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Chapter 4

I awakened to the sea-bright sunshine pouring into my bedroom on Cajon. Untangling myself from my sleeping bag — I was too sleepy when I returned from the Bay to unpack my box of sheets and blankets — I tugged on my jeans and hotfooted across the scorching deck, its rails covered with white trumpet flowers amid the green vines. At the stairs I plucked an orange for breakfast. After savouring the sweet fruit, I fried some bacon and scrambled a couple of eggs left over from the drive down. While I ate in my dining nook, I gazed past my neighbours’ roofs to the Pacific stretching blue to the horizon under a cloudless sky.

The remnants of the late morning and early afternoon were spent doing settling-in chores. I walked along Hillcrest Drive to the Boat Canyon Safeway, a half-mile distant, to stock up on grits. Later I cranked up the Volksie and steered downtown to Pacific Bell to arrange to have my phone connected.

I fretted about the impending 9:00 p.m. gathering the rest of the afternoon. My resolve had been to produce more of my thesis. I’d have to report to Dr. Bulgy next week, but if I stuck to my desk all weekend, perhaps I could still craft enough pages to salvage something of his good graces.

When I spread my primary material and manuscript on the bedroom desk and poised my fingers over the keyboard of my trusty portable typewriter, my attention ebbed. I rehearsed again my uncertainty about whether to phone Janey. Yet the need to concentrate on the thesis was the ideal excuse not to dither further about calling her before the term began on Monday. That left me to mull over my concern about the evening meeting at Guantanamero Bay.

I considered walking over to Emma’s to let her know I was back, rap with her about developments in SDS, and seek her opinion on the satellite idea. Before our gathering at the Bay broke up last night, though, we had agreed not to mention the satellite proposal to anybody else except on a need-to-know basis. I could always swear Emma to secrecy. But more to the point, I could predict her reaction. She’d deem the plan a frivolous diversion from the task of building an effective opposition to U.S. imperialism abroad and its attendant forms of oppression at home.

At my desk, at some point, I accepted that I was too preoccupied to think about the thesis. I went out to the deck to roll up and store my tent, which I’d left airing. That task accomplished, I sat on the recliner in the sunshine to resolve once and for all whether I also thought the scheme was a frivolous diversion, and whether I was even going to keep the 9:00 p.m. appointment.

One slogan both sides had chanted at the June SDS convention had been: “Less talk, more action.” What Pump and Jay had in mind was certainly action. But I knew from many an SDS debate about tactics that an action could have more negative results than positive ones.

I decided I needed more information to better assess whether Jay and Pump were competent to undertake the venture, and whether the risks of tagging along were ones I was willing to take. If the scheme went ahead without me, my stature as some sort of radical would be diminished forever in their eyes. Yet how important was it for me to live up to an image held by people I’d only met the night before?

I stretched out on the recliner to focus on possible consequences arising from the impending evening. Resting my eyelids also registered with me as an aid to ascertaining the best course to follow. When I woke, it was past four and I went inside. While I was mixing some meat loaf for supper, I resolved I might as well show up at the Bay to learn the status of the plan. I more than half expected to be greeted by Edward telling me that Jay’s and Pump’s wacko notion had evaporated in the day’s hot sunshine.

* * * * *

Just before nine I arrived at Guantanamero Bay to find Remi already there drinking a beer in the living room. He told me that Pump and Jay had stopped by his place earlier in the day and that he was open to hearing what was afoot.

A UCI fine arts major, Remi appeared more military than either Pump or Jay. He had close-cropped blond hair and a parade-square-trim moustache. Habitually, he wore cowboy boots and jeans, though his girlfriend, Meg, had embroidered a flower on the flare of each denim leg. His frequent cool-weather attire was a U.S. Army jacket, with the name tag above the breast pocket reading: warhol. Remi had been friends with a nephew of the famed Pop artist since both had attended the same Santa Cruz high school. The garment had been obtained by Remi after his pal was drafted.

Remi was professionally brusque in delivering his opinion on any matter, as befitted a man who had read one too many Hemingway novels. I had become friends with him because his ambition was to eventually be a fine arts journalist rather than a painter. He had sought me out when Edward or somebody had told him about my background as a reporter. Our paths probably would have crossed regardless, due to the Edward-Willow-Meg connection. Actually, I liked his canvases. The painting of his I most admired was a four-foot-by-eight-foot rectangle divided into two squares of contrasting background colours: one grey and one red. In the centre of each was, respectively, a sideways head-and-torso silhouette self-portrait and a similar depiction of Meg. These silhouettes, which faced each other, were painted in the background hue of the adjoining square. The two figures each extended an arm toward the other, offering an open hand. The tip of each of their middle fingers nearly touched across the boundary between the panels. Yet in the instant of the picture, each figure remained confined within its solipsistic block of colour.

In his day-to-day behaviour, Remi struggled to reconcile his intent of being a man’s man with his artistic pursuits. He was contemptuous of much of the peace movement’s activities and slogans. Yet he exhibited an identical attitude toward government pronouncements seeking to justify the Vietnam conflict. I had noticed him lounging on the fringes of some on-campus anti-war rallies, and from our conversations I knew he admired gutsy resistance to the establishment. He spoke favourably, for example, about Tommie Smith and John Carlos giving the Black Power salute from the winners’ podium at the Mexico Olympics the previous October. More than once he said if he was Vietnamese he’d fight for the Vietcong, and if he was black he would be a Panther. Part of his opposition to the war, I was convinced, was his sense that in this confrontation the United States was the bully, and not the despite-the-odds, come-from-behind battler Remi believed was the quintessential American stance.

When Edward wandered in to join us, to my surprise his references to the satellite scheme, though still negative, had undergone a subtle shift: I could now detect in his comments a whiff of attraction to the plan. Probably his brother had worked on him. While he continued to be scornful of the concept of a Woodstock Nation, I could sense a draw for Edward in being able to hint to other people, in his trademark Mr. Mysterioso style, that he possessed inside knowledge about a daring event.

While we waited for the surfers to ascend from their downstairs bedroom, Pump and Jay appeared with some Mendocino grass they had scored that afternoon and whose qualities they were enthusiastic about. I found the smoke unusually searing in my throat and nasal passages.

The meeting finally convened with Jay announcing he and Pump now advocated strictly a reconnaissance this evening. They had concocted, too, some arguments to counter Edward’s cautions. “Far from the Feds catching us, man,” Pump enthused, “they won’t even know where the satellite came from. All they’ll know is there’s a new one in orbit.”

“They might calculate eventually that the launch site was in Southern California,” Jay admitted. “They might even get hip after a while to which bird flew. But we’ll be long gone by then. If we don’t leave fingerprints or drop our wallets, and if we can keep our mouths shut, even if they trace the launch to the Sitton site, how can they ID who did it?”

“Hmm,” Remi said. I could see he was intrigued.

“’Fess up, boys,” Edward said. “You’re just shit-disturbers. You don’t really care about Woodstock or the so-called Woodstock Nation.”

“Not true, man,” Pump shot back.

“Even if it was true,” Jay said, “it’d be a gas ripping off the army. They got two years of my life, and I’d sure like to get one of their missiles. That would make it almost a fair trade.”

“Right on!” Pump chimed in.

Edward began a speech about the need for absolute secrecy, rehearsing again the list of crimes for which he claimed we could be charged. I was aware, however, that my anxiety was reduced somewhat when Pump and Jay detailed the likelihood of us doing the deed and escaping any repercussions. Nor could I decide where to put my foot down to extricate myself from further entanglement. Was there any harm in having a look-see? I assured myself that at any juncture in the evening’s escapade I could announce this was the limit I was prepared to go. Yet before I fully sorted out all the pros and cons of participating, I was stepping into the back of Willow’s microbus while Pump and Jay hoisted themselves into Jay’s Econoline.

On the route out of town, after arranging to meet Jay and Pump at a gas station in South Laguna where they aimed to refuel, the five of us in Willow’s microbus rolled by Alan’s to inquire if he was interested in joining the expedition. He had phoned Guantanamero Bay during the afternoon to announce his return to his abode of the previous year in Glomstad Lane. Like Emma, he rented the ground-floor apartment of a small house. The area he lived in differed, though, from the districts of Laguna inhabited by the rest of us, where streets rose steeply but regularly up the hillside. Glomstad Lane was a curving goat track, wide enough for much of its length to permit only a single vehicle to inch along it. The lane was situated in a small box canyon, reachable only by tracing a labyrinth of similar narrow, winding streets, with houses perched chaotically on the slopes lining the way. Lush vegetation masked driveways, street names, carports, and the dwellings themselves.

At Alan’s our carload trooped inside for a flurry of greetings and reminiscences. Our host was watching television on his ancient set, which featured two large circular control dials protruding above the screen; the model had been dubbed the Frog for its uncanny resemblance to the head of that reptile. Alan declined to accompany us once he had sworn not to repeat a word to anybody and Edward had provided him with a sketchy account of our destination. “Mission: Impossible’s on,” Alan explained. “It’s a rerun, but I haven’t seen it. Let me know what happens, though,” he said as we filed out his door again.

We retraced the maze of streets back toward the highway, having to reverse once to a wider spot to allow an oncoming late-model Plymouth Fury to squeeze by. At last we intersected Glenneyre, which paralleled PCH a block inland through much of the southern half of Laguna. Moments later our Volksie rendezvoused with Jay’s van, and we were putt-putting south behind him toward Dana Point through the dusk. We turned onto Highway 74 by Doheny State Beach, motored through San Juan Capistrano, and began to rise into the Santa Anas.

Driving the two-lane up into the uninhabited inland hills, we encountered no other cars. Few side roads appeared in our lights once we passed the sign announcing our entry into the spectacularly misnamed national forest. Several miles later Jay’s turn signal started to flash. We slowed, then negotiated an unmarked turnoff from the asphalt.

After parking our vehicles far enough off the highway to be unobservable by passing cars, we trudged for twenty minutes up a rutted dirt road that threaded through shadowy arroyos and over small ridges. The decision had been made to proceed without lights except as needed. As we climbed, a black jumble of boulders, scrub, and spiked agave stretched in every direction, with low trees in the bottom of the draws. The shoes of the seven of us produced so muted a sound on the dusty track that occasionally I was startled by a clinking noise ahead or beside us. Something had scrabbled away from our presence, or perhaps from a threat posed by more dangerous predators in the darkness.

Very little was said; people mainly concentrated on propelling themselves upward over the uneven ground. Once I heard subdued giggling from where Jay and Pump strode in the lead. Edward stubbed his toe on a rock and uttered a restrained string of curses. Otherwise, the starry night belonged to those who usually inhabited this wilderness.

At last the road curved up out of a gulch, and the outline of a high industrial fence loomed against the sky. Pump and Jay released whoops of delight. The obstacle that blocked our path extended across the mountainside into the blackness. We halted before a gate reinforced with metal bars, securely chained and padlocked. A smaller, person-size door, also padlocked shut, had been incorporated into the gate’s design. Jay swept his flashlight along the stretch of chain-link fence topped with barbed wire either side of the gate, revealing the warning that now confronted us, plus identical notices posted every dozen feet or SO: U.S. GOVERNMENT. ABSOLUTELY NO TRESPASSING. UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY SUBJECT TO SEVERE PENALTIES. ARMED PATROLS.

“Armed patrols,” Willow whispered. Her tone captured perfectly the surge of dread I experienced reading the words.

“Speak up, Willow,” Pump said. “Nobody around but us.”

She pointed at the sign. “What about this?” she whispered again. “Armed patrols? Severe penalties?”

“That’s just to scare you, man,” Pump said.

“It works, as far as I’m concerned,” I admitted. In the light from somebody’s flashlight, Willow, I thought, aimed a grateful glance my way.

A plan that had made some sense in the Bay’s living room, my mind full of delectable smoke, had acquired more threatening associations as I scanned the sign. My status as an accomplice to what could only be considered a break-and-enter appeared more ominous in the black desert night. This was no ordinary B and E, but a B and E with serious federal implications.

“These sites are abandoned,” Jay said. “We know. We mothballed them.”

“The sign doesn’t look like they’re abandoned,” Willow insisted, her voice louder.

“Why would they patrol a sealed-off site?” Pump asked. “The army has other things to do than guard every decommissioned facility. They put up shit like this to spook people from getting too near.”

“Most sites, signs were up even before we finished,” Jay said. “There never were armed guards around.”

“No tracks,” Phil said.

We looked at him.

“Shine your lights on the road,” he suggested. Four beams complied. “See? No tire tracks. If there were patrols, they’d have to enter and leave by this gate.”

We stared at the undisturbed dust. I felt a little less nervous.

“Couldn’t they have hiked up here like us?” Willow asked.

“Nobody’s footprints except ours.”

“Stand clear,” Pump said. He slung his pack off his shoulders, extracted a crowbar, and strode meaningfully toward the gate.

“Just a minute,” Jay said “Hold it!” ordered Edward.

Pump stopped.

“Gloves,” Jay reminded him.

Pump returned to his pack, drew on a pair of work gloves, and advanced toward the fence again.

“We can’t leave evidence,” Jay explained.

“Hold it, Pump,” Edward repeated. “Are we sure we want to do this?”

No one spoke for a moment. Then Remi announced in his take-charge voice: “Bet your ass we do.”

For a few seconds, on the rock-strewn slopes of Sitton Peak in the Santa Ana Mountains, Remi’s curt declaration in favour of breaking into the fenced-off area was met with silence. Before anybody resumed discussion of the subject, though, Pump inserted his crowbar into the padlock that fastened the door-size opening. A grating, rasping noise echoed loudly around the hills. Pump kicked the broken padlock aside from where it had fallen and swung the portal wide. “Last one in is a rotten egg.” He gestured toward the gap as if to conduct us across.

We glanced at one another. Nobody seemed inclined to shift. Then Jay strode past Pump, crossed over the threshold, and faced us from the other side. “Didn’t we agree we’d do a recon? Are you wimps chickening out?”

Nobody answered.

Pump returned the crowbar and gloves to his pack, shrugged into the straps, and marched through the opening in the gate to join Jay. “Looks like you and I have to do this alone, buddy.”

“Nobody’s around for miles,” Jay stressed to us. “They seal these sites and forget them. Maybe once a year somebody comes by. But like Phil said — no tracks. And they aren’t going to do an annual inspection in the middle of the night.”

“Pay no attention to these weenies,” Pump said. “Let’s hit it, man.”

“Even if by some miracle we got busted,” Jay continued, “we’ll simply say we were out here partying, saw the gate ajar, and decided to poke around.”

“And we just happened to be carrying a crowbar?” Edward said.

“Okay, we’ll stash the crowbar.”

Remi moved toward the gate. “Sounds like a solution.”

I had to admit Jay’s suggestion did seem a plausible excuse to offer if things went terribly wrong. The cops might get down on law-breaking partiers, but were unlikely to be as heavy if they tagged us as spies or saboteurs sneaking into a national defence installation. The rest of us must have reached similar conclusions, since our group pressed forward after Remi.

Willow paused a few feet inside. “Shouldn’t we leave a lookout in case the Highway Patrol or somebody drives up?”

“You want to stay out here?” Phil asked.

No one relished the idea of remaining behind in the dark.

“This is where Alan would’ve come in handy,” Willow said.

All but Pump and Jay laughed. The image of our pudgy friend lurking among the rocks keeping watch was comical. Except when Alan was drunk and belligerently confronting the Laguna cops at our parties, he was notorious for being sedentary.

As we stepped cautiously inward from the fenced perimeter of the site, we approached a low mound, roughly circular, about twenty feet in diameter and three feet high. Jay all at once ran up onto it and struck a heroic pose. Pump began to circumnavigate the structure, his flashlight beam traversing back and forth across an area several feet out from the mound.

“What are you looking for, Pump?” Phil called. Despite Pump’s and Jay’s insistence that we were alone on the mountain, his voice was low.

“Personnel entrance.”

“Don’t we go in through the silo?” Willow inquired.

“What does the entrance look like?” Phil asked.

Jay dashed down the mound to rejoin us. “A hatch. Like a manhole. When the sites were operational, there were walkways that led to it. They’ve been —”

“Found it!” Pump called.

We assembled where he was crouched, his flashlight illuminating his right hand whisking gravel to one side. Parts of what looked like a city sewer manhole cover were appearing.

“That’s how we get in?” Edward asked.

Pump grinned. “Dig it — the Revere silos were pretty primitive. They built them fast and declared them obsolete fast.”

“Minuteman installations are a lot more elaborate,” Jay concurred. “They’ve got outbuildings with elevators you take down to your station. Some sites have clusters of birds, every one a MIRV.”

Willow frowned. “MIRV?”

“Equipped with more than one warhead.”

Pump straightened and added, “Multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle.”

I could see that the exposed cover was padlocked to a metal staple set into the encircling concrete.

“Where’s the jimmy?” Jay asked.

Pump was already struggling out of his pack.

“Weren’t we going to ditch the crowbar?” Edward demanded.

“I figured we might need it for something else,” Pump said. “Once we pry the entrance open, we’ll stash it.”

“Useless fucking hippies,” Edward said. “Can’t trust a word they say.”

Pump extracted the implement. “Lighten up, man.”

“Gloves,” Remi reminded him.

Pump pulled the gloves out of the pack, and a second later was easing the hinged manhole cover upward. He put the sprung-open padlock beside the concrete and disappeared toward the fence with the crowbar. The underside of the cover bore a notice:

WARNING

Entrance to this facility

without proper authorization

constitutes a felony under

the National Defense Secrets Act.

Severe Penalties.

By the time Pump returned, Jay was already clambering down into the opening. Remi followed, with Pump close behind.

“Let’s go, Wayman,” Edward said, lowering himself into the tube.

I gazed around the dim and desolate landscape. When I peered into the manhole, I could make out flickers of light some distance below and the top of Edward’s head receding down the shaft. Phil and Willow were bunched behind me.

My nervousness about the entire venture had swelled at the prospect of climbing underground. Spelunking had never been my thing. “I don’t know about this,” I managed.

“Want me to go next?” Phil asked.

I briefly considered volunteering to remain topside to serve as lookout.

Then a muffled shout from Edward floated out of the hatch. “Way-man! Come on!”

I hoisted a leg over the rim and onto the first rung of the vertical ladder. Clutching the concrete, I located the second rung with my feet and then the third. I bent so that my hands grasped the metal of the topmost rung. Then I was smoothly descending, with Phil’s bulk blocking the stars above me.

“About ten feet more,” Edward’s voice directed.

“We should have lights in a minute,” I heard Pump call out.

My foot touched a steel plate. I stood beside Edward at the foot of the ladder.

“What do you think, Pump?” Jay asked.

They had removed the cover of a metal electrical box on the wall of what appeared to be a concrete antechamber. The flashlights were throwing strange shadows as Pump fussed with something deep inside the box. Phil stepped from the ladder.

Fluorescent light flooded down. Blinking, I could see we faced a featureless steel door resembling an institutional fire door. The same informative sign as on the manhole cover was affixed to the metal. The shaft leading to the surface — which Willow’s jean-clad legs currently were descending — and the small room I was in were lined with cables of various thicknesses.

Pump and Jay remained with their faces in the electrical panel. “We’re going to have to short-circuit the damn door,” Pump announced. “It’s keyed to an electrically conducting security card, which of course we don’t have.”

Jay rummaged in the pack and passed Jay a long screwdriver. “We think we can bypass the system by zapping the door circuit.”

“You think you can get it to —” began Willow.

A shower of sparks shot out of the electrical box, causing Pump and Jay to jump back, bumping into Edward, who had crowded in to observe them. A puff of smoke rose along the edge of the door frame.

“You sure this isn’t wired to some detection apparatus that will alert somebody we’re here?” Edward asked.

“If they had such a device, we’d have installed it,” his brother said, dismissing Edward’s concern.

The door had opened inward an inch. Jay pushed it wider with the plastic handle of his screwdriver. He and Pump, who again had donned the backpack, preceded us through.

The concrete passageway extended about fifteen feet. To our left was a glass window with the legend SECURITY painted on it. Behind was an empty office with desks, telephones, filing cabinets, and a framed photograph of Lyndon B. Johnson. Pump flicked a wall switch to activate additional overhead fluorescents. Jay was shifting massive bolts on a door blocking the hall ahead.

“Blast doors,” Pump explained as he and Jay heaved the thick bulk of the door ajar.

An identical portal was visible farther along the corridor, the floor of which now noticeably sloped downward. We followed the pair into the space between the doors.

“These look like they’re made of concrete,” Remi noted.

Bolts on the second door were being retracted. “They are concrete,” Jay said.

“Built to withstand atomic attack?” Edward asked.

Jay activated more lights from an array of wall switches. “They probably would, but that’s not what they’re for.”

“Yeah?”

Pump had already forged ahead. As the area beyond the second door was illuminated, I could see him stop before a railing that barred his progress. Jay joined him, trailed by the rest of us.

Once, thousands of miles away, I had been taken as a child on a tour of a freighter docked in Vancouver harbour and had been suddenly led through a door that provided access to the ship’s engine room. From walking on the steel plate of a lower deck, I stepped over the threshold to find my feet suspended on a metal-mesh stair landing that overlooked a cavernous void. Below my shoes an immense hole dropped seemingly hundreds of feet to loud, frightening machinery.

The platform on which we now stood was similarly constructed of metal mesh. Fifty feet of empty space yawned below our shoes, with only the thinnest of metal sieves keeping me from plunging to certain death. For somebody afraid of heights, this situation was a nightmare. I recoiled rapidly through the doorway onto the solider ground of the corridor, bashing into Phil, who was bringing up the rear of our group.

Pump waved his hand at the expanse before us. “How do you like it?”

From my spot at the entrance to the platform, the view extended down to a concrete floor. A ring of lights set in the roof high above our heads illuminated the entire silo — about thirty feet across. The centre of attraction, however, was the missile. I was amazed at how gigantic it was. Its long black body filled the space from top to bottom, the pointed nose cone ending just under a circular steel door in the roof. When I gingerly put one foot out onto the platform again and clutched the rail to peer down, I could see the rocket’s tail disappearing into what looked like military blockhouses at the base. Spelled out in white down the body of the rocket was:

PAUL REVERE US ARMY

Jay began pointing out features of the silo. I was too stunned by the enormity and complexity of the vista we were gazing at to take in much.

“That’s fuelling gear over there. This stairway descends what we call the A wall of the installation. Halfway down you’ll see the bunker, which is the launch control station.”

“Where?” Edward asked.

“Two landings down. The staircase then continues to the silo floor.

There’s a catwalk across the blast deflectors at the base of the bird. The deflectors lead to tunnels that vent the initial exhaust, so this chamber doesn’t fill during countdown. The staircase rises up the B wall of the silo on the other side.”

“I never imagined it would be so big,” Willow said.

“Across from here on the B wall is the ready platform for servicing the bird’s guidance instruments.” Jay twisted his head to squint upward and pointed. “The arming platform is directly above us. The armoury where the nukes were stored is through there.”

Edward, Phil, and Willow craned their necks. “Where?”

“In from the exit to the arming platform. See it?”

They all nodded.

“Of course, munitions have all been removed,” Pump said.

“What are these little doodads above the stairs?” Remi asked.

“Coolant nozzles, man,” Pump said. “After launch the stairs have to be cooled in case people need to evacuate the command bunker by the stairs.”

“That’s an emergency procedure,” Jay explained. “Ordinarily, we get around by elevator. Back this way.”

A few steps retraced into the passage brought us to an ordinary elevator door. I hadn’t noticed it when we first hurried by, intent on catching up to Pump. We all crammed into the elevator, Jay punched a button, and the car slid smoothly downward.

When the doors retracted, we emerged into an already lit room that resembled a cross between an accounting office and an air traffic control operations centre. There were no windows, but blank TV monitors were suspended from the ceiling in many places and stood on a few desks. Pump hit a bank of switches against one wall, and a hum of machinery became audible.

“That noise is air conditioning,” Jay said. “Nothing very scientific.”

The rest of us gaped at the mysterious equipment scattered around the room. I recognized a radar screen, but evident at other consoles were arrays of dials, levers, oscilloscopes, control knobs, and much more. Everywhere I stared, complicated and unfathomable devices loomed.

“You really think the bunch of us can make this work?” I blurted.

Jay and Pump glanced at each other. Pump perched on the edge of a table, removed the pack, and lowered it to the floor. “Wayman’s right.”

“I am?”

“If we’re going to go any farther, man, we better get serious.”

“This isn’t serious enough?” Edward asked.

“We need to make a checklist,” said Jay. “Everything we have to know, what we need to do, and who’s going to do it, to get this bird up.”

Edward wheeled a chair out from a desk and sat on it. “Didn’t you geniuses make a list back at the Bay?”

“We wrote down all we could think of. Being here, a few more things come to mind.”

“Terrific.”

“Can you launch it?” Phil asked.

“Without blowing it up and killing us all?” Willow added.

“Without starting a nuclear war?” Phil came back.

“First step is, well, to get a list together.” Jay seemed unsure of himself for the first time. “We need paper.”

“Here’s a typewriter,” Remi said. “Should be some paper in the drawer.”

Pump slipped off the table. “Let me open it. I’ve got the gloves.”

“Who knows how to type?” Remi asked. “Wayman, you’re the journalist. You’re faster than I am.”

“I’m not even a citizen,” I protested.

“Type!” Phil ordered.

I sat in front of the machine.

“Gloves!” Edward, Willow, and Jay cried in unison.

“I can’t type in gloves,” I complained. “I’ll wipe off the keys afterward.”

“We already have on our list,” Jay said, “that we need to know the size of the payload compartment, so we can figure the maximum dimensions of the satellite.”

“Can you build a satellite?” Remi asked.

“The satellite won’t be complicated,” Jay said. “It just has to broadcast a message from orbit so everybody will know what it represents.”

I typed “1.,” followed by “payload compartment dimensions.”

“Next?” Edward said.

Jay secured another chair and wheeled up alongside me to the left. “Essentially, the satellite will be a radio transmitter. So we’ll need to get one of those.”

I duly recorded this.

“Plus a tape recorder for what we want the satellite to say.”

Pump hovered at my right shoulder. “Why don’t we be like the Red Chinese? Let’s broadcast quotations from some Woodstockers. With their music, naturally.”

“What’s this about the Chinese?” Remi asked.

“Never mind,” Edward ordered. “Let’s decide what we’ve got to do and split.”

“Affirmative,” said Pump. “We also need to determine the state of readiness of the bird. That was on our old list.”

My fingers tapped this onto the paper.

“We have to confirm flight programming,” Jay reminded his associate. “The bird is likely default-targeted at some Russkie or Chinese burg. We’ve got to change that.”

“Or else start World War III,” Edward noted.

“It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it,” Remi chortled. He looked around the interior of the command bunker, face beaming. “This is so far-out. I always wanted to see first-hand one of these babies go up.”

“Well, you might, and you might not,” Jay said. “I feel a tiny bit less optimistic here than I did at Guantanamero Bay.”

“Now you tell us,” Edward said.

“What else should be on the list?” Willow prompted.

“Procedure for opening the launch doors,” Pump said.

“Details of the whole launch procedure, really,” Jay corrected. “We don’t want to miss some vital step.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “We also need to figure out how best to notify the media.”

“What gear we’ll need to bring to the launch,” Pump added.

“Contacting NORAD, too, at the last minute, so they can let the Russkies know in case something goes wrong with the launch,” Jay mused.

“I thought we were going to keep the launch location secret,” Phil said.

“Isn’t that how we stay out of jail?” Willow asked.

“The call can be anonymous,” Jay said. “We wouldn’t specify where the bird lifted from. Simply tell them the Woodstock Nation is blasting one off.”

Remi snorted. “Like the Russkies will believe that. Unless they see it on their radar. Then they’ll probably freak right —”

“Let’s sort out that shit at home,” Edward interjected. “Is there anything else we need to do tonight?”

I wiped sweat from my fingers. When I moved to the Gold Coast, living in a target area for nuclear war bothered me in the dark hours of the night. I had a recurring dream of desperately attempting to drive north through an L.A.-type urban landscape amid a thicket of rising mushroom clouds erupting on every side. A memory surfaced of an L.A. Times article on military preparations for the ultimate conflict.

“I just thought of something,” I announced. “I’ve read that ICBMs can’t be fired unless two different keys are inserted simultaneously into a launch mechanism. To prevent some nut blowing up the planet.”

Pump grinned. “Sure. But what do those keys do, man? Activate electrical circuits, right? Guess who had to know how to repair those circuits?”

Willow whistled. “You guys are too much.”

“The more I think about it,” Jay said, “we need to find the operations manuals. Otherwise we’re going to space out about something important. They’re probably around somewhere.”

“What do they look like?” Phil asked.

We abandoned creating the list and spread out to search for the manuals. Pump put the gloves on and riffled through filing cabinets and desk drawers.

No luck.

Remi pointed. “What’s down there?”

A hallway of offices stretched away from the command bunker. One door was marked DUTY OFFICER. Pump eased the lock ajar with a credit card, and we all went in.

“Here they are!” whooped Jay. He grabbed a thick plastic binder resting on a shelf of similar binders.

“Gloves!” everybody yelled.

Pump passed him the gloves, and he wiped the cover of the manual before putting them on and cracking the binder open. Leaning over Jay’s shoulder with the others, I saw that the first page was devoted to a notice: “This Targeting Manual is classified SECRET. Unauthorized possession of this document is a felony offense punishable by …”

I stopped reading.

“How about that?” Remi said. “We’re committing an offence.”

“Some of those present already are an offence, an offence against humanity,” Edward said. “Let’s get on with it and get out of here.”

Most of the manual appeared to be letters and numbers that didn’t mean much to anybody except Pump and Jay, who were delighted. They pointed to bits of the Operations Summary Index that we could understand:

Targeting normally will occur only following receipt of the correct codes from WHITE HOUSE or DOD, Washington; NORAD, Colorado Springs; or CINCLANDPAC, Los Angeles.

In the event of hostilities with the U.S.S.R., primary target for this missile is TYUMEN, a manufacturing city in central Asia in the Ural Complex (SEE ATTACHED MAP). Programming instructions pp. 245 and following. CODING FOLLOWS for confirmation.

In the event of hostilities with PR of CHINA, primary target for this missile is HANGCHOW, a manufacturing city on the eastern seacoast in the Shanghai Complex (SEE ATTACHED MAP). Programming instructions pp. 172 and following. CODING FOLLOWS for confirmation.

“I’m starting to feel like a spy,” somebody said.

Jay, despite his gloves, was paging quickly through the manual. “Far fucking out, people. It’s here.” A gloved finger indicated a heading: ORBIT. He started to read part of the instructions out loud, but except for Pump his words didn’t mean anything to us.

“Cool,” people said, though.

“We’ll have to take this sucker home,” Pump said. “The data’s all here, but it’s going to take a little figuring.”

“Afraid not,” declared Edward. “There’s something about having top-secret documents lying around the house that I don’t like.”

“We’ve violated about a dozen major federal felony laws now, man. What’s an op manual or two going to matter? We’ll put them back when we’re done.”

“Eddie has a point, Pump,” Jay said. “Let’s leave it for now. You and I need to come back, anyway, and sort through a ton of details. Maybe tomorrow night? No reason for everybody to hang around while you and I get it straight.”

Edward smirked. “You two haven’t been straight since July.”

Jay slid the binder back onto the shelf. “Here’s Launch.” He indicated another manual. “That’ll show us how to assess the bird’s readiness status.”

“And checklist procedures,” Pump said.

“We can cross that off our list then?” Phil asked.

“It’s still in the typewriter,” I reminded him, and we trooped back into the bunker. Nobody had anything to add when I read our items aloud for review, so I retrieved the piece of paper from the machine and passed it to Pump. I used my handkerchief to wipe down the keys, and somebody borrowed the cloth to rub over the chairs we had shifted.

“Want to see the ready room?” Jay asked. “We should scope it out. Then we’ll come back to this side and get the dimensions of the payload compartment. That’ll do us for tonight.”

Pump cut power to the command area, and we returned to the elevator. Dropping to the silo bottom, we filed across the concrete top of the blast deflectors. The vast bulk of the missile became even more apparent as we walked around its base. At the opposite wall a short hallway led to a similar elevator.

The ready room was a small-scale version of the command bunker. A number of TV monitors hung from the ceiling. A blast door, however, gave access to a retractable platform that allowed instrumentation to be removed from or installed into the rocket. Beyond the ready room, Jay ushered us down a corridor where we could peer through windows at a white-painted enclosure resembling a hospital operating theatre.

“The instrument lab,” Jay said. “Here’s where we’ll assemble the satellite, keeping it hygienic and dust-free and all that good stuff.”

“Weird,” Phil said.

We retraced our route to the silo floor, back across the deflectors, and ascended to the arming area, several feet higher in the silo than the ready room across the well of the facility. Another metal-mesh platform, currently extended to the missile, provided access to the nose cone. From the entrance to this ramp, I could appreciate the very long plunge to the cavern floor. A dozen feet above the platform was the steel of the silo’s roof.

Pump conducted us through two blast doors and along a passage to the warhead storage room: a small, echoing vault that boasted an empty bomb rack and a wheeled metal carriage that ran on tracks set into the concrete and the platform out to the rocket. A winch and movable boom were attached to the carriage’s sturdy frame, obviously to assist the loading process. While Pump was providing this tour of the staging area of megadeaths, Jay had taken a tape measure and assorted screwdrivers from Pump’s backpack and departed to measure the bird’s payload chamber.

We met Jay returning down the corridor. His face looked stern. “It’s all off.”

“What?” Edward said.

“We’re finished. Let’s split.”

“Why?” Willow asked.

“What’s happening?” Pump added.

Jay stepped behind Pump and slipped the tape measure into his pack. “There’s a fucking hydrogen bomb in that missile. That’s what’s happening.”

We dashed by Jay in a clump onto the ramp, with me careful to stay in the middle of the group. A large panel had been swung open in the nosecone of the rocket. When we bent one by one to peer in, I saw a squat black canister secured by a cradle in the confines of the missile’s top. On the canister, which resembled a large barrel perhaps four feet in diameter and five feet high, was painted in white: U.S. GOVERNMENT PROPERTY. FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY. Under that were some numbers, the radiation warning sign, and the words NUCLEAR MUNITION, followed by more numbers.

“You sure it’s the bomb?” Phil blurted.

“Oh, my God!” Willow cried.

“What’s it doing here?” Edward demanded.

Remi straightened from studying the object, then turned to Jay, who had followed us out onto thin air. “Didn’t you say they removed these?”

“It can’t be here then,” Willow insisted.

“It’s here,” Jay said.

“It can’t be.”

Pump shrugged. “We were told the warheads were removed from the sites even before we started decommissioning them.”

“They don’t just leave hydrogen bombs lying around,” Phil declared.

“No?” Edward countered. “Remember that B-52 in Spain? Dropped one in the drink, and they were going to forget it until they noticed the Russkies were doing some fishing nearby.”

Willow sighed. “I guess we do have a lot of them.”

Pump nodded toward the opened compartment. “Heav-vy!”

We filed back onto solid ground, with me in the lead. At the elevator, we slumped down in a row against the wall to evaluate the situation. Pump produced a doobie, which circulated despite Willow’s voiced concern about whether we were endangering ourselves by smoking too near a warhead.

Nobody else spoke. A couple of times somebody passed the joint to a neighbour, heaved himself to his feet, walked out onto the ramp again, and leaned in to peer at the bomb. Then he returned, shaking his head. “Bummer.”

Pump eventually sucked the last smoke out of the roach and ate it. “Let’s roll.”

“Hold on,” Edward said. “Why does this have to wreck the whole plan?”

Edward’s question startled me. I stared at him. Others did the same.

“What do you mean?” Phil asked.

“That’s a hydrogen bomb in there, Eddie,” Jay said. “I’m not going to fuck around with a nuke. Can you relate to that?”

“Cool it, Jay,” Pump said.

“Can’t we run it back into the armoury?” Edward asked. “How is it secured? If it’s just bolted in, we could wheel out the dolly and store it behind those blast doors, safe and sound.”

His suggestion of a solution astounded me. “I thought you weren’t that keen on putting up the satellite,” I said before I could stop myself.

“I’m not saying I’m in favour of it. I’m not saying I’m against it. Being here, seeing this —” he waved an arm to encompass the passage we were sitting in and the missile “— intrigues me. That’s all.”

“What does that mean?” Willow asked.

Edward smiled.

“No can do,” Jay declared.

“Why not?” Remi asked.

“I’m not going to fool around with a missile anywhere near one of those nukes.”

“Hey, man, Eddie’s got a point,” Pump said. “You know it’s got to be armed before it can detonate. Even if the bird blew up, there’s no chance —”

“Go ahead if you want. Count me out.”

Silence hung in the air.

“Suppose . . . suppose we move the thing out of the silo completely?” Edward stated.

“How?” Willow asked.

“There has to be a procedure,” Phil said. “They got them in here.”

“Would that satisfy you, Jay?” Edward asked.

“Judging by the rig on the dolly,” Phil continued, “it looks like the warhead weighs under a ton. We could rig a winch over the silo’s edge on top and haul the thing out.”

“Sounds right,” Remi said. “Hoist it up to ground level, load it on a trailer, and tow it someplace.”

Phil nodded. “Yeah.”

“But where would we tow it to?” Willow asked.

“The house,” Edward suggested. “We’ll stick it in the garage with our other junk.”

Jay waved away the notion impatiently. “You’re uptight about having a few secret documents around the Bay? But you don’t mind stashing a hydrogen bomb in the garage?”

“They know the launch manuals are here,” Edward reasoned. “If they ever figured out where the missile was launched from, they’ll scour this place to see if anything has been ripped off.”

“Besides the rocket,” Remi added.

“If nothing else is missing, maybe after ten or twenty years they’ll stop looking for the culprits. From what you and Pump say, they don’t know an H-bomb was left behind. So they won’t freak about one of their toys being unaccounted for.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Phil declared.

“What would we do with it, man?” Pump asked. “Leave it in the garage for whoever rents the house next?”

“You’re assuming we could lift it out of this hole without dropping it,” Jay said, “either trashing the bird or blowing up half of Southern California.”

“Man, that’s not how these are detonated,” Pump protested. “You know that. They can fall out of planes and absolutely nothing —”

Jay raised his hands. “All right, all right.”

“Once it’s safe in the garage, we’ll worry about how to dispose of it,” Edward said.

“Maybe we can get the neighbour’s kid to enter it in the high-school science fair,” Willow joked.

Remi laughed. “Or sell it to the Tijuana border guards, so Mexico can have the bomb.”

Willow grinned. “Paint it psychedelic and leave it on consignment at the Mystic Arts World boutique.”

“We could rent a boat and dump it at sea,” Phil proposed, more serious.

Edward stood. “Abandon it along the freeway like a junked car.” He shrugged. “If nobody discovers where the missile was launched from, we might be able to sneak it back later.”

I had experienced a wave of relief when Jay pronounced the satellite scheme finished. Now that the crisis appeared to have been weathered, I also rose to my feet. “If we’re going to keep on keeping on, don’t we need to record the payload area size? Wasn’t that the last chore tonight?”

“Jay?” Pump asked.

His friend leaned over to fumble inside the pack and extracted the measuring tape. He and Pump moved out toward the platform together, and a few minutes later rejoined us by the elevator. Nobody had brought a pen, so we descended to the command bunker again and I typed the dimensions onto our list and again wiped away my prints. Then we returned to the entrance level, where Jay powered everything down. We stood in blackness at the bottom of the ladder. Phil climbed up first.

I heard the cover click open, and a moment or two later snap shut. Phil was clambering back. “Somebody’s out there,” he hissed.

My heart flipped over. I had been feeling a little more relaxed every second, cocky even, thinking, We’ve done it: broken in, looked around, and in a few minutes we’ll be outside and scot-free. Anxiety now roared back. The small room in which we were shoulder to shoulder felt claustrophobic; I was having trouble catching a full breath.

“Quit fucking around,” Edward ordered, shining a light at Phil.

“You sure, Phil?” Remi asked.

“Goddamn sure! I saw someone out there, watching.”

I sensed tension rise in the others around me. With the antechamber lit by the thin beams of flashlights, the thought struck me that the scene resembled a dramatic moment in a submarine movie, with everybody clustered around the ladder to the conning tower while under attack or with water pouring in.

“Let me take a look, man,” Pump insisted.

“Did they spot you?” Willow whispered. “Maybe we should just stay here until whoever it is goes away.”

“Be my guest,” Phil said to Pump, jumping down.

Pump pushed past him.

“Whoever is there probably saw my light,” Phil said. “I was checking around before leaving the hole.”

“Careful,” Willow urged.

“Everybody shut off their lights when I open the hatch,” demanded Pump from up the ladder.

We waited in the dark. Seconds crawled by.

“It’s a cow,” Pump called down. “Beyond the fence. A fucking cow!”

“Cow?”

“A little paranoid, Phil?” Edward needled.

“Shut up.”

Then I was out in the chilly morning, with streaks of dawn brightening the sky above the ridges to the east. Phil and Jay kicked gravel over the manhole cover. As we exited through the site gate, Pump replaced the sprung padlock so that it appeared functional. Before he did, Remi grabbed a mesquite or sagebrush plant and used the branches to sweep away our footprints near the silo. I stepped off the road beyond the gate and secured a branch for myself, as did Edward, and we obliterated our tracks in the dust of the road for fifty yards or so.

During the rest of the trek back to the vehicles, the tightness I’d been living with throughout the night slowly relinquished its grip on my body. Weariness flowed in to supersede the baseline fear and worry that had kept me buzzed since our expedition began. When I finally sank into the microbus’s back seat, tiredness clobbered me.

“Jay and Pump are going to do a little work, and then we’ll all get together again?” I heard Phil ask from the front as the Volksie swung onto the asphalt.

“That seems to be the plan,” Edward said.

Once again there was no traffic on 74. Everybody in the vehicle had lapsed into a state of lethargy, except for — I hoped — Willow, who steered us through the series of curves and dips of the winding mountain road. Phil, beside her, tuned the radio to a station fading in and out from Riverside, or perhaps San Diego. The eternally energetic Beatles, in a tune from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, were celebrating an improvement in their personal life:

I used to get mad at my school

(No, I can’t complain)

The teachers who taught me weren’t cool:

(No, I can’t complain)

You’re holding me down

(Ah-ha)

Turning me round

(Ahhh)

Filling me up with your rules.

I’ve got to admit it’s getting better,

A little better all the time.

(Can’t get no worse)

I have to admit it’s getting better,

It’s getting better

Since you’ve been mine.

Me used to be angry young man….

Static overwhelmed the weakening signal, and Phil hunted up and down the dial. The Beatles’ comments about their teachers had plunged me into a consideration of Dr. Bulgy and how many thesis pages I needed to get squared away by Monday to create the illusion that I hadn’t squandered the summer. This was already Saturday morning. An aura of gloom started to descend on me, but Phil found a station broadcasting Procol Harum, and I drifted off into the band’s stoned meanderings:

The room was humming harder

As the ceiling flew away

When we called out for another drink

The waiter brought a tray

And so it was that later

As the miller told his tale

That her face, at first just ghostly,

Turned a whiter shade of pale.

I jerked out of a doze when the microbus halted to let Remi off at his place. Ten minutes later, as I climbed out of the vehicle, the street lights on Cajon shut off. Then I was falling into bed as the new California day shone through the curtains.