The Day Before Midnight Quotes

“The Americans, he laughed drunkenly. They build more cars than anybody in the world, and take them out and dump them in terrible traffic jams. The only thing crazier than the Americans were the Russians, who never had traffic jams because they didn’t have cars.”
― Stephen Hunter, The Day Before Midnight: A Novel

“So here it is. You punch in twelve numbers. No more, no less. To make it interesting, there's no limit on the integers between the hyphens. Thus the code may be twelve numbers long, or it may be twelve million; it just has to have eleven hyphens in it. And then you push Enter. If you are wrong, the machine will shout STRIKE ONE. If you are wrong again, the machine will shout STRIKE TWO. If you are wrong a third time, the machine will figure out that someone who doesn't know is trying to guess his way in, and it will shout ACCESS DENIED and arbitrarily assign twelve new numbers that only it knows and that only another computer can figure out in about 135 work hours.”
― Stephen Hunter, The Day Before Midnight

“We need a guy--a good, brave guy, a guy with no nerves, and balls the size of Cadillac hubcaps, a tough, smart, shrewd guy, a James Bond guy, but Russian--to get into the basement and stop this Klimov.”
― Stephen Hunter, The Day Before Midnight

“You feel like you're the king of creation in an A-10. You're up front and the plane itself--wings, engines, rudders--is way back. You sit at the end of the long snout in a fishbowl wide and bright to the world and the only thing in your head-up display is a little rubbery smudge of nose. It's really just you, slung out there. That's why pilots like Leo Pell loved the ship; you really fly her, you're really airborne, on the wind. It's World War II stuff, Jugs and Bostons lowlevel over the hedgerows of occupied Europe.”
― Stephen Hunter, The Day Before Midnight

“The question is, where would he get a bomb? I mean, if he doesn't have a Russian missile silo or a missile sub at his command, where does he get a bomb? Does he buy it at Eddie Bauer's?”
― Stephen Hunter, The Day Before Midnight

“He had an erection like an SS-24. He was set to blast off.”
― Stephen Hunter, The Day Before Midnight