The Navy pilots stared briefly into the cockpit of the B-52. A voice echoed out of the F-18 off Moreau’s wing. “We don’t want to do this, buddy.” Then, in unison, the two fighters peeled off into their turns for the loop around that would bring them back in for the kill.
“So much for that,” Kazaklis said.
“Good God, man,” Moreau said, shaking her head in amazement, “is that how you racked up all those scores in the Boom-Boom Room?”
“Wel-l-l-l,” Kazaklis drawled, “in the Boom-Boom Room the four-inch gun helped.”
“Alice here.”
Sweat poured off the general, soaking through his clothing. He had steeled himself, the way a strong man does, for the ultimate moment. If the last-minute reprieve was a blessing, his bodily functions did not accept it. The tension release had been too sudden. All his systems seemed ready to fail now, almost as surely as they would have flooded in release with the snap-lock opening of a hangman’s trapdoor. His hand shook, his breathing came in short gasps, his voice quavered, or so it seemed to him, and he was certain that was why he received no instant reply.
“Alice here,” the general repeated, a trifle louder, a touch more stridently. He had every excuse to feel paranoid, and fleetingly it occurred to him that he had been had.
“This is the President speaking,” a voice said. It was a familiar voice, with a resonance he had heard hundreds of times. Alice drew a deep breath, trying to pull his rebellious bodily functions back into harmony. He instantly fell back on his training. A familiar voice was not enough in his world.
“Day word?” Alice asked automatically.
“I don’t think we have time for that, general,” the voice said.
Dammit! The unexpected response jarred Alice, steadying him as it also angered him. Now what the hell was going on? Anyone could fake a voice. The President of the United States would know better.
“Listen, pal,” Alice barked caustically into the phone, “we haven’t had a President since Calvin Coolidge who would’ve tried that line of shit. I don’t know what you are, but you give me the day word. Now. Or you’ll find yourself alone in a phone booth.”
Alice heard a slight, appreciative—and familiar—chuckle. “Day word’s Cottonmouth, general,” the voice said. “The command word’s Trinity, and the action word’s Jericho, bless our tumbling walls. Now you’ll ask for the authenticator codes, right?”
“Bet your ass, buddy,” Alice said, fingering the small card in front of him.
“I don’t have my authenticator card, Alice. It’s lost and you either trust me or more than Jericho’s walls will come tumbling down.”
Alice sagged. “Without that card, you’re a phony,” he said wearily. “I don’t know who you are.”
“So what do we do now, general? Check my baseball averages? Play the old Brooklyn Dodgers game? You want Betty Grable’s measurements? Or is it Bo Derek this time around? What do we do?”
“We hang up,” the general said flatly. “I won’t talk to you. I’m disconnecting.”
“You… hold… on… general.” The sweat from Alice’s forehead dripped off his eyebrows, stinging his eyes. He wanted to believe. “This is the President of the United States calling you. Authenticator card or no authenticator card. We can play it by the book and blow the world to smithereens. That’s what the book calls for. That’s where it’s taking us. Is that where you want to go?”
Alice didn’t answer. The irony of being accused of playing by the book was lost on him, his mind darting down too many dead-end alleys. The perspiration was causing his hand to slide down the receiver. It fleetingly occurred to him—a bolt out of nowhere and departing just as fast—that their greatest mistake had been to expect anyone to act rationally under this pressure. He wanted a cigarette.
“I need a patch through to the E-4, ” the voice said. “I know you can talk to them. We can hear you. We can’t reach them from Olney. I know where the plane is. I know who’s aboard. The Secretary of the Interior is aboard. He thinks I’m dead. He thinks he’s the President. I must talk to him. Fast. About the submarines. Do you understand?”
Alice still said nothing.
“General, for Christ’s sake, do you want the precise location? The E-4’s flying over Paducah, Kentucky. You’re also flying over Paducah, Kentucky. You’re damn near on his ass! As your Commander-in-Chief, I’m telling you you’re too fucking close to him! One spooked Soviet submarine commander decides to take a potshot, and neither of you will be worrying about goddamned authenticator cards! There won’t be any cards! Then where the hell will we be? Answer me, damn you!”
“Where is your card?”
The general heard a pained sigh. “Damned if I know, general. On the South Lawn, which I crawled across on my belly. In the back end of Nighthawk, which got blown down in a gully, me in it. Lost in the rubble of somebody’s front yard when a kid packed me five miles on his back to this godforsaken hole. In the Olney incinerator with the bathrobe I was wearing when Icarus called.” The voice drifted, as if the man were in great pain. “Damned if I know.”
“Without the card, the E-4 won’t give you the time of day.” Alice looked at the clock. It read 1925 Zulu, one hour and thirty-five minutes to go.
“You let me worry about that, general. That’s what I get paid for. I think it’s time to earn my pay.”
Alice stared into the hands of the clock. “The risk…” he mumbled, more to himself than the man on the phone.
“Risk?” the voice bellowed into Alice’s ear. “This is a bad time to be talking about risk, general. I’m not asking you for information, though God knows I could use some. Do you think I’m a Russian, spoofing you? Good God, man, they would have read you the numbers so fast your head would spin. They probably have more of our goddamned cards than we do. I just talked to the Soviet Premier. You want me to call him back and ask him for the numbers?” The voice shook, wavered, and then returned very wearily. “Fucking little credit card. Charge-a-war. Damn, it’s probably the one thing we did keep secret from the Russians. Or I would get it from the Premier. Hell’s bells, man, I couldn’t read you the numbers if I had the card in my hand. I’m blinder than a bat.”
Alice slumped over the phone, rocking slowly.
“It’s a bad day for book players, general. I guess orders won’t do any good, but I’m asking you to patch me through. Will you do it?”
Alice pulled himself back up to an erect and militarily correct posture. He reached in search of a cigarette. In the private niche the pack of Pall Malls lay crumpled and empty. “Yes, sir, Mr. President, of course I will. I should brief you on a few matters first.”
Over the next five minutes, while the clock spun toward 1930 Zulu and Smitty dropped slightly off the tail of the E-4, Alice told the President about the extent of the damage to the world, about Polar Bear One’s unprompted turnabout made for reasons known only inside the B-52, about his own decision to turn the remaining bombers, about the Soviet response and Condor’s reaction, and, most important, about the timing of the submarine attack just ninety minutes hence. The President did not interrupt once.