Forty thousand feet above the ocean, and thirty-five miles from his boyhood island, the air slammed into Halupalai at almost six hundred miles an hour. He was protected somewhat—by his helmet and the steel seat that had shot out of the top of the aircraft with him. The temperature, even in these latitudes, was seventy below zero. But he did not feel the cold. The jolt knocked him unconscious immediately, and also broke the arm he had used to disconnect the radio wire after his brief farewell. He tumbled, his body tucked in fetus form, end over end, downward. He would fall in that manner for more than thirty-thousand feet. Then, below ten-thousand feet, the parachute would pop. That much was a virtual certainty. The parachute rarely failed. The body often did. In any case, the chute then would waft him slowly down into the cradle of the sea.
In the aircraft, Kazaklis and Moreau heard a tremendous thunderclap, although, in truth, there were two claps, one following the other so quickly their ears could not make the differentiation. The first came from the small explosive charge that propelled Halupalai away. The second came almost simultaneously from the rapid decompression of the aircraft, the oxygen being sucked out of the B-52 almost as rapidly as Halupalai had left. With the instant change in pressure, all other loose items rushed out of the upper compartment—charts, manuals, alert bags, unfinished box lunches. Tyler’s body swept up through the well and out the hole above the gunner’s seat. O’Toole’s body jammed in the well and kept Radnor aboard, too. In the cockpit, a fog briefly clouded the fliers’ vision as all on-board water vaporized. Both the pilot’s and the copilot’s fingertips began to turn blue, although not from the cold. Almost instantly, both Kazaklis and Moreau began suffering acutely from the symptoms of hypoxia. At this altitude they had fifteen, perhaps twenty seconds to take supplemental oxygen. After that their brains would cease functioning with any rationality. A few seconds later they would be unconscious. Shortly after that, they would be dead. Kazaklis and Moreau were well-trained to recognize the deadly effects of hypoxia, but the condition is subtle and hypnotic, affecting airmen much the way nitrogen overload affects scuba divers. Its symptoms are light-headedness, euphoria, well-being, even eroticism. And so Kazaklis, his tired but now soaring mind recalling the warmth and pleasure of Moreau’s unexpected bear hug, reached for his copilot’s thigh instead of his oxygen.
FOURTEEN
• 1800 Zulu
Sedgwick glanced fuzzily at the clock—1720 Zulu—flinched, and then moved his eyes to the President, who lay near him. The I.V. still hung above the man’s arm just as an I.V. hung above his. Sedgwick shifted uncomfortably in the wetness of his bed. Beneath his buttocks the I.V. tubing dripped slowly and steadily, the serum solution and the last dose of morphine washing through his sheet and soaking into the mattress as it had for the past half-hour. His eyes moved slowly from the President’s I.V. bag to his. The solution was depleting at the same rate. That was a good sign. He followed his own tubing down beneath the top sheet where he had moved his right arm. A small spot of blood stained the sheet where he had pulled back the medical tape and foggily removed the tubing from his arm. The President moaned slightly and babbled a few incoherent words. Across the room the nurses stopped their conversation, looked at the man, and began to draw another small dose of the peace-giving drug they would inject directly into the tube running into the President’s veins. Sedgwick flailed at his bedsheets and screamed, now wanting to draw attention to himself and away from the President. The nurses moved to Sedgwick first, one to each side of the bed.
“Hey, there, sailor,” said the one on the left, placing a calming hand on his head.
“What the hell is this?” demanded the one on the right, as she prepared to insert the hypodermic into the tubing above the revealing bloodstain.
Sedgwick forced his clouded mind and hurting body to function together. His right hand darted from beneath the sheet and grasped the nurse’s wrist, twisting only until the hypodermic clattered to the floor. He reared up painfully and lunged at the other nurse, grabbing her by the neck of the dress, ripping the fabric. Both nurses reared back, stunned.
The nurse on the left screamed urgendy. “Help us ! For God’s sake, someone help us!”
Sedgwick lunged again, shredding the front of her dress until she was naked to the waist. He twisted the fabric in a lock around his hand. “Shut up!” he ordered. “Shut up and listen!” He fumbled briefly for the most compelling words. “We’re going to die,” he said.
“You’re not going to die,” the nurse on the right said, nervously trying to calm him. “Let us give you something for the pain, sir.”
“Fuck the pain!” He could hear the noise of someone approaching from another room. “Listen to me! Stop the President’s morphine!” The hurting was beginning to overwhelm him, but he fought it back down.
The nurse on the left whimpered. The nurse on the right persisted in trying to soothe him. “You don’t want him to suffer.” She brought her free hand down on his chest and pushed. He wrenched at her arm again.
“Screw the suffering!” His words began to gush as he heard others approach. “There’s not enough morphine in the world to stop the suffering! Don’t you understand? It’s better that he hurt! You must understand, damn you! Damn you… damn you… can’t you understand…?”
Sedgwick felt someone roughly pulling his arms away from the nurses. He sagged back, closing his eyes and yielding briefly to the pain. He reopened them slowly. A man held him down. On his left the nurse had withdrawn, sobbing lightly and covering her breasts with her arms. On his right the other nurse stared at him angrily, curiously. Sedgwick’s eyes begged now. “Please hear me,” he pleaded. “You were outside. You saw. You have no idea what can still happen. He must be able to think. To feel. Please understand… ” All the strength began to ebb out of him. “Please…” he muttered. The nurse’s face blurred. He felt her patting him on the shoulder. He thought he saw her fuzzy face nod comfortingly. But by that time he was well on his way out again.
Alice clenched Smitty’s shoulder, and the pilot turned away from the unshielded cockpit windows—away from the smoke and crud floating over the Ozarks—and looked up at his command officer. “You doing okay, general?”
Alice smiled. “It’s my job to ask you that, Smitty.”
“Oh, I’m doing all right,” the pilot said. “You ever think it would be this way, sir?”
“Tell you the truth, Smitty, I don’t know what I thought.”
“No, I guess none of us did.”
“I’m very proud of you, old friend. All of you people.”
The pilot turned back to his work and said nothing. They were in an extremely hot area, flying directly through the radioactive debris floating away from the crater-gouging attack on the Missouri Minuteman fields. Even with the vents closed, the radiation ate at them now. The general shuddered. It would not kill him. He would go much faster now that his new course was set for a deadly midair meeting with Condor. But he shuddered nevertheless and forced his thoughts back to his crew, of whom he was immensely proud.
Alice had come close to not telling his staff, letting Sam and the cockpit crew know and allowing the rest to carry on routinely. Sam had wagged his head at the thought, and he had been correct. The crew was too tight a group, confined in quarters too small, confined too many months and years in a life too other-worldly for any of them to have missed the dynamics of the decision. Or to have misunderstood—even in the sodden depression that pervaded the airplane after their orderly military world had been shattered by his earlier decision. They had accepted the new decision sadly and fatalistically—but without a single objection. A few moments ago, the crew had filed into the cockpit one by one. They had peered down into the moonscape of the once pastoral Missouri farmland, saw crater overlapping crater where the missiles had been planted with other crops. Then they had returned quietly to work. He understood their need for that. It gave meaning to this final mission.