The Rackham Files by Dean Ing

Author:Dean Ing [Ing, Dean ]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 0-7434-7183-0
Publisher: Baen Publishing Enterprises
Published: 2004-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

In my hurry, I hadn't followed my own drill; hadn't kept two radios tuned to different stations; and so I didn't hear the President's brief, self-serving spiel that called for crisis relocation and, by implication, admitted that we could expect a "limited" nuclear response to the tactical weapons we were unleashing on the wave of Soviet tanks that had lashed across the border into West Germany. "Crisis relocation" was an old weasel phrase for "evacuation"; our Office of Technology Assessment and thinktanks like the Hudson Institute had solemnly agreed that Americans would have between twenty-four and seventy-two hours of warning before any crisis developed into a nuclear exchange.

Actually, from the moment our Navy engaged Russkis in the Aegean until the first wave of nuke-tipped MIRVs streaked up from Soviet hard sites, we'd had about fifteen hours. It might've been halfway adequate if we'd planned for it as Soviet-bloc countries had done—or even as one solitary local government had done in Lane County, Oregon.

Everybody joked about the jog-crazy, mist-maddened tokers around the University of Oregon in Eugene, so the media had its fun upon learning that city and county officials there were serious about evac—I mean, crisis relocation. Some poly sci professor, in a lecture about legal diversion of funds, pointed out that most federal funding for crisis relocation was turned over to emergency-services groups in sheriffs' departments. And that those funds—all over the country, not just in Oregon—were being diverted by perfectly legal means to other uses. The overall plan for a quarter-million people in the Eugene area was orderly movement to the touristy strip along the coast.

Then an undergrad checked out the routes and nervously reported that the wildest optimist wouldn't believe that many people could drive out of firestorm range in two days' time through a bottleneck consisting of a solitary two-lane highway and a pair of unimproved hold-your-breath gravel roads. County maps showed several more old roads. They hadn't existed for thirty years.

Firestorm in Eugene bloody Orygun? A strong possibility, since the Southern Pacific's main switching yards in the coastal Northwest sprawled out along the little city's outskirts. No prime target, certainly, but all too likely as a secondary or tertiary strike victim. In a county commission meeting, some citizen asked, Why worry? We'll just get on the capacious Interstate 5 freeway and drive south.

The hell you will, replied a state patrol official. We have orders to keep that corridor clear for special traffic running south from Portland and the state capital. There'll be riot guns at the barricades; sorry 'bout that, but Eugeneans were scheduled to the coast and if they didn't like that, they could stay home and watch the firestorm from inside it, har har.

When local politicos realized how many feisty folks in the Eugene-Springfield area were clamoring for a solution, one of them hit on a rationale that couldn't be faulted. Eugene could be a target because the railroad had such tremendous load-carrying capacity, right?

Right. And SP's rolling stock, flatcars for milled lumber

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