The Book of Truths Read Online Free Page A

shoot nukes and Roland lived to shoot things. Roland was a large man, four inches over six feet,with the build of an athletic middle linebacker. The scar that curved along the right side of his head from temple to behind his ear hadn’t been earned on a football field, though, but in combat during his first tour with the Eighty-Second Airborne in Iraq. Years ago and miles away.
    “Eagle?” Mac asked.
    “At the height of the Cold War, the United States had thirty-one thousand, two hundred and fifty-five nuclear weapons,” Eagle said, drawing on his vast reservoir of useless information. Useless until they needed it to save their asses. “It is not improbable that our government lost track of some. This is the fifth Bent Spear we’ve been on this year, which is a two hundred and fifty percent increase from last year.” The Bent Spear was a reference to a nuclear event that did not involve the possibility of nuclear war. “My summation,” Eagle continued, “is that there was a paperwork error and the missile and warhead were simply left behind.”
    “Yeah, but that don’t explain why it’s going off now,” Mac said.
    “It’s old,” Eagle replied. “Old things malfunction.”
    “Like Nada,” Mac said with a grin no one could see but everyone knew he had. Mac liked to push everyone’s buttons. Usually for fun.
    Nada was indeed old, in military terms, having passed his fortieth birthday several years ago, the oldest member of the team and the longest serving. He was of Colombian descent, although many mistook him for Mexican, with graying hair poking straight out his skull as if seeking to escape his head, and a pocked, dark-skinned face. He’d plowed through a stellar Special Ops career: Rangers, Special Forces, Delta Force, Black Ops freelancer… and now he was a Nightstalker. It was either the tip of the spear, or theshit depth of the ocean depending on which day of the week it was. Today it plunged toward the latter.
    “Three minutes,” Eagle announced and Roland shuffled another inch closer to the edge of the ramp.
    “
O-L-D
,” Mac spelled out as he wrote it on his sleeve. “Old what? You always say it’s old with nukes and there’s no way we can really pin that down. You gotta pick something specific.”
    “That’s because pretty much our entire nuclear arsenal is old,” Eagle said. “Old and falling apart.”
    “That’s the reason,” Moms said, “they’re going to sign the SAD treaty at the United Nations soon.” She was referring to the Strategic Arms Disarmament Treaty, in which all nuclear powers were pledging to work to zero weapons in ten years. At least those countries that acknowledged actually having nuclear weapons. It was what Reagan and Gorbachev had come within one word of achieving in Iceland in 1986.
    “And pigs will fly,” Nada muttered.
    “They do if you toss them out of a plane,” Mac observed. “It’s just the landing that ain’t pretty.”
    “I’ll be glad when they get rid of all the obsolete material,” Doc said. “Both hardware and software,” he added.
    “I’ll be glad when we don’t get called out on these anymore,” Nada said.
    “I’ll be glad to get some dinner,” Eagle muttered from the cockpit.
    “Roland?” Mac asked, ignoring all of them.
    “Something broke,” Roland said simply. “And we’re going to fix it.”
    “
B-R-O-K-E
,” Mac wrote on his arm. “I think Roland, once more, in his finite yet elemental genius, will win theoretically.”
    “Did you just insult me?” Roland asked, a scowl crossing his ugly mug.
    “It’s not just the aging arsenal,” Moms said, stepping into the banter because Roland and Mac sometimes went a bit too far turning banter into something darker. “Remember what’s in your nuke briefing book? The ’95 Black Brant scare?”
    “Norwegian clusterfuck,” Nada corrected. “Fucking scientists launched a weather satellite and forgot to tell the fucking Russkies. It went right into the flight