Sole Survivor td-72 Page 4

  "Yes, I wish to land in America. This is why I had to destroy the meat machines infesting this craft. They would have prevented me from landing in America. I cannot reenter earth's atmosphere without being incinerated by reentry forces. This craft will protect my vital parts during reentry."

  "What is he babbling about?" asked the President.

  "I have no idea, sir. He may be suffering from a psychosis or brain injury. But if I read him correctly, he seems to have murdered his fellow crew members."

  "Murdered?"

  "He said he destroyed the meat machines. I think he means people. Unless the Soviets have launched the first experimental butcher shop into space."

  "I've never heard people called that."

  "You should attend a Pentagon meeting sometime," the Secretary of Defense said. "They've got a tricky euphemism for everything. Nuclear-war casualties are termed 'collateral damage.' I think the latest word for 'retreat' is 'retrograde advance' or something."

  "Why would he murder his crew?" asked the President.

  "To get them out of the way, perhaps. He may want to defect. Why not ask him?"

  "Do you want to defect? Is that it?" asked the President of the anonymous voice.

  "A defect is an error or fault in a physical form. It is a noun. I do not understand you when you use the noun 'defect' as a verb. Please clarify."

  "I mean do you seek asylum in the United States of America?"

  "I seek to land in America. I have already said that." The Secretary grabbed the receiver so his words would not transmit uplink to the shuttle.

  "With all due respect, Mr. President, the consequences of letting that ship land on American soil are enormous. The Soviets will retaliate. They'll probably cut the support staff to our embassy in Moscow even more. Or suspend the rights of our diplomats to shop in the better stores."

  "This is a humanitarian situation. That ship is in trouble. Let it land. We'll sort out the fallout later."

  "I wish you hadn't used that word, Mr. President."

  "What word?"

  " 'Fallout,' "

  "You have a point," said the President. "But we can't just ignore that man. He'll talk to us but not to his Russian comrades. What should I do?"

  "Stall him until we can confer with the Soviets. Maybe we can negotiate an understanding."

  The President nodded. He lifted the phone set to his rugged face. "I am sorry, Yuri Gagarin, but I cannot authorize a landing on United States soil at this time," he said.

  "I do not need your authorization. I am coming down." As the President and the Secretary of Defense watched in horror, the green triangle on the simulator board tilted so its apex pointed earthward. It began to descend. High in orbit, the shuttle Yuri Gagarin rolled like a shark submerging into an inky ocean. Thrusters sent it tumbling and then its rear braking engines were brought into play. A six-second firing was all the ship needed to slow its orbit. Then it slipped, wing first, into the outer edges of earth's atmospheric envelope.

  In the cockpit, the control yoke moved automatically. Lights blinked through automated sequences on their own and switches clicked as if piloted by ghosts.

  The Yuri Gagarin descended, nose down, its whitish wings growing yellowish-orange along their leading edges. It descended in a flat glide through the ionosphere and into the stratosphere, moving at Mach 25-over eighteen thousand miles per hour. Pink superheated plasma streamers broke out over the hull. Only the insulating cushion of the reentry shock-wave kept the six-thousand- degree heat of atmospheric friction from incinerating the ship.

  Once in the thicker troposphere, the tail jets flamed into life and the shuttle Yuri Gagarin leveled out over the Pacific Ocean and began to vector for the west coast of the United States.

  In the White House Situation room, there was near-panic.

  "Mr. President, I implore you," said the Secretary of Defense. "We have to shoot that thing out of the sky. It's heading toward California."

  "It's in trouble," said the President stubbornly.

  "It may be, but we certainly will be. We cannot-we must not-allow a Soviet machine to penetrate our airspace unchallenged. We don't know what they're up to. They could be carrying onboard nuclear or biological weapons."

  The President heard the frantic garble of Soviet ground control commanders in the background. The NSA stenographer continued spewing out shorthand translations of their broadcasts.

  "What are they saying?" the President asked the NSA man.

  "Sir, they are threatening the cosmonauts with dire consequences if the Gagarin touches down anywhere but Soviet Russia."

  "A ruse," snapped the Secretary of Defense. "They want to allay our fears, make us think we're reeling in a propaganda coup."

  The President watched the tactical map of the United States on one wall. The shuttle, still represented as a coded green triangle, crossed the grids of longitude and latitude toward the luminous green line of the coast of California.

  "We can intercept over the Pacific," said the Secretary of Defense. "Wave it off. If it refuses, blow it out of the sky. We'll be justified."

  "Maybe. But will the world understand? How would it look if we shot down a shuttle? It would be worse than the time the Russians downed that Korean airliner."

  "Maybe that's what they want," said the Secretary suddenly. "Maybe they're trying to set us up. Oh, my God, what do we do?"

  "Put a pair of chase planes on it," the President ordered. "Tell them to stay with the shuttle, but not to challenge it. Let's see where they land."

  The Yuri Gagarin landed in the least expected location-New York's Kennedy International Airport. It came down on runway 13-Right, without requesting clearance or landing instructions, and rolled to a stop at the far end of the runway, just short of the blast fence.

  There it sat while the tower, on orders from Washington, hastily diverted all incoming traffic to La Guardia. All takeoffs were suspended and the airliners were drawn close to their gates like frightened fish who sense a predator.

  The National Guard was the first military authority on the scene. They set up a command post in the tower until an Air Force team flown in from NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain Complex threw them out. The National Guard commander left in a huff, claiming that the protection of New York City from the Soviet invader was his responsibility. He vowed that there would be hell to pay.

  He was told to go kiss a tank.

  Meanwhile, the shuttle just sat on the runway, ignoring radio demands for the crew to disembark peacefully. From his high vantage point in the tower, Colonel Jack Dellingsworth Rader trained his binoculars on the Soviet shuttle until he saw the red letters CCCP on the near wing. He followed the clean lines of the craft until the smaller black letters Yuri Gagarin appeared in the lenses. Then he lifted the glasses ever so slightly until he had a clear view of the cockpit. It appeared empty. It had been empty ever since the ship landed. Before landing, if the testimony of a chase plane pilot could be accepted. But that was impossible. A craft that sophisticated could not land on automatic.

  Colonel Rader picked up a field telephone and got the captain in charge of the NORAD team, who were deployed on the runway.

  "The cockpit still appears empty," he said.

  "Yes, sir, Colonel. I am reliably informed that the cockpit has been vacant since the first F-15's intercepted over California."

  "Impossible. That pilot has to be mistaken."

  "Sir, every Air Force pilot who picked up the shuttle along the way reported the same situation."

  "Well, it's sure empty now," Colonel Rader harrumphed.

  "The NASA team has just arrived, sir. Shall I send them in?"

  "Now's as good a time as any."

  "Yes, sir."

  Colonel Rader picked up his binoculars. Below, four figures in white anticontamination suits exploded from the back of an olive-green van. They crept up on the shuttle from the rear, slipping in under the tail assembly-the main blind spot of most aircraft. They sneaked along the side until th
ey got to the main hatch, affixed charges of C-4 plastic explosive, and retreated until the charges whoomped and the door yawned like a slack mouth.

  The team tossed flash grenades through the open door and then climbed a portable ladder into the ship itself.

  Minutes passed. There came a grinding sound from within the shuttle. It lasted barely a minute. After that there was silence.

  No one came out of the shuttle. "Any word?" asked Colonel Rader.

  The captain's voice came over the field telephone much more subdued than it had before.

  "I'm trying to raise them now, sir. They were under orders to maintain radio silence unless contacted first. But they are not responding to my calls."

  "Keep trying."

  The colonel listened in as his second in command repeated his requests for a reply from the NASA team leader. The team leader did not reply.

  "Hold on," said the colonel, bringing his glasses to bear on the ship. "I see some activity under the craft."

  "I see it too. The ship appears to be valving water."

  "Are you certain it's water?" asked the colonel.

  "What else would it be?"

  "It looks red to me. You're closer than I am. Use your field glasses."

  "Sir," said the captain's voice, "I can confirm to you that the liquid being discharged from the Soviet ship is red. There is a lot of it, sir," he added.

  "Blood?"

  "No way to tell."

  "Use your nose, man. You know what blood smells like. "

  The hound-dog sound of the captain sniffing the air transmitted back to the tower.

  Finally the captain admitted what both officers knew instinctively.

  "We appear to have lost the team, colonel." Earl Armalide had been prepared for anything.

  If it was a race war, no problem. He had built himself a fortress of timber and stone on a high hill in the wilds of Oklahoma, near Enid. Below the barbed-wire-topped fieldstone fence, he had cut down every tree and bush and kept the hill denuded with defoliants. It gave him a clear field of fire in all directions. No pillaging revolutionaries were going to get past Earl Armalide's 334-piece gun collection.

  If it was Armageddon, he had that covered. The basement of his home was built with three-foot-thick granite blocks encased in lead for protection against radiation. Inside the blocks he had built the finest fallout shelter imaginable. The house would go if it was caught in the blast radius, of course, but even a direct hit by a high-yield thermonuclear device would only fuse the topside escape hatch. There was still the escape tunnel leading out into the forest. Earl Armalide had enough provisions-canned vegetables, dried fruits, water, and condensed milk-to survive as long as the gas-powered generators held. He even had a VCR with a six-hundred tape library. He could live in Spartan comfort until the radiation dropped to survivable levels.

  If it was an invasion, Earl was prepared for that too. He strung fine razor wire from the ham-radio antenna mast on his roof to the surrounding fence. They were like the strands of a spider's web, thin and nearly invisible. If Communist paratroopers tried to land within his designated defense perimeter, they would dismember themselves coming down. Earl would put them out of their misery as they bled on the ground, of course. He believed that soldiers deserved to die with dignity. And he had plenty of bullets to waste. He cast them himself.

  He had it all figured out because Earl Armalide was a survivalist. He knew the end was coming, and he was going to survive it even if no one else did. Let them come. On foot, by air, in tanks, dressed in camouflage or in bulky flak jackets. They couldn't get up the hill without being seen. No one got up the hill, except the mailman, who was allowed to slip the mail into a gun port in the main gate-which Earl only opened for his monthly dash for supplies. Earl allowed the mailman up the hill so he could receive his subscription copy of Survivalist's Monthly. He always threw the rest of the mail away.

  That was Earl Armalide's downfall.

  When they came for him, they were not wearing combat fatigues, or dropping out of the sky with Kalashnikov rifles cradled to their chests. They came in a late-model Ford, wearing gray worsted and clutching expensive leather briefcases.

  "IRS," one of the men called into the gate intercom.

  "Go away," Earl Armalide said. "I don't pay taxes anymore."

  "Yes, sir. That's why we're here, Mr. Armalide. You've ignored repeated requests to explain your nonpayment of taxes at our Oklahoma City office and have been declared in default. We'll have to ask you to come with us."

  "Nothing doing. What if they drop the big one while we're in traffic? All this protection won't do me any good, now will it?"

  "Mr. Armalide, this is a serious matter. It's your duty as an American citizen to pay your taxes. Now, will you open the gate, please?"

  "Look, I don't even have any money anymore. I ain't worked since eighty-one."

  "We understand that. But you are delinquent back to 1977."

  "I ain't paying."

  "Then we may have to confiscate your property and sell it at auction."

  Those were the last words the IRS agent ever spoke. Earl Armalide split his skull like a melon with a clean shot from a .22 Swift. The contents of the agent's skull splattered onto his companion's face. The second agent pawed at the liquid matter in his eyes and walked around in circles while Earl Armalide tried to get a bead on his head. He could not.

  So Earl shot him in the right knee. When the man folded up, Earl took him out with a head shot. He felt bad about that. He didn't enjoy the thought of the man suffering from a shattered knee in the three-second interval between the two shots. As his daddy had always told him,"Earl, killin's one thing. But inflicting suffering on any living thing, that's a sin in the eyes of your creator. Always go for the head, son. It's God's way. "

  Earl left the bodies out in the sun.

  When a second Ford came up the dirt road later that day, Earl waited for them to spot the bodies. He tripped a radio-controlled antitank mine buried in the dirt. The car jumped twelve feet into the air and landed in flames.

  Two days later, backed by an FBI SWAT team, state troopers surrounded his hillside home. Earl held them off for nearly a week as the helicopters buzzed overhead and the story of his siege climbed to the top of the national newscasts with each passing day. After he had picked off nearly a dozen of them when they attempted to storm the south approach, Earl began to realize they were not going to go away, no matter how many he killed.

  Earl stuffed his pockets full of ammo and dried fruit, collected his two favorite rifles, and belted a.44 AutoMag pistol to his hip. He stuffed the latest, unread issue of Survivalist's Monthly into his back pocket and took a last, wistful look at his prized collection of Mack Bolan paperbacks before he disappeared into the fallout shelter, escaping through a tunnel that led to the woods where he had buried a crated trail bike.

  The trail bike carried him as far as the Ozarks in Missouri, where he hot-wired a pickup truck. He drove east, not exactly sure where he was going. He traveled by day. By night he slept in the flatbed, his eyes on the heavens above. Earl fervently hoped the nukes wouldn't fall while he was so exposed.

  On the fifth night, he realized there was only one path to survival. Out of America. There was no way he could build a new shelter, and no time to do it in. He would have to go somewhere safe, somewhere the Soviets would not attack. Some place where there were no people, no enemies, no race problems, and no IRS.

  Earl Armalide decided to go to Tahiti. He jumped out of the back of his flatbed in the middle of the night when the inspiration hit him. He drove to the only place he knew where he could pick up an international flight, New York City. It was true he did not have enough money to buy a ticket, but he did have three guns. Guns were as good as money in some situations. Sometimes better.

  Earl left his guns in the pickup while he wandered through the bewildering maze of terminals at Kennedy Airport. He looked in vain for the official Tahitian airline. Finally he asked at the JAL count
er. He thought JAL might be Tahitian.

  "You go to Tahiti, lady?"

  "No, sir, I'm afraid we're not going anywhere today," said the ticket agent. "They've asked us to evacuate the terminal."

  "They? They who?" Earl asked suspiciously, wishing he hadn't left his AutoMag in the truck.

  "There's a Russian spacecraft on the main runway. The Air Force has it surrounded. We're being told to evacuate to the city."

  Earl Armalide followed the woman's pointing finger.

  Out on the runway, like a sick bird, the big white shape of the Yuri Gagarin sat quietly.

  "What's it doing there?" Earl demanded fearfully.

  "No one knows. Could you please leave now?"

  "Sure, sure, I'm goin'," said Earl. He backed out of the lounge, one eye warily regarding the silent shuttle. This was it. Earl was convinced of it. The Russians' first move. Out in the parking lot, he ran for his pickup, and jumped in. He ground the starter to life, and then it hit him.

  There was no chance of reaching Tahiti. There was no returning to Enid, either. Earl Armalide was a fugitive. Sooner or later, the government would catch up with him, and Earl knew he would die in a hail of gunfire. The way he had always dreamed of dying.

  But dying in a hail of gunfire was not surviving. Surviving was surviving.

  Earl belted on his AutoMag pistol, checked both rifles, and careened out of the parking lot, slamming through a fence gate and onto the runway system, straight for the waiting shuttle.

  Soldiers scattered out of his path as he barreled through. But Earl Armalide did not pay them any attention. His feverish eyes were fixed on the shuttle.

  He was going to storm the shuttle singlehanded. Alone, a fugitive from justice, hunted on all sides, Earl Armalide would redeem himself. He would conquer the invading spacecraft, capture its wicked crew, and be received as a true American hero by a thankful nation.

  The President would probably grant him a pardon. After all, what were the lives of a few IRS and FBI agents against the heroic capture of an invading force? Yes, the President would pardon him. He'd be on all the TV stations. Maybe someone would write a paperback book series with him as the hero. Call it Earl Armalide, Super-Survivalist. He liked the sound of that. He pressed the accelerator to the floorboard and wondered if they'd let him write the first book himself. In the control tower, Colonel Jack Dellingsworth Rader watched as a pickup truck barreled onto the runway and screeched to a halt at the side of the Yuri Gagarin. A man clambered from the cab, pulled himself onto the roof, and jumped into the shuttle's open hatch. Before he disappeared inside, Radar saw that he was bristling with weapons.