The Contec security man nodded.
"The first thing is to get this faceplate open and see who we've got in here."
He reached for the helmet's release catch but Vickers took a hasty step back and clapped a protective hand over it.
"Just a goddamn minute."
Slaughter jerked his rifle. "Get that damn helmet off! Now!"
"What about the radiation?"
"What radiation?"
"The radiation from the bombs. You may be acclimated or something but…"
The Contec man's eyes narrowed.
"What the fuck have they been telling you in there?"
Vickers was cautious. He was so totally shocked and confused that he didn't want to make any mistake.
"There's no radiation?"
"None. There've been no bombs exploded around here since the 1960s."
"You're sure."
"There's no radiation. Damn it, man, even your own radiation counter's in the green."
Vickers closed his eyes for a moment. One step at a time was all he could manage. He popped the release on his helmet. The faceplate swung open. Despite his situation, the air tasted good. He took off the whole helmet. The Contec man's eyes widened.
"Well, shit."
The captain looked at him curiously.
"What?"
"He definitely came from inside the bunker."
"You know him?"
"I've seen pictures of him. His name is Vickers, Mort Vickers. He was a Contec corpse who went in a while before the place was sealed."
Vickers looked at each of his captors in turn. "I think I ought to talk to someone." The captain nodded. "I think you'd better. You're coming with us."
He took Vickers by the arm and propelled him toward the helicopter. The lieutenant and the Contec man flanked them. Slaughter gathered up Vickers' weapons and brought up the rear. They ducked as they passed under the rotor blades. As they climbed into the Cobra, Vickers glanced at the captain.
"What's my status in all of this?"
"You're under arrest, Jack, until someone tells me different. "
The chopper flipped up before they were even settled. The pilot was a gum-chewing Indian with crazy eyes. Vickers remembered the reputation of army chopper pilots. This sucker probably popped greenies all day. It was cramped inside the Cobra with two extra passengers and the door gunner sucked a toothpick and glared at them for the rest of the flight. The chopper crossed the top of the hill and Vickers was able to look down at what had been the approach system for the bunker entrance. The whole area was scarred by explosions. Sections of highway were nothing more than craters. Some of the blockhouses had been burned down to blackened stumps. Sometime since the bunker had been sealed, its surface installations had been the site of close and intense combat. The army, presumably the victors in the conflict, had established what, from its dugouts, camouflaged tents and parked helicopters, appeared to be a forward base in among the ruins.
"What happened here?"
"No questions, Vickers. You're under arrest."
Vickers scowled. "Suit yourself."
The Cobra dropped toward a white-marked landing area. A small crowd had gathered, apparently to stare at Vickers as he emerged from the gunship. No less than four video cameras were pointed at him. He couldn't imagine they were media and assumed that the army wanted a permanent record of the proceedings. The way everyone gawked was unnerving. They were treating him like a captured Martian. Someone had seemingly decided that he needed additional guarding. A half-dozen Military Police, in white helmets and toting Whoopers, were gathered by the landing area. They surrounded Vickers as he stumbled from the chopper and hustled him away to a tent where more MPs stood with weapons at high port. Inside, more army and more Contec security were waiting for him. The feeling of being a captured Martian was tripled. There was a single army folding cot in the middle of the tent. Vickers stood beside it and looked slowly around. They really were treating him like a specimen. The Contec officer from the helicopter came in with a set of army fatigues over his arm. He tossed them down on the cot.
"You can change out of that suit and into these."
"I can?"
"Right now, please."
"Now?"
"Right now."
Vickers stroked his chin. He needed a shave.
"You expect me to undress in front of all these people? I don't get to retain any dignity?"
"You're in something of a unique situation."
Vickers' eyes were bleak.
"I am indeed."
Vickers put the cold Coke bottle against his forehead. He couldn't remember when he'd last slept. He still hadn't shaved. What they called the "debriefing" seemed to have been going on for years, years of people asking him questions and shining lights in his face. The current one was a major in Army Intelligence. He varied the routine slightly. Others had bullied or threatened, this one had a mildly amused smile and the manner of a shrink. He wanted to know how Vickers had felt about everything.
"Why don't you go through the basic story just once more."
The major also liked things repeated over and over. It was starting to make Vickers belligerent.
"Do I have to? I'm exhausted."
"Just once more, please. I'd like to feel that I have it straight."
A dull anger burned up inside Vickers.
"Straight? Nothing about this whole set-up is straight. Eighteen months ago I'm down below, in the bunker. We're told the Soviets have started World War III. Fucking President himself tells us and we believe him. The bunker is sealed and for a year and a half we sit around going crazy thinking that we may be the only surviving remnant of humanity."
The ordeal had started in the tent with the dozen or more officers gawking at him. That hadn't lasted, however; there'd been another quick chopper flight to a more permanent command post that had been set up in a run-down, presumably commandeered motel. A weathered neon sign beside a cracked and disused two-lane blacktop proclaimed it to be the Desert Inn. They rushed Vickers to Cabin 17 and surrounded him with guards. They seemed unwilling to let him linger as if he might contaminate something. Once he was installed in the cabin, the interrogators came and went without letup. Army, Contec, a couple of Federal agency types in dark suits, they came singly and in twos and threes. A stenobot watched every move. They wouldn't let him have a drink but a constant supply of ice cold Cokes was a novelty in itself. Everything in the bunker had tasted of metal for as long as he could remember.
"So after a year and a half, by combination of ingenuity, courage and idiot luck, I finally get out and I'm dragged in here and everyone's telling me that there never was a war and we've been squatting in a hole in the ground with our thumbs up our collective ass under the illusion it was Armageddon time."
"It's very unfortunate but…"
"Unfortunate, shit!" Vickers thought about hitting the major in the face with his Coke bottle. It was tempting but he was too tired. "Tell you what, why don't you go through it some of it again so I can get it straight?"
"What do you want to know?"
"What happened to our war?"
There was something very trying about the major's patience.
"It didn't happen. There was a marked deterioration in the international situation around the time that the bunker was sealed. For a week or so it really looked as though the Soviet Union was disintegrating. Then Podgorny and the revisionists staged their coup and took control of most of the Red Army in the west. Within days they were talking with the corporations and the Western governments. The grainlift was underway inside of two weeks and we were moving troops in to restore order while they cleared up the mess. Well, to be accurate, it wasn't strictly us; the troops were nominally neutraclass="underline" Greeks, Cubans, Canadians, Swedes and what have you. Just so long as no one looked like either an American or a German. The Russians wouldn't have stood for that, too many long-standing prejudices."