The Day Before Midnight

switches, NO LONE ZONE the walls said. Jesus, who’d want to be alone in this creepy place? The only human-scaled thing he could see in the small room was a crude, hand-lettered index card which read AND HEEEERE’S MIRV taped above an odd keyhole garlanded with an uptilted red flap in the control panel. Jack noticed then that there were two keyholes but that only one of them had keys in it.

“Say, what the hell is this?” he asked.

“It’s a kind of computer facility,” said the white-haired man. Jack didn’t buy this at all. Computers, yeah, computers, but something more, too.

The man took him to a wail. There, before him, stood a broken window; shards of glass lay on the floor. But behind the window was not a view but simply a shinier grade of metal.

“Touch it, please, Mr. Hummel.”

Jack’s fingers flew to the metal.

“Do you recognize it?”

“It’s not steel. It’s not iron. It’s some kind of alloy, something super-hard.” He plunked his finger against it; the metal was dull to the touch. It didn’t retain heat; it didn’t scratch; it looked mute and lifeless. And yet it felt to his touch oddly light, almost like a plastic.

“Titanium,” he guessed.

“Very good. You know your business. Actually, it’s a titanium-carbon alloy. Very tough, very hard. There’s probably not another block of metal like it in the world.”

“So?”

“So. This block of titanium has descended into a second block of titanium. When it fell, thousands of pounds of rock above it locked it into place. It cannot be lifted. We need a welder to cut into the center of the titanium as fast as possible. You are a welder.”

“Jesus,” said Jack. “Titanium’s the toughest stuff there is. They build missile nose cones out of it, for crissakes.”

“The melting point of titanium is 3,263 degrees Fahrenheit. Add the carbon, which has a melting temperature of over 6,500 degrees, and you are dealing with a piece of material that has been designed to be impenetrable. Can you penetrate it?”

“Shit,” said Jack. “I can get into anything. I cut metal. That’s what I do. Yeah, I can cut it. I have a portable plasma-arc torch that should get hot enough. Heat isn’t the problem: You can make a puddle out of anything. You can make a puddle of the whole world. The problem is how much I’m going to have to melt away to get inside. It takes time. You cut in circles, narrower and narrower. You cut a cone into its heart. You dig a tunnel, I guess. So what’s at the end of the tunnel? A light?”

“A little chamber. And in the chamber, a key. The key to all our futures.”

Jack looked at him, trying to connect the dots.

A feeling of intense strangeness came over him.

“You’re going to all this trouble for a key? That must be one hell of a key.”

“It is one hell of a key, Mr. Hummel. Now let’s get going.”

Jack thought about keys. Car keys, house keys, trunk keys, lock keys.

Then, with a woozy rush, it hit him.

“A key, huh? I read a little, Mister. I know the key you need. It’s the key that’ll shoot off a rocket and start a war.”

The man looked at him.

“You’re going to start World War Three?” Jack asked.

“No. I’m going to finish it. It started some time ago. Now, Mr. Hummel. If you please: light your torch.”

A boy rolled out the portable Linde Model 100 plasma-arc cutting control unit. The coiled tubes and the torch itself were atop it. Another boy wheeled in the cylinder of argon gas.

“I suppose if I—”

“Mr. Hummel, look at it this way. I’m willing to burn millions of unnamed Russian babies in their cradles. I would have no compunctions whatever about ordering that two American babies — called Bean and Poo — join them. After the first million babies, it’s easy, Mr. Hummel.”

“The torch,” Jack Hummel said, swallowing.

The President looked into the eyes of the Army Chief of Staff, a blunt-looking man who bore a remarkable resemblance to a.45 Colt automatic pistol bullet. On his chest he wore enough decorations to stop just such a round. “It couldn’t be simpler,” the general said. “It’s straight infantry work, bayonet work. We have to get our people into that hole and kill everybody in it before they dig out that key. Say, by midnight. Or else the bird flies.”

“What’s the recommendation?”

“Sir, Delta Force is already gearing up for deployment,” said the army general with a small, harsh smile. “Best small-unit men we’ve got. Our computer tells us there’s also a company of Maryland National Guard infantry in training not two hours away from the site. That’s two hundred more men, although you’d have to federalize them. I’m sure the Governor of Maryland would agree. We can truck out elements of the 1st Battalion, Third Infantry, from Fort Meyer, a good infantry unit, your ceremonial troops, hopefully by 1300 hours. I’ve already put them on alert. Then, I can get you a Ranger battalion air-dropped into the zone from its home base at Fort Eustis, Washington, by mid-afternoon, weather permitting. I can throw together a makeshift chopper assault company from Fort Dix and I can get you air support from a Wart Hog unit of the Maryland Air National Guard. With Delta, Third Infantry, and the Rangers, you’ll have the best professional soldiers this country has produced.”

“And armor, General. Could we just blow them out?”

“There’s only one road up, and the latest information is that they’ve destroyed it.”

There was silence in the room for a time.

“We’re back to rifles and balls,” said the Army Chief of Staff.

“Can you do it in time?” the President said to the army general.

“I don’t know, Mr. President. We can solve the logistics of it. We can get the men there in time, and we can send them up the mountain.”

“It’s going to be a long and bloody day,” somebody said.

“But it’s a very hard assault. First, you’ve got to get to the elevator shaft, and you can only attack on a very narrow front because the mountaintop is surrounded by cliffs. Once you get to the LCF and its elevator,” the general explained, “you’ve got to rappel down the shaft, and fight your way to the LCC, where they’re trying to launch the bird.”

“Sir,” said one of the President’s advisers, “you’ll have to declare a phase four nuclear emergency, which empowers federal authorities to literally take over a given district, and turns all civil authority over to federal command. You’re going to have to turn Frederick County into a war zone. I think maybe you’d also better raise the defense condition to a Defcon 4.”

“No to that,” said the President. “I don’t want the Soviets thinking we’re ready to launch. Increase security at all our missile sites and our satellite receiving stations.”

“It’s been done, sir,” said the Air Force Chief of Staff.

“Okay, go to the phase four. Put out some kind of cover story about a military exercise to keep the goddamn press out of it. Now it’s the Army’s baby, with all due respect to the Air Force. I don’t want a lot of different services falling all over each other’s toes. Set up the roadblocks, seal off the area. Go to war if that’s what it takes. But get those people out of there, or kill them all.”

“Yes, sir,” said the general. “Now, as for the command—”

“For the commanding officer out there, General, I want the best combat man you’ve got. And I don’t care if he’s a PFC in Louisiana.”

“No, sir,” said the general. “He’s a full bird colonel, retired. But he’s one mean son of a bitch.”

Jack Hummel pulled his goggles down over his eyes and the world darkened. He held the cutting torch in one hand, and reached back to the control panel to switch the device on. The current flowed and the electrode in the tip began to glow from red on through the hues of orange. He watched it heat and grow within the nozzle, and then