“Why are we alive?”
He immediately regretted the question, for he knew his old friend, who seemed to be the only casualty, was not. A wave of dizziness hit him. But his mind was clearer now. He struggled painfully to pull away from the body.
“Take it easy, Mr. President. The explosion was relatively small. I think they were telling the truth about a ground burst, which as you know, digs a big hole but concentrates the damage. Not like Hiroshima. They were trying to be surgical. That’s for sure.”
“So we’ve got a big hole a couple of miles from the White House. What else?”
“Well, unless it landed in the park, it had to strike a residential area, upper Northwest Washington probably. Out near the cathedral, I’d guess. Maybe as far as Chevy Chase, but I doubt it.”
“And killed a lot of people.”
“At this time of night, probably fifty thousand, maybe more. Hard to say. The big apartment buildings absorb the shock wave fairly quickly. That’s why we’re okay.”
The President did a quick mental tally. The area was old, established Washington. He had lived there as a young congressman. He guessed a fourth of the Congress lived in the area. So did several members of his Cabinet. And a helluva lot of the national press corps, he thought ruefully. They loved the old oak-lined streets, the quick access down Connecticut and Wisconsin avenues to the power centers of the capital.
“What’s upstairs?”
“We haven’t been up. Part of the old place must be standing. But the concussion would have made quite a mess.”
“Was I out long?”
“No, just seconds, really. Can you move your legs? They don’t seem to be broken.”
The President struggled to his feet. He felt as if he had been trampled by a horse. He tried not to show it. He also tried not to show the fear.
“What’s next?”
“Communications are out. Briefly. The long lines are down, naturally, but the patch will be through quickly. We’ll have Omaha back up any second. We could go downstairs to the shelter. I don’t see much point, frankly. We really should get you out of here.”
Sedgwick paused. Then he added: “You have an interrupted message from the Soviet Premier. It was arriving as communications went down.”
The President sighed. “Give it to me.”
The telegram was brief.
“Andrews missile malfunctioning. Deep regrets. Target Military. Repeat: Target Andrews. All at stake in your belief in my intentions. Our combined will crucial. Other unexpected complications causing…”
The message broke off there. The President rubbed his temples, his head swimming again. A minute ago he had seen nothing to lose in waiting. Deep regrets. Good God.
“Omaha’s back,” Sedgwick interrupted, handing him a phone.
“Hello, general,” the President said numbly. “The Preme sends his regrets.” He instantly wished he had begun the conversation differently.
“I’ll bet,” Icarus responded caustically. “His little con didn’t work. He overshot Andrews by thirteen miles. The blast wave rolled right up Rock Creek Park and took out Walter Reed. My father was there.”
“Sorry,” the President said, truly feeling it.
“It’s irrelevant. He was sick. He was a soldier. A father should die before his son. The hospital wasn’t the target. Andrews wasn’t the target. You were the target. Our little wonder weapons aren’t as surgical as we like to think. You can’t do brain surgery with a nuke. Especially a Navy nuke. You are very lucky, Mr. President. You get what I won’t—a second chance.”
“A second chance?”
“SIOP is now developing a more appropriate response. There have been some unusual developments. The Premier has got a lot of problems. You get a second chance to save the world from those bastards, Mr. President.”
The President glanced around the Situation Room, his memory playing tricks, conjuring up a rhododendron garden he had planted as a young congressman at a happy first Washington home along a quiet street shaded by pin oaks.
“Save the world,” the President repeated. “I think we have a different vision of that, general.”
Kazakhs felt the Buff’s power gush through him, its swept-back wings becoming his wings, its immensity his immensity, its surging fuel his rushing blood. The altimeter, racing up the thermometer stem at the edge of the radar screen, seemed to monitor his adrenaline, too. He heard his voice say flaps up, wheels up. He saw the adrenaline climb to five hundred feet, one thousand, twelve hundred, fifteen hundred, and soar further. He became the Buff. There was nothing else.
For Moreau, PRP ruled as it should. She flew mechanically, robotlike, following the flawless lead of Kazakhs in equally flawless precision. Flaps up, wheels up.
Behind her, the now calm voice of the Fairchild air controller cleared the second B-52, then the third and the fourth. The quietly nasal echo of his farewell probed for an escape from her subconscious. But thoughts did not escape. Moreau’s mind was on autopilot. She searched the dark night sky for other aircraft, as she always did on drills. She fine-tuned the moves Kazakhs made, as she always did on drills. Somewhere, the knowledge rested that the air controller’s strange farewell was for her. But it was bracketed, closed off, shut away along with the hidden memory of her friendship with the young kid from the Bronx, the speeding drives through the desert that had terrified him so, the black jeep careening through canyon-road turns, barreling across dunes. The drives had stopped, although the big-sister/little-brother friendship had not, after a magnificent autumn day, an Indian-summer sun bleaching the desert with the dancing heat rivulets of one last mirage before winter. Moreau unleashed all the power of the jeep in a rapturous race through the open sagebrush. She dug into deep sand unexpectedly, spun wildly, flipped, banged the roll bar violently into the desert ground, and landed wheels down. She came up squealing in delight, grinning from ear to ear. The kid’s face went bloodless. “Melech hamafis,” he said quietly. It was some time before she learned the meaning of the Yiddish phrase, and it did not penetrate now. This is a test. Z-n-n-n-n-n. This station is conducting a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. Z-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n.
The whine cut into the PRP-induced veneer around Moreau. It was an alarm whine, routine enough, too, but beckoning her to take control of the climbing bomber from a pilot preoccupied with other tasks. Still, it startled her and her body jerked almost imperceptibly.
She turned and saw Kazakhs reaching for the lead-lined flash curtain. He tugged at the dirty-gray screen, drawing it across his side of the cockpit window. Moreau made no move to pull her curtain, completing their isolation from the night sky and the last of the outside world. This was a drill. It was against regulations to fly with the nuclear blinds drawn on a drill. She had never pulled the curtain. The whine stopped.
“I’ve got it now, copilot,” Kazakhs said. ‘“Pull your curtain.”
Moreau looked at him strangely.
“Draw your curtain, copilot.”
Moreau exploded. Her words, vibrating in her own helmet, seemed to echo back at her. “Are you nuts, Kazakhs? We’ve got commercial jets out there, ranchers landing their goddamn Cessnas and Comanches at Spokane International. This brute is a bugsquisher. I’m not pulling the screen in a drill. No way!”
The dull throb of the headache, which Kazakhs had been subduing all day, crept into the pilot’s forehead. He wasn’t sure if it was Jack Daniel’s or Captain Moreau, and he didn’t care. “Draw… that… screen.”
Moreau tightened.
“Take the plane, copilot,” Kazakhs said, his voice abruptly calm. He lunged out of his seat and reached across the cockpit