Under the Dome

A B-52 which had taken off from Carswell Air Force Base in the early hours of that Monday morning had been on-station above Burlington, Vermont, since 1040 hours (the Air Force believes in showing up early for the prom whenever possible). The mission was code-named GRAND ISLE. The pilot-commander was Major Gene Ray, who had served in both the Gulf and Iraq wars (in private conversations he referred to the latter as “Big Dubya’s fuck-a-monkey show”). He had two Fasthawk Cruise missiles in his bomb bay. It was a good stick, the Fasthawk, more reliable and powerful than the old Tomahawk, but it felt very weird to be planning to shoot a live one at an American target.

At 1253, a red light on his control panel turned amber. The COMCOM took control of the plane from Major Ray and began to turn it into position. Below him, Burlington disappeared under the wings.

Ray spoke into his headset. “It’s just about show-time, sir.”

In Washington, Colonel Cox said: “Roger that, Major. Good luck. Blast the bastard.”

“It’ll happen,” Ray said.

At 1254, the amber light began to pulse. At 1254:55, it turned green. Ray flicked the switch marked 1. There was no sensation and only a faint whoosh from below, but he saw the Fasthawk begin its flight on vid. It quickly accelerated to its maximum speed, leaving a jet contrail like a fingernail scratch across the sky.

Gene Ray crossed himself, finishing with a kiss at the base of his thumb. “Go with God, my son,” he said.

The Fasthawk’s maximum speed was thirty-five hundred miles an hour. Fifty miles from its target—about thirty miles west of Conway, New Hampshire, and now on the east side of the White Mountains—its computer first calculated and then authorized final approach. The missile’s speed dropped from thirty-five hundred miles an hour to eighteen hundred and fifty as it descended. It locked on Route 302, which is North Conway’s Main Street. Pedestrians looked up uneasily as the Fasthawk passed overhead.

“Isn’t that jet way too low?” a woman in the parking lot of Settlers Green Outlet Village asked her shopping companion, shading her eyes. If the Fasthawk’s guidance system could have talked, it might have said, “You ain’t seen nothin yet, sweetheart.”

It passed over the Maine–New Hampshire border at three thousand feet, trailing a sonic boom that rattled teeth and broke windows. When the guidance system picked up Route 119, it slipped first to a thousand feet, then down to five hundred. By now the computer was in high gear, sampling the guidance system’s data and making a thousand course corrections a minute.

In Washington, Colonel James O. Cox said, “Final approach, people. Hang onto your false teeth.”

The Fasthawk found Little Bitch Road and dropped almost to ground-level, still blasting at near–Mach 2 speed, reading every hill and turn, its tail burning too brightly to look at, leaving a toxic stench of propellant in its wake. It tore leaves from the trees, even ignited some. It imploded a roadside stand in Tarker’s Hollow, sending boards and smashed pumpkins flying into the sky. The boom followed, causing people to fall to the floor with their hands over their heads.

This is going to work, Cox thought. How can it not?

19

In Dipper’s, there were now eight hundred people crammed together. No one spoke, although Lissa Jamieson’s lips moved soundlessly as she prayed to whatever New Age oversoul happened to be currently claiming her attention. She clutched a crystal in one hand; the Reverend Piper Libby was holding her mother’s cross against her lips.

Ernie Calvert said, “Here it comes.”

“Where?” Marty Arsenault demanded. “I don’t see noth—”

“Listen!” Brenda Perkins said.

They heard it come: a growing otherworldly hum from the western edge of town, a mmmm that rose to MMMMMM in a space of seconds. On the big-screen TV they saw almost nothing, until half an hour later, long after the missile had failed. For those still remaining in the roadhouse, Benny Drake was able to slow the recording down until it was advancing frame by frame. They saw the missile come slewing around what was known as Little Bitch Bend. It was no more than four feet off the ground, almost kissing its own blurred shadow. In the next frame the Fasthawk, tipped with a blast-fragmentation warhead designed to explode on contact, was frozen in midair about where the Marines’ bivouac had been.

In the next frames, the screen filled with a white so bright it made the watchers shade their eyes. Then, as the white began to fade, they saw the missile fragments—so many black dashes against the diminishing blast—and a huge scorch mark where the red X had been. The missile had hit its spot exactly.

After that, the people in Dipper’s watched the woods on the Tarker’s side of the Dome burst into flame. They watched the asphalt on that side first buckle and then begin to melt.

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