The Dying Time (Book 1): Impact Page 10

  “Now I want you to take a firm grip and line the orange part of the front sight up in the middle of the vee, then set your target right on top of that. That’s called a sight picture,” Michael said, adjusting his ear protectors. A .357 was loud! “Now when you have a good sight picture, let out half your breath and gently squeeze the trigger. It should surprise you when the pistol goes off.”

  Bang! Dirt puffed up above the pop can. “I’m sorry, Michael, this just doesn’t feel right,” Ellen complained.

  Anger flared but he kept it hidden. Hell, it wasn’t her fault. This was the way he’d been taught to aim and shoot, the only way he knew how to teach it. Maybe he could get her to take a NRA course. They had some excellent instructors.

  Bang! Dirt jumped beside the can. She shook her head in frustration, emptied the cylinder, saving the casings for Michael to reload, and started thumbing in six more shells.

  Michael scanned the terrain with an outdoorsman’s gaze. The sky was clear, a deep, rich cobalt blue, and the sun felt warm even though the outside thermometer read fifty degrees Fahrenheit. Aspen leaves were now a deep gold amid the blue green spruce and orange-trunked Ponderosa pines. Everything was right and something was wrong.

  This was the hundredth time today she’d said it didn’t feel right. She’d been even wilder with the .38. He’d hoped the heavier .357 would settle her aim down, but she was still missing.

  Wait a minute. Maybe she wasn’t the only one who was missing something. She’d been telling him all day it didn’t feel right, and he kept forcing her to do it his way.

  Duh! Stupidity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

  She was aiming the gun when he laid a hand on her arm and pulled the pistol down.

  “Sweetheart? You keep saying it doesn’t feel right. Can you tell me why?”

  Ellen shrugged. “It just doesn’t feel like it should be this hard.”

  “In other words it shouldn’t be as hard as I’m making it.”

  “No,” she said quickly. “It isn’t you, but…um, yeah.”

  “Then forget everything I’ve said except for the safety stuff. I want you to just relax and go with your gut instinct. Okay?”

  She nodded.

  “Just take your time, take a few breaths, and let me know when you feel ready.”

  She stood in front of him, facing the cans for a few moments and said, “I’m ready.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Ellen?”

  “Yes, honey?”

  “Shoot the can.”

  Bang! The can jumped three feet and snagged in the branches of a gooseberry bush.

  “Yes!” she yelled with a big grin.

  BangBangBangBangBang! Five cans jumped or spun.

  Michael smiled at his wife. Her elbow was bent. She was shooting from the hip. While she reloaded he set up two fresh cans and told her to “walk’em around.”

  As pistol shots echoed down the valley the cans danced across the hillside, hiding among the stalks of wild geranium, raspberry and cinquefoil. She didn’t do anything he understood to be aiming, just pointed and shot and hit every time.

  With every reload her shooting improved until she wasn’t just hitting the cans, she was nailing the ‘e’ in Pepsi and the ‘o’ in Coke. He couldn’t believe his eyes. She was drawing a crowd, as people stopped to gawk.

  She was a natural--an instinctive shot. He chuckled softly. He’d been trying to teach her how to shoot but all he’d been teaching her was how to miss.

  Finally, he couldn’t hold back anymore.

  “Ellen? How do you do that?”

  She stopped and thought about it. “I look at what I’m shooting.” She smiled like a little girl, her hazel eyes gleaming with delight. “And that’s where the bullet goes.”

  He burst out laughing and said, “It surely does, Sweetheart. It surely does,” while thinking, and God help the next SOB who messes with you.

  *

  Dugway Proving Grounds

  The last truck full of stolen goods had arrived four hours earlier, marking the official completion of his mission. What he did now was strictly “off orders.” He laid his letter of resignation on the army green metal desk and walked out to meet his assembled troops. They were his men and he wouldn’t see any of them hurt.

  “Ten hut!” he heard his exec call and the sound of three hundred pairs of boots stamping to attention met his ears.

  “Men,” he began. “This will be my last act as your commanding officer. For reasons of conscience, I am resigning my commission effective as of 23:59 hours tonight.”

  A murmur swept through the men, silenced by sharp looks from their NCO’s.

  “Let me assure you I didn’t make this decision easily; for it has been my honor to serve with such fine soldiers.” He swallowed hard and looked away. This was more difficult than he’d thought.

  “My final orders as your commander are for you to mount up and head back to Fort Benning. Golf company will remain here to guard the chemical depot--and only the chemical depot. My XO, Major Jennings, will assume command.”

  He paused and looked out over them, seeing a few knowing nods from senior sergeants and at least one Captain. The Lieutenants, as always, looked lost.

  “That will be all. Major Jennings, dismiss the men.”

  By twenty-one hundred that evening he stood alone at the main gate. Stars played hide and seek among drifting clouds. A pack of coyotes celebrated a kill in the distance. At twenty-one thirty his brother Bob rolled through the gate with more than five hundred volunteers. Long before midnight all trace of them and the goods they came to reclaim were gone, no longer to be stored in centralized church warehouses, but to be dispersed among the Stakes and Membership.

  In years to follow, the Dugway Tea Party would assume mythic proportions in LDS lore.

  Chapter 13: Hobson’s Choice

  Edwards Air Force Base Launch Facility

  Carl Borzowski and Harry Garrison felt their way through the fog from the parking lot to mission control. The dense blanket had rolled in early in the morning, a freak of nature inversion that trapped cool damp air in the warm desert valley. A frontal system scheduled to blow through in mid-afternoon had failed to materialize. The launch was on hold.

  “God, this is awful,” Harry complained. “Much worse than I expected.”

  “I don’t know about you,” Carl said, “but I can see just as well with my eyes closed.”

  The border between sidewalk and grass, felt rather than seen, was the only thing that kept them on target until a ghostly light cut through the fog shining over the entrance.

  Once inside an aide led them to General Mabry in the command center.

  “Roland,” Carl nodded. “What have we got?”

  “Winds aloft are forty-five knots,” Roland Mabry snorted. “Hell, anything over twenty could upset the equilibrium of the launch vehicle.” He gave Carl a puzzled glance. “I thought you were bringing the Garcias.”

  “They felt they’d be more useful back at the lab computing firing solutions for Sunflower One and Two.”

  “Launch status?” Harry questioned.

  “T minus two minutes and holding,” the General answered.

  Harry and Carl both looked at their watches.

  Carl said, “We going to miss the launch window?”

  “I hope not. I’d hate to scrub until tomorrow,” Mabry said. “But if something doesn’t give in thirty-seven minutes we will.”

  The white phone on General Mabry’s desk began blinking as it rang. It was a direct line to the President.

  “He’s been calling every ten minutes,” Mabry said as he lifted the receiver. “Yes, Mr. President?” The General listened for a minute then said, “Yes, sir. He’s right here,” and handed the phone to Borzowski.

  “Carl?”

  “Yes, Mr. President?”

  “Put the phone on speaker so everyone can hear.”

&nb
sp; Carl pushed the button and instantly the President could hear that hollow, talking-in-a-tunnel speakerphone sound.

  “You’re my man on site, Carl,” Hammond Powell said slowly. “You know the conditions better than I do, so I’m giving you the authority to make the call.”

  When Truman said, “The buck stops here,” he wasn't talking about modern presidential politics.

  “I understand Mr. President.” Carl mentally cursed Bell for inventing the telephone.

  Minutes crawled by with agonizing, freeze-frame slowness. Carl’s thoughts, traveling at light speed, marveled at the relativistic effect stress had on time, stretching it out to infinity. An airman called out the speed of winds aloft every thirty-seconds.

  With twenty minutes to go the fog began to lift and Carl’s hopes rose with it.

  Eight minutes. “Winds aloft Thirty-seven knots.” The announcement brought a subdued cheer from all present.

  The Garcias barged in, explaining that their calculations were complete, and they needed to talk to Carl now! He held up one hand, forestalling them until he heard the next wind reading.

  Seven minutes. “Winds aloft thirty-six knots and dropping.”

  “What?” he snapped at them, the strain telling.

  Raoul got straight to the point. “We think we can cut the asteroid in half with Sunflower One,” he announced, and his voice held a slight tremor.

  “How? No, never mind. What does that have to do with this launch?” In the background he heard, “Thirty-four knots and dropping.”

  “If we are successful, half of it will miss us and half will hit,” Raoul said. “An asteroid twelve miles in diameter, it’s current size, will certainly extinguish all life on Earth. But an impactor six miles wide should leave survivors, people who can rebuild civilization. The problem is they won't have time, Carl, because unless cutting it in half changes its orbit by more than we calculate the second half will impact in another twenty years and finish them off.”

  “So what you're saying is--”

  Four minutes. “Winds aloft twenty-nine knots and dropping.”

  “We can't risk launching Sunflower Two in these high wind conditions, Carl. We're going to need it in twenty years to save humanity.”

  “You'll have Sunflower One,” Carl said.

  “No, we won't. We'll burn it out carving the rock in two.”

  “But if we can get Sunflower Two up there now we can prevent the disaster entirely,” Carl argued.

  “No, we can't,” Ariel stepped in. “If we had been able to launch this morning as planned we could have positioned both One and Two perfectly, lining up our shots on different parts of Havoc, and vaporizing almost four-fifths of its mass. But now Two won't be in position to fire until almost five hours too late.”

  Three minutes. “Twenty-seven knots and holding.”

  Raoul took over. “The dust and debris kicked up by the explosions Sunflower One will generate on Havoc will obscure the asteroid, diffusing the beam from Sunflower Two and rendering it partially ineffective.”

  “So hold your fire until Two is in position,” General Mabry said.

  Carl Borzowski and Harry Garrison joined the Garcias in shaking their heads no. Carl and Harry spoke at the same time.

  “Basic trigonometry,” Harry said.

  “Angle of separation,” Carl said.

  Together it sounded something like, “Bangle of trigoration.”

  Harry snatched a pen from his pocket protector and grabbed a sheet of paper, sketching rapidly. “If we don't carve the asteroid in half here at point A,” he tapped the paper for emphasis. “Both halves will hit point B. That's Earth.”

  Two minutes. “Winds aloft twenty-seven knots and holding.”

  Carl Borzowski faced the guillotine of decision. There were two minutes left in the countdown procedure for the booster as well as in the launch window. “Hold the launch,” he said, gray-faced.

  “Belay that order!” General Mabry yelled. “Resume countdown on my authority.”

  “STOP!” Carl out-bellowed the General. “You all heard the President say this was my call to make. Well, I didn't want the damn call, but I'm making it. We'll hold the launch until winds aloft fall within safety margins.”

  He turned to the General and laid a hand on the man's shoulder. “Roland, weren't you listening? Even if we launch now we cannot stop this thing. The best we can do is minimize the consequences.”

  “Minimize the consequences!” Roland Mabry stormed. “Are you insane? You're talking about millions, maybe billions of dead, the collapse of civilization, a return to the stone age--”

  “That's better than extinction!” Carl interrupted. “Roland! The death of all humanity is a virtual certainty unless we take this chance.”

  General Mabry's shoulders slumped.

  Carl turned to the technicians, knowing he was making the only rational decision. He heard himself say, “We hold the launch.” While deep inside his mind a voice screamed, “Butcher!”

  “It’s not all bad, Carl,” Harry said. “If we can get Two up soon enough we can at least whittle Havoc down some before it hits.”

  The name finally registered and Carl shook his head. “You’re calling it Havoc?”

  “It’s what the Garcia’s and I have been calling it,” Harry admitted.

  Carl shrugged. “Appropriate,” he said.

  Fifty-two minutes later Raoul and Ariel Garcia were hunkered over the computer control screen selecting items from the menu with Carl Borzowski, Harry Garrison, and General Mabry clustered behind them. A radar picture of Havoc filled most of the screen and Raoul moused the cursor carefully over the picture and clicked twice, fixing the aim point directly over a fissure. Their computer was slaved to Sunflower's, and what they were seeing was what Sunflower's radar showed them.

  Almost immediately the crosshairs began to drift, oscillating in a small circle.

  “Damn it!” Raoul pushed back from the screen. “I'm sorry, Carl. That's the best we can do.” Ariel began massaging his temples.

  “How long before we fire?” Carl's voice crackled with tension like a high voltage power line.

  “Optimum firing solution in three minutes on my mark,” Harry said. “Three, two, one, mark.”

  Ariel entered the Countdown command on Harry's mark and began calling out the final items on the checklist. “Array?”

  “Green light,” Raoul answered.

  “Targeting Radar?”

  “Green.”

  “Target Sequencer?” If they succeeded in cutting Havoc in two before Sunflower burned out the aim point would automatically shift to the half that would impact, to incinerate as much of it as possible.

  “Green.”

  “Weapon charge?”

  “Green.” A light sheen of sweat covered Raoul's forehead.

  “Stabilizer?”

  “Yellow.” The best they could do. At least Ariel and he had been able to software it out of red.

  “Autolock?” The aiming mechanism.

  “Yellow.” It couldn't go to green because the erratic stabilizer wouldn't allow it to lock the crosshairs.

  “Continuous fire?” Even her voice was trembling now.

  “Green.”

  “Manual override?” A last ditch, video arcade style firing mechanism.

  “Armed and ready.”

  “Whew.” She puffed her cheeks out explosively. “Harry?”

  “One minute and...fourteen seconds to go,” he said.

  *

  The laser beam speared across thousands of miles, delivering megatons of energy deep into the flaw that creased Havoc. Like a cutting torch the drifting beam ate its way into Havoc's heart, vaporizing an ever-widening hole. The asteroid's rotation caused the beam to track along the fault line.

  Tons of magma and dust exploded into space as the plasma-hot beam met space-cold rock, turning the well-defined radar picture Sunflower was transmitting to Earth into a hazy cloud.

  In the control center tension
had set like concrete. Jaws and fists were clenched, eyes glued to monitors, sweat dripped unheeded from nose tips and chins.

  “Is it working?” Carl hissed. In the dead silence of the room his whisper startled everyone.

  “I don't know,” Harry shrugged. “Ariel said if Sunflower could maintain continuous fire for thirty-four minutes we have a chance.”

  The nerve-wracking vigil continued, punctuated by occasional gasps as the watchers released unconsciously held breaths. Suddenly, the monitors popped and went black.

  “What happened?” Carl shouted, but in his heart he knew. He looked at the countdown clock and his last hope withered like a flower in a drought.

  In the skies overhead a new star flared and died as Sunflower One overloaded and exploded.

  “It's gone,” Raoul whispered. He stole a glance at the countdown clock. Thirty-two minutes and twenty-seven seconds. Sunflower had exceeded its continuous fire design parameter by almost nine minutes, one minute and three-seconds short of the time he and Ariel believed was needed to crack Havoc. Had it been enough? Just before the screens blacked out he thought he saw the message, “Target Sequencer Engaged” flash by.

  Everyone was still speculating thirty minutes later when the phone rang and the President announced that radio telescopes in Australia confirmed Havoc had split into two pieces. Relief flooded the control room, but cheers and tears were stifled when rapid orbital calculations revealed that even though Havoc's Twin would miss Earth by the width of a silk thread, Havoc itself would hit along with a few small chunks they had carved off.

  Carl Borzowski looked around the room at the mixed emotions playing over everyone's faces and said, “We've still got a job to do.”

  One hour and twenty minutes later Sunflower Two lifted off the pad and climbed into orbit through clearing skies and calm conditions. But by the time it achieved stable orbit Havoc was occluded by Earth. They’d have to wait for more than eight hours before taking another shot.

  *

  Ten minutes after Sunflower reached orbit a massive solar flare ionized the Earth’s upper atmosphere and disrupted communications.