Robert McCammon - Swan Song

Swan Song

By

Robert McCammon

"Once upon a time, man had a love affair with fire."

Once Upon a Time /

Sister Creep /

Black Frankenstein /

The Spooky Kid /

Kings Knight/

July 16

10:27 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time

Washington, D.C .

Once upon a time we had a love affair with fire, the president of the United States thought as the match that hed just struck to light his pipe flared beneath his fingers.

He stared into it, mesmerized by its color-and as the fire grew he had the vision of a tower of flame a thousand feet tall, whirling across the country he loved, torching cities and towns, turning rivers to steam, ripping across the ruins of heartland farms and casting the ashes of seventy million human beings into a black sky. He watched with dreadful fascination as the flame crawled up the match, and he realized that there, on a tiny scale, was the power of both creation and destruction; it could cook food, illuminate the darkness, melt iron and sear human flesh. Something that resembled a small, unblinking scarlet eye opened in the center of the flame, and he wanted to scream. He had awakened at two in the morning from a nightmare of holocaust; hed begun crying and couldnt stop, and the first lady had tried to calm him, but he just kept shaking and sobbing like a child. Hed sat in the Oval Office until dawn, going over the maps and top-security reports again and again, but they all said the same thing: First Strike.

The fire burned his fingers. He shook the match out and dropped it into the ashtray embossed with the presidential seal in front of him. The thin thread of smoke began to curl up toward the vent of the air-filtration system.

Sir? someone said. He looked up, saw a group of strangers sitting in the Situations Room with him, saw the high-resolution computer map of the world on the screen before him, the array of telephones and video screens set in a semicircle around him like the cockpit of a jet fighter, and he wished to God that someone else could sit in his seat, that he was still just a senator and he didnt know the truth about the world. Sir?

He ran his hand across his forehead. His skin felt clammy. Fine time to be coming down with the flu, he thought, and he almost laughed at the absurdity of it. The president gets no sick days, he thought, because a presidents not supposed to be sick. He tried to focus on who at the oval table was speaking to him; they were all watching him-the vice-president, nervous and sly; Admiral Narramore, ramrod-straight in his uniform with a chestful of service decorations; General Sinclair, crusty and alert, his eyes like two bits of blue glass in his hard-seamed face; Secretary of Defense Hannan, who looked as kindly as anyones old grandfather but who was known as Iron Hans by both the press corps and his associates; General Chivington, the ranking authority on Soviet military strength; Chief of Staff Bergholz, crewcut and crisp in his ubiquitous dark blue pin-striped suit; and various other military officials and advisors.

Yes? the president asked Bergholz.

Hannan reached for a glass of water, sipped from it and said, Sir? I was asking if you wanted me to go on. He tapped the page of the open report from which hed been reading.

Oh. My pipes gone out, he thought. Didnt I just light it? He looked at the burned match in the ashtray, couldnt remember how it had gotten there. For an instant he saw John Waynes face in his mind, a scene from some old black-and-white movie hed seen as a kid; the Duke was saying something about the point of no return. Yes, the president said. Go on.

Hannan glanced quickly around the table at the others. They all had copies of the report before them, as well as stacks of other Eyes Only coded reports fresh off the NORAD and SAC communications wires. Less than three hours ago, Hannan continued, our last operating SKY EYE recon satellite was dazzled as it moved into position over Chatyrka, U.S.S.R. We lost all our optical sensors and cameras, and again-as in the case of the other six SKY EYEs-we feel this one was destroyed by a land-based laser, probably operating from a point near Magadan. Twenty minutes after SKY EYE 7 was blinded, we used our Malmstrom AFB laser to dazzle a Soviet recon satellite as it came over Canada. By our calculations, that still leaves them two recon eyes available, one currently over the northern Pacific and a second over the Iran-Iraq border. NASAs trying to repair SKY EYEs 2 and 3, but the others are space junk. What all this means, sir, is that as of approximately three hours ago, Eastern Daylight Time-Hannan looked up at the digital clock on the Situation Rooms gray concrete wall-we went blind. The last recon photos were taken at 1830 hours over Jelgava. He switched on a microphone attached to the console before him and said, SKY EYE recon 7-16, please.

There was a pause of three seconds as the information computer found the required data. On the large wall screen, the map of the world went dark and was replaced by a high-altitude satellite photograph showing the sweep of a dense Soviet forest. At the center of the picture was a cluster of pinheads linked together by the tiny lines of roadways. Enlarge twelve, Hannan said, the picture reflected in his horn-rimmed eyeglasses.

The photograph was enlarged twelve times, until finally the hundreds of intercontinental ballistic missile silos were as clear as if the Situations Room wall screen was a plate glass window. On the roads were trucks, their tires throwing up dust, and even soldiers were visible near the missile installations concrete bunkers and radar dishes. As you can see, Hannan went on in the calm, slightly detached voice of his previous profession-teaching military history and economics at Yale-theyre getting ready for something. Probably bringing in more radar gear and arming those warheads, is my guess. We count two hundred and sixty-three silos in that installation alone, probably housing over six hundred warheads. Two minutes later, the SKY EYE was blinded. But this picture only reinforces what we already know: the Soviets have gone to a high level of readiness, and they dont want us seeing the new equipment theyre bringing in. Which brings us to General Chivingtons report. General?

Chivington broke the seal on a green folder in front of him, and the others did the same. Inside were pages of documents, graphs and charts. Gentlemen, he said in a gravelly voice, the Soviet war machine has mobilized to within fifteen percent of capacity in the last nine months. I dont have to tell you about Afghanistan, South America or the Persian Gulf, but Id like to direct your attention to the document marked Double 6 Double 3. Thats a graph showing the amount of supplies being funneled into the Russian Civil Defense System, and you can see for yourselves how its jumped in the last two months. Our Soviet sources tell us that more than forty percent of their urban population has now either moved outside the cities or taken up residence inside the fallout shelters

While Chivington talked on about Soviet Civil Defense the presidents mind went back eight months to the final terrible days of Afghanistan, with its nerve gas warfare and tactical nuclear strikes. And one week after the fall of Afghanistan, a twelve-and-a-half-kiloton nuclear device had exploded in a Beirut apartment building, turning that tortured city into a moonscape of radioactive rubble. Almost half the population was killed outright. A variety of terrorist groups had gleefully claimed responsibility, promising more lightning bolts from Allah.