Second Horseman Out of Eden

14

I awoke with a start, started to sit up, and grabbed at my head as a sharp pain shot through my skull. For a moment I couldn't figure out where I was or what had happened-and then I remembered. I sat up straight, ignoring the pain in my head, and looked around me. It took me a few moments to orient myself, and then I realized that I was alone on the backseat of an olive-drab-colored National Guard Sno-Cat, which had been left with the motor running and the heater turned on full blast. Above the steady, throaty growl of the Sno-Cat's engine, I could hear wind screaming outside the frosted Plexiglas windows. The storm had not let up, but the milky light pouring in through the windows told me that it was day. I glanced at my watch, then realized that it had been thoroughly disabled during my tussle and dousing with Tanker Thompson.

Cursing under my breath, I yanked on the door handle and pushed open the door with my shoulder; the door was promptly caught and yanked back off its hinges by a powerful gust of wind. I stuck out my head, squinted against the swirling snow; the Sno-Cat, along with the two snowmobiles we had been riding on, was parked atop a massive snowdrift near the entrance to the control tower at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Still cursing Garth for leaving me behind, I eased back into the interior of the Sno-Cat to take stock of myself. I felt groggy, to be sure, but I thought that my fever might be down. I took the plastic bottle of amphetamines out of my pocket, shook out one of the green pills, and swallowed it. Then I rewrapped myself in my foil shroud, slid back across the seat, and fell out into the snow. I slid down the face of the drift on my back, got up, hippety-hopped and waded through the snow in my stocking feet to the entrance to the control tower. I went through the door, paused long enough to brush as much snow as I could off my socks, then hurried up the stairs.

I found Garth, McCloskey, Palorino, and two National Guardsmen up in the glass dome at the top of the control tower talking to two unshaven, obviously exhausted air traffic controllers who kept shaking their heads and gesturing out the windows.

Garth turned and saw me as I came through the door. "Mongo!"

"What time is it?"

"Four o'clock," Garth said quietly.

Eight hours left.

"Are the telephones working?"

Garth shook his head.

"We can't wait."

"Mongo, there's nothing we can do but wait and hope," McCloskey replied in a weary voice. His eyes were bloodshot, and there were dark circles around them. "Nothing can get out of here; even if it could, it's debatable whether we could get to Idaho in time to do anything. Our only hope is that we'll get telephone communications back in time for the Air Force to send planes to find and destroy the place."

"There's at least one child in there, McCloskey," Garth said evenly, "and probably more. If you bomb Eden, you'll kill children."

The muscles in McCloskey's jaw clenched, and he looked away. "I know that-but it won't be my decision. That's certainly what they'll have to do. It's the only course of action that makes sense. You said you don't know exactly where Eden is, and you don't even know where the transmitter is inside Eden. The Air Force certainly isn't going to want to waste time looking for it; there's too much risk, and too little time."

"There's already too little time for us to waste any of it standing around here and having this conversation," I said. "The place to establish communications is in the air, away from this storm. There'll at least be military planes in the air. We can communicate with them, and they'll find a way to get through to Shannon or Mr. Lippitt."

"For Christ's sake, Frederickson, you've got eyes! Can't you see what's going on out there?!"

I turned to one of the air traffic controllers, a slight, blue-eyed man with blond hair that was now greasy and plastered to his forehead. "The Concorde. Does Air France or British Airways have one parked here now?"

The blue-eyed man looked at his equally disheveled companion, who nodded. "Yes," he said, turning back to me. "British Airways-it was the last plane in before we closed down the airport. But I don't see how. . Even if the captain agreed to make the attempt, it would be suicidal to try to take off in this storm. The wind shear factors alone would be almost beyond belief, and-"

"Where are the captain and his crew staying?!" I snapped, grabbing Garth's wrist and bending it around in order to look at his watch. It was 4:28.

"The International Hotel, up the way."

"I know where it is," I replied, turning to the senior

National Guardsman. "Captain, do you suppose you could round up some of your men and plow out a corridor of sorts in front of the British Airways hangar?"

The guardsman looked at McCloskey, who nodded. "I can try," the guardsman replied tersely.

I said, "I don't want it plowed right down to the tarmac; it would only drift in again. See if you can level off the drifts and leave a cushion of, say, two or three feet. The path should be at least as wide as the hangar doors, and as long as you can make it. And make sure there are no buried planes or machinery out there. Okay?"

"I'll do my best, Frederickson. Good luck to you guys."

"And to you." I turned back to the blue-eyed air traffic controller. "Can I borrow your watch?"

Without a word, the man removed the stainless steel watch from his wrist, handed it to me. I put it on.

"Let's get going," Garth said. "We've got to get up the road to the hotel."

Leaving the two stunned air traffic controllers staring after us, the two policemen, Garth, and I hurried back down the stairs. Once again Garth picked me up and carried me up the side of the drift to one of the two snowmobiles. It was almost completely dark now, and I huddled in my silver wrap behind Frank Palorino as the snowmobile engines roared to life and we raced ahead through the blizzard.

The International Hotel was bathed in a dim, eerie glow, the power supplied by emergency generators which I was vaguely surprised to see were still working. We drove right up to the entrance, got off, and walked into a lobby that was overflowing with men, women, and children huddled in overcoats, blankets supplied by the Red Cross, whatever they could find. We went to the front desk, where McCloskey showed his shield to a weary-looking middle-aged man who looked about to fall asleep on his feet. McCloskey asked what room the British Airways captain was staying in, and after some fumbling through file cards the desk clerk found the information. The elevators had been shut down to conserve emergency power; we hurried up the stairs to the third floor, where Garth knocked on the door to Room 315.

I glanced at the loose-fitting watch the air traffic controller had given me; it was 5:30.

Six and a half hours.

The door was opened by a bleary-eyed, unshaven man in a thoroughly rumpled flight attendant's uniform. McCloskey showed the man his shield. The man turned on the light, and we stepped into the first of what was actually a suite of rooms in which all of the dozen or so crew and flight attendants of the British Airways Concorde were sleeping on beds, couches, in chairs, or on the floor. The attendant stepped over three snoring men on the floor, shook the shoulder of a man who was sleeping in a chair with a yellow blanket wrapped around him. He stirred; the attendant whispered something in his ear, and he sat up quickly, then stood up.

The man was about six feet tall, with sharp features, deep brown eyes, and a firm set to his jaw and mouth. Even dressed only in boxer shorts and an undershirt, he had the bearing of a man used to command.

"I'm Captain Jack Holloway," the man said as he came across the room to us. "Which of you is the police lieutenant?"

"I am," McCloskey said, and then proceeded to tell Captain Jack Holloway the purpose of our visit.

McCloskey spoke unhurriedly, but in a firm, clear voice as he related the events that had occurred in the past few days, concluding with his description of finding us strapped to a B-53 hydrogen bomb-which, by now, we hoped had been deactivated-in a penthouse suite at the top of a skyscraper in the middle of Manhattan, and the existence of at least two other such bombs, on opposite sides of the world, that would explode unless a way was found to destroy the transmitter that would send the signal to set them off.

By the time McCloskey had finished, all of the people in the suite were awake. Female crew members who had been sleeping in the other room were huddled just inside the doorway, eyes wide with shock and faces pale. One of the women suddenly began to sob uncontrollably.

"Captain," I said when McCloskey had finished, "the whole idea is to somehow find a way to get up in the air-high enough and far enough away from the storm so that Garth-my brother here-and I can make contact with certain powerful people we know in Washington; even if the phones there are still out-and we don't know that they are-there should still be lines of military communication that can be used. If we can get through to them, either of the two men will act as quickly as humanly possible to mobilize forces to infiltrate the structure that houses the transmitter, which is somewhere outside Boise, Idaho. But it's going to take time for us to get them the message, and it will take them time to get planes into the air, and then find the place. Time is something we're rapidly running out of."

"Are you sure of your information?" Holloway asked in a firm voice.

"Yes," Garth replied in an equally firm voice. "We all saw the bomb in Manhattan, and there's absolutely no reason to doubt the existence of at least two others-in Detroit, and near Israel.''

I said, "Captain, right now there are men plowing snow in front of the hangar where your Concorde is parked. Not all of the snow-they're trying to plow it down to a level of two or three feet, enough to belly-slide on if that's what has to be done. My thinking is that if there's one plane that's sleek and powerful enough to slice its way up and out of this blizzard, it's the SST-if we can only get it going, and off the ground."

"And you think we might be able to do that by sliding the plane on its belly in the snow?" Holloway asked evenly.

"You're the only man who can answer that."

"It's impossible, Captain," a very thin, tall man standing over in a corner said in a tense voice. "Even if you could gain enough speed to lift off the ground, which is unlikely, the wind shear out there would certainly tip your wings, or even slam you right back into the ground. It would be suicide to even try."

I swallowed hard, licked my cracked lips. "Is that right, Captain?"

Jack Holloway drew back his shoulders and adjusted his boxer shorts. "Frankly," he announced in his clipped British accent, "the odds of us even getting off the ground before we tip over and explode are not at all favorable."

"Captain," I said with a heavy sigh, "naturally, we have no right to-"

"But we must attempt it, of course," Holloway continued as if I hadn't spoken. "After all, the lives of millions of people depend on us, no?"

"Yes," Garth said softly. "You're a good man, Captain."

"Captain Holloway," one of the women in the doorway said, "I'll go."

There was a chorus of murmured assents as every member of the British crew started forward and pressed around us.

Holloway held up his hand, and everyone fell silent. "That won't be necessary, Evelyn," he said in an even voice. "After all, we're not carrying the Queen, are we? None of you will be going on this trip."

"I will be going, sir," the tall, thin man who had described the attempt as impossible said. "Although it's possible for you to pilot the plane alone, that certainly won't increase your odds, will it? I suggest you could use a 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 in the snow. But it wasn't enough. I had no idea how long a runway an SST needed to take off, but it was certainly more than the hundred yards or so that the snow movers were operating in. And as soon as the plows moved farther out, snow blew and drifted back in behind them, accumulating at an alarming rate. Just in the few minutes I'd been standing in front of the hangar, huge flakes had collected on my hair, lashes, shoulders, and sneakers.

Less than six hours to Armageddon, and it was looking more and more like the second horseman out of Eden was going to be riding forth, killing untold millions in the initial explosion of his appearance and more untold millions in the radioactive wake of his passing. I clenched my fists in frustration, choked back a sob of grief and rage.

"We're not going to make it, Garth," I murmured, and immediately hated myself for saying it.

"Let's get you out of the cold, brother," Garth said, and started to haul me up the side of the snowbank.

I angrily shook off his grip-and promptly fell on my face in the snow. He grabbed me again, and half-pulled, half-carried me to the top of the mound of snow. We slid down the other side, found a door, went into the hangar. As soon as the steel door was shut, there was an almost eerie silence inside the cavernous space, which was filled with a ghostly, yellowish glow cast by spotlights powered by emergency generators.

In the center of the glow sat a magnificent, sleek airplane, its metal skin glistening in the light, its needle nose almost touching the closed hangar door. Even as I watched, two men in maintenance uniforms came around from the opposite side of the plane; they opened hatches under the rear of the fuselage, shone flashlights up into the compartments, checked hoses and dials.

Garth grabbed me as I started to sag, picked me up and carted me over to a corner, set me down on top of a pile of folded blue tarpaulins. I started to get up, but he put a hand on my chest and shoved me back down, covering me with a flap of the top tarpaulin.

"Rest, Mongo," Garth said in a low, firm voice. "You're going to need it. I've got a nose for other things besides evil, and it tells me that we're going to get up. I know it."

"It would take a miracle, Garth."

"We're going to make it."

"Garth, don't leave me behind."

"I won't, Mongo."

"Promise me."

"I promise."

"You know I have to be there, the same as you."

"I know."

"Promise again that you won't leave me behind."

"I promise again."

My brother didn't lie-not usually. But I didn't trust him; not this time, since he was certainly capable of lying-and leaving me on the ground-if he thought it would save my life. Consequently, I struggled to stay awake. The result was a kind of surreal semiconsciousness in which blurred images moved about, accompanied by the muffled howl of wind and roar of machinery.

Segueing in and out of consciousness, I suddenly heard something begin to whine; the whine quickly grew in volume until it became a roar of sound cascading against my senses. I came fully awake, panicky, afraid that the plane was about to take off without me. I sat bolt upright-and saw Garth hurrying across the hangar toward me. He looked exhausted, his brown eyes glassy and sunken deep in their sockets. At the same time, there was an almost eerie serenity reflected in his features.

"Ready to roll, brother?" he said softly, smiling down at me as he brushed a thin, greasy strand of wheat-colored hair back from his eyes.

"Oh, yeah." I struggled to get to my feet, fell off the pile of tarpaulins onto the concrete floor. I was feverish again, bone-deep exhausted, and still nauseated from the amphetamine overdose. "I'm sorry, Garth. Help me, please."

He did, pulling me to my feet and supporting me with one arm as we walked toward the ramp that was extended from the center of the SST's fuselage. I glanced at his watch; it was 9:00.

"The phones. .?"

"Still out."

"Did they manage to plow. .?"

"No. But we're going anyway."

With Garth supporting me by the back of my shirt, I managed to walk up the ramp and into the plane. Garth steered me left, through a thick steel door that Nigel Fickley was holding open for us, into a spacious cockpit that was in semidarkness except for the light cast by a glittering array of instrumentation that seemed to be all around me. Jack Holloway was strapped into the pilot's seat, and he gave a thumbs-up sign to me as we entered.

"Strap yourselves in, gentlemen," Holloway said in his clipped tones. "And please allow me to apologize in advance for what may be a slightly bumpy takeoff.''

Garth and I sat down in two seats at the rear of the cockpit, on either side of the steel door, and strapped ourselves in. Nigel Fickley eased his lanky frame down into the copilot's seat, buckled himself in.

Holloway tilted his head back. "Ready, gentlemen?"

"Hit it, Captain," Garth replied evenly.

Holloway signaled to someone below him, and a few moments later the huge hangar door opened-onto a nightmare. In the glare carved out of the darkness by the plane's lights I could see that the snow-removing equipment had been removed-but it was almost as if nothing had changed; snow was everywhere, and I knew that in the darkness beyond the light there were huge drifts. Also, undoubtedly, there were trucks, perhaps even stalled planes-dozens of snowbound, buried obstacles that could kill us.

Holloway pushed the wide handle of the throttle forward, and I could feel as well as hear the power surging through the plane. But we didn't move.

"Release the brakes on my mark, Lieutenant, and raise the landing gear on my second mark."

"Yes, sir," Fickley said easily. "Luck."

"Luck."

Holloway eased the throttle even further forward, and the roar of the engines grew in volume; the plane began to vibrate as tens of thousands of horsepower howled in a kind of mechanical dismay and outrage, demanding that their awesome power be unleashed.

"Mark!"

"Aye!"

The screaming, gargantuan silver bullet that was the Concorde shot out of the mouth of the hangar into the maelstrom of night, wind, and snow.

"Mark!"

"Aye!"

For the first few seconds, before the landing gear came up into the belly of the plane, there was tremendous drag on the plane as the wheels ground through the snow. The muscles in Holloway's forearms bunched and stood out as he pulled back on a control. Then the wheels were up and the SST became an improbable ballistic sled catapulting us out across unknown territory.

Suddenly I suffered another dizzy spell; my vision blurred, and the cockpit began to spin. I screwed my eyes shut, opened them again just as the plane began to sideslip, its tail yawing over to the left. Holloway, his hands virtually flying from one control to another, struggled for control. I felt as if

I were hurtling down a roller coaster, and I was afraid I would vomit. The plane yawed sharply in the opposite direction, shuddered, then finally straightened out and shot forward with even greater speed; but now I was certain it was heading in a different direction, toward-whatever. Dark, terrifying black shapes that I was certain were planes or trucks or hangars flashed by, and great waves of snow splashed like water against the windows as we sliced through huge snow drifts. Again the plane yawed from side to side, again Holloway managed to correct.

Again, everything began to spin-but this time I was certain it was the plane itself, and not my head. We were out of control. The last thought in my head before everything exploded in brilliant flashes of red, black, and green was that this time Garth's nose had been wrong. We were about to die, only a couple of hours ahead of millions of other people.