Under the Dome

quite willing to turn them over to someone else. He sighed and said, “I want to let this alone.”

Big Jim nodded as if to say Be it on your own head. Then he smiled—if, that is, a pulling-back of the lips can be so characterized. “Well, you’re the Chief.” He turned back to Barbie, Julia, and Scarecrow Joe. “We’ve been outmaneuvered. Haven’t we, Mr. Barbara?”

“I assure you that there’s no maneuvering going on here, sir,” Barbie said.

“Bull… pucky. This is a bid for power, pure and simple. I’ve seen plenty in my time. I’ve seen them succeed… and I’ve seen them fail.” He stepped closer to Barbie, still favoring his sore right arm. Up close, Barbie could smell cologne and sweat. Rennie was breathing harshly. He lowered his voice. Perhaps Julia didn’t hear what came next. But Barbie did.

“You’re all in the pot, sonny. Every cent. If the missile punches through, you win. If it just bounces off… beware me. ” For a moment his eyes—almost buried in their deep folds of flesh, but glinting with cold, clear intelligence—caught Barbie’s and held them. Then he turned away. “Come on, Chief Randolph. This situation is complicated enough, thanks to Mr. Barbara and his friends. Let’s go back to town. We’ll want to get your troops in place in case of a riot.”

“That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!” Julia said. Big Jim flapped a hand at her without turning around.

“Do you want to go to Dipper’s, Jim?” Randolph asked. “We’ve got time.”

“I wouldn’t set foot in that whore-hole,” Big Jim said. He opened the passenger door of the cruiser. “What I want is a nap. But I won’t get one, because there’s a lot to do. I’ve got big responsibilities. I didn’t ask for them, but I have them.”

“Some men are great, and some men have greatness thrust upon them, isn’t that so, Jim?” Julia asked. She was smiling her cool smile.

Big Jim turned to her, and the expression of naked hate on his face made her fall back a step. Then Rennie dismissed her. “Come on, Chief.”

The cruiser headed back toward The Mill, its lights still flashing in the hazy, oddly summery light.

“Whew,” Joe said. “Scary dude.”

“My sentiments exactly,” Barbie said.

Julia was surveying Barbie, all traces of her smile gone. “You had an enemy,” she said. “Now you have a blood-foe.”

“I think you do, too.”

She nodded. “For both our sakes, I hope this missile thing works.”

The second lieutenant said, “Colonel Barbara, we’re leaving. I’d feel much more comfortable if I saw you three doing the same.”

Barbie nodded and for the first time in years snapped off a salute.

18

A B-52 which had taken off from Carswell Air Force Base in the early hours of that Monday morning had been on-station above Burlington, Vermont, since 1040 hours (the Air Force believes in showing up early for the prom whenever possible). The mission was code-named GRAND ISLE. The pilot-commander was Major Gene Ray, who had served in both the Gulf and Iraq wars (in private conversations he referred to the latter as “Big Dubya’s fuck- a-monkey show”). He had two Fasthawk Cruise missiles in his bomb bay. It was a good stick, the Fasthawk, more reliable and powerful than the old Tomahawk, but it felt very weird to be planning to shoot a live one at an American target.

At 1253, a red light on his control panel turned amber. The COMCOM took control of the plane from Major Ray and began to turn it into position. Below him, Burlington disappeared under the wings.

Ray spoke into his headset. “It’s just about show-time, sir.”

In Washington, Colonel Cox said: “Roger that, Major. Good luck. Blast the bastard.”

“It’ll happen,” Ray said.

At 1254, the amber light began to pulse. At 1254:55, it turned green. Ray flicked the switch marked 1. There was no sensation and only a faint whoosh from below, but he saw the Fasthawk begin its flight on vid. It quickly accelerated to its maximum speed, leaving a jet contrail like a fingernail scratch across the sky.

Gene Ray crossed himself, finishing with a kiss at the base of his thumb. “Go with God, my son,” he said.

The Fasthawk’s maximum speed was thirty-five hundred miles an hour. Fifty miles from its target—about thirty miles west of Conway, New Hampshire, and now on the east side of the White Mountains—its computer first calculated and then authorized final approach. The missile’s speed dropped from thirty-five hundred miles an hour to eighteen hundred and fifty as it descended. It locked on Route 302, which is North Conway’s Main Street. Pedestrians looked up uneasily as the Fasthawk passed overhead.

“Isn’t that jet way too low?” a woman in the parking lot of Settlers Green Outlet Village asked her shopping companion, shading her eyes. If the Fasthawk’s guidance system could have talked, it might have said, “You ain’t seen nothin yet, sweetheart.”

It passed over the Maine–New Hampshire border at three thousand feet, trailing a sonic boom that rattled teeth and broke windows. When the guidance system picked up Route 119, it slipped first to a thousand feet, then down to five hundred. By now the computer was in high gear, sampling the guidance system’s data and making a thousand course corrections a minute.

In Washington, Colonel James O. Cox said, “Final approach, people. Hang onto your false teeth.”

The Fasthawk found Little Bitch Road and dropped almost to ground-level, still blasting at near–Mach 2 speed, reading every hill and turn, its tail burning too brightly to look at, leaving a toxic stench of propellant in its wake. It tore leaves from the trees, even ignited some. It imploded a roadside stand in Tarker’s Hollow, sending boards and smashed pumpkins flying into the sky. The boom followed, causing people to fall to the floor with their hands over their heads.

This is going to work, Cox thought. How can it not?

19

In Dipper’s, there were now eight hundred people crammed together. No one spoke, although Lissa Jamieson’s lips moved soundlessly as she prayed to whatever New Age oversoul happened to be currently claiming her attention. She clutched a crystal in one hand; the Reverend Piper Libby was holding her mother’s cross against her lips.

Ernie Calvert said, “Here it comes.”

“Where?” Marty Arsenault demanded. “I don’t see noth—”

“Listen!” Brenda Perkins said.

They heard it come: a growing otherworldly hum from the western edge of town, a mmmm that rose to MMMMMM in a space of seconds. On the big-screen TV they saw almost nothing, until half an hour later, long after the missile had failed. For those still remaining in the roadhouse, Benny Drake was able to slow the recording down until it was advancing frame by frame. They saw the missile come slewing around what was known as Little Bitch Bend. It was no more than four feet off the ground, almost kissing its own blurred shadow. In the next frame the Fasthawk, tipped with a blast- fragmentation warhead designed to explode on contact, was frozen in midair about where the Marines’ bivouac had been.

In the next frames, the screen filled with a white so bright it made the watchers shade their eyes. Then, as the white began to fade, they saw the missile fragments—so many black dashes against the diminishing blast—and a huge scorch mark where the red X had been. The missile had hit its spot exactly.