“But surely, sir,” protested Senator Davidson, “the issue of war or peace transcends–”
“Will the gentleman yield?” came the voice of Senator Winthrop Lukar of West Virginia, a tall young man of great wealth and greater ambition from whose fund-raising talents Senator Davidson had greatly benefited in the past election campaign. Davidson yielded with a gracious smile.
The president pro tem looked at the clock on the opposite wall. It was 4:13. He had been informed by the White House that 5:40 Washington time was zero hour for the bomb drop. By then, both houses would have had to approve the bill. It would then be sped by helicopter to the White House, where President Turnbull was waiting to sign it into law.
Senator Lukar rose to his full six feet seven inches and adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “you will remember with what travail and soul-searching SALT III was negotiated, signed, and approved by this chamber. Are we now going to turn our backs on it? Are we now going to turn the clock back to those days–days of unbearable tension and fear–when the cold war for decades froze amicable relations between our nation and the USSR?
“I certainly hope not, and that we may place this extraordinary request of the executive branch in proper perspective, I should like to review a few salient facts concerning the relationship between our two countries which I feel sure you will agree with me must be carefully considered before we act.
“First of all, I call your attention to the abortive SALT II negotiations of President James Earl Carter. He–”
The president pro tem couldn’t credit his ears. The son of a bitch was filibustering.
The President picked up the telephone. “Filibuster?”
“Yes, sir. Senator Lukar.”
The President slammed down the phone. For long minutes he sat, staring into space, oblivious to the fact that he was grinding his teeth again. Suddenly he smiled and reached for the telephone.
“Get me the DCI.”
A moment later the voice of the director of the central intelligence agency came on the line.
“Yes, Mr. President?”
“What’s your latest reading on Soviet harvest prospects this fall?”
“The same old story, sir. We estimate the grain shortfall to be somewhere between thirty-five and forty million tons, worse than last year, in fact.”
“And if they don’t get it from us, where–” “They won’t get it at all. The world drought has–” “That’s all I wanted to know.” President Turnbull cradled the receiver and reached for the red telephone.
Aboard the Sun King, the crew could only wait.
Forte had signed off his conversation with President Turnbull in a confident mood. The President would have his legislative assistant frame the resolution, which would be waiting for both houses when they convened.
Meanwhile, the B-2 bearing the thirty-kiloton bomb was winging southeast from Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, just over three thousand miles away, at an economical Mach 1.3. A second B-2 carrying a backup bomb had taken off behind it twenty minutes later.
Forte made sure his captains were taking all necessary measures, had another look on deck at the inferno raging afar, and descended to the deserted galley, where he cooked himself bacon and eggs.
He ate his breakfast at one of the stainless-steel galley tables and was pouring himself a second cup of coffee when Jennifer Red Cloud bounced in.
She was radiant. There was spring in her step and summer in her eyes. “I’m ravenous,” she proclaimed as she strode into the galley in a hip-hugging cocktail dress of sky-blue silk. “Isn’t it amazing what good news will do for one’s appetite?”
“Sure is,” said Forte, keeping a tight grip on his cup. “But if that’s the good news, the bad news is that you’ll have to fix your breakfast yourself. The cooks have been evacuated.”
“Even better,” she burbled. “I’ve never wanted to hurt their feelings, poor dears, but they’re really not very good. This will give me a chance to have a decent breakfast for a change.”
“Oh, so now you can cook?”
“My dear man, I think it only fair to tell you that before I met Ned Raynes, I spent six months in Paris mastering cordon bleu techniques.”
“Your talents are endless.”
Forte observed her art with interest. She prepared her breakfast con brio and with a lot of wrist, but he noted with malicious satisfaction that the eggs were overdone, the toast singed around the edges, and the bacon soggy.
“I take it,” she said, pitching into her home cooking with a will, “that we have only until 0840 to evacuate. What a pity! Just when I was getting used to the dear old rust-bucket.”
“I hate to ruin your day, Red, but it doesn’t look like its going to work out that way. Weren’t you there when the President agreed to drop the bomb?”
“I was there.” she smiled.
“Well, it’ll snuff out the fire like a candle.”
“Really, Rip, if you’d spent less time on the high seas and more in Washington, you’d know it will never happen.”
“Turnbull will–”
“Turnbull will propose, but the Congress will dispose. The Congress is 515 men and women with minds–well, at least concerns–of their own. They have a couple of hours to act. They’ll spend those hours in wrangling, each trying to wring some advantage from the national peril.”
“No,” said Forte, shaking his head. “The nation needs the water. The people need the water. Those 407 congressmen and 98 senators are the people’s voice. For them not to vote for dropping the bomb would be treason.”
“If for any reason I’m wanted, I’ll be in my stateroom,” she said, “listening to the radio reports of the Alamo’s last hours. One must gather in life’s little pleasures where one finds them, you know.”
She strode cheerfully out of the galley, head back, heels clicking on the metal deck, hips swinging.
Quite a woman, Forte mused. Of course, she needed a daily application of what comes to the drum on feast days, and he was the man to do it, but that would have to wait. Time enough when he got the Alamo into port.
Back in the communications room, he received a situation report. Admiral Hodge’s twenty-five ships were now deployed approximately seven miles beyond the belt of fire, ready to move at flank speed toward the firebreak the moment the fire was snuffed out. The U.S.S. Pratt had made contact with the first of the Sun King’s tugs and was distributing radiation-protection gear. Forte’s skippers reported they were ready to take their craft through the break in the fire line as soon as the bomb created it. The lead B-2 was now passing over the Virgin Islands, on course and on schedule. The White House radioed that the special session of Congress was under way and that no problems were anticipated.
Forte remained in the communications room until 0700. Everything that could be done to prepare for the breakthrough he had done. After reviewing the drill once more with his commanders, he sensed that they were getting restive. So, indeed, was he. He put down his clipboard and went topside.
Forward, the four oceangoing tugs were straining just hard enough on their lines to the Sun King to keep them taut and to maintain steerageway. Astern, the Alamo rose out of the sea like a great white mountain, so still and huge that it seemed impossible that it could actually move–was moving–at 1.56 knots, reduced from 2.25 knots now that the Flettner sails had been shut down. On both sides were arrayed Forte’s support ships, inboard closer than usual, practically dead in the water. Ahead, the U.S.S. Pratt prowled. The U.S.S. Swordflsh was down there someplace, too, ready to surface the instant it was summoned to remove the remaining crew.
But beyond that small radius of familiarity, there was nothing to excite optimism. To the east, behind them, only a wall of smoke was visible. So, too, on either side. But dead ahead to the west, a streak of wavering red smeared across the horizon, and boiling up from it a roiling mass of black smoke reached up to merge with the clouds. The wind was hard and hot and dry. Although he had been sweating copiously below decks, up here his shirt dried within seconds, rough and scratchy, as if freshly starched and ironed on his body. The stink of burning oil quickly
permeated his clothes and hair and assailed his nostrils, reminding him of the acrid warmth of the flaming tar buckets he had hunched over during bitter winter days while on the Hardin County road gang.
It was that tar-bucket smell that alerted him. He looked about and realized that history was about to repeat itself: firestorm, just like Dresden, 1945. Smoke swirled up from every quarter. The inrushing wind was whipping the surface of the ocean into froth, and the bulky easy chair he had been sitting in only hours before went ghosting by him on the deck, propelled by the mounting gale. Overhead, the smoke had cut out all but vagrant rays of sunlight.