Read Online Trinity's Child by William Prochnau - Free Book Online Page A

for tourists in the snow-covered front yard of the base. The missile seemed to point toward a heaven lost, and momentarily his mind tripped into disarray. The colored lights of a proud nation caromed off a different white symbol reaching toward a different heaven. He shivered, not from the cold but from the flash of the memory, a honeymoon many years ago. It had seemed the right place, the right time; Washington, Fourth of July, after his graduation from Annapolis. He and his bride sat on a Virginia hillside across the Potomac on a muggy night so unlike this one. The world lay at their feet, as did the majesty of a nation he would serve, the rockets' red glare splashing off the Washington Monument, dancing among the flags circling its base. They held each other very close. Life with a submariner, months away beneath the sea, was not going to be easy. Never say good-bye, she said as the sparks of the last rocket faded.
    Now she was asleep, alone four miles away in a mock-colonial home too large with their only son grown and gone. He shook his head, ducked it under the open doorway of the blue alert truck, and said, “Bust ass.”
     
     
    The President stood impatiently in the Situation Room, surrounded by oppressive gray file cabinets filled with background reports on trouble areas and the latest twenty-four-hour summaries of activities in every nation in the world. He was two floors below the Sitting Room, one floor directly below the Oval Office, having come here hurriedly in his bathrobe, but not for the security his staff had urged on him. He came for the telegram. He glanced at the clock: 0606 Zulu.
    The telegraph operator, an Army Signal Corpsman wearing a forced look of detachment, handed the message to his bathrobe-clad Commander-in-Chief. The President began reading quickly.
    “My dear Mr. President,” the telegram began. “By now you are aware that my government has launched a limited number of nuclear weapons at your country. The missiles are selectively destined for targets which will inflict minimal damage on your nation, its civilian population, and even your military resources. Your wisdom, at this delicate time, can minimize the consequences of this event, which the mistakes of both of our nations have made inevitable. I pray that this may not be another of those mistakes. . . .”
    The President let out a low whoosh of air. Mother, he thought bleakly, I'm dealing with a mad general, a rampaging computer, and now a commie religious nut who prays while he nukes me. The paper began to shake in his hand.
    “. . . While your warning system undoubtedly has described the attack which is about to arrive, I want absolutely no misunderstanding. We have struck all your bomber bases. There is no way to make a nuclear attack palatable. But these are the least reliable, most vulnerable, and most expendable of your forces. They also cost us billions to defend against, and we no longer can afford the cost. We have launched token attacks against a few Minuteman installations, away from population concentrations, and an attack on your Trident submarine base. These attacks show the obvious: all your targets, like all ours, are vulnerable. Omaha and Cheyenne Mountain will be destroyed. Your command facilities are undefendable, as are ours. I have attempted with great effort to limit civilian casualties. This has not been entirely possible, because your system has allowed civilian populations to thrive around strategic targets. We have never understood that peculiarity of your system. So be it. There is one final element. A single small warhead has been directed at Andrews Air Force Base. My generals promise me it will do little damage beyond the base. The target is symbolic, Andrews being the base from which you normally would leave Washington. We know you have other departure routes, just as you have command facilities that will take over from Omaha. I opposed the inclusion of this target, but in achieving far greater gains