The Day Before Midnight

The Russian understood immediately.

“Mr. Hummel, don’t do anything foolish. I haven’t lied to you, I guarantee it. Your wife and children are safe. Listen, you’ve been working hard. Take a break. We’ll leave you alone. Think about it, then give me your answer. All right?”

He smiled, spoke to the two soldiers, and the three of them exited. Jack felt a surge of triumph. It had pleased him to see the suave general suddenly at a loss, scuttling backward absurdly. But the triumph turned quickly to confusion. Now what should he do? Pull the hose? Boy, if he did that, they came in and blew him away and blew away his family. The world lived, the Hummels died. Fuck that. As long as I hold this goddamned tube, I got some power. It occurred to him that he could hold them off. He looked and saw the big metal door to the center. If he could get that locked, then maybe—

Then he saw the yellow sheet from the teletype lying on the counter and picked it up.

* * *

Arkady Pashin, First Deputy of the Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye, you are hereby directed to cease operations within the South Mountain Silo Complex. The following conditions are offered:

1. You and all men of Spetsnaz Brigade No. 22 will be given safe escort back to the Soviet Union. Soviet authorities have not yet been notified of your identities or the extent of your operation or your connection to the group PAMYAT.

2. All your wounded will be tended and returned to the Soviet Union at their earliest convenience.

3. No intelligence interrogations or debriefings will be held.

4. If the condition listed in paragraph 1 is unacceptable, the United States will also guarantee your delivery (and delivery of any men who chose to accompany you) into neutral country of your selection.

5. A tender of asylum is also hereby offered for you or any of your men who chose to so decide, and with it the offer of a new identity in comfortable surroundings in this country.

General Arkady Pashin, the mission which you have planned cannot succeed. I implore you, in the name of our common humanity and your code of ethics as a military professional, to cease and desist before the gravest possible consequences result.

It was signed by the President of the United States.

The President! The President was involved. This really impressed Jack. His spirits burgeoned. If the President was involved, that meant it was just about over. The Army would be here at any moment! If I can just get the door sealed, I can—

He looked up and the world disintegrated in red dazzle and befuddlement as a dot of gunsight laser struck his eyes, blinding him.

Yank it! he thought, and pulled on the hose, but something exploded in his leg and he fell yelping as his leg collapsed. The pain was extraordinary, but even as he fell, the torch slipped from his fingers, and as he hit the deck he rolled, scrambling, full of athletic passion, to reach it and yank that son of a bitch. But the commando who had shot him was through the opening of the capsule and on him. It was over in seconds.

“Stop the bleeding,” said the general.

“You’re crazy,” Jack Hummel shouted. “You’re fucking crazy, you’ll—”

People were all over him. He lay flat on his back. Somebody shot something into his leg, and it stopped hurting and began to feel as if it were filling with whipped cream. A bandage was applied.

“He shot you very cleanly, Mr. Hummel. Right through the meat of the thigh. You’ll live to be a hundred.”

“You’re crazy,” shouted Jack again. “You’re going to blow up the world. You’re a fucking screwball.”

“No, Mr. Hummel, I’m quite sane. I may be the sanest man in the world. Now, Mr. Hummel, you’re going to have to go back to the torch, and as you cut, bear in mind that this man here will have a pistol on the back of your neck every second of the time. One slip and you’re dead and your family is dead. They will go unmourned in the funeral pyre of the world.”

The general leaned over. His charm ducts opened and Jack felt the scalding bliss of attention rush across him.

“But listen here, young man. When you get the key loose and we do what we must, I’ll let you call them. There’ll be time. I’ll have my men bring them up here. Don’t you see, Mr. Hummel. In here, in this mountain, it’s the only safe place. Mr. Hummel, think of the world you’ll inherit. It’s all yours for a little bit of further effort.”

It wasn’t that the guy was nuts that was so unsettling to Jack Hummel; it’s that he seemed sane — that he knew, absolutely and without doubt, what must be done.

“Think of your kids, Mr. Hummel.”

“Why are you doing this?” Jack blurted out involuntarily. “Jesus, why? You’ll kill a billion people.”

The general smiled bitterly. Jack had the sense he was really seeing the man for the first time.

“The fact is, I’ll kill only a few hundred million. I’ll save billions. I’m the man who saved the world. I’m a great man, Mr. Hummel. You are lucky to serve me.”

The general gave another little smile.

“Now, cut, Mr. Hummel. Cut.”

Jack felt himself surrendering again. What could he do against such an operator, so much better than he was, so much stronger, smarter, who had it all figured out.

The flame ate into the metal.

Scurrying like a swift night lizard, Alex moved from position to position with a sweet word, a pat of encouragement, an invocation to patriotism and sacrifice, a reminder of the traditions. He was not an eloquent man and certainly not a glib one, but his blunt simplicity and, most of all, his belief, did what it was supposed to.

“How are we here, boys?” he said, glad to be speaking in Russian again.

“Fine, sir. Ready. Ready as we’ll be.”

“On our nightscope we picked up their trucks moving toward the mountain. Our infrared also picked up the heat of their helicopter engines turning over. The Americans will be here soon, boys. And this time there’ll be lots more of them.”

“We’re ready, sir. Let them come.”

“Good lads. This isn’t Afghanistan now, where the issues grow hazy and you wonder why the fellow next to you has to die. This is the battle we all trained for.”

He believed it. The general had explained it all to him, and he believed in the general. The general was a great man, a man who understood the whole world and what was best. You could believe in the general. Alex had come back from Afghanistan hungry for a fight to believe in: he’d seen too much meaningless death in the gulches and canyons and enfilades, too many guts spilled out on the rocks, seen too many black flies corpulent with Russian blood. Yet he came back, like the veterans of many another war, unappreciated and unloved, to nothing except a bitter peace. He came back needing a faith, a redeemer, a confessor, a messiah, and he’d found them all in the general.

“It’s changing,” pointed out the general. “This Gorbachev, with his damned glasnost, is turning the country your men fought and died for into a little America. We are becoming soft and bourgeoisified. We are becoming our enemies, even as our enemies are preparing to destroy us. In America this second they are preparing to deploy a new generation of missile that dooms us, the madmen! And this fool Gorbachev has stripped us of mid-range nuclear weapons and hints of yet broader initiatives. Jews are brought back from the Gulag and allowed to become celebrities for their antisocial tendencies! American music is played on the radio. Our teenagers no longer join the Party, they are too busy dancing. And all this was going on while your men were bleeding slowly to death in Afghanistan. Only a few of us have the memory to understand this. Memory, Alex, that is the key. From memory, Pamyat, comes everything, a belief in our land, the courage to do something about the unpleasant present. Few enough have the guts to realize this, and fewer still the guts to do anything about it. Where is the leadership, the passion, the courage?”

“Sir, it’s with one man. It is with you.”

The general especially hated America. He called it “One big moral and intellectual concentration camp.” Only men of courage could stand against the hated America and its plans to destroy Russia.

“Alex, did you know that Ghengis Khan had a special operations team, a Spetsnaz himself, under the