught her well.
But not well enough since she was living inside a practically unheated, no-flowing-water concrete bunker in the middle of Nebraska.
Clarence dropped the last case of water, frozen solid from sitting in the bed of his pickup during the two-hour drive back. “What?” he demanded in that tone men use to indicate to their wives, significant others, and even one-night stands that they don’t want to hear the real question following the question mark behind their name.
“I ain’t never seen this light blinking before.”
Clarence checked his irritation. “What light?”
“This here.” Peggy Sue pointed to an open metal cabinet next to the pipe she’d been using as a clothesline. “I just pulled that cupboard open to see if—”
“It ain’t a cupboard,” Clarence said. “I told you not to touch nothing.”
“What is it then?” Peggy Sue had picked up the uncertainty in his voice and twisted the dagger a little. “You don’t know what it is, do you?”
It was a flashing orange light. Anyone could see that.
On a piece of crumbling masking tape underneath it, someone had scrawled PINNACLE in black marker. The container had a metal door, which Peggy Sue had opened, and was four feet high by two wide. There were a lot of lights, but only one was active. An old keyboard rested at the base of the cabinet connected to the panel by a single cord. Another piece of masking tape, which had half-peeled over the years, was above it. The same hand had simply written, ENTER CODE — GOOD LUCK OR GOOD-BYE! If they’d used emoticons back in the day, there probably would have been a:) there. Below it in pencil, someone had added: Smoke ’em if you got ’em.