Gridlock and Other Stories Part 2

"h.e.l.lo, Fred," Bahmani said. His Cambridge accent was as incongruous as the turban he wore.

"Where's Robertson?"

"Brig. I am his backup. Anything to report?"

"Have you heard about Sequoia National Park?"

Sta.s.sel nodded. Sixty hours earlier, a Mexican jumbo freighter masquerading as a commercial airline flight had broken through the Pacific Air Defense Identification Zone. Their target had been the giant redwoods. A thousand tons of highly toxic herbicides were dumped on the ancient trees. Reports from the area indicated lethality had reached eighty percent in some stands of trees.

"I picked up some Ecocrat orator on my last pa.s.s over the States," Bahmani said. "He was haranguing the faithful, urging them to rise up and smite the greasers. Things won't hold together much longer, I'm afraid."

"I'll keep an eye on it," Sta.s.sel said. He snapped to attention, his boots held to the tetrahedral grid set in the deck by mechanical clamps. He saluted the Indian. "I relieve you, sir," he stated formally.

Bahmani did the same. "The station is yours to command, sir," he replied, completing the formula.

"Good luck, Fred. You are going to need it."

Then he was gone head first down the transfer tube. Sta.s.sel shut the hatch behind him and began peeling off his suit. Minutes later, two metallic clicks and a muted clang announced the departure of the shuttle.

Sta.s.sel grabbed a sandwich from the galley and munched thoughtfully as he studied the tactical briefing tapes and the situation display Bahmani had left in the control center. The Indian was right.

Things did not look good.

Sta.s.sel lay in the command couch of PCS Alpha-Nine and sipped tea from a hot squeeze bulb. The tea left a bitter aftertaste in his mouth. Before him were a dozen screens over which his eyes roamed ceaselessly. On the large central screen was a view of all of the Mexican State of Sonora and small patches of the Sea of Cortez and the southernmost region of Arizona.

Around the edge of the big screen were smaller screens, each with a different view. In one, he could see the long form of the satellite laser module, half in sun and half in dark, a semi-cylinder that appeared stationary against the ever-changing image of the planet. In other screens, he saw views transmitted from low orbiting reconnaissance satellites, zipping in a north-south orbit just beyond the limits of atmosphere. He glanced at the position map, noting that Alpha-Nine had just crossed the equator headed north. For the next four hours, Sta.s.sel would be over the crisis area and would be subjected to the awful strain that can come from harboring mixed loyalties.

On the one hand, he was an officer in the Peace Enforcers and sworn to uphold the peace and the rulings of the Security Council. On the other, what if the goals were mutually exclusive? The S.C. was impotent, a mere squabbling band of grasping politicians who were going to let everything he and so many others had worked for be flushed down the drain. Sta.s.sel liked Mexicans -- How could he help but like them? Alicia had been one -- and like most Europeans, he found Americans to be overbearing,brash, and insensitive boors. In fact, they were a nation of Smiley Burgesses.

Nevertheless, this was one time when they were the injured party and the underdogs were in the wrong. It was anti-Americanism in the Security Council that emasculated the Peace Enforcers. Sta.s.sel scanned his screens and shuddered at the thought of what he would do if the Mexicans chose the time when he orbited overhead to step up the pressure. What they were doing was wrong, and it stuck in his craw to have to sit back and let them get away with it. Better for everyone if the next Mexican raid came during Hsin Liu's watch when Beta-Nine was in the Northern Hemisphere.

What about it, Alicia? Would you have destroyed Carlsbad over a sugar beet? Could you have brought yourself to follow orders and kill the thousand-year-old redwoods? How about Lake Mead? After all, it is a manmade lake rather than a natural one. Does that somehow make it right?

Alicia did not answer. In Sta.s.sel's opinion, she did not have to. She had loved the beauty of nature and to think she would have had anything to do with its destruction was ludicrous ... at least, to him.

An hour later he licked tongue over dry lips and watched a death duel take place ten thousand meters above the twin border towns of Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora. A dozen planes wheeled, and stooped, and dodged in a deadly dance of sputtering guns and sprinting missiles. Sta.s.sel watched the fight through the eyes of a low-level reconnaissance satellite. He followed the progress of the battle by means of an array of sensors ranging from infrared scanners to side looking radar. The quick thrusts and parries of the combatants were spelled out in glowing electronic symbols on the face of the main screen.

Sta.s.sel inhaled sharply as the tiny dot of a missile merged with the image of a plane. He tasted bile and smelled the stink of involuntary fear. His eyes burned from too little sleep and too much time spent in the command couch in the last seventy-two hours. On the screen, the wounded plane began its death dive Earthward as the missile exploded under one wing.

Sta.s.sel sighed heavily and released the couch armrest from his white-knuckle grip as he turned his attention away from the battle. Monitoring its progress was the job of specialists aboard the s.p.a.ce station. He had another job to do.

As deadly as it was, the dogfight was a sideshow.

Pilots were fighting and dying down there in a militarily senseless engagement. Six Mexican fighters had crossed the border to attack a like number of American planes. They had no hope of success. Even now, the American reinforcements were swarming south to help their brethren. However, the men who had ordered the attack were not stupid. Their actions to date had been near brilliant in their reading of the international situation, as evidenced by the knots that they had managed to tie the Security Council into. Therefore, their purpose in initiating hostilities had to be something more than a straightforward provocation.

The dogfight was obviously a diversion. The Mexicans knew it, the Peace Enforcers knew it, and the Americans knew it. Peace Control Satellite Alpha-Nine, orbiting over 10 degrees north lat.i.tude, 110 degrees west longitude, scanned the battleground with powerful sensors. The electronic brain of the satellite sorted through a forest of information looking for that one telltale return that would indicate the presence of an unseen intruder. The bandit would be low and fast, and incorporate every concealment device possible. But it had to be there. No other explanation of the air battle raging below made sense, Suddenly there it was in the lower right hand corner of the big screen. A flickering blue dot with a string of green symbols beside it. The raider was on the deck, hugging the ground as it screamed atMach 1 through a series of mountain pa.s.ses and dry river valleys. It followed a path that offered the maximum in concealment for a low flying airplane. In fact, Sta.s.sel noted with grim satisfaction, it was much the same course followed by two generations of aerial drug smugglers. Having spotted the raider, Sta.s.sel ordered the whole array of sensors...o...b..ard Alpha-Nine and the string of recon satellites to focus on the speeding dot of t.i.tanium and high alloy steel.

Then he sat back nervously to wait. The computers would record all the information they could glean from the ma.s.s of data being collected. From that information, they would be able to guess the raider's armament, his probable future course, and with luck, his target.

Three minutes of data collection confirmed his worst fears. The intruder was trailing a minuscule wake of ionized particles. In itself, it meant little, but knowing that the situation was getting as desperate in Mexico City as Was.h.i.+ngton, he had little doubt as to the cause. Having trained in similar fighters, he could picture the red tipped missile slung at the midpoint of each wing, its high explosive warhead cladded with radioisotopes harvested from commercial power plant waste. A sheath of metal that would become deadly radioactive shrapnel fragments when the missile exploded. If the raider managed to launch his weapons, the resulting explosion would contaminate an area five hundred meters in radius and the contamination would remain dangerous for decades. Any spot where the explosion occurred would be effectively defiled for the remainder of the lives of everyone living.

Sta.s.sel broke into a cold sweat at the thought. To use such a weapon at Carlsbad had been bad enough. However, a cavern did contain the fallout. Most of the non-American-press had gone to great lengths to point that out in their stories on the raid. Third Worlders had used the point with telling effect in their defense of the Mexicans in the Security Council. However, to use an isotope warhead in the open air was something else again. World opinion would never forgive them for it.

Sta.s.sel punched a communicator key with shaking hand. "h.e.l.lo, Control, this is Alpha-Nine. I have a bandit at grid Bravo-Gamma-Three-One-Eight. He is hot. I repeat, he is hot!"

"We have him, Alpha-Nine," the Combat Center Operator aboard the s.p.a.ce station replied.

Sta.s.sel thought he detected a tense undertone in the man's voice. It was nothing like the bored acknowledgment he usually got from the CCO. He must realize that this may be the spark that puts Civilization to the torch , Sta.s.sel thought.

A fan-shaped area shaded in blue flashed on the screen, with its apex at the blinking blue spot that was the raider. The satellite brain had computed the probable flight path of the bandit. Spotted across the face of the big screen was a scattering of red dots with tiny vector arrows pointed down. These represented the position and course of American planes drawn out by the dogfight over Nogales. The intruder continued his zigzagging northern course. The Americans were seemingly unaware of his presence as yet. Their positions showed they were in rough search formation rather than having s.h.i.+fted to the more purposeful attack order. With the establishment of the Peace Enforcers, the UN had taken control of all the surveillance devices beyond the atmosphere. It put the various nations at more than a small disadvantage.

Sta.s.sel extended the probable flight path of the raider. As he did so, a white ellipse formed on the face of the screen. This was the computer's estimate of the target area, based on the raider's speed and fuel situation. The ellipse was centered on the Grand Canyon National Park.

Sta.s.sel cursed the depths of stupidity to which human beings could be driven by injured pride. He reached for the transmit b.u.t.ton. "He's after the Grand Canyon, Control," he said with a quaver in his voice. Gott im Himmel, let me be wrong! He thought as he punched for a list of possible targets in the Grand Canyon.The list was displayed on one of the auxiliary screens and was relatively short. The Grand Canyon was a huge place, a fact that had been drilled into him that long ago day when he had hiked down from Hualapai Hilltop. It was far too large an object to be held hostage in this game of environmental blackmail. Even a full-fledged nuclear weapon would have had trouble leaving its mark. Therefore, an aircraft armed with an isotope warhead would be aimed at a smaller target, an enclave within the greater National Park. First on the list of probable targets, just as he knew it would be, was Havasu Falls.

Sta.s.sel cursed the day he had decided to follow in his father's footsteps. He cursed the father of that unseen, misguided patriot who was being bounced around by wicked thermals and wind shears 37,000 kilometers below him. Most of all he cursed the Security Council and the UN in general for letting him get into this situation.

They were not after some picture in a travel brochure this time, a place he had never been and would never miss. They were after Alicia's place! The beautiful azure-green pool with its indescribable waterfall would become the deadly center of a radioactive cloud within minutes. No more would lovers swim in the icy water of Havasu Creek, to lie in the gathering dark and compete with the roar of the falls as they talked of the future. Possibly, the last place on Earth that had yet to see a parking lot would be no more.

And he had orders to let it happen.

Take no action without orders... Wait for the Security Council to vote Censure before we move ... It is your duty to obey your superiors, Friedrich. You keep that in mind. (Yes, Father) ... I need men in orbit who can keep their heads and do their duty. Can you? ... (I think so, Herr General.) All the authority figures he had ever known poured out of Sta.s.sel's memory. There had been his father, the proud s.p.a.ceman. There had been his science teacher in die gymnasium ("Excel at everything you do, young man"). There had been his first unit commander after he had returned to Germany from training in America. Major Von Brandt had helped put him back on the track after Alicia's death. It had been Von Brandt who had steered him toward the Peace Enforcers.

However, all of these stern images were suddenly overshadowed by a quiet, black-eyed face that stared up at him as she had done in life. "It is wrong, Friedrich. Don't let the misguided fools do it."

He made his decision and punched to energize the manual controls for the laser.

The long cylinder that was the laser module rotated on an auxiliary screen as raw, unfiltered sunlight flashed brilliantly from its flanks. On the main situation screen, a tiny black cross inside an aiming circle appeared and moved toward the blue dot of the raider. It had traversed half the distance to the bandit when the emergency communicator alarm erupted in his ears. He hurriedly shut off the alarm with his left hand while still controlling the motion of the laser with his right.

Colonel Shetland's angry face appeared on one of the small screens. "What the h.e.l.l do you think you are doing, Sta.s.sel?"

"What, Colonel?" he asked, not taking his eyes off the target.

"Why have you activated your laser?"

"Activated my laser? You have to be kidding. All my dials show normal here," he said. In spite of himself, he could not help grinning at the thought of Colonel Shetland's face turning red with rage. Hestole a quick glance at the screen and gasped. She had pa.s.sed the red stage and was well on her way to purple.

"By G.o.d, Sta.s.sel, shut that d.a.m.ned thing down!"

He suddenly gave up trying to bluff her. She had too many readouts that told her what was going on to be fooled by his denials. d.a.m.ned Gestapo and her spy cameras! He thought.

"Why should I, Colonel?"

The cross was centered on the raider's image on the big screen. He locked the laser on target and set the pumps into operation. He imagined he could hear their high-pitched whine in the laser module as they precharged the combustion chamber with fuel. Of course, he was wrong. The umbilical that held the two halves of the satellite together did not transmit sound.

"Because it is a direct order from a superior officer!" she screamed.

"Not good enough, Colonel. Think up some other reason."

"Because you will be starting World War III."

Suddenly indecision swept over him. Did he alone have the right to make such a decision? Could he risk the world just to save a bit of natural beauty that happened to have personal significance? What about all the people who had never seen Havasu Falls and could care less? Didn't they deserve a vote too?

Shetland saw the indecision on his face and knew that she had won. Her manner was suddenly calm, her voice soothing. "Come on, Fred. Shut down. You are minus on your sleep. If you were thinking clearly you would never even consider this."

The big screen suddenly blurred in front of him as tears welled up in his eyes. "But they are after Alicia's place," he pleaded. "I can't just let them destroy it without doing anything to save it."

Shetland looked perplexed, running his service record over in her brain. Then recognition showed in her eyes. "Oh, the incident during your training. The girl who was killed in the accident," she said, her eyebrows furled in bewilderment. "Is that what this is all about?" She threw back her head and laughed.

It was the first time Sta.s.sel had ever heard the sound issue from between her lips. "Don't tell me you are ready to blow up the world because of some long dead girl friend?"

"Do you know a better reason?"he screamed, a red rage blocking out all else as his finger stabbed at the firing stud.

An invisible pulse of light erupted from the end of the laser module. And 37,000 kilometers below, a pencil beam of light sheared through the tail surfaces of an aircraft skimming the surface of a dry desert arroyo. There was no time for the unsuspecting pilot to react. Before he could comprehend what was happening, he was the center of a cartwheeling ma.s.s of sc.r.a.p metal and flame and a towering cloud of dry, brown dust.

Sta.s.sel leaned back in his couch and s.h.i.+vered, his hands shaking out of control. There would be no turning back now. If the world wanted to blow itself up, he had just given it a good excuse. He turned to Colonel Shetland, still staring out of the screen at him, horror on her face.

"You've just killed us all," she whispered, unable to find her voice"Maybe," he replied, feeling washed out and listless, but at peace with himself for the first time in years. "But maybe I just saved us, too. You can come get me anytime, Colonel. I'll surrender peacefully."

Jan Pieter Heugens sat once more behind his desk and watched storm clouds gather over the New York skyline. This storm seemed somehow less gloomy than the one a week before. It was suddenly a bright new day. That morning he had caught himself whistling in front of the bathroom mirror while shaving. It had been years since he'd done that. Not since Katrina had died, in fact. The intercom on his desk buzzed.

"General Heinemann is here to see you," his secretary said. "And President Warren is reported to be in the building."

"Fine, send the General in now."

The door opened and a man with close cropped, graying hair stepped through into the office. He wore the black and silver uniform of the Luftwaffe and the blue beret of the UN Peace Enforcers.

"Good to see you again, w.i.l.l.y," Heugens said.

"No more 'Bernard', Mr. Secretary-General?" Heinemann asked.

"I think Mr. Bernard can safely die now, don't you'?"

"What is the purpose of this meeting? I have urgent duties aboard Atlantic Station. As you may well guess, things are a bit unsettled right now."

"It won't take long, w.i.l.l.y. In fact..."

The intercom buzzed again. "The President is here, sir."

"Send him in, Miss Callahan."

Heugens stood and crossed to the door as a photogenic middle aged man entered. Heugens thrust out his hand to have it grasped in a firm grip. "How are you, Mr. President?"

"Well. And you, Mr. Secretary-General?" Heugens noted with amus.e.m.e.nt that Warren stood half turned for the benefit of the television cameras in the outer office. Then the door closed, cutting off the glare of the media lights, and the pose was suddenly gone. "Kind of public for a meeting of a cabal, isn't it?"

"Don't worry," Heugens replied. "I am also meeting with Amba.s.sador Torres this morning. We are going to discuss 'the international situation', as it is called. Mr. President, I would like to present General Heinemann of the Peace Enforcers."

"The man we have to thank for this happy state of affairs?"

Heinemann stood to attention and clicked his heels. "Not I entirely, sir."

"Ah yes," the President said. "Where is the young Captain who fired the shot heard round the world? I wanted especially to meet him."General Heinemann s.h.i.+fted nervously from foot to foot. "I'm afraid that is impossible, Mr.

President. Colonel Shetland has him locked up aboard Atlantic Station. She is bound and determined to see him shot."

The President frowned. "You aren't going to let that happen, are you?"

"No, we are not," Heugens said. "I'm afraid Hauptmann Sta.s.sel's career in the Peace Enforcers is ended, but we will not waste him. He's too valuable a man for that."

"Good. He should be rewarded beyond his wildest dreams. Without him, the Council would still be stalemated. By the way, when is the vote?"

"This afternoon," Heugens said. "Torres is so incensed that he demanded it with no delay. Of course, he does not know that four of the delegates who have been making noises of sympathy at him are my agents. So he will be greatly surprised by the vote."

"You are sure we will win?"

"Positive, Mr. President. When it came out that the Mexicans were using isotope warheads, their goose was cooked. It's all over but the shouting."

Warren nodded, a half smile on his lips. "That's great. Tell me something, Mr. Secretary-General.

Just how did you do it?"

Heugens turned to the General. "Want to tell him, w.i.l.l.y?"

The General nodded. "I've known Sta.s.sel's family for years, Mr. President. I served with his father aboard a German cruiser before the UN took over the national s.p.a.ce navies. Sta.s.sel's father was something of a ... how do you say it? ... A maverick. He was the type of man who did his duty as he saw it and worried about following orders later.

"I figured that Sta.s.sel had a lot of his father in him. So, I called him into my office and gave him my Good-Germans-always-follow-orders speech. It bothered him. I could see it in the way he squirmed in his chair. Meanwhile, the S-G infiltrated one of his spies into the Mexican hierarchy and suggested the attack on your national monument that had the most meaning to Sta.s.sel. From there on, nature took its course."

The President looked doubtful. "Come on, General. I have seen the tapes. There was a moment there when this Colonel Shetland of yours had him on the ropes."

Heinemann laughed. "Poor, Irma. She is one of those who see conspiracies everywhere she looks.

Come to think of it, all UN Political Officers are like that. When she saw that Sta.s.sel had activated his laser, she conjured up visions of some huge international conspiracy."

Heugens chuckled. "She was more right than wrong, too. Otherwise the three of us wouldn't be here."

The General nodded. "True, but Sta.s.sel didn't know that. So, Shetland got him calmed down at the last second and found out that he was ready to shoot, not because of a conspiracy, but for this girl he once loved. The incongruity of it was too much for her. She burst into an explosion of laughter ... almost an attack of relief. It was exactly the wrong thing to do. Sta.s.sel's psychological profile shows he has an unreasoning fear of being laughed at. When Irma broke down, it was just like thrusting a dagger into him. He fired that laser in angry reflex, without thinking."Warren smiled. "Remind me to send Colonel Shetland a thank you note in about twenty years."

Heugens shook his head slowly from side to side. "I don't think she would appreciate that, Mr.

President."

Author's Note for Duty, Honor, Planet: