the headset. 'Here, give me that thing…' Two minutes later, after a near-mutiny by the pilot, Casimiro's chopper was swinging back toward the parliament complex. The old US cruise missiles could not hover, but could and did change course near Jaipur, hurtling eastward fifty meters above Indian soil toward her brobdingnagian breadbasket at near-sonic velocity. New Delhi, then, was not the American target, and nuclear weapons were not the threat. In hurried parley with General Kirpal, Casimiro and the available cabinet ministers deduced much from scattered reports filtering into their blastproof — though it was feared, not firestorm-proof — digs near Parliament.
I. F. Stone was right, of course; the Americans had lied in saying the cruise missiles had come from a Seventh Fleet Shangri-La. The birds had approached as parasites carried by US bombers from Diego Garcia Island to the Arabian Sea, then launched in their long dog-leg, to put the fear of a Christian God in New Delhi before dashing their brains out against Uttar Pradesh granaries.
Of the seventy-two cruise missiles launched by the Strategic Air Command, sixty-four carried conventional high explosives. The other eight carried aerosol-dispersed chemical poison as lethal as botulism toxin, with special loiter programs to distribute the stuff over what was left of the granaries after the earlybirds had strewn them across the landscape. Seventy-two conventional weapons are far too few to munch all the wheat in Kanpur's vicinity, even granting pinpoint accuracy and complete mission success — which it was not. Six missiles succumbed to natural ills en route, three were actually downed by Indian-manned Mirage fighters in an insane treetop rabbit- chase, and five missiles missed their targets. But following the fifty-eight bull's-eyes sauntered over all eight of the dispersant drones, pumping out cargoes of poison that contaminated exposed wheat and the outsides of many granaries still untouched by explosives.
Then came the RUS cruise missiles, fleeing zero-length launchers from Magnitogorsk. There had been no agreement with Washington; but there had been a RUS recon satellite tracking the US birds, and a volte-face correction in the RUS robot flight path so that, wherever US birds roosted, RUS birds would also. This blatant me- too ploy by Moscow was based on the computer-derived conclusion that only an instant alliance with the Americans could possibly deter China, who alone had the technology and the will to evaporate supertankers, from moving onto RUS soil while the US was embroiled with India. All sixty of the RUS cruise missiles were tipped with conventional explosives. A handful of them hit Kanpur. The rest exploded against granaries, bridges, and a rail depot.
This was good shooting, but bad tactics. India's first conclusion was that she must scrap all the wheat stockpiled within ten klicks of reported contamination, meaning roughly a third of her Uttar Pradesh supply. Her second was that the US/RUS strikes, instead of killing a million Indians outright, had doomed many millions to slow starvation unless India accepted mortifying ceasefire terms for American grain.
The American terms, hastily sketched in by pill-popping diplomats in Washington, were not inhuman; but they did specify an American presence on Indian soil. It was undemocratic, it was Judeo-Christian. It would be humiliating to India's leaders in the sight of Islamics everywhere.
India's third conclusion sprang from reports by tariqat members in Tazhikistan, warning of RUS troops moving into a region that adjoined both China and India. The report was false; had been generated in Peking and released among Tazhiks for a purpose which would, in time, become all too scrutable.
While Washington, Brussels, and Moscow sought some way to engage in meaningful dialogue with Peking and Riyadh as a conduit for calm negotiation with New Delhi, India's war-horse Kirpal was already coordinating a SinoInd reply to the US terms. This coincided perfectly with China's plans: she alone, except for the RUS themselves, knew just how inflated were the population figures across the enormous breadth of Siberia, and just how much RUS oil was being drawn from Siberian wellheads.
Chapter Seventeen
'I absolutely forbid it,' Purvis Little shouted toward the sedan that rolled away toward Asheville. Gabe Hooker did not look back. Wayne Atkinson jabbed a scornful finger skyward from the car.
Tom Schell sat on a guard rail at roadside in the dusk. 'Face it, Mr. Little, the bus isn't coming on a Sunday. Maybe hitching rides is better; what if there's no bus tomorrow?'
'Safety in numbers,' Little said testily. 'And I'm still responsible for your safety. It's a long way back to Raleigh, boys.' The scoutmaster moved nearer to the group that lounged on packs around the Quantrill boy, listening to the radio which Quantrill had flatly refused to surrender again. Not that it mattered much; on AM or FM, only a few stations were broadcasting and all said the same things. The federal freeze order had stabilized wages and prices while outlining consumer rationing; Russians were championing the US cause; Indian wheat had been the target of our 'bloodless' demonstration; Peking was silent; stay tuned.
Presently Quantrill pocketed his radio. “Too dark for the solar cells; I'll save the batteries for later,' he apologized, then raised his voice. 'Mr. Little, should we set up camp and eat?'
It gave them something to do. A few vehicles passed, most at high speed. Propane stoves soon glowed under panniers of tea. None of the boys seemed hungry. Those who felt like weeping crept off to do it alone, so it was bedtime before Little realized that four more of his scouts had hiked off to hitch rides to the east.
Ray Kenney's mummy bag was deployed next to Quantrill's. Both of the boys were still awake when the late bulletins came, and both listened with breathless awe until the highway blockage bulletins began to repeat. “How're we gonna get to Raleigh now?' Ray whispered.
'The question is, will it still be there?' Quantrill regretted his reply but felt curiously detached from Raleigh. His father was on active duty; his mother had left to spend a week with kinfolk in Danville; his little sister had died two years ago. Quantrill thought of his upstairs room with its soccer posters, the pylons he used to fly his formula racers in the room, his hidden trove of pornflick cassettes, his suspended model of the Venus lab. It all seemed priceless to his childhood, valueless to his future.
Quantrill framed several replies to Ray Kenney, heard the boy weeping hoarsely, and realized that he was as likely to make things worse as to improve them. He recalled something his father had said once: 'Talk is cheap, but silence is just about free.' The smile of reminiscence was still on his face when Quantrill began to snore.
Once in the night, Quantrill waked for a moment; puzzled at the heavenly — hellish — display overhead. A meteor-bright line scrawled a curve, winking regularly before a final yellowish flash. The line disappeared almost instantly. Halfway across the sky a tiny star flared, then winked out just as abruptly. Quantrill thought sleepily of Perseid showers; failed to note that meteorites do not maneuver; rolled over and slept. Thus he did not see the awesome streaks that laced the night sky later when space junk began to plummet into the stratosphere.
Chapter Eighteen
The series of launches near Ining, in northwest Sinkiang, were too suspiciously spaced and too numerous to ignore. The RUS passed its data on by coded link with a US synchronous satellite thirty-six thousand klicks above the Pacific. Almost certainly the Americans were monitoring the launches anyway, in addition to the SinoInd subs known to be nearing Scotland, Australia, the US eastern seaboard and elsewhere.
We were monitoring. Our Air Defense Command computer complex, in nanoseconds, offered the 0.858 probability that the Chinese were aiming a stab for our eyes in the sky. Red telephones were in use and fingers were near buttons. All that remained was for any one of those Chinese devices to achieve low orbit, then 'jink' suddenly to higher orbit in a classic pop-up intercept. ADC scrambled the F-23's equipped with Vought AA-Sat (anti-antisatellite) systems from England, California, and Queensland. It was still possible that the Chinese were flinging up
No human presence could have kept track of so many satellites, from lunar-orbit Ellfive study projects to the synchronous-orbit Comsats to the nineteen-thousand-klick Navstar navigation devices and barely orbital research facilities. ADC's computer watched it all with ease, simultaneously keeping tabs on existing RUS, Chinese, and other satellites.
On one end of a hotline, Col. Robin LoBianco jumped. “Jink, Mr. President! It's targeted against a RUS
