The Day Before Midnight

“Who? Gottlieb was an Israeli, for Christ’s sake. They’re on our side, for God’s sake.”

“Well, in some things. In others, maybe not. Maybe — well, who knows? She’ll have to tell us.”

This struck through Peter’s defenses. Ashamed, he still reacted instinctively. “Go easy on her. The truth is, no matter what, I still love her. I never loved anyone before and I’ll never love anyone else. It was my fault. It wasn’t hers—”

Finally, he’d run out of words.

He sat for a while after they rushed off with their little treasure, feeling awfully rocky inside. Had he just betrayed her? He wasn’t sure anymore where the higher loyalties lay. He hated the idea of disappointing her again, after everything else. He also felt close to her. He realized it had pleased him to talk of her. He wanted to reach out for her. It was dark in the room. He thought of Megan, Megan’s laugh, which he had not heard for ages.

He remembered the last time he’d seen her. Two weeks ago, after such a long time. They’d talked for a while, and for a while everything seemed fine and there seemed to be some chance for them. He was out of the bin and teaching at the Hopkins and everything was fine. The key vault thing was finally going through, they’d just sent him the final design configuration and the Northrop design team had really done a good—

But in the morning she’d been angry with him. She said he was happy only because the project was going well. He was still a part of it, wasn’t he? He still drew power and pleasure from its evil.

He’d gotten angry. Shouts, screams, accusations, the same old business, the air hot with neurotic fury. He’d watched her go off.

Still, she’d looked so damn beauti—

Certain things clicked in the machine of a brain he had and Peter recognized from the pattern that a wondrous possibility had just been opened.

But he also had a moment of real loneliness. Jesus, Megan, what the fuck have you done now? What the fuck have I done?

And then he thought, Where is Puller? Where is Puller?

They reached the lateral tunnel without much trouble, and Rat Team Alpha headed one way, toward the shaft called Alice. That left Team Baker to veer toward Elizabeth.

“We goin’ to fuck this Elizabeth,” said Walls. “We goin’ crawl up this white bitch’s pussy, and fuck her to death. Give her some lovin’ like she never thought of. Once they go black, they never go back.”

“Shut up,” said Witherspoon, an edge on his voice.

“Man, you talk like you married to a white bitch.”

“I am. Shut up.”

“Man, no wonder you so mellow. Man, I was cashing in on white pussy every night, I tell you—”

“Shut up. Nobody talks about my wife like that. She’s a terrific gal who just happens to be white, goddammit.”

Walls snickered, a deep contemptuous sound. So rich. This jive-ass white boy nigger is full of himself, Mr. Delta Mean Motherfucker, see how he do if Charlie’s up ahead. He shit up his pants real good.

He liked the darkness, the cool air of the tomb. The tunnel was narrowing, too, closing down. The initial shaft had been cleanly cut into the mountain, almost like a stairwell, its walls flat and more or less smooth. A little railroad track had run through it where the miners pushed their little trains. It had a comfy feel to it.

But now, after the separation of the teams, the walls were closing in. It was coolish and clammy in there; he could smell the coal dust in the air, and something else, too, a tang or something. Witherspoon’s powerful beam cut like a sword all around, jiggering nervously this way and that, its white circle roaming all over the place like a man’s hands on a woman’s body. Meanwhile, Walls kept his beam straight ahead.

“Man, you must be nervous or something.”

Witherspoon didn’t say a thing. The night vision goggles pressed against his head tightly, pinching it, and it was less than pleasant. And he was a little jumpy, it was true. In Grenada he had been amazed by how un-nervous he was, but it had happened so fast, there wasn’t time to be nervous. The stick had landed, they shucked their ‘chutes and were hauling ass up this little ravine toward the airfield HQ, when literally, all hell had broken loose. Some lucky Cubie had been gazing skyward when the black-painted Charlie-130 Herc had flown in for the insertion, and had seen the black-clad commandos floating to earth.

And Jesus, after that, forget the mission, the job had just been to stay alive. It was like crawling through the Fourth of July, all the fireworks in the world floating out at you, trying to knock you off.

But this was different. Witherspoon hadn’t thought a lot about the underground. He was Special Forces, Ranger, and Delta, the best of the best of the best. Courage was his profession. But, uh, like, a tunnel? In a mountain? He cleared his throat. Soon he’d have to face the horror of dumping the beam and going to infrared. Ceiling getting real low.

“Hey, man?” Walls’s voice, soft now, its mocking edge gone. “Man, you scared? You ain’t said much.”

“I’m okay,” Witherspoon said.

“Man, this ain’t nothing. In the ’Nam, the tunnels so low you got to crawl through them, you know. And man, them people they shit in those tunnels, they got no other place to shit. And over the years, man, the shit mount. Man, finally, you crawling through shit. You think this is bad, you try crawling on your belly through shit waiting for some gook girl like that pretty number in the other tunnel waiting to stick a razor blade in your throat.”

But this was plenty bad enough for Witherspoon.

He was really having trouble with his … breathing now. The blackness, the closeness of it, the sense of the tomb. And men had died here, hadn’t they? Fifty years back, in this same hole, over a hundred of them.

“Rat Team Baker, do you copy? Baker, this is Rat Six, you guys copy?” The voice was loud in his ears.

“Roger and copy, Six,” said Witherspoon into his Prick-88’s hands-free mike.

“Jesus, you guys were supposed to log in fifteen minutes ago. What the hell is going on in there?” Something in Rat Six’s white voice really irked Witherspoon.

“No sweat, Six, we’re just bumbling along. Hey, hold your water, okay, Six?”

“Let’s stick to radio SOP, Sergeant. You want to tell us what’s up?”

“Affirmative, Six, we’re through the main shaft and we’ve gotten into the lateral and we’re looking for this Elizabeth. The farther out we get, the lower the ceiling is. This tunnel’s drying up to nothing.”

“How’s your pal?”

“He’s doing fine,” said Witherspoon, sensing his partner next to him.

“Roger that, Baker, you guys stick to the schedule now, okay. You let us know anything turns up.”

“So what’s going on there?”

“National Guard guys got their butts shot off, that’s what. These are mucho tough hombres, these guys, Baker, you watch your ass.”

“Affirmative, Six, and out.”

And then Walls said, “Shit, man, I think that’s it.”

His beam flicked out and nailed a gap in the wall, no bigger than a crawl space, low and ominous in the white shine of the bulb.

It was the tunnel called Elizabeth.

“Oh, baby,” said Walls, “have I got a dick for you.”

“Smoke,” said Poo. “Smoke. It’s burning. It’s a fire.”

They could see the column of smoke rising, drifting, on the wind. Several of the neighbors were out on their snowy lawns, staring.

“Herman, why is it burning?”

“It’s an airplane,” Herman said. “An airplane has crashed in the fields and now it is burning. It must be some kind of terrible accident.”

They were in the basement, peering out of the small cellar window. The smoke smeared across the bright blue sky through the lacework of the trees.

“Can we go look at it?”