A half-million Russians dead, another half-million or million or two million doomed, Americans dying outside, Iraqis…all because some Russian politicians desperately needed money and Saddam Hussein wants to be the Arab Stalin!
And he himself had just killed two men. So he could go on breathing and write the big stories…about how fucked up the world is!
Yocke walked over to a corner and plopped down. Suddenly he had a raging thirst. He got out his canteen and took a long drink, then another. He was nursing the water and listening to the translators when the first television crew arrived. The camera man was dragging the end of a cable, which went out the door. Another man set up some lights.
“Can we film in here?” the reporter asked Grafton.
“Have right at it,” the admiral said, and got out of his chair. “Interview these Russians.” Jake gestured at Toad. The two of them left the room together.
There was a massive steel beam that formed an angle with one of the upright supports on the wall. Staring at it and listening to the CNN reporter’s breathless delivery into the camera, Jack Yocke got an idea. He removed the magazine from his weapon. Then he wedged the silencer and barrel of the piece into the junction of the beam and angular support. Now he pulled with all his might. He paused, braced his feet, then put his weight into it. The barrel bent. With sweat popping on his forehead he made a supreme effort. The bend got bigger. When the barrel had bent about thirty degrees the stock shattered. Yocke removed the remains of the submachine gun from the joint, inspected it, then tossed it on the floor.
Everyone was watching the television reporter interview the Russian technicians.
Jack Yocke wandered out of the room with his hands in his pockets, lost in thought.
The air base was secure. For the moment. Approximately a hundred casualties, about thirty of them fatal. The 101st Airborne assault commander wanted to be gone in three hours, at least an hour before he estimated that the Iraqis could put together an armored assault. Although he had real-time communications via satellite with headquarters in Arabia and thought he had the air power available to stop any conceivable Iraqi military effort, he didn’t want to take any more chances or casualties than he had to.
Jake Grafton listened to the report and nodded. He had no questions. The little knot of officers stood in one corner of the hangar watching technicians load the warheads onto pallets with forklifts. Through the open doors came the whine of helicopter engines at idle and the pulsating thud of turning rotors. This noise almost drowned out the distant bark of artillery, which was shelling known remnants of Iraqi forces to prevent their concentration. Almost drowned it out, but not quite.
Someone handed Jake Grafton a paper cup full of coffee. Beside him someone else lit a cigarette.
“Can you spare the rest of that pack of cigarettes?”
“Sure, Admiral.”
“And the lighter.”
The staff officer handed it over. “I didn’t know you smoked, sir.”
“I don’t.”
As he walked across the hangar Jake saw Jack Yocke standing with his hands in his pockets. He looked tired and pensive, the flesh of his face tightly drawn across the bones. “You okay?” Jake asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Come with me,” Jake said and walked on.
“I’ve seen enough,” Yocke told the admiral’s back. Jake Grafton acted like he hadn’t heard. Yocke quickened his pace to catch up. “I’ve had enough.”
The admiral didn’t even look at him. “Who hasn’t?” he muttered.
The marine guard outside the door of the room where General Yakolev and Marshal Mikhailov were being held saluted Jake as he approached. Rita Moravia was standing beside him, and she also saluted.
“Are you injured?” Jake Grafton asked. She had blood on the front of her flight suit.
“No, sir. We arrived fifteen minutes ago. Our pilot was killed by small-arms fire.”
“Is the machine airworthy?”
“I think so, sir. We took a couple of other hits, but nothing vital. They’re refueling now from a bladder that one of the Sky Crane’s brought in. We’ll be ready to leave in another fifteen minutes or so.”
“Fine. Have the Russians had anything to say?”
“No, sir. Lieutenant Dalworth is inside with them now, just in case.”
Jake nodded and opened the door. Jack Yocke followed him into the room. Dalworth stood up. “Thank you, Lieutenant. Let me have a few minutes alone with these gentlemen.”
“Yessir.”
When the door closed behind Dalworth, Jake sat down at the table across from Yakolev and passed him the pack of cigarettes and the lighter. Yocke took a chair in a corner.
“A last cigarette, Admiral?” Nicolai Yakolev muttered. He took one and offered the pack to Mikhailov, who also stuck one in his mouth.
“Perhaps. We’ll get to that.”
“At least these aren’t Russian cigarettes.”
Yakolev glanced at Yocke, who was getting out his notebook. Mikhailov concentrated on savoring his cigarette and ignored Jake. He looked exhausted, shrunken, the lines around his eyes and mouth now deeply cut slashes. He looked old. The marshal didn’t speak English, Jake remembered.
“Who is he?” Yakolev inclined his head an eighth of an inch at Yocke.
“A reporter.”
“A reporter?”
“That’s right. His specialty is news that isn’t fit to print.”
Yakolev closed his eyes. He took an experimental drag on the cigarette, sucked the smoke deep into his lungs, then exhaled through his nose.
“So explain to me, General,” Jake said, “how the hell you got yourself into this fucking mess.”
“You want the history of Russia in the twentieth century? For an American newspaper? Will this be deep background or a Sunday think-piece?”
“Just curious.”
“Another philosopher,” Yakolev said heavily. “I give you some good advice, Admiral. While you wear that uniform you cannot afford to be a philosopher, to ponder the nuances of good and evil. You do the best for your country that you can and live or die with the results. That’s what the uniform means.”
“Blowing up a reactor? Poisoning hundreds of thousands of your own countrymen? You did that for your country?”
Yakolev smoked the first cigarette in silence, then lit another off the butt of the first one and puffed several times to ensure it was lit. Under his heavy eyebrows his eyes scanned Jake Grafton’s face carefully.
“Russia is disintegrating,” the Russian general said finally. “Very soon it will be like Somalia, without government, without law, without civilization, without food for its people. We are not talking about a return to the Dark Ages, Admiral, but a return to the Stone Age. Roving bands of armed thugs, mass starvation, epidemics, a complete breakdown of the social order — to survive, future Russians will become vicious, starving rats fighting on the dung heap.”
Yakolev glanced at Mikhailov, then continued. “Already it has begun in the countryside, in the republics, in little towns in Russia that your news media does not cover, on the farms where there is no one to see the babies and old people starve, no one to watch or care as people die of pneumonia and tuberculosis. No agriculture, no food, no fuel, no transportation, no medical care, no electricity, no one to protect those who cannot protect themselves, violence leading to ethnic warfare, feuds building toward genocide — it is here now!
“In Moscow the ministries are corrupt from top to bottom. A small number of bureaucrats trade in dollars and live well while the rest of Russia — the rest of the Soviet Union — sinks deeper and deeper into the morass of starvation. This is what the future looks like when this grand scheme you call civilization collapses.”