After Action

Missile Silo B

Hudson was on a beach.

It was spring break of his senior year. They'd all gone in together and rented a beach house on the Cape. Since alcoholism ran in his family, Hudson didn't party as hard as everyone else. His reward was waking up early every morning, while his friends slept off their hangovers.

Each morning, he walked the beach as the sun rose, painting the sky in evolving shades of red, orange, yellow, and finally blue. The mornings were so peaceful, after a night of ear-numbing dubstep. There was just the warm salty breeze, sounds of waves lapping the sand, and the echoing cry of the seagulls.

As Hudson slowly regained consciousness, his mind placed him on that beach.  

The waves whooshed and crackled.

The seagulls squawked. 

Whoosh.

Squawk–squawk–squawk.

Whoosh.

For what felt like hours, Hudson lay on his back, listening to the ocean sounds. 

And then they changed.

The whoosh morphed into a hiss of compress air. 

The squawk morphed into the wail of an electronic alarm.

And suddenly time sped up.

The launch alert klaxon echoed off the narrow space between the silo and the Minuteman-III missile. 

Hudson opened his eyes, staring straight up the 75-foot-tall silo. 

"Wha–" 

He coughed and then screamed in agony. His right shoulder exploded in pain with every tiny movement. The upper half of his flight suit was soaked. Hands shaking, Hudson touched his shoulder where the pain centered. His body lurched at the contact and he yanked the hand back. His fingers dripped with blood. 

It all came back to him. The launch alert. The North Korean attack. Amy's gun.

Nothing made sense. Amy had waited for him to unlock his side of the cabinet. It was the last portion of the launch she couldn't perform. But it had all been authenticated. The printer could only be activated by an external order...

The hatch. 

The pressure warning. 

Hudson had never actually seen the printer turn on and spit out the orders. He'd never seen the text that Amy had read. 

Nothing made sense.

"I'm so sorry," Latimer's voice crackled over an intercom. "But I couldn't trust you after everything."

"Amy?" Hudson said. He pushed himself into a sitting position, fighting his body's urge to pass out. "You shot me?"

"I saw you hesitate during the last launch. You don't have it in you, Mark. You can't fulfill our mission."

"You faked the launch order!" Hudson struggled to his feet, clutching the railing around the Minuteman's engines. His hand went to his breast pocket, searching for the familiar hard plastic card. It wasn't there. She had stolen his new Permissive Action Link card. She had everything she needed to fire and arm the nukes. 

"We don't need launch orders. Don't you understand? That's what Visigoth is for. The Generals and Admirals can't give the order to strike first. But we can. We can protect America."

Hudson tried to walk but stumbled, catching himself on a vertical pipe. "That's insane. Amy, if you launch, the whole world will turn against us. If they see America launch, what's to stop Russia or Pakistan?"

"The military will just say one of its missileers went rogue. The diplomats will step in and stop it from going further. But the North Koreans will be crippled. They won't be able to strike back."

"Taking out a naval base isn't going to cripple them."

"I'm not aiming for a naval base."