the mission was turning into one big mood crash for him, hiding out and working on the bomb. Ilse seemed to use her rage, barely slaked, to deal with it. That, and the immediacy of helping treat SEAL One, seemed to keep her from the depression Jeffrey felt come on.
'I can do something useful,' One said. 'I can guard the bomb after you leave.'
'That's true,' Jeffrey said. He took One's hand. 'It could make the difference…Hey, Shaj, can you rig up some kind of switch? You know, to set off the bomb right away, in case of enemy interference?'
'Not a problem,' Clayton said.
'How much time you figure I got left?' One asked Two.
'You'll be alert for long enough.'
'Just try not to sneeze or something,' Jeffrey said, 'and hit the switch by accident before we're out of range.'
One laughed, despite the pain. 'Bring the chief's body in here. He deserves decent burial too, and I don't want to die alone.'
'Six, Nine,' Ilse heard in her helmet. She knew SEAL Nine was the downhill perimeter security guard. 'Nine, g'head,' Clayton said.
'Trouble, boss. We got company.'
'What is it?' Clayton said. Ilse reached for the butt of her pistol. The weapon was cooler than before. 'A runner,' SEAL Nine said, 'some kind of messenger. Must have been sent up 'cause they lost contact in the village.'
'Nine, Four,' Jeffrey said, 'does he have a radio?' 'Affirmative. I can hear it. He's turned it up to monitor the traffic.'
Clayton turned to Jeffrey. 'We better take him out.' 'Let's hope he isn't wearing a life signs monitor alarm,' Jeffrey said.
'Yeah,' Clayton said. 'None of the other soldiers were.'
'Nine, Four,' Jeffrey said, 'take out the runner.' 'Four, Nine, understood.' There was silence on the circuit, then Ilse heard Nine say 'Shit.' There was heavy breathing on her headphones, grunting in two different voices, and the sounds of snapping branches.
'Crap,' Jeffrey said. He took off out of the bunker with his fighting dagger in his hand and a frightening expression on his face — eagerness.
As Jeffrey topped the steps, Ilse heard a meaty thud over the radio, more grunting, then a gurgling moan. 'Nine, Six,' Clayton hissed. 'Nine, Six, come in.' No response.
'Nine, Six. Nine, Six.'
Then Ilse heard a shuffling sound on the radio, more thuds and thumps and grunting, a tearing noise, then a drawn-out exhalation that ended in a rattling sigh.
'Four, Six,' Clayton called. 'Four, Six.' Nothing. Ilse sat up anxiously.
'Six, Four,' Jeffrey called. Jeffrey sounded winded. Ilse relaxed a little — he was okay.
'Four, Six, g'head,' Clayton said.
'Six, Four, runner's been neutralized.'
'What about Nine?' Clayton said.
'Nine bought it,' Ilse heard Jeffrey say. 'The runner slit his throat before I could get to him.'
'Did the runner get off a warning?' Clayton said.
'No,' Jeffrey said. 'We'd have heard it through Nine's open mike.'
'We need a plan,' Clayton said.
'I'm bringing the runner's radio and paybook,' Jeffrey said.
'Eight,' Clayton said. 'Help Commander Fuller bring in Nine's body and hide the runner, then you take downhill guard.'
'What about the bomb?' Eight said. 'It's a two-person job to rig it to the flux compression generator, to fire the krytrons.'
'I know,' Clayton said. 'We're running low on manpower here.'
'Could I help?' Ilse said.
Clayton looked at her. 'I think you need to.'
SEAL One started coughing uncontrollably, grimacing, then reached up for SEAL Two.
'More local. Please. Gimme another shot.'
Ilse peered through the hatch at the foot-wide physics package sitting in the missile. By her own count, from the initiator at the very core to the wires attached to the krytrons, it had a dozen layers. She knew it wasn't really dangerous now, giving off sporadic alpha particles and weak neutrons and soft gamma rays from spontaneous fission — whatever got past the reflector and dense high explosive would be stopped by clothes and skin or was virtually harmless in short doses. Still, just looking at the thing gave her the creeps.
'It's essential we get each connection perfect,' Clayton said. 'If just one krytron misfires or goes off too soon or late, the implosion wave's distorted. We just scatter U-235 around the bunker, or worse, we crack open the archaea lab without the heat to sterilize it properly.'
'What do you want me to do?' Ilse said.
'Watch this little oscilloscope screen. Make sure the peak of the curve hits right at the tick mark here, and its full wave form comes up above this threshold line. That'll mean we have a good solid connection.'
'That's so all the signals get there at the same time?'
'Yeah,' Clayton said. 'And keep your eyes glued to this display window. We're looking for an inductance of one hundred nanohenries and a capacitance no more than one hundred microfarads total. We need a nice square firing pulse, with a rise time under two microseconds. If something's off, you tell me. I'll compensate at my end in the arming gear. That's what this little keyboard's for.'
'We have to do this with ninety-two different krytrons?' Ilse said.
'SEAL Eight and I already did a few, but yeah…It'll go faster once we get in rhythm. Don't rush it, Ilse, please. A slipup here would be bad.'
Jeffrey came back to the missile bunker after hiding the runner's body. He'd already cleaned his K-bar and now he wiped blood off the Boer walkie-talkie. 'Somebody who speaks Afrikaans needs to monitor this. Here's the dead guy's paybook — you'll know his name and unit.'
SEAL Two looked up. 'I can do that, sir. Ilse and Lieutenant Clayton are kinda busy now.'
'The radio has built-in encryption,' Jeffrey said. 'That's good — it garbles voices. Also, the atmospherics'll still be bad up here from the EMP box we set off. You, pretend to be the runner. Don't rush your answers. Whisper a translation to me, I'll tell you what to say'
SEAL Two flipped through the paybook. 'Okay. I'll let you know as soon as I hear them call this guy. Meantime, I want you to do something for us. SEAL One's BP keeps dropping and he's slightly cyanotic. He needs whole blood. You're the only one here with his type, B positive.'
'You want me to stand right here?' Jeffrey said.
'Yeah,' the SEAL corpsman said. 'Gravity feed should do it. I got two empty one-pint bottles I want to fill from you. Roll up your sleeve.'
'These bottles aren't sterile,' Jeffrey said.
'Like that really matters,' SEAL One said.
'You hungry?' Jeffrey said, bending down to One. 'Wanna candy bar?'
'Last meal?' SEAL One said. 'Yeah. And more water.' Jeffrey rolled down his sleeve just as the runner's unit called in from the village. SEAL
Two translated.
Jeffrey put his lips to SEAL Two's ear. 'Tell them you're at the Sharks Board and there was some kind of voltage surge. Say they thought they were struck by lightning but that wasn't it. Tell them the missile's fine, everything's fine, and they're cleaning up the mess.'
SEAL Two passed that on. A different voice came from the walkie-talkie speaker. SEAL
Two whispered, 'It's the senior corporal. He says he'll report it to the power company, and they'll probably send a repair crew from Durban in the morning. He says missile control keeps bugging him that we dropped off the line. He wants to talk to the sergeant.' Jeffrey made the facial expression for 'yikes,' trying to think on his feet. He felt groggy from the blood donation. 'Okay,' he whispered, 'tell him the sergeant's in the head, I mean the latrine,
