THE ALEX FLETCHER BOXSET: Books 1-5

by Steven Konkoly

  Chen had barely settled onto his mat when the tent went dark—the intense light from the watchtowers no longer penetrating the thin brown canvas. The sudden change quieted the tent, only a few whispers penetrating the silence. Absolute silence. Something was wrong.

  He scrambled to the tent flap on his knees, pushing through a sea of huddled prisoners. He crawled out of the tent and lay still in the rocky dirt. Aside from a few flashlight beams sweeping across the fence line in front of the closest guard barracks, the camp was completely dark. Only the lights on the inbound trucks penetrated the night—but the trucks had stopped moving. He stood up, fixated on the lights.

  Why the hell would they stop in the open?

  The guards in the tower to his right started shouting at him. Chen heard the words “last warning,” so he raised his hands above his head and nodded.

  He turned toward the tent, noticing something he had missed a few moments ago. Chen stopped and stared beyond the trucks.

  Impossible.

  He hoped his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. The prominent orange glow above the hills had vanished. The trucks. The camp’s lights. The city. It all made sense. Someone had just thrown the switch over part of the People’s Republic of China. Why had the Americans waited so long to strike back? It didn’t matter. He was deeply satisfied knowing that the people’s lives had been permanently cast into darkness.

  Fuck the people.

  Chapter 8

  KJ-3000 Airborne Early Warning aircraft

  153 miles east of Guangzhou

  Major Xhua Hua stabbed at the button next to the console’s trackball, locking the target in the system. A flurry of voices and movement erupted around him as equipment operators scrambled to report the target to a dizzying array of People’s Liberation Air Force units on the ground. He swiveled his chair to brief his commanding officer, who had already crisscrossed through the maze of consoles to reach him.

  “Colonel, I have an unidentified air track eighteen point two miles north of Guangzhou. Altitude 600 meters and rising. Speed 700 kilometers per hour. Zero horizontal trajectory. Zero squawk. Designating track number eight-five.”

  “Where did it appear?” asked the colonel, leaning in to view the screen.

  “Here,” said Xhua, pointing at his wide-screen display. “Eighteen point two miles north of Guangzhou.”

  “It’s flying straight up?”

  “Affirmative, sir. Altitude eleven hundred meters.”

  “It can’t be a missile or a rocket. It’s too slow,” said the colonel, shaking his head. “And there’s nothing listed on the ground in that area.”

  An officer behind them interrupted. “Colonel Jin! Southern Air Defense Command demands a personal report on the contact!”

  The colonel’s face tightened, and he nodded stiffly to the junior officer before scrambling back to his station toward the front of the aircraft. Xhua turned his attention back to the display and watched the baffling contact profile.

  “Altitude twenty-one hundred meters. Speed steady at seven hundred!” he yelled to the colonel.

  This was a first for Major Xhua. He’d been assigned to airborne early warning aircraft since he joined the People’s Liberation Air Force, rising through the ranks to the second-most senior position in the command and control center aboard the PLA’s premier air defense platform. Only Colonel Jin and one of the pilots outranked him. In all of his eighteen years, he’d never tracked a straight-vertical contact this low to the ground. Military jet aircraft occasionally pulled this kind of maneuver during combat training, but in every case the aircraft started the steep ascent from a two- to three-thousand-meter altitude. Nothing about “eight-five” made sense. Another five seconds passed.

  “Altitude thirty-two hundred meters. Speed holding,” he said. Three kilometers.

  “Review the feeds and confirm that we didn’t miss anything prior to detection!” yelled Colonel Jin.

  “Yes, sir!” he yelled, looking between the consoles behind him to assign the task to one of his junior officers.

  “No! You review the feeds!” screamed the colonel.

  Here we go. Southern Air Defense Command had started their inquisition. He wondered if the phased array ground radars situated further inland had seen anything different. Doubtful. They were focused on higher altitude, over-the-horizon threats. He nodded and opened a separate command window on his screen.

  “Captain Wu, stand by to assume primary tactical actio—” What is this?

  The data window for track eight-five couldn’t be correct. Altitude seventy-three hundred meters? Speed twenty-nine hundred kilometers per hour? Supersonic?

  “Colonel! Track eight-five has increased speed to Mach two point three. Eight thousand meters!” said Xhua.

  Colonel Jin snapped his head in Xhua’s direction, but didn’t respond. He kept nodding in acquiescence to the generals undoubtedly screaming at him through his headset. Xhua watched the altitude climb. Nine thousand. Ten thousand. Nearly a thousand meters per second. What the hell is this? A chilling thought entered his mind. ICBM? Second Artillery Corps certainly wouldn’t disclose the location of their mobile launchers, so the area would appear empty to conventional PLA forces.

  It was the only thing that made sense to him. The Americans had responded to the invasion of Taiwan with nuclear weapons, and China was retaliating. He resisted the urge to get up from his seat. He had nowhere to go and nothing to do except wait.

  “Southern Air Defense Command confirms your data!” said Colonel Jin. “I have been assured there is nothing in the area.”

  “Retaliatory strike?” asked Xhua, silencing the command and control center.

  Jin stared at him with his mouth agape for a moment before shaking his head.

  “No. We would have an inbound warning by now,” said Jin, the confidence in his voice fading.

  “Twenty-one thousand meters, sir,” said Xhua, grimacing.

  What else could this be? A UFO?

  “Guangzhou Air Base has scrambled a flight of two J-10 fighters!” yelled one of the console operators.

  “I hope they brought space suits,” said Xhua. “Because the contact will be in low Earth orbit before they reach it.”

  The colonel cursed and spoke forcefully into his headset, never breaking the steely-eyed glare at Xhua. Message received. Quit speculating about nuclear weapons—do your job. He turned to the screen. Twenty-three thousand. The altitude continued to climb while Jin talked to the Southern Air Defense Command. Thirty-two thousand. It had to be an ICBM.

  At sixty-eight thousand meters, the track disappeared—followed immediately by the picture on his display. The cabin lights blinked and the plane shook violently, throwing Xhua against his seatbelt harness. The engines whined through the hull before settling into a stable pitch. The crew erupted in a cacophony of reports punctuated by cries of pain. He looked around and saw four members of the crew sprawled over the consoles and deck. They all appeared to be moving, which was a good sign. Panning toward the front of the cabin, he saw that Colonel Jin hadn’t been so lucky. Jin’s lifeless eyes stared at him from the rubber-matted deck, his head and neck jammed at an unsightly angle against the aircraft’s mid-cabin door.

  He flipped a switch to talk to the flight deck, but couldn’t get the pilots to answer. His display screen reappeared with a prompt that told him that the system was in the reboot phase. The southern air defense zone was temporarily blind. He unbuckled his seatbelt and made his way to the cockpit door, grabbing anything sturdy in case the aircraft hit another patch of turbulence. Glancing down at Colonel Jin, he realized it wouldn’t matter. He couldn’t hold himself steady if the aircraft shook again. He knocked on the door, which opened before he lowered his hand.

  A bloodied flight officer stood in the opening, his gray helmet cracked down the middle. He wiped the blood from his face and glanced at Colonel Jin’s legs, which protruded into the aisle.

  “Jin’s dead. What is the status of the aircraft?�
�� said Xhua.

  The pilot pulled him into the spacious cockpit, taking Xhua by surprise.

  “One of the engines is down, but the aircraft is stable—for now. We’re running a diagnostics check on the main systems. What the hell happened?”

  “I don’t know. We were tracking a target headed straight up. It reached sixty-eight thousand meters and vanished right before the system shut down.”

  “Sixty-eight thousand? What was it, a missile?” asked the lead pilot.

  “We don’t know, sir,” said Xhua.

  “You don’t know?” replied the pilot. “I’m taking us back to base.”

  “I need to get authorization from South Air Defense Command to end the mission,” said Xhua.

  “The mission is over.”

  “Negative, sir. We can’t come off station without their permission,” said Xhua.

  The copilot interrupted the argument. “Both of you need to see this. Look toward the ground.”

  Xhua pushed past the dazed flight officer and leaned between the pilot and copilot seats, craning his head to see through one of the side windows.

  “I don’t see anything,” said Xhua.

  “That’s the problem. The lights are out—everywhere,” said the copilot. “Consistent with the equipment fluctuations, I’d say we’ve been hit by an EMP.”

  “I don’t see how,” said Xhua. “We would have been notified of an incoming ICBM.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m declaring an emergency and landing this aircraft,” said the pilot. “It’s only a matter of time before we have a catastrophic equipment failure.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s probably…the best course of action,” he said, backing into the cabin, not sure what to do next.

  The tactical situation over southern China had drastically changed, and not for the better.

  Chapter 9

  Sky View Tower

  136th Floor

  Pudong District, Shanghai China

  Huan Xiao swiped the air a few inches from the ample touchscreen of her Jianyu smartphone, activating the device. Responding instantaneously, the screen displayed a picture of her family posing in front of a tranquil, azure bay in the Maldives. Her boys, ages five and seven, grinned widely at the photographer. Her husband displayed a forced smile, his thoughts thousands of miles away at Jianyu Tower.

  She stole a glance out of the two-story, floor-to-ceiling window, the centerpiece of their 9,200-square-foot residence, at the zenith of Shanghai’s tallest building. Across the Huangpu River, the warm, distant lights of the Bund waterfront beckoned over the cramped array of Technicolor towers jammed into Pudong. Jianyu Towers rose among them, displaying a dizzying array of brilliant colors that slowly shifted from dusk until dawn. Huan was thankful that she could still see the Bund. She was thankful for many things, mostly her two children, who were sound asleep.

  Huan flicked her head a few centimeters left, clearing the screen with the nearly imperceptible movement, the device having already verified her identity through a subtle retinal scan. She had to admit, her husband’s company’s latest device was slick. Jianyu Industries didn’t invent gesture-guided screen technology, but they had nearly perfected it. With a little practice, the features performed flawlessly, freeing a hand to hold a cappuccino or shopping bag. Another technological marvel designed to enable an upwardly mobile lifestyle. At least that’s how they were selling it—or trying to sell it.

  What should have been a breakthrough for Jianyu Industries, and the Chinese economy, had been hampered by another round of international trade setbacks. The launch was already three months behind schedule. The European release date, scheduled for early September, was inexplicably pushed back to November, followed by another delay in late November.

  She suspected the problem stemmed from the brewing conflict with Taiwan. After the Americans withdrew their ships from the region, the Taiwanese government and military escalated their aggressive stance toward the Chinese. Rumors had spread through underground news agencies that Taiwanese Special Operations teams had been captured near Shantou, scouting the South Sea Fleet Naval Base. Whatever was happening, her husband knew more than he was willing to tell. He’d grown edgier by the week since the announcement of the November delay.

  The scene beyond the reinforced, quadruple-paned windows vanished, leaving an impenetrable blackness—everywhere. Her phone’s screen cast the only light she could detect inside or outside of the residence. She stopped breathing, listening to the unfamiliar stillness around her. Something must have gone wrong with the auto-tinting windows. But why would the entire suite go dark?

  “Wei?” she said, calling out to her husband.

  He was on the second level, in his study, just beyond the balcony. A light illuminated the windowpanes of a double set of French doors above her. She heard them click open.

  “Wei? Something is wrong with the windows,” she said, standing up in the darkness.

  “It’s not the windows!” he barked. “I just lost power to everything. Not even my laptop works!”

  “How is that possible?” she said.

  “It’s not. The building has its own backup power system. The residence has its own backup system. This is bad news, Hu,” he said, using his phone’s built-in light to make his way to a spiral staircase.

  Instead of heading toward her, Wei drifted to the center of the massive window. She stumbled across the marble floor to join him. Small lights flickered across the river, pinprick signs that the darkness wasn’t a mirage caused by the high-tech, light responsive glass. Huan peered at the horizon, finding it devoid of Shanghai’s endless sea of lights.

  “Nothing,” she said. “How could the power fail for the entire city?”

  He took deep breaths, but didn’t answer her. Wei was acting way too calm, almost like he had expected this to happen.

  “Wei, what’s happening?” she said.

  “We need to pack up and get out of here,” he said, putting both of his hands on the glass.

  “What are you talking about?” she said, grabbing his shoulder and spinning him to face her.

  She held her phone in the other hand, with the screen facing up. The light washed over his face, exposing a frighteningly detached look. He swallowed hard before turning his head and staring blankly past the glass.

  “It won’t be safe for the children in the city,” he muttered.

  “Wei! You’re scaring me! Why won’t it be safe here?” she pleaded, her hands trembling.

  “Twenty-two million people live here, half of them migrant labor from the interior. We don’t stand a chance,” he muttered.

  “In a power outage? You’re not making sense,” she said, shaking him.

  He looked at her with wild eyes.

  “The power isn’t coming back on, Hu,” he said.

  “Of course it is,” she said, cocking her head. “Why wouldn’t it?”

  “The rumors were true,” said Wei.

  “What rumors?” she demanded.

  “Nobody thought they would retaliate,” he said, ignoring her.

  “I’m taking the kids to my parents,” she said, walking away from him.

  Whatever he was saying about the lights sounded like the ramblings of a madman on the verge of a breakdown. It wouldn’t surprise her given his odd behavior over the past few months. The delayed launch of their flagship product had obviously been too much for him to handle. She’d check into the hotel on the seventieth floor of the tower, just to put some distance between them until the city restored the power. She sensed his presence close behind and whirled to defend herself if necessary.

  “Sorry, Hu. This is just…this is like a bad dream,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll be able to cross the river to get to your parents—and we need to be moving away from the populated areas.”

  He sounded normal again, but she still didn’t understand what had him so spooked.

  “I still don’t understand why we can’t stay,” she protested. “The tower has its o
wn security. Its own grocery stores. We have everything we need right here.”

  “Sky View is home to ten thousand residents. The stores will be emptied within minutes once people realize that the lights are out for good. Then they’ll turn their attention to us, at the top of the building. That’s how it works. The building will devour itself from within, and whatever’s left will be devoured by the millions of people living in the slums we created. Our only chance of survival is to get out of this building—immediately,” he said.

  “We should just wait for the power to be restored,” she said. “It’s too dangerous to travel in a blackout.”

  “Hu, my love, this isn’t a blackout. Can’t you see? Nothing is functioning here,” he said, gesturing around the deathly still residence. “The residence is on backup battery power, but nothing works.”

  She stared at him, still not grasping what he was trying to say.

  “This is a retaliatory EMP attack. It all makes sense now. The trade restrictions, bogus underground news reports, travel bans—they’ve been keeping us in the dark. Ha! Did you hear that? In the dark. Now we’re really in the dark,” he said, laughing.

  He was starting to sound crazy again. Huan backed up slowly, bumping into an end table and knocking over a lamp. The room brightened momentarily, an orange fireball fading on the southwest horizon. They ran to the window together, pressing against the cold panel. Something big had exploded on the outskirts of Pudong. The metal chandelier above them rattled, followed by a vibration through the floor and glass. She recoiled from the glass, feeling completely exposed twenty-two hundred feet above the ground.

  “I better wake the kids,” she said.