copilot and navigator.'
Holloway's brows knit slightly as he thought about it. Finally he nodded. 'Very well, Nigel,' he said. 'I do believe you're right. Gentlemen, this is Lieutenant Nigel Fickley, my copilot and navigator.'
We all exchanged nods. Crew members brought the two men their uniforms, and they began to dress.
'Captain, what's your fuel situation?' I asked. 'I understand yours was the last flight in before the airport shut down, so you didn't have time to refuel.'
'That's correct,' Holloway said as he carefully adjusted his tie and brushed a speck of lint off his jacket. 'But we have sufficient fuel to get up-if that's possible-and ride beyond the radius of the storm.'
'Do you have enough fuel to get us to Idaho? It's about two thousand miles.'
Holloway turned to his slim navigator, who gave a noncommittal shrug of his shoulders. 'Perhaps we can scrape up some fuel somewhere in the terminal.'
'Captain,' Garth said, 'I know it's asking a lot when you've already agreed to risk your life, but Mongo and I have to get to Boise, if we can. There's no telling how close a margin the Army and Air Force will be working on by the time we can get our message out and they can get mobilized. The logic of choosing the greatest good for the greatest number of people dictates that they'll just fly in and bomb the biosphere to bits if the time margin is too close. There's at least one innocent in there-a little girl. Mongo and I would like to try to get her out before the bombs fall, if that's what's going to happen.'
'Even if the bombs end by falling on you?'
Garth's silence, our answer, was most eloquent.
'Well, then,' Holloway said as he slipped on a fur-lined parka and zipped it up, 'I guess we'll just have to find fuel, or coax sufficient mileage out of the aircraft, to get you to Idaho. We certainly won't have enough to get back, but I'm sure Her Majesty will understand. Shall we go and see how the plowing is coming along?'
'Just one more thing, Captain,' Garth said. 'We know you can fly an SST-probably by yourself, if you had to. Can you drive a snowmobile?'
Ah. I thought I had a pretty good idea why my brother had asked the question; I caught his eye, gave a curt nod of approval.
Holloway looked slightly taken aback. 'Actually, we don't get that much snow in England.'
'I can handle it, Garth,' I said as I walked quickly to a desk set against the opposite wall. I opened a drawer, took out a pad and a ballpoint pen.
'You can hardly stand up.'
'I believe I can drive a snowmobile,' Nigel Fickley announced. 'I'm somewhat of a winter sports enthusiast, you might say.'
'Hey, wait just a minute,' Malachy McCloskey said, seeming slightly bewildered as he looked back and forth between Garth and me. 'What the hell's the matter with the chauffeurs you've got? We can fit-'
That was all he managed to say before Garth hit him on the point of the jaw with his fist. It was a pretty good pop-what I estimated to be a half-hour punch.
'The man's scheduled to retire in a few hours,' Garth said to a startled Frank Palorino as he caught the unconscious McCloskey and eased him down onto the floor. 'He's got children and grandchildren. We could die in the plane-or in Idaho. There's no way he'd stay behind if we gave him the choice, but there's no reason for either of you to come along. Your jurisdiction ends if and when we get in the air, and it's better that the two of you stay here- first, to follow through to make sure they've deactivated that bomb back in Manhattan, and second, to make the necessary calls if we crash and explode. Don't think about it, Frank, because we know you want to come too. But you'd just be excess baggage.'
'Here,' I said, handing Palorino a slip of paper on which I had written two telephone numbers. 'These are direct lines to the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and President Kevin Shannon. I've also written down a code word you use to make sure you get no hassle from anyone who may be answering the phones for them.'
Palorino looked at the paper, shook his head. 'Valhalla?'
'Tell whoever answers that this is a Valhalla priority.'
'This will get me through to the president of the United States?' The policeman seemed stunned.
'Actually, the Director-Mr. Lippitt-is harder to get hold of than Shannon, but that's neither here nor there.' I paused, smiled thinly. 'Have McCloskey tell them you got the numbers from the famous Fredericksons.'
'Let's go, Mongo,' Garth said from where he, Holloway, and Fickley were standing by the door. 'Schmooze later.'
Frank Palorino quickly unholstered his service revolver and gave it to me. Then he slipped McCloskey's automatic out of the unconscious detective's shoulder holster, handed it to Garth. 'Take these,' he said. 'You may need them where you're going.'
'Mongo,' Garth said tersely, 'let's go.'
'Be right with you,' I said, and turned to the flight attendant who had first volunteered to go up with us. She looked like she had the right size feet. 'Evelyn, I don't suppose you have a pair of sneakers you could lend me, do you?'
Shod in a pair of pink sneakers that were only a tad too small for me, I hurried back out into the storm with Garth and the two British Airways pilots. Garth got on one of the snowmobiles, with Jack Holloway behind him, and I got on the second snowmobile behind Nigel Fickley, pulling the silver wrap tightly around me. Throughout the long night and day I'd been running on adrenaline and amphetamines, and I had almost forgotten just how weak I was. Now my mind and body reminded me. I suddenly experienced a wave of dizziness, and I came close to falling off the snowmobile. Garth seemed to be holding up just fine without stimulants, but I knew that I was perilously close to not being able to hang on unless I got a little chemical help. As Fickley fumbled with the starter switch, I groped in my pocket for the bottle of amphetamines, found it. I shook out two pills and swallowed them both. I'd just managed to get the bottle back into my pocket when the engines of both snowmobiles roared to life and we shot off into the gelid, snow-swept darkness.
The two pills hit me fast and hard. One thing was certain, I thought; I wasn't cold anymore. Nor was I hot with fever. I was alternately numb from head to toe, and then tingling. I wanted to throw up, but I didn't want to soil myself, and I was afraid that I'd fall off the snowmobile if I leaned out too far. Swallowing bitter bile, taking deep breaths of the frigid air through my nostrils, I cursed myself for taking two of the pills. In my desperate desire to be on stage at the final act, I'd placed myself in danger of falling into an empty orchestra pit where-because Garth would be concerned and distracted by my condition-I'd be worse than useless. I kept sucking in deep breaths, tried to will myself to remain conscious.
But the double dose of greenies was coursing through my system, addling my brain.
My world of darkness, driving snow, and wind rolled around a few times, and for a moment I thought the snowmobile had tipped over. But it was only my brains rolling around, and I somehow managed to keep my grip on the navigator's jacket and my pink sneaker-clad feet on the riding bar. Suddenly, without warning, the snowmobile ran up the side of a huge snowbank, flew through the air, then came down with a teeth-rattling jolt into a field of intense white light in which the rumble, clank, and grinding of gears of heavy machinery was even louder than the roar of the wind. We swooped across a wide swath of relatively flat, hard-packed snow, came to a stop in front of a soaring structure that, in my blurred field of vision, looked as high as a mountain, but was only a hangar. I rolled off the back of the snowmobile, fell into a mound of snow. I stuck my face into the icy powder, trying to clear my vision and my thoughts.
Strong hands gripped the back of my shirt and pulled me to my feet. I turned, found myself looking up into my brother's face.
'Mongo!' Garth cried in alarm. 'What's the matter with you?! You're cross-eyed!'
I managed to mumble, 'If you think my eyes are crossed, you should see the circuitry inside my head. What time is it? I can't see my watch.'
'You lost your watch. It's six fifteen.'
I hoped the fact that I couldn't keep a working watch on my wrist wasn't a bad omen. I stepped to the side, raised my hands to shield my eyes from the driving snow, looked out over the area in front of the hangar, and felt my heart constrict. The National Guardsmen had done a good job in mobilizing equipment and personnel, because I estimated that there were at least a dozen pieces of heavy machinery rumbling around in an attempt to clear a path
