The Wrath of God

by Jim Balzotti

  The Chinese had a symbiotic relationship with the Zetas. Apart from the money the Chinese paid to the Zetas to bribe and intimidate the local Mexican authorities, they were able to offer the drug cartel a way to ship their drugs into the United States hidden inside the appliances they manufactured. All that was needed was for the Zetas to arrange for the border crossing—something the Zetas were very good at and had already been doing successfully for years.

  The Chinese contracted for the Zetas to smuggle in ten refrigerators, a feat neither large nor difficult since most American household appliances were now being manufactured in Mexico, thanks to the NAFTA treaty. The Zetas were paid for not knowing that each appliance contained a single NEMP. Only Chinese drivers were permitted to load and drive these modified refrigerators across the border. The Zetas scheduled drivers to pass through the border crossing at a specific time and place when a cooperative and well-bribed border patrol agent would wave them through. From there, the trucks were driven to a nondescript storage facility that stood with hundreds of other similar buildings in the warehouse district of Laredo, Texas.

  From this location, they would be transported in the familiar brown UPS trucks. Thanks to the relaxed restrictions on foreign governments buying land, buildings, and businesses, a Chinese straw company acting for the Chinese government bought UPS for 2.1 trillion dollars, and in turn, bought themselves the perfect covert delivery system for clandestine weapons and men. Brown delivers.

  The second stage of the Chinese attack on the United States was ready.

  October 2025

  United States

  The day America fell was just another ordinary day. Well, the new ordinary, anyway.

  Chaos reigned in the streets, and because the sanitation department had been dismantled, garbage piled up high. Along with the usual fast food wrappers from McDonalds and broken whisky and beer bottles, rats ran rampant. Even more disconcerting was the random disposal of corpses in broad daylight. Some natural deaths were hastened due to the lack of medical care after the hospitals’ closings. Without ambulances to remove the bodies, they often were just wrapped in sheets or blankets and then dumped unceremoniously at the sidewalk curb. Mild heart attacks that were once treatable turned fatal. Other victims had been beaten to death or simply shot trying to hang on to a precious bag full of groceries. Stores were closed, and any supplies they may have had were looted a long time ago. Guns and bullets were the new gold. Groups of men banded together, desperate to protect their families, and fought for food and medicine. Gun battles raged in the streets. Those lucky enough to have cars and full tanks of gas drove into the countryside on raids, where they were met, more often than not, by farmers with their own guns and families to protect.

  The US government was powerless to intervene. Most elected politicians stayed out of sight, especially after a mob stormed Congress and hung the fourteen Congressmen they found hiding in chambers. The president was locked deep in his bunker far beneath the White House with his Cabinet and a battalion of heavily armed marines to protect him. If he had shown his face, he certainly would have been assassinated. Most people knew it was the decades of ineffectual, corrupt leadership of the government, the inability to stop the out-of-control spending, and the paralysis between the Democratic and Republican parties that brought them to this day. The day of reckoning had arrived.

  At noon on the day of October 14, a day that the Americans were celebrating as Columbus Day, Chairman Chang gave the order to detonate the NEMPs. All ten bombs had already been delivered to strategic sites around the United States. Each bomb had such a large blast radius that it was critical for them to be spread out equally between the ten largest-populated cites. The bombs were brought on board UPS planes, along with other cargo. The pilots, all Chinese agents who had long resided in the United States and had attained American citizenship, took off on preselected flight paths. Even knowing that death was imminent, the Chinese agents participated willingly. They knew that their families would be well taken care of and that each would be forever remembered as one of the ten patriotic comrades that brought America to her knees.

  It was thought that the most difficult location, the one that took the most planning and deception, was getting a bomb in NORAD. As it turned out, it was much easier than expected.

  The acronym NORAD stood for North American Aerospace Defense. It provided aerospace warning and was the heart of the defensive system for both the United States and Canada. NORAD used the most advanced computer technology, similar to the Doppler radar system but even more sophisticated. Through its BMEWS, or Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, it was set up to spot heat signatures and exhaust plumes that would indicate a missile launch anywhere in the world. All this information was cross-referenced and shared with the American and Canadian civilian and military air traffic control. This computer system was hardwired and located deep underground and connected to a worldwide system of sensors and orbiting satellites. From these sophisticated computers, an American president could give the order to launch a nuclear attack.

  To protect NORAD from a physical assault that would, in effect, blind the eyes and ears of North America, NORAD was built into the Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station in Colorado. It was a bunker buried so deep in the mountain and so heavily fortified, it could withstand a direct hit from a nuclear attack. What protected NORAD was also its Achilles’ heel. Like the fabled city of Troy, a wooden horse would take it down. Because NORAD was constructed hundreds of feet beneath the earth and located far away from any major city or town, NORAD relied on a steady stream of outside vendors, who had passed strict government security clearances in order to be able to deliver the routinely needed supplies of paper, food, ink cartridges, laundry services, medical supplies, and even the occasional pizza for the brass. So while NORAD searched the skies for any visible threat to the safety and security of North America on this fateful day, the guards waved through a familiar brown UPS truck that had been making deliveries to that location for years.

  The wooden horse had arrived, and today, it would be making a very special delivery.

  Each of the ten bombs was rigged with a timer (the various time zones were accounted for), and precisely at noon was detonated by a Toshiba Satellite A135 laptop computer, one easily purchased at any Staples or OfficeMax. In a small apartment building on Park Ave in Brooklyn, a small, compact man sat on a plain white couch he purchased from Pottery Barn. Poised over a laptop computer, he typed in the code which activated the sequence that sent out a signal to each bomb, while he sipped his green tea. Having completed his mission, he smiled knowingly as he unfurled the abridged version of the Wenhui Xinmin, China’s daily newspaper, and nibbled on his edamame.

  At exactly noon on October 14, 2025, a brisk fall day with just a slight chilly breeze, ten nuclear electromagnetic pulse bombs detonated simultaneously across America. Over the populated cities of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, and Seattle; to the smaller towns of Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Minot, South Dakota; Aspen, Colorado; and Alamogordo, New Mexico; to the small villages of Amherst, Massachusetts; Lake Charles, Louisiana; and Roseau, Minnesota; and extending five hundred miles into the northern reaches of Mexico; ceramic insulators on overhead electrical power lines exploded, blasting violently and completely frying all circuits. Power lines burst away from the telephone poles that held them and toppled to the ground, crashing on cars parked below. The fuses and gas-filled overvoltage protectors were no match for the highly charged electrons traveling at 90 percent of the speed of light causing violent surges in underground power lines, resulting in massive fires in power plants all across North America. The only locations that were not affected were the heavily forested areas in the border regions along the United States and Canada, where the towering evergreen trees blocked the microwaves.

  In a period of minutes, every television, radio, microwave oven, refrigerator, toaster, electric light, ceiling fan, air conditioner, heater, and every other electrical appliance
ceased to work. The electrical system in cars, trains, buses, boats, helicopters, and motorcycles stopped dead in their tracks. Airplanes fell out of the sky in fiery crashes. Hospitals, schools, police and fire stations, and television and radio studios lost their power. Nearby houses were set ablaze. In Kentucky, thirty-eight thoroughbred race horses were burned alive when their stable turned into an inferno. Due to the previous austerity measures, there were no fire trucks or firefighters to respond.

  This was not a temporary glitch where the system would reboot itself and you could buy a new coffee pot and plug it in. For the most part, America’s whole vast electrical power grid was destroyed. The Internet, a mysterious marvel of technology, is not wireless as believed, but a series of cables all connected from one massive router to another, joined together at various exchange points. The two main junctions where the transatlantic cables met coming into the United States were located in Lower Manhattan and Ashburn, Virginia. When the NEMPs detonated, the large routers with the multi-blinking lights were completely destroyed, along with the cables coming in along the ocean floor of the Atlantic. The Internet collapsed.

  People attempting to use their cell phones, thinking they were linked by some mysterious cloud in space, only had dead air, as every cell tower had erupted into flames. The loss of life was serious, as any loss of life is, but was small compared to the damage done to the country’s infrastructure. The NEMP attack wiped out physical electrical lines, and the shock waves destroyed the complex circuitry of sensitive electronics.

  When the clock struck twelve in NORAD, the bomb detonated inside the nuclear protected bunker. Being inside, completely enclosed by solid rock and heavily reinforced steel doors, the NEMP completely destroyed the most heavily protected United States military and civilian electronic systems ever devised. The loss of life was total. Without anywhere for the bomb’s blast to go, it was confined and reverberated within the bunker’s walls, killing every man and woman inside. Instantaneously every military ship, plane, submarine, and foreign base lost all communication with NORAD. Communications ceased with orbiting US satellites. The White House and the military’s most secure sat phones only had dead air. Nuclear-powered fast-attack submarines armed with nuclear-tipped intercontinental missiles held their position, not knowing if America had been attacked (or even, for that matter, by whom) as all communications went unanswered. Terrorists from the Middle East? The Russians? The Chinese? While they may have had their suspicions, nuclear submarine commanders are commanded by the rules of engagement, not personal assumptions, so they held their course, awaiting orders. Orders that would never come.

  While the Chinese really didn’t care how many Americans they killed, they did need to kill as many as possible to make a point, knowing those surviving Americans would be a resilient, scrappy bunch. The Chinese wanted to take over the United States intact. They knew that a vast number of its citizens owned firearms, so they needed to provide a strong deterrent, and at the same time, give pause to a heavily armed populace. China needed America’s valuable natural resources and its vast landmass for its own people to expand, so they took great care not to implode America’s sixty-five nuclear power plants. After all, making the United States uninhabitable did not serve the needs of China. Each nuclear power plant was shielded from radiation in the event of an inside leak or break, and that precaution saved it from a meltdown when the Chinese attacked. They certainly could have sent their UPS trucks into each facility; they had the bomb-making capacity to produce NEMPs at will, but they wanted to keep the nuclear power plants to generate power for themselves. While all the sensitive electronics were damaged, the core remained safe.

  The Chinese weren’t done yet.

  October 14, 2025

  Washington DC

  5 p.m.

  The White House went dark at noon. No one knew what had happened, first hoping and then praying it was a local blackout only affecting DC. The lights and phone lines went down along with the computers. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, especially those charged with Homeland Security, reported nervously that they had been unable to reach any of their local commanders. Worse, NORAD was dark. More disturbing than bad news was no news. It seemed that the eyes and ears of America were sealed shut.

  This came on the heels of the country’s attempt to maintain order in the wake of the previous fiscal chaos. President Mann assembled his Cabinet to assess the damage just as his secretary informed him that the Chinese ambassador was there to see him.

  “Show him in immediately,” President Mann barked.

  Deng Xiaoping, the ambassador to China, was shown into the Oval Office and stood quietly and respectfully in front of President Mann’s desk. He ignored the hostile looks from the attending Cabinet members, and instead handed the president a rosewood box with the seal of China engraved on its top.

  “Mr. President, I was instructed to give you this secure satellite phone that will enable you to speak directly to Chairman Chang. He will be calling you momentarily.”

  No sooner than he spoke those words, a soft ringing sound emerged from the box.

  “Please, Mr. President. It is Chairman Chang for you.”

  President Mann opened the box to find a 32-bit wireless sat phone that was directly linked to an orbiting Chinese overhead satellite. It was one of the few phones that still worked in America.

  “Mr. President, I will come right to the point. We have crippled your country. As of twelve noon today, we have completely destroyed your energy infrastructure…”

  “This is an act of war! Have you forgotten that we have thousands of nuclear missiles aimed at your country as we speak?” said President Mann, feeling himself losing control as he yelled into the phone.

  “Actually you don’t, Mr. President. NORAD was completely destroyed, rendering your nuclear subs dead in the water. The remaining 7,000 ICBMs were likewise rendered ineffective by the detonation of our NEMPs. There’re as useless as the silos that house them. The circuitry in every missile was destroyed by the blast, and even if the missiles weren’t destroyed, NORAD no longer exists to send the launch codes. Your ability to communicate with your military via satellite no longer exists.”

  “What do you want?” the president asked tersely, trying to keep the fear he felt from raising his tone.

  “Since, Mr. President, you were so quick to threaten a nuclear strike—which, I might add, I expected—I will get right to the point. I want the complete and unconditional surrender of the United States to the People’s Republic of China. We demand that within two hours, or 7 p.m. EST, you will turn over all your launch codes and the locations of your nuclear subs. You will inform all branches of your military to stand down. At 7 p.m. you will receive my delegation and surrender yourself and your full cabinet to them.”

  “This is an outrage! The world will not stand for this unilateral aggression against a peaceful nation! And if we refuse?”

  “I fully expect you to refuse, Mr. President. That is why in one hour from now, at 6 p.m. EST, we will launch two nuclear strikes within the boundaries of the United States. This will make our demand for your surrender perfectly clear.”

  “Wait…”

  “Then, if we do not have your complete, unconditional surrender, we will launch the rest of our nuclear missiles from our subs that surround your coast. Every major city in the United States will be destroyed, and the fallout from the nuclear radiation will make them uninhabitable for one hundred years. America will cease to exist. The choice is yours. Two hours, Mr. President.”

  “Wait! We can talk! We can come to an arrangement…”

  “No arrangement, Mr. President. Surrender in two hours or have the death of millions of Americans on your hands.”

  “Then stop the attack in one hour. Give us time to respond, for God’s sake!”

  “There is no God, Mr. President, and I will not stop the attack. Two of your cites will cease to exist after six o’clock. My delegation is already in Washington and will call upon you at sev
en. At that time you will be presented with a formal surrender document. You will sign it, and you, your Cabinet, and the members of your family will present themselves for detention. Seven o’clock, Mr. President.”

  “Tell me, then, which two cities?”

  “You’ll see soon enough, Mr. President.”

  With that, Xi Chang terminated the connection. He was not bluffing about the impending nuclear attack; in fact, he had already given the orders. He selected Miami and San Diego for destruction. The cities were far enough away from the nuclear power plants in those states so as not to destroy them, but large enough to cause a massive loss of life. This was of no concern to Chang. Fewer Americans he had to deal with. He had no doubt the bombing would bring the surrender of the United States to him, but he had no compunction about launching the full nuclear strike if they didn’t. He would have preferred not to contaminate two major cities with the fallout from the radiation, but he knew it was necessary to force the United States’ surrender. Did the Americans not do the same thing to the Japanese at the end of WWII? Besides, Chang could live without Miami and San Diego. He took a sip from his steaming mug of tea and sat back to watch the clock on his desk. Fifty-three minutes to detonation.

  October 14, 2025

  Washington DC

  5:10 p.m.

  The president sat stunned in the Oval Office. In just one day—six hours, really—the Republic that stood for over two centuries as the world’s protector of human rights, with the strongest economy and the largest military in the world, collapsed.