“How about our forces?” the president asked.
“That’s not so good, Mr. President. Our European land forces have been pretty much wiped out. But a lot of small units are still fighting independently, and the Pentagon people indicate they’ll go on doing that until you tell them otherwise. Most military bases in the continental United States were knocked out, since they were A-Class targets because of their missiles. The really bad news is an unconfirmed report that when the missiles struck on the West Coast, they ruptured the San Andreas fault line and caused massive earthquakes and tidal waves. We’ve confirmed that New York City was swamped by an Atlantic tidal wave. Estimated casualty figures don’t include the San Andreas quakes, but do include the New York disaster.”
“Are the Russians coming?” the president asked, his voice emotionless.
“As best as we can tell, they’ll make landings in certain safe cities where they used neutron bombs. About twenty-four hours. It’s more symbolic than military. They can hold those areas, but just frankly don’t have the manpower to do anything else with the Chinese on their rear ends. And they won’t have sufficient heavy industry for years to get up enough muscle to actually occupy our entire country. We’ve got some small independent military units that are ready to go and make the Soviet occupation here miserable. Should be able to keep up fighting almost indefinitely.”
“I suppose I should be thankful,” the president muttered. “The whole planet could have been blown out of its orbit and plunged into the sun-like some of the scientists have been warning.”
“Well, sir, no one got to use all their stuff. The Russians have pretty much stopped targeting us now. May have been a slight axis shift, could result in some radical climatic changes. Can’t tell yet. Pretty scary business. Mind if I sit down, Mr. President?”
“Oh, I’m sorry Thurston,” the president said, looking at the young man. “Yeah, go ahead and sit.”
“Mr. President, what are you going to do?”
The president smiled, saying, “I was afraid somebody was going to ask me that. Well, I have no precedent to guide me. The country, more or less, has ceased to exist as a country. I don’t know. What about fallout-any guesses there?”
“Well, sir, we had a lot of scenarios worked out for war, and this comes closest to scenario,” and Potter studied his notes. “Eighteen-A. I doubt you’d remember it by that number, but, basically, it looks as though the fallout should stay in bands across the country, and when it settles to the ground, stay that way. Some areas will become nuclear deserts and are estimated to remain that way for perhaps hundreds of years-depending on the exact nature of the warheads the Soviets dropped. Some few areas will have very little danger from fallout. But then of course, almost the whole Mississippi basin was destroyed with direct hits, so the entire midsection of the country is going to be a vast no-man’s land for a century or more.”
“The planet isn’t dead, though,” the president said.
“Not as far as we can tell. I don’t know if I should tell you what Rear Admiral Corbin said.”
“Tell me,” the president asked.
“Well-he called it instant urban renewal. Said someday future generations may actually thank us for this. Only the really fit will survive, the weaker types will be naturally cropped out. The land will eventually restore itself.”
“He’s full of crap,” the president said quietly.
***
The Soviet premier signed the necessary papers for the token airborne invasion of several neutron-bombed cities. Most important would be Chicago, or what was left of Chicago after the seiche in Lake Michigan had produced a tidal wave effect and destroyed much of the city proper. Chicago was the largest of the cities they would occupy; Atlanta, St. Louis, Washington, and other eastern cities had been destroyed by conventional nuclear weapons and would be uninhabitable for-he checked the figures on the radioactive half-life of the nuclear material-204 years. Los Angeles and other western cities were not to be considered. Los Angeles. San Francisco, and most of central California had fallen into the Pacific when the San Andreas fault line had slipped. This distressed the premier. Tidal wave effects had swamped a portion of western Canada; parts of Alaska and were expected to slide toward the coastal areas of Siberia and, eventually, Japan.
The Premier turned off the desk lamp. Unlike the one in his Kremlin office, the light was strong, and it hurt his eyes. Sitting in the darkness, secure in his bomb shelter, he recalled the preliminary casualty estimates for the Soviet Union-some forty percent of the overall population. He closed his eyes-120 million men and women and children had died. And there was still the war with China. In the darkness, where no one could see him, he brushed tears from his great dark eyes.
Chapter Twenty-three
Rourke stood up and turned toward Mrs. Richards who was kneeling on the cockpit floor beside the captain. “You were right.” Mrs. Richards looked at him. Rourke went on. “The captain is dead.” He glanced across to the other side of the narrow cockpit-the copilot had died twenty minutes earlier. “Looks like it’s up to us now,” Rourke said quietly.
Mandy Richards bit her lip and nodded.
Rourke patted her on the shoulder. “From what I’ve been able to tell, we’ve got about two hours of flying time left-less, since we’ll need some fuel to get her down, and we’ll have to get down to a lower altitude before we can do that.”
Suddenly, Rourke held his fingers to his lips, signaling silence. The speaker for the radio was the focus of his attention. He heard a voice coming from it. Ever since he had gone forward to the cockpit and begun trying to decipher the controls, the radio-on every band he’d tried-had been nothing but static. Ionization, he’d believed was the cause. But now there was a voice.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Richards,” Rourke said, moving forward and dropping into the captain’s chair, then putting the headset on and working the radio controls. “This is Canamerican 747 Flight 601-reading you with some heavy static. Do you read me? Over.”
He waited a moment, then the static broke and the voice came back. “This is Buck Anderson-ham operator out of Tombstone, Arizona, Captain. Over.”
Rourke smiled. “I’m no captain kid-just a fella flyin’ the plane. Captain and co-pilot bought it with flash burns. Is it possible for you to relay our signal and get us some professional help-maybe from Tucson?”
“There is no Tucson,” the voice came back. Then there was a long pause.
“Buck,” Rourke said, “you still reading me? Over.”
“I’m still reading you. But there is no-no Tucson. Everything to the west has either gone into the sea like California did or been flooded. We’re on an island out here now.”
“Yeah,” Rourke cut in, “yeah, I knew your area-was there for Helidorado Days.”
“But the water,” the boy’s voice went on, “it may be rising-not sure if it’s stopped. Everyone is dead-I’m sick-the bombs that hit Tucson and Phoenix just wiped them out. As far down as Bensen.” There was a little restaurant in Benson that Rourke had liked. It had made the best pizza he’d found in Arizona. “What’s your source for the West Coast thing?” Rourke asked. “Over.”
“Ham operator-a girl I knew. We were on when the bombs started failing and she kept on. Somehow I was still getting her. Then she started describing it-horrible.”
“Tell me,” Rourke said, his voice low. “Over.”
“Oh. Mother of God-the buildings started shaking, the ground-from where she was she could see the ground starting to open, and then she went off. After that, I picked up another commercial flight. Told me they were watching from the air-huge cracks in the ground-lava coming up, and then suddenly it all slipped away and there was a giant wall of water. I lost the transmission after that. The pilot said the turbulence was getting bad and cut off, kind of funny.”
“Any word on Flagstaff, Buck?” Rourke asked. “Over.”
“No-nothing since a Civil Defense broadcast over an hour ago-the whole area around Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon had an eight- or nine-point earthquake, and there were bombs still failing.”
Rourke just shook his head. “Kid,” he said, “you gonna make it?”
“I don’t think so-I’m starting to throw up blood-vision is already blurry. I think its radiation sickness.”
“It is, Buck,” Rourke said.
“That’s what I thought.”
“I’m sorry,” Rourke said.
“I wish I could help you get your plane down. But I can’t. Maybe you’re better off just crashing-it’s hell down here. The air is bad, the water’s rising now-I can tell, and-” The voice cut off.
“Buck?” Rourke said.
The boy’s voice cut back in. “My generator handle pulled out-sorry.”
“Anything on New Mexico? Over.”
“Can’t make out-” Then there was static.
“Did he die?” It was Mrs. Richards, sitting now in the co-pilot’s chair beside Rourke.