The Day Before Midnight

subs if they have to and Pashin has forced them to. That’s all; he’ll make them beat our subs. They aren’t going to want to fight that fight, but he’s taken the element of choice out of it. And he’ll make them do it. And in a terrible, deep way he probably thinks he’s cleaning up the mess the rest of his leaders have made. He’s the cleaning lady.”

“Why didn’t he take over a Russian missile compound and get his first strike that way?” somebody asked.

“Because this is the only independent-launch-capable silo in the world. It’s the only one he could take where he himself could push the button. He’s made the hardest choice of all, but by his lights, it’s the logical one. I suppose by a certain moral system it’s even the right choice. He’s not a madman, really, he’s just operating within the rules of the game, the game that his country and ours invented.”

“Who are those men with him?” somebody asked.

“Washington’s sure it’s Spetsnaz,” said Major Skazy. “Soviet Special Forces. In the control of the GRU, not the regular Army, and remember this Pashin is a big-time GRU heavyweight. Anyway, they’ve been trained in silo- seizure and blooded in Afghanistan. That explains those tans and the false teeth, meant to cover up their foreign origin. And there were sixty? That’s four fifteen man teams, which is the operational unit in the Spetsnaz organization. And it explains where the goddamned Stingers came from. We’ve shipped Stingers to the Muhajadeem, to take out the Soviet MI-26 gunships. These guys must have bounced a shipment, and they’ve turned the stuff around on us. These are very, very good guys. That’s why they’ve been so tough.”

But Puller hadn’t been listening. He’d been thinking. He’d gotten close to the last wrinkle. “Dr. Thiokol,” he said suddenly, “doesn’t your theory fall apart on the issue of our response to their launch? As soon as our radar sees the Russian birds coming, we launch. And they’re blown away. And the world dies in the rad—”

“You haven’t seen it yet, Colonel Puller. Just as I said early on, something else has to happen. Something to prevent us from launching, something to totally de-coordinate our response in the crucial seven-to nine-minute envelope between the launch of this Peacekeeper and the launch of the Russian massive retaliation.”

Again, the silence.

“The launch is only one half of the operation. There’s another half of it, there has to be. I told you this from the very beginning, but I didn’t know what it was. Now I see it. It explains the radio message that he sent out this morning immediately after the seizure. He was talking to his other half, telling it to hold off for eighteen hours because of the key vault.”

“Hold off on what?” asked Skazy.

“It’s called ‘decapitation,’” said Peter, “or leader killing. It means cutting the heads off. And all the heads are in Washington. You better bump me through to the FBI fast, because they’ve got to get hopping on this. This Pashin’s going to launch at South Mountain and then he’s going to nuke D.C.”

This was the hardest thing yet. Uckley would rather do anything than this, but now events were whizzing by and it had been explained to him in Washington that he had this last job left to do.

“I–I’m not sure I can do it,” he said. “Can’t you get somebody else?”

After a restrained moment or two of silence, the voice at the other end of the line at last said, “They can’t get there in time. We can send the photos and documents over the wire to the state police barracks on Route 40 outside Frederick and have them to you in twenty minutes. You’re the senior federal representative there, it has to be you.”

Uckley swallowed. What choice did he have?

And twenty minutes later, a state police car whirled into town, its siren blaring, its flasher pulsing. Seconds after that, the messenger was delivered to Uckley.

“We got these over the computer hookup from D.C. just a few minutes ago. Hey, you okay? Man, you look like you had the worst day of your life.”

“It wasn’t the best.”

“I hear there was a bad shooting.”

“Yeah. Mine.”

“Oh, Jesus, sorry, man. Hey, don’t they give you time off for—”

“There’s no time for that today. Thanks.”

Uckley took the envelope from the man and headed up the walk. The house was full of lights. A minister had arrived and the family doctor and, a few minutes back, an older couple he took to be grandparents.

He paused at the door, wishing he were several million miles away, wishing the whole thing were over, wishing it weren’t him. But it was him, and eventually he knocked.

Minutes seemed to pass before someone answered. It was a man about sixty, heavyset, with expressionless eyes.

“Yes?” he asked.

“Uh, my name is Uckley. I’m a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’m sorry to have to do this, but I’ve got to talk to the girls.”

The man beheld him for the longest time.

“The girls are very tired,” he finally said. “They’ve been through a lot today. Too much. We’ve just gotten them down. I was going to sedate them if they have any trouble sleeping. Their grandparents are here. Can’t this wait until some other time?”

“I wish it could, Doctor. But I’ve got to talk to them. This is a very urgent situation and time is important.”

“Young man, these girls saw their mother shot and killed today. Have you any—”

“Look, I hate to have to act like a jerk, but you’ve got to understand how terribly, terribly urgent this all is, Doctor. This is what’s known as a phase four nuclear emergency, and technically I have all legal rights to get what I want. Please don’t make me have to be an asshole about this.” He felt himself swallowing uncomfortably. His breath was heavy and his knees felt watery.

The doctor simply glared at him. Then he stepped back and let him in.

Uckley stepped into a terrible silence. The two older people sat on the sofa. The woman was crying. The man looked numb. There wasn’t enough light in the room. The neighbor, Kathy Reed, fussed at the dinner table. She had evidently brought some casserole over, but nobody had eaten and the food lay on the plates glazing with grease in the dim light. There were still chips of wood and plaster and shreds of tufting everywhere from the gunfire, and a gritty layer of dust lay over everything, but evidently the police had covered the blown-out windows with plastic. The room filled Uckley with the nausea of memory and terror.

“Kathy,” said the doctor, “do you think you could go up and get the girls? This officer says it’s urgent that he talk to them.”

“Haven’t they been through enough—” began Mrs. Reed, her voice rising with emotion.

“I’m sorry,” said Uckley. “It’s necessary. But maybe I only need the oldest one. Uh, Poo?”

“Bean,” she said. Then she started up the stairs. But she turned.

“You were so positive this afternoon. You were so excited. And look what happened. Look what you did to this family.”

Uckley didn’t know what to say. He swallowed again.

“They were such a happy family. They were a perfect family. Why did you have to do this to them?”

Uckley just looked at his shoes. The doctor came up to him.

“Were you the man who went upstairs?”

“Yes,” said Uckley, swallowing. “You’ve got to believe I didn’t want anything like that to happen.” But the doctor looked as though he didn’t believe it at all.

In a few minutes Kathy Reed brought Bean down the stairs. The girl’s face was wrinkled from sleep, and she had on a pink robe and a pair of rabbit slippers. She was scrunching her eyes, but when she saw Uckley waiting for her, she just grew still and grave. She had a peculiar presence to her, an almost eerie luminescence. Kathy Reed led her down the steps to Uckley.

“Hi there,” he said, his tone chipper. “Hey, I’m real sorry I had to wake you.”

“You don’t have to talk to her like a chipmunk,” said Mrs. Reed.