Arc Light (45 page)

Lambert thought for a second, then said, “Nothing.”

“Did he object? Tell the President that what he was doing was ill advised?”

Lambert thought about that night again. Jane had still been alive then. Swallowing, he said, “It sounded like Secretary Moore began to object, but the President cut him off.”

“He cut him off.” The manager shook his head at the dastardly behavior of the President. “How did the President cut him off? What words did he use?”

“I don't remember. He just told him to do it,” Lambert said.

“ ‘Just do it'?” the Congressman repeated.

“Something like that.”

“No questions asked?” he said as he swept his hand up into the air, turning from Lambert to walk toward the gallery. “No discussion? No consultation with military experts with whom he could easily have been in contact to discuss the
ramifications
of such a
monumentally
significant blunder?”

“No,” Lambert said to the Congressman's back.

“Did
you
try to stop the President, Mr. Lambert? Did you say anything?”

“Yes.”

“And what was the President's response?”

“He couldn't hear me. We were on the White House lawn. The noise of the helicopter that had landed to take us to Andrews—Crown Helo, it's called—made continuation of our telephone call over the portable phone impossible.” The thought tormented him for the hundredth time. He could have saved her, if only he had stopped the President.

“And you tried, but he couldn't hear you?” She was alive, unharmed, as healthy as a person could be, flushed with a summer tan from the tennis lessons she worked so hard on to give them a sport they could play together. Together, for the rest of their lives, that was the way it was supposed to be. “Because of the noise of a helicopter?” Her eyes were blue, but when she wore her green sundress they turned green. She was magic. “Mr. Lambert?”

“Uh, I . . . I called out over the portable phone”—his mind was wandering, and he didn't fight too hard to keep it focused—“and I ran across the lawn, but when I got to the helicopter they took off immediately.”
Why did you let this happen, God? How could you do this?
“I could barely make it to a seat. The ride was . . . wild—very low.”
Like the helicopter ride to find Jane's lifeless body.
He had carried her body in his arms. It had been different. She felt heavier than he remembered, different because every time before she had wrapped her arms around his neck, made it easier, made herself lighter. She was magic.

“Mr. Lambert,” the Congressman asked in a kindly voice, “I only have one other question for you. You were on board the President's Airborne Command Post during the nuclear attack together with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were you not?”

“Yes.”

“And did this topic come up?”

“Yes. The Joint Chiefs were speculating as to how it was that the Chinese fired their missiles, and I told them of the conversation that the President had with Secretary Moore.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Colonel Rutherford, General Thomas's aide, whispering in Thomas's ear.

“And what was their reaction?”

“They were surprised—shocked, I guess you'd say.”

“And why do you suppose that was?”

“Because it was that forewarning that allowed the Chinese time to generate their missiles, and it was the Chinese missile attack on the Russians that prompted the Russians to mistakenly fire at us.”

A rush of voices rose up from the crowd now and filled the chamber.

“I have no other questions,” the Congressman said and returned to his table.

“Mr. Dodson?” the Chief Justice said, and the old gentleman who was President Livingston's long-time lawyer rose, buttoning his jacket.

“I have only one question, Your Honor.” He looked at Lambert. “What, sir, is your opinion of President Livingston?”

There were a few muted whispers around the chamber at that question, and Lambert searched his brain for an answer. After a long pause during which the lawyer waited patiently, Lambert said, “I think President Livingston is the most decent man I have ever met.” He began to say something about Livingston the President, but he stopped short, closing his mouth instead and falling silent.

Dodson nodded. “No further questions, Your Honor,” he said as he unbuttoned his jacket and sat.

“You are dismissed, Mr. Lambert,” the Chief Justice said.

Lambert walked back to his seat in a daze, the memories of her so fresh he felt he could reach out and touch her. Thomas was chopping an outstretched palm with the heel of his hand as he spoke rapidly and angrily to Rutherford. Rutherford nodded and started to leave, but Thomas grabbed his arm and said something more to which the colonel nodded again and then strode briskly for the side door, breaking into a run once he was through the door and into the hallway.

As the House managers called their next witness, Lambert sat, looking over at Thomas, whose knitted brow betrayed deep concern. Thomas put his hand on Lambert's forearm, and Lambert leaned to meet Thomas halfway between their chairs.

“The Russians are landing on Iceland,” Thomas whispered. Lambert looked up at his face, at his grinding jaw, just as Thomas's head jerked in silent curse. “Just sailed right up and put troops ashore.” He was shaking his head. “They've got airborne troops coming down all over Reykjavik. They'll have aircraft operating out of there in a few hours.” His head jerked again, but this time Lambert heard an audible “Shit!”

It was a military disaster, Lambert knew, but it was something more. He looked back up at the Senators. The vote was only hours away. With word that Iceland was going to fall with hardly a fight after the newspapers and television had trumpeted the risk for days, there would be hell to pay. And it would be Livingston who would pay it.

There were soldiers and airmen everywhere, engineers laying metal gratelike sections of tarmac off to the side of the concrete for additional parking areas, bladders of fuel and pallets of equipment rolling down the brightly lit rear ramps of giant C-5A and C-17 transports, tent cities going up with astonishing rapidity, fighter-bombers roaring off in pairs with flames shooting out the rear. Iceland was, he had heard, close to falling to Russian paratroopers and marines. The battle was on, but the routine established by Chandler and his men and women over the last two weeks was unchanged. Nobody knew who they were or what was going to happen to them.

“Jackpot!” “Ho-o-o, man!” “Lordy, lordy!” Chandler slowly approached the commotion as he wandered down the corridor. A small clump of soldiers stood among the much larger group that lay on their bags all along the windowless stretch of concourse. They were laughing good-naturedly and punching the shoulder of a man—a boy, really, who looked to Chandler to still be in his teens—around whom they formed a semicircle as he gathered his gear. As the tall, skinny boy left to follow a private to a door, Chandler surmised that he had finally gotten his orders and was off.
Lucky bastard!

Through the open door to which the boy was led, Chandler saw another group of soldiers kneeling in the harsh, artificial light of the tarmac, their gear resting around them, and he stopped to stare. All were on their knees, facing in the same direction. An arm extended down, cut off from its body by the doorframe. The arm wafted gracefully down to the mouth of the soldier nearest the door, his face black with greasepaint. The soldier stuck his tongue out and drew the small wafer into his mouth, bowing his head to pray. The arm with no body made the sign of a cross and rested for a second on the stubble of the man's head, palm down.

The boy in the doorway put his cap on as he exited. Chandler's last sight of him was as he clamped his hand on his cap to keep from losing it in the backblast of jet engines.

You wouldn't want to lose a cap like that,
Chandler thought.
It takes a year of training to win a Green Beret.

He wandered on down the concourse, his mind blurring as he came to a glass-walled section. As the dim rays of the setting sun bathed the tarmac in faint light, he saw Special Forces troops filing up the rear ramp of a transport, even
their
strong backs bowed under the weight of their weapons, existence loads, and parachutes. Chandler felt the goose bumps rise on his chest and arms as he imagined
where they were headed, what lay in store for them upon their arrival.

“You lookin' for somebody, Major?” a man with a gravelly voice standing unnoticed off to Chandler's right asked.

“Well. . . ” Chandler started to say “Top” when he saw the man was a first sergeant, the highest ranking NCO in a company-size field unit, but stopped, uncomfortable with the word. “I'm trying to find out when my men and I get out of here. We've been stuck in Gander for two weeks.”

“You pro'bly oughta ask the flyboys at the operations center downtown,” Top said, pulling up on his pistol belt from which hung a 9-mm Beretta.

Chandler smiled and shook his head. He'd been wandering around for hours, ever since the transports started flooding the airport during the afternoon.
Sure,
he thought,
that makes sense. The army is at the airport, and the air force is in the town.
“What's going on with Iceland?”

“Oh,” Top said, rocking from heel to toe, “our fearless leader gave it to the Russians, and now he wants us to go get it back. Sort of an Indian giver.” Chandler could sense the first Sergeant's ease in speaking to him, to a major. He had noticed before a stiffness of manner when he had spoken to most army enlisted men and women, but Top's world was spent giving orders to sergeants on the one side and reports to officers on the other. He was the liaison between the two worlds of the enlisted and the commissioned, and he was comfortable in both.

Despite being anxious to move on, Chandler politely asked the first sergeant when he was off. He got a bigger reaction than he'd bargained for.

“Oh! Well, ya see, Major,” Top spat the words out bitterly, a smile on his lips but not in his eyes, “this is as far as I
go.”
He grew agitated, rocking and straightening his belt again. “I'm too
valuable,
ya see,” he said, nodding his head at Chandler, his lips pulled thin over his teeth. “It's only World War Fuckin'
Three!
They're
savin'
me, ya see, sir,” the first sergeant continued. “Couldn't
risk
it—need
me
here!” He waved his arm ceremoniously over the hangar, which was filled with soldiers lying lazily on the floor with nothing to do. Chandler looked back at Top. The man was furious. His eyes, however, scanned the hangar. His head jerked as his eyes picked up a target—two o'clock, moving, twenty meters.

“Hey you! Soldier!”
Chandler jumped involuntarily on the first word, like at the sound of a door slamming unexpectedly.
“Yeah you,”
Top continued,
“you sad-sack piece o' shit!”

Chandler's reaction paled in comparison to that of the lounging enlisted men. For a radius of about fifty meters every eye was now on Top. Arms once draped over the faces of soundly sleeping soldiers flew up, and heads were raised. Conversations were halted, and soldiers froze in their tracks. The alarm was general—but just long enough to see that the object of Top's salutation was someone else. Then there was only mild interest, a perverse sense of enjoyment.
“There but for the Grace of God . . . ”
Chandler thought.

“ 'Scuse me a second, sir,” Top said, politely. “Just tryin' to get these little boys ready, ya know, for what's comin'.” Chandler nodded.

Top never again raised that awesome voice, that force erupting from deep in his barrel chest born of a career of exercise. He didn't need it. The soldier—at rigid attention, almost visibly quivering—was jellified by the mere whispers of the first sergeant, whispers projected at the private from close range.

The older man exhibited that tendency of NCOs, perfected by drill instructors, to invade a soldier's space. His behavior was, in fact, quite reminiscent of a DI, which was seldom encountered once you joined a unit.
A crash course in discipline,
Chandler thought as he watched.
Exhibition games are over. It's time for the regular season.

Top never appeared to be on the verge of raising his hand to strike the poor soul, but flinches and small jars shook the soldier's body as if blows were landed. Contrary to popular impression among the civilian population, Chandler knew, one of the surest ways to find your career in the military ended—and possibly a new one begun in the stockade—was to strike a subordinate. But the threat of physical suffering at the hands of the vastly more accomplished NCO was always there just beneath the surface. The persona of the senior NCO, no matter what their physical stature or age, could be summed up with the words they almost never had to use: “Don't fuck with me.”

The private's was the only voice you could hear. “Yes, First Sergeant!” “Yes, First Sergeant!” Never “Sir”—only officers were “Sir.” You didn't insult an NCO more than once in your military life with that mistake. And not “Sergeant” either. Sergeants were “buck sergeants”—three chevrons forming inverted Vs, and only three. Upon promotion, you get rockers underneath the chevrons and a new title, and neither were to be taken from you by the sloppy terminology of some mere private. One rocker: staff sergeant. Two: platoon sergeant. Three: master sergeant. And three with a diamond in the middle: “Top.”

“Yes, First Sergeant!” the private, ever correct, barked crisply. Chandler watched as Top roamed the contours of the boy's face and
head. At an altitude of about one inch, the teacher was instructing the pupil in the errors of his ways. His nose to the boy's nose, then descending off that prominence and onto the plain of the private's cheek in order for Top to turn his ear to hear the wimpy answer, shouted at the top of the private's lungs—“Yes, First Sergeant!” Top finally returned to Chandler.