Phuong, in the tunnel called Alice, also heard the gunshots.
Mother, her daughter said, Mother, the Americans are coming for us.
I know, she said. Let them come.
But her response was different, because unlike Rat Team Baker, she had not come to the end of her tunnel; she still believed there was something ahead. Thus her thought was to continue her movement.
She reached to her belt and swiftly removed one M-26 fragmentation grenade, smooth as an egg. Then she knelt, took off her tennis shoes, and quickly unlaced them and threw the shoes away, behind her. She swiftly tied a loop around the lever of the grenade with just enough tension to hold it in close enough. Then, gingerly, she pulled the pin. She felt the lever strain against the shoelace. With her knife she began to saw through the lace. At last, only a hair’s width of lace remained, just the thinnest, tiniest membrane of woven cotton. Gingerly, she set the thing down in the center of the tunnel, on its base. She knew that if men came through the tunnel single file, without lights, they would kick it; when they kicked it, or bumped it, the thing would fall on its side, the shoelace would pop and—
Two hundred yards farther on she repeated the process with the other lace.
Let the Americans come, she thought. Let them come for Phuong, as before. And as before, Phuong will be ready. I will save my child from the fire.
Turning, she fled deeper into her home, the tunnel.
Peter was writing.
He set up a simple a=1, b= 2, c=3 scheme to see what the thing decrypted out to. It decrypted out to … nonsense.
He played with themes of 12: 4 3’s, 2 6’s, 3 4’s, 12 1’s … 12. Twelve, he kept thinking,
Suddenly bells were ringing. What the fuck? He looked up as a bunch of Commo specialists in the room jumped, shocked out of what they were doing.
“What the hell does that mean?” Peter asked.
“It means Priority One,” said one of the kids. “It means they’ve got something for us.”
“You better go get the hotshots.”
But by the time Peter got to the flash teletype, Skazy had already taken up the prime position.
“Okay,” he said greedily, “okay, here it comes,” as the machine spat out its information.
Skazy read the document quickly and summarized.
“They’ve identified the original source of Aggressor-One’s communication and they think from that their psychologists can extrapolate his motivation, his psychic dynamics, a profile of who he is and what he’s liable to do, what he’s capable of, and what we should do.”
“So?” said Puller.
Skazy’s fast eyes ripped through the letters as they spewed out. Every twenty or so lines he peeled the paper off the roller and passed it around the room. The machine clicked for several minutes.
“Of course,” said Major Skazy. “That’s why it’s so familiar, yes.”
Puller said nothing for the longest time, letting the younger men absorb the information.
“All right,” said Puller. “Let’s have it.”
“It sounds familiar,” said Skazy, “because it
There was quiet in the room.
“Yes, it’s the same, don’t you see?” Skazy rushed on, tumbling with the information. “It’s John Brown’s Raid, before the Civil War. He’s taken over a key installation at the center of the military industrial complex. Right?”
“In 1859,” Peter said, “in Harpers Ferry, in fact not seven miles from here, John Brown led a force of about twenty or so men and took over a federal arsenal and musket factory. This year, with a few more men, he’s taken over a federal missile silo. Strategic muskets, in other words.”
“And the goal is the same,” Skazy said, “to start the big war, and to unleash the forces of good and to drive out the forces of evil. And, this time, as last time, there’s a bunch of elite troops outside the place who’ve got the job of going in with bayonets fixed to try to stop him.”
“What’s the source?” asked Peter laconically, feeling quite beyond surprise.
“The message he sent,” Skazy answered, “it’s from John Brown’s interrogation by federal authorities in the jailhouse at Charlestown, West Virginia, October 17, 1859, after his capture and before his execution.”
Skazy read from a CIA psychologist’s report: “‘Empathetic connection with historical figure suggests paranoid schizophrenia to an unusual degree. Such men tend to be extremely dangerous, because in their zeal they tend to exhibit great will and charisma. Well-known examples include Adolf Hitler, John Brown himself, Joseph Stalin, Ghengis Khan, several of the Roman emperors, Peter the Great. The standard symptoms are highly developed aggressive impulses and the tendency toward the creation of self-justifying systems of illusion. In the classical cases such men tend to be the offspring of broken families, generally with fathers either absent or remote, and strong matriarchal units replacing the patriarchal. They are usually marked by abnormally high IQs and extremely well-developed “game intelligence.” Such men, typically, are extraordinary tacticians and brilliant at solving narrow technical or strategic problems. They almost always operate from the narrow basis of their own self-interest. They lack the gift of perspective; their power stems from their ability to see only the relevant, narrow slice of the “big picture.” They lack associational abilities; they lack, furthermore, any tendency toward moderation. They are highly-narcissistic, usually spellbinding speakers and almost always completely ruthless. Historically, their flaw arrives in “overreaching”; they tend to think they can change the world, and almost always go too far and are destroyed — usually at great cost to self and families — by their inability to compromise.’”
“Everything we need to know about him except how to kill him,” said Dick Puller.
Skazy continued. “From this they expect him to be American military, extremely proficient in a narrow range, nursing obscure political grudges. They think his men are Americans, possibly a reserve Green Beret unit that has come under his spell. They think he’s bankrolled by conservative money. Man”—he whistled—“they’ve worked up a whole scenario here. It’s about what you’d expect. Screwball general, impressionable troops, maybe some paramilitary outfit, those pretend mercs who read
Dick listened, his eyes fixed on nothing.
Finally, he said, “So what’s their recommendation?”
“Frontal attack. They say that his green troops will buckle when they start taking heavier casualties. They want us to throw frontals at ’em again and again.”
“They better send some fresh body bags,” was all Dick said.
Then he asked, “So is that what you think, Major? Frontals?”
“Yes, sir. I think we ought to hit him again. The sooner, the more often, the better. Let me saddle up Delta and we’re off. Bravo in support. Leave a small reserve force here in case that radio message this morning was to another unit ready to jump us from the rear. When the Third Infantry and the Rangers arrive, you can feed them in if we haven’t taken the place down yet.”
Puller went around the room. Everybody said yes. Hit him. Hit him and hit him, and he’ll crack. Waiting solved nothing, especially now that Rat Six had been zapped and there was nothing going on inside the mountain.
Even the morose Lieutenant Dill, the gym teacher who now led what was left of Bravo, had to agree: hit ’em, he said. Hit ’em until they crack.
Finally, Puller got to Peter.
“Since this has become a democracy and we’re polling the voters, Dr. Thiokol, you might as well throw in your two cents. You tell me. Should I hit him until he cracks?”
Peter considered. He felt Skazy’s hard eyes boring in upon him. But Skazy didn’t scare him; he’d been glared at by furious five-stars in his time.
He said, “And what if he doesn’t crack? What if his men are the best, and when they take casualties they don’t break? What if he’s got enough ammo up there
