Sigma One (49 page)

"Burt,we can run away. The three of us. If we leave now we can go up North. Cross into Canada and leave all this behind us. I've got friends in Vancouver, and I don't think they'll ever be able to find us there."

"Burt----Burt." She started to sob as she waited for him to turn around, hoping against hope that he'd listen to reason--hoping that this madness would end. Her sobs ratcheted out and she became unable to speak as she stared into the dark recesses of the van and waited.

Suddenly Burt twitched slightly and she tried to calm herself thinking this movement a sign of compliance--of a change of heart on his part. In her mind's eye she could see him slowly turn around and come to her so she could hold him. She wanted so desperately to hold him.

She reached out her hand and gently placed it on his shoulder to prod him, but the instant she touched him, he flinched again, this time more violently than before as if she had struck him with a rod instead of lightly touching him on the shoulder.

Immediately, he released his knees and spun around. Debbie saw that his eyes were wide open when he faced her, giving them a Mansonesque quality as if all humanity had been leached out of them leaving only black islands of despair surrounded by a sea of white and red. Snot ran out of both his nostrils and his lower lip quivered.

Burt grabbed her hand and flung it aside causing it to slap hard against the cold metal paneling, sending a flash of pain up her arm.

"Give me the keys, bitch!" he growled.

Debbie was too stunned to move. After having her hand flung against the inside of the van she had immediately brought it back to her chest whereupon she grabbed it with her free hand to make it stop stinging. In so doing, she had dropped the keys into the back with Burt and Andre.

"Give me the keys, now," Burt growled again.

"I don't have them. Burt, what's happened to you?" she cried out, wanting, no needing, an explanation for his behavior--still holding on to the hope this was all a bad dream and that it would soon end.

Burt didn't answer, but instead, reached forward and grabbed her by the back of the neck. "The keys! Where are the keys?"

He wrenched her head forward as he spoke until she was halfway in the back of the van with him straddling the seat and leaning face down at the floor mat where she had earlier dropped them.

She pulled back in terror. But he had followed her eyes downward to the keys, and when he grabbed them from the floor, he released his hold on her and pushed her forward into the front seat away from him. As he did this, he reached over with his free hand and rapped Kamarov on the back.

"We go! Now!" he snapped at his friend and then scrambled over the console and got out of the van.

Kamarov followed him and both men began to run down the creosote soaked timber of the docks toward Mac Tavish's boat neither turning around to give Debbie a second look. Had they done this, they might have seen Walker and his squad of agents who were just thirty feet away from the van and approaching it cautiously from behind.

Walker saw them and immediately fell to one knee to steady his pistol which he brought up and trained on Andre's back.

"Freeze! Kamarov! Grayson! It's all over!" he ordered.

And for a split second, both men did just that...they froze...but not because of Walker or the threat of being shot. They each had other things on their minds.

Burt raised his arm slowly and pointed South toward Vandenberg.

"There, Andre. Look there. Vandenberg is just over those hills. While we sat in the van, I was able to determine by linking with their computers that a test is about to occur!"

Burt then lowered his hand as Walker strode forward behind them.

At Vandenberg, Colonel Banes signaled to the launch control officer, who like Banachek, was watching a series of TV monitors from his position at the control panel. "We have a go ahead from range safety," Banes said putting down the phone.

As he did this, the launch control officer acknowledged his signal and spoke into his microphone. "Begin countdown again at twenty seconds," he ordered to the crew of young Air Force officers.

Banachek was still hunched over his own screens and watched as the

series
of green numbers indicating missile subsystem status scrolled in

front
of him.

The loudspeaker overhead crackled.

"Twenty!"

"Nineteen!"

"Eighteen!"

"Seventeen!"

"Sixteen!"

"Fifteen!"

"Fourteen!"

"Thirteen!"

Banachek looked up at the TV monitors which focused on the two Minutemen missiles and noted their sleek, dark, silent sides. Unlike the former liquid-fueled work horses of the Department of Defense, the Atlas and Titan class missiles, which by this time in the countdown would be steaming from the condensation from the liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen which filled their fuel tanks giving them a malevolent fearful look, their two solid rocket fueled minutemen cousins instead sat there motionless giving no indication they were soon to leap into the sky to catapult their mock reentry vehicles nearly half a globe away downrange.

"Twelve!"

"Eleven!"

"Ten!" "Nine!" "Eight!" "Seven!" "Six!" "Five!" "Four!" "Three!"

"Ignition!"

"Two----
"

"One!"

"Liftoff!" The loudspeaker sounded, and the TV monitor instantly showed clouds of smoke and fire belching from the twin black obelisks as they jumped from their concrete cocoons into the afternoon coastal haze.

As the missiles leapt into the air, Banachek turned his attention away from the TV monitor and began to assess the guidance control computer outputs and the radar screen to track their course.

"All systems green, Colonel Banes," he announced, his hand on the destruct button ready at an instant's notice to push it should the screens he watched give any indication of a malfunction which might send the missiles on an intercept path with the mainland.

Back in Morrow Bay, Walker was approaching Andre and Burt from behind. His three cohorts followed like baby ducks following their parent. Each man had his gun trained on Andre, ready to fire if he should turn and attempt to do what he had done to Wycoat. All marched in lock step.

"Ok, Kamarov and Grayson! Both of you stop and raise your hands, but don't turn around!" Walker ordered.

Andre and Burt stopped moving forward, but continued to talk. The wildness inside each was growing as Burt relayed the fact that the missiles had lifted off. Each felt stronger than they had ever felt before, momentarily losing themselves in the power surge which accompanied their mental metamorphosis.

Kamarov knew he could now turn and with little more than the blink of an eye destroy those who stood behind him, but he also knew that such an act would weaken him for what he was about to do when the twin missiles finally came into view. So he fought the urge to attack and instead, continued to stare out to the South beyond the boats in the harbor, beyond the high knoll on which the nesting ground of the Blue heron stood, out toward the coastal mountains above which he knew he would soon see the missiles.

The high overcast that had covered the California coast since morning had thinned somewhat, but a silvery thin layer of horsetail cirrus remained, and it looked as if someone had spread a gossamer silken scarf over the cap of the sky. As Burt and Andre continued to stare upward, the twin missile contrails appeared and like spiders crawling up a web, they began to quickly arch into the veil; their white ribbons of exhaust stretching taut as they ascended toward the heavens.

Burt raised his hand and pointed.

"See them! There!" he said to Andre, already closing his eyes and focusing his thought energy toward them.

"Do it now! Now! I'll take the one on the left! You, the right!"

Andre followed Burt's lead and closed his eyes tightly and began to concentrate to redirect his missile's flight profile toward Washington while Burt did the same for his to send it to Moscow!

Walker saw the missiles too, and fearing the worst, raised his gun and fired twice.

Simultaneously, at Vandenberg Launch control, Banachek, detected an ever-so-slight trajectory aberration and punched the button he held in his hand.

As the bullets entered the backs of their heads, Andre and Burt opened their eyes. The last thing they saw was that they had succeeded as the missies began to arch north and east instead of south toward Kwajalein.

When they both fell to the ground mortally wounded, both missiles finally exploded, but not before it had been determined that the trajectories they were taking would send them to the two most powerful nation's capitols.

Thirty minutes after the successful destruct command, Colonel Banesand Lt. Banachek were on a conference call to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force to explain the gravity of the situation. Thirty six hours later, trajectory reconstruction confirmed what Banachek had said his computer had told him and a report was delivered to the President.

Sarah Huxley reached aver the silver railing of the hospital bed for Pat's bandaged hand and squeezed it tightly.

Feebly, he responded and tried to grip her back. As he did,
Sarah, forced a smile and a tear trickled down her cheek as she stared at her injured husband's broken body. She was so glad he was alive, but she had to turn her head away so he couldn't see her cry. She had shed enough tears for a lifetime the past two weeks ever since she received Amanda Yates call at her mother's house telling her Pat had been in a car wreck. Had it not been for Walker's urgent call back to the NSF and the subsequent trip Amanda made to find Pat and tell him the news of Kamarov's and Grayson's demise, Pat might have died.

As she sat there staring at him, the television set which hung on the wall opposite his bed droned in the background and Peter Jennings’s voice was barely audible.

Jennings sat at his news desk in front of a picture of the White House where only hours before, the Soviet and American Presidents had signed their historic, unprecedented and unannounced arms agreement which in five years’ time would put the threat of a nuclear war completely out of the realm of possibility and end, at least momentarily, mankind's most horrific age. The newscasters had been playing the story for hours and would probably continue to do so for weeks on end covering every aspect of such a momentous event. The public, however, would only be given half the story, but that didn't matter, not to Pat anyway. He, after all, had finally achieved his goal. In five years all U.S. and Soviet missiles would be destroyed as a result of the treaty.

Pat opened his swollen blackened eyes and focused on the TV set and although it hurt, he forced a smile and spoke."I'm so sorry Sarah, but I didn't know what else to do. I felt so alone              like such a failure. He then smiled again, coughed, and grimaced in pain as his broken ribs moved.

Sarah put her hand on his forehead and stroked it lovingly.

"It's all right, Pat. Don’t try to speak. Just know that I love you and everything will be fine after you're better." She then added as she leaned over the bed to give him a kiss. "I'm so proud of you!"

Pat turned his head toward her, momentarily ignoring Jennings’s announcement of the resignation of Radcliff, and smiled at Sarah as a video tape of the senator and Cherisa Hunt locked in a steamy embrace, but appropriately edited for television, flashed on the screen.

"It will be better. I know it. Now that it's over!" Pat said.

"Yes, it will honey. Now that it's finally over," she said dreamily and continued stroking his brow while he drifted off to sleep.