The Day Before Midnight

Back in a hole.

Hey, Jack, I was done with holes. Man, my life was golden, you know.

He thought he was going to die today.

Die in a hole.

I thought I was done with that shit, man.

Jack Hummel watched the flame eat into the metal. The world was flame. And as he watched, he fought the temptation to surrender completely to craft, and to think of nothing but the job. He forced himself to think about the general.

Guy was plenty strange. First, he made Jack nervous because he was so sure and calm. And he scared Jack with his magical ways of persuasion and leadership. And he intimidated Jack because he seemed somehow rich, or at least upper class, and Jack was a little unsure of himself around such a customer.

But he also seemed fabulous, somehow, like something out of a movie. Jack remembered when he’d been a kid there’d been a lot of movies about crazy generals who tried to take over the world and Jack tried to place this guy against that context. But it didn’t work, because he saw vapidly handsome star faces, remote and eighteen feet tall in black and white. No help here; this guy was flesh and bone and charm. The difference struck Jack as weirdly comical. He laughed in an involuntary spasm.

“You find this amusing, Mr. Hummel?” said the general over the roar of the flame.

“No, it’s just that—” But Jack couldn’t finish.

“That’s all right. Laugh away. I’m used to it. I’ve been laughed at before.”

But Jack’s face had locked up. The man’s hard eyes, empty of merriment, nailed into him. The torch wavered and slipped in his grip and he lowered it.

“And now you can’t laugh. I’m used to that too. When people encounter the strength of my will and understand what I represent, they hardly find it humorous. I represent the memory, Mr. Hummel. The memory of a once-great country, but a country now fallen on terrible times, its way lost, its leaders pathetic, its enemies ravenous with the hunger to rip it to shreds. And I represent the strength to regain that past. And these soldiers feel the rightness of my way and the urgency of my moral mandate. They give themselves to me. It’s happened before, only my predecessor lacked my skill. He had my will, but he didn’t have my talent. You know him, Mr. Hummel. Remember your history. It all happened right around here. His name was John Brown. John Brown took over a federal armory with nineteen halfwits and idiots, who came unglued when some townspeople took potshots at him. He was captured by a junior Marine officer with a toy sword, which bent when the officer stabbed him. That was less than fifteen miles from here. At Harpers Ferry. Have you been there. Mr. Hummel?”

Jack wasn’t sure if the guy really wanted an answer or not. But this was getting crazier by the minute. The guy was a real total screwball. So Jack gave him the earnest response he thought was required.

“Uh, yeah, as a matter of fact. Last year, I think, my wife, she said we ought to, you know, get more out of the history of the state and—”

“Mr. Hummel, I mention John Brown because in a peculiar way he’s quite important to me. A very bright young man once predicted what I might do, and called it ‘The John Brown Scenario.’ Since I hold that young man dear, it’s important to me that I draw the contrast with John Brown. I’ve taken over a federal armory that stores missiles instead of muskets. I’m going to do what has to be done. I’m going to launch a strike against the Soviet Union. I’m going to give the world the future it hasn’t the guts to get for itself. I’ll kill millions, yes, but the outcome will be survival not only for a political system I believe in but survival for the planet. The fools who haven’t the guts to face this simply pass it on to future generations, so that when it does happen — and we both know it will — then everybody dies. Not just the race but the world. The planet. In my way I’m the most moral man who ever lived. I’m a great man. They’ll hate me for a dozen generations and worship me for a thousand.”

“Uh, yeah, but—”

Jack decided he didn’t have the mental equipment to argue with the guy. Who was he, some dropout from a state university who now made his living with his hands? What power did he have against a guy like this?

“The torch, Mr. Hummel,” commanded the general, the power of his brilliant eyes surging into Jack.

Obediently, up came the torch and again it began to lick at the metal.

1400

Pilots don’t work. This is one of the universal laws of aviation culture. Pilots fly. They are special. They only fly.

“Higher, goddammit,” said Leo Pell to Rick Tarnower, both of whom were pilots and both of whom were working.

Tarnower, twenty-six, was not happy to be laboring next to ground crew in the goddamned unheated hangar of the 83d Tactical Fighter Wing of the Maryland Air Guard at Glenn L. Martin Air Field just north of Baltimore; he had skinned his knuckles evilly twice already, and he was cold and he was greasy and he was a pilot and pilots don’t work.

“Higher, goddammit,” cursed Leo Pell again, his eyes squinting. Leo looked a little like a pig, especially when he squinted, collecting his tiny little eyes up in folds of fat. He was a squat, bald man with thick hands and short pistonlike arms. He had the body of a linebacker and the face of a fireplug and right now he was greasier than any mechanic. He smelled of sweat and joy. It was no coincidence that Leo had named his ship The Green Pig, and that he liked flying it low and slow and bouncing it off the Chesapeake now and again, getting his nose down in the shit, as his men said. There was something definitely anal compulsive about Leo and his willingness to get in close to the elemental stuff of life. Leo Pell was your natural-born ground-support man.

“Leo, goddammit,” Tarnower squealed in response, “I’m not even supposed to be doing this! I’m supposed to be putting together a mission assault profile or—”

Above him loomed the massive wing of an A-10 Thunderbolt II ground-support fighter, called Wart Hog or Flying Pig by its pilot and air crew. It was a big ship with a long bony prow, a single-bubble cockpit, and two high twin rudders, almost like the old B-25 Mitchell of World War II fame. Two gigantic General Electric TF34 GE-100 engines were mounted like spare parts from some surplus airliner halfway back along the fuselage. They looked as if they didn’t quite belong; in fact, the whole airplane had the look of having been designed by a bright but evil eleven-year-old boy with a yellow crayon.

“Rick, chum, we don’t get these goddamned guns bolted up just right, we ain’t got no mission,” Leo said with a grin, which showed his yellow stubby teeth. “Now, boy, people depending on us, and goddammit, I’m not going to let ’em down. Besides”—he smiled his most malicious, most charming smile—“we gonna be live shooting. Twenty mike-mike, goddamn, Rick, twenty mike-mike. Life is good!”

Leo loved shooting better than anything.

All up and down the line the pilots and men of the unit scrambled over their big green ships as they tried to speed-mount two SUU-23 gun pods in the five and seven slots in the external stores loading stations under the big wings of the green birds.

Tarnower cranked on his lug wrench, wiped the sweat from his brow, and — goddamn! — skinned his knuckles again.

“Tighter, sir, you almost got it,” his chief crewman called. “The 20-mil ammo’s just come in.”

“Great,” said Tarnower, twisting the wrench again.

“Hurry up, Larry,” Leo said, and ducked on to the next plane, cackling gleefully.

The assault plan that Delta had worked out was relatively simple. It was now predicted that the ANG A-10s from Martin would be regunned and airborne by 1445 hours. At 1500 the flight would peel through a gap in the Appalachians and hit the South Mountain installation with their external 20-mm cannons, in theory cutting the hell out of Aggressor Force without blowing away the mainframe computer, and at the very least, chopping the hell out of that mysterious tarpaulin that draped the mountain top.

At 1505 hours a flight of fifteen Hueys would deploy to the road moving up the mountain, intersecting it at an