Read Trinity's Child for Free Online

father-hero returning to the blockhouse.
    “Timmie!” Tyler heard his wife scream.
    He turned to see the little boy romping toward him. Tyler froze, arms cocked angrily on his hips, and glared at the boy. The boy froze too, fleetingly, staring uncertainly at this other father. He turned and saw his mother racing at him. He bolted in panic, away from both of them, off toward the drooping wings of the airplanes his father flew. He skidded on a patch of ice, slid on his padded behind under a huge sagging wingtip, colliding with a wheel beyond which slender projectiles jutted. Suddenly a white form loomed above him. He heard his mother nearby, heard her land on the frozen tarmac too, the air whooshing out of her in a moan.
    Tyler, who understood, moved more slowly toward them. He had watched the security patrol, a SWAT squad cloaked in winter-camouflage white, appear out of nowhere, training their weapons on the child first, the mother second. He saw one guard trip his wife, instantly spread-eagling her on the runway and placing a foot on her back, a sawed-off Italian riot gun inches from her head. He saw another guard's foot land on the boy, only slightly more gently, but firmly, with a riot gun directed at him, too.
    Tyler edged methodically toward them.
    “Cottonmouth,” he said to the snowmen.
    The foot came off the boy first, then off the woman, more slowly. Tyler picked up the boy and, wordlessly, struck him sharply on the rump. The boy's eyes filled with water that would not leak. Tyler handed him to his mother.
    “You do not go near the bombs,” Tyler said to her tonelessly.
    His wife stared back blankly, stricken eyes saying nothing and everything.
    Now, as it became almost time for lights out in the alert bunker, Tyler reopened the book and reread the sentence, still unable to handle it.
     
     
    “Yes?”
    The voice was groggy and slurred.
    Jee-zuz, the general thought. He's drunk.
    “Mr. President, we face an extremely serious situation. I have asked for a full attack conference. Under my authority, I have moved us from Cocked Pistol to Fast Pace.”
    “Cocked Pace?”
    Jee-zuz.
    The President represented everything the Joint Chiefs had wanted since the bleak days following Vietnam, the rise of OPEC, the humiliation of the hostages, and the Soviet adventures in Africa and Afghanistan. He had begun the development of a trillion dollars' worth of new strategic weapons, although their deployment was just beginning. He had sent the Russians into a cold sweat, yelping that this was the pathway to war. He had ended the last vestiges of detente with the Soviets. Good stuff.
    “Mr. President, I know you are upstairs. But the line is secure. The call was moved, through standard emergency procedures, directly up from the Situation Room.”
    “Who is this?”
    The general slumped slightly in his swivel chair. Who the blazes did he think it was? On the Command Balcony, the siren-red lights had stopped spinning. The room was still blue. The white lines out of Polyarnny had inched ahead. The lines over the coasts looked like the Fourth of July weekend at the O'Hare Traffic Control Center. The general did not like his most recent code name.
    “Icarus.”
    The phone seemed dead, the silence was so leaden, although the general heard some babbling in the background. The President was beginning to make him very nervous, bringing back some old, nagging doubts. The general had dealt personally with four Commanders-in-Chief, briefing each of them on the complexities of this moment. Of the four, this President was the only one who had joked during the briefing. The others had been dead serious as they listened. One broke into a heavy sweat, left the room abruptly, and slipped into such a deep depression afterward that he spoke only to his wife for a week. But this President had listened in what appeared to be satisfaction and quiet confidence until they reached the communications portion of the briefing.
    “Don't call us,” the