World War III

Someone had printed at the top CAFFEY’S LAST STAND, and under it, THE MAGNIFICENT NINE.

“Lieutenant Hendricks?”

“Sir?”

Caffey cast a glance over his shoulder. “Start up that crate of yours.”

“Right-o, Colonel.”

Caffey looked at Lieutenant Parsons. “The wind is falling off. They’ll be moving fast now. The weather’s breaking.”

“Well, Colonel, we’re ready,” Parsons said. “Corporal Simms here will look after the wounded.” He gripped the man’s shoulder beside him. The corporal’s left hand was badly burned and wrapped in strips from a pillowcase. “He’s been checked out on the spare radio.”

Caffey nodded. “Call Fairbanks every half hour or so, Corporal. They’ll get an evacuation team in here as quick as they can.”

“Yes, sir,” Simms said. He glanced at the wounded men behind Caffey. “I know I can’t, sir, but”—he swallowed and looked straight into Caffey’s eyes—”I wish I could go with you. I’d like to be there when you hit the sonofabitches.” He held out his good hand. “Good luck, sir.”

Caffey shook it, then turned to Kate. “You still have a choice, Major.”

“Major?” Kate looked at him with a puzzled stare. “I think we can drop the formalities now, Jake.”

“You can stay here, Kate,” Caffey said. “I’m giving you the choice. You don’t have to do this.”

“Yes, I do,” she said. She held her head up and smiled. “Besides, I’m not exactly the Florence Nightingale type — am I.”

“No, not exactly.” He looked at the other faces a moment. The Huey’s engine whined to life. “All right,” he said firmly. “Let’s go.”

THE WHITE HOUSE

The television screen went white with the flash of the explosion. The familiar mushroom formed as contrast and color returned to the screen. Mountains outlined in the background gave the explosion scale. It was at once terrifying and beautiful.

The president touched the VTR’s remote pause button and the billowing cloud froze instantly. A pair of the Oval Office’s window drapes had been drawn to keep glare off the console’s screen. Farber turned toward the president with a questioning look.

“How many megatons, Jules?”

“This is a twenty-ton test.”

“And the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombs were what… eight?”

“Five.”

“And the Russians tested a fifty-megaton bomb twenty years ago?” McKenna sighed. He tapped the pause button again to allow the tape to continue.

“A thermonuclear device such as this,” said the television narrator, “exploding on a clear day at ground level, would create a fireball one and a half miles in diameter. Temperatures at the core would reach twenty to thirty million degrees Fahrenheit — two hundred times the temperature on the surface of the sun. If it were targeted on a city the size of Boston, with the Hancock Building as ground zero, every structure in the downtown district — streets, cars, buses, even the underground water mains — would be vaporized in the first tenth of a second, leaving a crater several hundred feet deep…”

“I hope to Christ Gorny has seen a film like this,” McKenna said.

“…ten miles radius, the blast wave with 180-mile winds would tumble or severely damage buildings more than three stories tall. The established body of scientific thought believes that this planet could absorb an all-out thermonuclear war…” Wayne Kimball stuck his head into the room. “Mr. President?”

“…but that mankind, its inventor, would become extinct as a species and—” The president switched off the machine. “Yes, Wayne.”

“Better pick up line two, sir. General Olafson just got a hot-line request.” McKenna picked up. “Phil?”

“Mr. President, we just got a request from Moscow for a direct line hookup,” Olafson said. He sounded slightly out of breath. “Chairman Gorny would like to speak to you at 1530 hours, our time.” McKenna checked his watch. “That’s not for another five hours.” He cupped the phone. “Gorny’s decided he wants to talk,” he said to Farber. “But not until three-thirty. What’s he waiting for?” Farber glanced up over his glasses. “Another proposition?”

“He can proposition me now, for chrissake!”

“If he’s having trouble convincing his friends”—

Farber shrugged—”maybe he needs the time to do some old-fashioned arm-twisting. Whatever the reason is, I wouldn’t turn it down.”

“I don’t intend to.” The president spoke into the receiver. “Phil, that is a call I do not want to miss. I want you and all of the crisis-conference members present when I take it. We’ll meet here, in this office, at three o’clock.”

“Yes, sir.”

McKenna replaced the receiver. He leaned back into his chair. “Maybe the old bird has come to his senses.”

“And if he hasn’t?”

The president held his head in his hands. “Pray for a miracle,” he said. “Pray for Caffey to save our asses.”

WHITE HILL 1250 HRS

White Hill wasn’t a hill at all.