Part 9 (1/2)

”Thanks,” Randy said. He took a package of cartridges out of his ammunition case and handed it to Ben. ”You load up your gun, Ben,” he said. ”It's yours now. Never point it at a man unless you intend to shoot him, and never shoot unless you mean to kill. You understand that?”

Ben's eyes were round and his face sober. ”Yes, sir.”

”Okay, Ben. You can baby-sit now. We should be back in an hour.”

When Rear Admiral Hazzard retired he embarked upon what he liked to call ”my second life.” He and his wife had prepared carefully for retirement. They had wanted an orange grove to supplement his pension and a body of water upon which he could look and in which he could fish. While still a four-striper he had located this spot on the Timucuan, and bought it for a surprisingly reasonable sum. The real estate agent had carefully explained that the low price included ”n.i.g.g.e.rs for neighbors,” meaning the Henrys. At the same time the agent had grumbled at the Braggs, who had allowed the Henrys to buy water-front property in the first place, thereby lowering values along the entire river, or so he said.

The Hazzards first had planted a grove. A few years later they built a comfortable six-room rambler and started landscaping the grounds. Thereafter they lived in the house one month each year, when Sam took his annual leave, trying it and wearing it until it fitted perfectly.

On his sixty-second birthday Sam Hazzard retired, to the relief of a number of his fellow admirals. There were rivalries within, as well as between, the armed services. In the Navy, the rivalry had once been between the battles.h.i.+p and carrier admirals. When it became a rivalry between atomic subs and super-carriers, Hazzard had outspokenly favored the submarines. Since he once had commanded a carrier task force, and never had been a submariner, the carrier admirals regarded his stand as just short of treason. Worse, for years he had claimed that Russia's most dangerous threat was the terrible combination of submarines equipped with missiles armed with nuclear warheads. Such a theory, if unchallenged, would force the Navy to spend a greater part of its energy and money on anti-submarine warfare. Since this, per se, was defense, and since the Navy's whole tradition was to take the offensive, Hazzard spent his final years of duty conning a desk.

Two days after his retirement his wife died, so she never really lived in the house on the Timucuan, and she never physically shared his second life. Yet often she seemed close, when he trimmed a shrub she had planted, or when in the evenings he sat alone on the patio, and reached to touch the arm of the chair at his side.

The Admiral discovered there were not enough hours in the day to do all the things that were necessary, and that he wanted to do. There was the citrus, the grounds, experiments with exotic varieties of bananas and papaya, discreet essays to be written for the United States Naval Inst.i.tute Proceedings and not-so-discreet articles for magazines of general circulation. Sam Hazzard found that the Henrys were extraordinarily convenient neighbors. Malachai tended the grounds and helped design and build the dock. Two-Tone, when in the mood-broke and sober-worked in the grove. The Henry women cleaned, and did his laundry. Preacher Henry was the Admiral's private fis.h.i.+ng guide, which meant that the Admiral consistently caught more and bigger ba.s.s than anyone on the Timucuan, and possibly in all of Central Florida.

But Sam Hazzard's princ.i.p.al hobby was listening to shortwave radio. He was not a ham operator. He had no transmitter. He listened. He did not chatter. He monitored the military frequencies and the foreign broadcasts and, with his enormous background of military and political knowledge, he kept pace with the world outside Fort Repose. Sometimes, perhaps, he was a bit ahead of everyone.

It was ten to eleven when Randy knocked on Admiral Hazzard's door. It opened immediately. The Admiral was a taut, neatly made man who had weighed 133 when he boxed for the Academy and who weighted 133 now. He was dressed in a white turtleneck sweater, flannels, and boat shoes. A halo of cottony hair encircled his sunburned bald spot. Otherwise, he was not saintly. His nose has been flattened in some long-forgotten brawl in Port Said or Ma.r.s.eilles. His gray eyes, canopied by heavy white brows, were red-rimmed, and angry. For the Admiral, this had been a day of frustration, helplessness, and hatred-hatred for the unimaginative, purblind, selfish fools who had not believed him, and frustration because on this day of supreme danger and need, his lifetime of training and experience was not and could not be put to use. The Admiral said, ”I saw your headlights coming down the road. Come in.” He squinted at Helen.

”My sister-in-law, Helen Bragg,” Randy said.

”An evil day to receive a beautiful woman,” The Admiral said, his voice surprisingly mild and mannered to issue from such a pugnacious face. ”Come on in to my Combat Plot, and listen to the war, if such a ma.s.sacre can be called a war.”

He led them to his den. A heavily planked workbench ran along the wall under the windows overlooking the river. On this bench was a large, black, professional-looking shortwave receiver, a steaming coffee-maker, notebooks and pencils. The radio screeched with power, static, interference, and occasional words in the almost unintelligible language of conflict.

On two other walls, cork-covered, were pinned maps-the polar projection and the Eurasian land ma.s.s on one wall, a military map of the United States on the other.

A hoa.r.s.e voice broke through the static: ”This is Adelaide Six-Five-One. I am sitting on a skunk at Alpha Romeo Poppa Four. Skunk at Alpha Romeo Poppa Four.”

A different voice replied immediately: ”Adelaide Six-Five-One, this is Adelaide. Hold one.”

There was silence for a moment, and then the second voice continued: ”Adelaide Six-Five-One-Adelaide. Have relayed your message to Hector. He is busy but will be free in ten to fifteen minutes. Squat on that skunk and wait for Hector.” ”Adelaide from Adelaide Six-Five-One. Charley.”

Helen sat down. For the first time that day, she was showing fatigue. The Admiral said, ”Coffee?”

”I'd love a cup,” she said.

Randy said, ”Sam, what was that on the radio? Part of the war?”

The Admiral poured coffee before he replied. ”A big part of it, for us. Right now I'm tuned to a Navy and Air Force ASW frequency in the five megacycle band.”

”ASW?”

”Anti-submarine warfare. I'll interpret. A Navy super Connie with a saucer radome has located a skunk-an enemy submarine-at coordinates Alpha Romeo Poppa Four. I happen to know that's about three hundred miles off Norfolk. The radar picket has called home base-Adelaide-and Adelaide is sending Hector to knock off the skunk. Hector is one of our killer subs. But Hector is presently engaged. When he is free, he will communicate directly with Adelaide Six-Five-One. The plane will give Hector a course and when he is in range Hector will cut loose with a homing torpedo and that will be the end of the skunk. We hope.”

”Who's winning?” Randy asked, aware that it was a ridiculous question.

”Who's winning? n.o.body's winning. Cities are dying and s.h.i.+ps are sinking and aircraft is going in, but n.o.body's winning.” Helen asked the question she had come to ask. ”Did you hear Mrs. Vanbruuker-Brown on the radio a while ago?”

”Yes.”

”Where do you think she was speaking from?”

The Admiral walked across the room and looked at the map of the United States. It was covered with acetate overlay and ten or twelve cities were ringed with red-crayon goose eggs, in the way that a unit position is marked on an infantry map. The Admiral scratched the white stubble on his chin and said, ”I think Denver. Hunneker, the three-star she named Chief of Staff, was Army representative on NORAD, in Colorado Springs. Chances are that he was in Denver this morning, or she was in Colorado Springs, when the word came through that Was.h.i.+ngton had been atomized.”

Helen set down her coffee cup. Her fingers trembled. ”You're sure that she couldn't have been in Omaha?”

”Omaha!” said the Admiral. ”That's the last place she'd be speaking from! You notice that whenever I've heard a broadcast, of any kind, that allowed me to identify a city, I ringed it on the map. I've heard no amateurs talking from Omaha, and I haven't heard SAC since the attack. Ordinarily, I can pick up SAC right away. They're always talking on their single side band transmitters to bases out of the country. Their call sign was 'Big Fence.' I haven't heard 'Big Fence' all day on any frequency. And the enemy hates and fears SAC, more, even, than they fear the Navy, I'll admit. Scratch Omaha.”

Sam Hazzard noticed the effect of his words on Helen's expression; he recalled that Randy's brother, her husband, was an Air Force colonel, and he sensed that he had been tactless. ”Your husband isn't in Omaha, is he, Mrs. Bragg?”

”It's our home.”

”I'm terribly sorry that I said anything.”

A tear was quivering on her cheek. Her first, Randy thought. He felt embarra.s.sed for Sam.

Helen said, ”There's nothing to be sorry about, Admiral. Mark expected Omaha would be hit, and so did I. That's why I'm here, with the children. But even if Omaha is gone, Mark may still be there, and all right. He had the duty this morning. He was in the Hole.”

”Oh, yes,” the Admiral said. ”The Hole. I've never been in it, but I've heard about it. A tremendous shelter, very deep. He may be perfectly safe. I sincerely hope so.”

”I'm afraid not,” Helen said, ”since you haven't heard any SAC signals.”

”They may have s.h.i.+fted communications or changed code names.” The Admiral looked at his maps. ”Besides, I'm only guessing. I'm just playing games with myself, trying to G-two a war with no action reports or intelligence. I do this because I haven't anything else to do. I just scramble around and move pins and make marks on the maps and try to keep myself from thinking about Sam, Junior. He's a lieutenant JG with Sixth Fleet in the Med, if Sixth Fleet is still in the Med. I don't think it is. For the Russkies, it must have been like shooting frogs in a puddle.” He turned to Helen again, ”We inhabit the same purgatory, Mrs. Bragg, the dark level of not knowing.”

Randy asked a question. ”What are the Russians saying? Can you still get Radio Moscow?”

”I get a station that calls itself Radio Moscow in the twentyfive meter band. But it isn't Moscow. All the voices on the English-language broadcasts are different so we can be pretty cer tain Moscow isn't there any more. However, the Russian leaders all seem to be alive and well, and they issue the kind of statements you'd expect. The very fact that they are alive indicates that they took shelter before it started. They probably aren't anywhere close to a target area.”

”Couldn't the President have escaped?”

”He probably had fifteen minutes' warning. He could have been in a helicopter and away. But in that fifteen minutes he had to make the big decisions, and so my guess is that he deliberately chose to stay in Was.h.i.+ngton, either at his desk in the White House, or in the Pentagon Command Post. It was the same for the Joint Chiefs, and probably for the Secretarys of Defense and State. As to the other Cabinet members, they probably received it in their sleep, or were just getting up. Do you want to hear something strange?” The Admiral changed the wave length on his receiver. He said, ”Now listen.”

All Randy heard was static.

”You didn't hear anything, did you?” the Admiral said. ”Right now, on this band, you ought to be hearing the BBC, Paris, and Bonn. I haven't heard any of them all day. They must've truly clobbered England.”

”Then you do think we're finished?” Randy said.

”Not at all. SAC may have been able to launch up to fifty percent of its aircraft, counting the planes they always have airborne. And remember that the Navy does have a few missile sub marines and the carriers must've got in some licks. Also, I'm pretty sure they weren't able to take out all our SAC bases, including the auxiliaries. For all I know, the enemy may be finished.” ”Doesn't exactly hearten me.”

The lights went out in the room, the radio died, and at the same time the world outside was illuminated, as at midday. At that instant Randy faced the window and he would always retain, like a color photograph printed on his brain, what he saw-a red fox frozen against the Admiral's green lawn. It was the first fox he had seen in years.

The white flashed back into a red ball in the southeast. They all knew what it was. It was Orlando, or McCoy Base, or both. It was the power supply for Timucuan County.

Thus the lights went out, and in that moment civilization in Fort Repose retreated a hundred years.