World War III

“And you, Mr. Chairman, see that we have nothing to lose.”

They rose together and shook hands, then turned and walked in separate directions to their respective entourages of bodyguards.

Within five minutes the basketball gymnasium was dark and empty with only the occasional loose window-panes in the ceiling to rattle in the wind and echo softly between the walls.

JONES’S STRIP

Three mortar rounds exploded on the runway at precisely 0200 hrs, disintegrating the moored helicopter in half a second. Two more hit the hangar, splitting its corrugated sheet-metal walls as if they were made from cardboard, crashing them inward. Another explosion caved in the roof of the Quonset hut beside the cabin. The blasts’ concussions collapsed Caffey’s bed as he was rolling out of it.

The clatter of machine-gun fire followed. A burst blew out a window and killed the generator as Caffey scrambled into the Joneses’ living room. The lights went out.

“They doubled back!” Caffey screamed. “The bastards doubled back!” He searched through broken glass for his M-16 as picture frames danced on the wall and crashed to the floor from the rain of bullets. Through the shattered window he could see the hangar. It was burning. “Parsons!”

“Here, Colonel!”

“Get on the talkie! Get the men out!” The room was suddenly freezing. Shredded curtains flapped in protest as snow and wind shrieked into the cabin. The temperature dropped fifty degrees in ten seconds.

Caffey found his parka. “Kate!”

“Here!”

He ran in a crouch to the radio bench. The operator was dead in his chair. Kate was huddled in the corner, under her parka. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, I—”

“Put that goddamn coat on!” He reached up and pulled the PRC-41 from the operator’s desk. “Keep this out of harm’s way… we lose the radio and we are dead.”

“Colonel!” Parsons yelled. He had the door cracked and was on the floor with the walkie-talkie.

Caffey ran to him. Through the crack he could see the hangar blinking in bright relief. The night was suddenly filled with flares; tossed and tumbled by the whipping wind, their flickering brilliances cast the battleground with a grotesque kinetoscope effect. Like bumbling actors from a film clip of a Mack Sennett comedy, GIs danced hideously to death in apparent slow motion. The Russians cut them down individually and in groups as they came pouring out of the burning hangar.

Caffey grabbed Parsons by the arm and slung him down as the two-day-old lieutenant tried to run to his men.

“Let me go!” Parsons shouted. “Those are my men! They’re slaughtering them!”

“Stay down!” Caffey shouted back.

Another mortar round collapsed the two remaining walls of the hangar. Then the flares burned out. One by one they burned out or dropped sizzling into the snow. Almost as quickly as it had been brilliantly light, it was dark again. The mortars stopped. The heavy weapons fire stopped. For the few seconds before they heard the screams of the dying, there was only the sound of the wind.

“Now!” Caffey said. He pushed the door open and led the way. He ran south in a flanking movement to cut the raiding party off from the good helicopter, parked at the other end of the runway. That chopper was their only means of transportation out of this hellhole, Caffey knew. He had to get to it before they sent up more flares. There was a machine gun on it, besides. If he could work his way behind them with that gun…

Caffey was gasping for breath and searing his lungs in the frigid air as he made it to the Huey. Parsons and two other officers were on his heels. Without a word between them they loosened the gun from its swivel mount and lugged it and three tins of ammunition to a sandbag position. Then they waited.

The second round of flares didn’t come. They waited twenty minutes, but there was no more shooting.

No one launched another mortar. They waited until it was too cold to hold the trigger anymore.

The attack was over.

“Where did they go?” Parsons asked. “Why didn’t they come in for the kill?”

Caffey shook his head. He stared into the darkness to the east. “I don’t know,” he said bitterly. “I don’t fucking know… maybe we are dead.”

AIR FORCE ONE 2355 HRS

The jet engines droned through the darkness outside in melancholy harmony. The president of the United States woke from a light sleep, blinking rapidly until he’d oriented himself. He was alone in the main cabin, sitting at his place at the small conference table where he’d fallen asleep against the double-sealed plastic window. A Military Contingency Profile (MCP) lay open in his lap. His reading light was on.