“You’re sure of this?”
“Dead.”
“If they give the order to fall back, we’ll miss the whole thing!”
“Are you out of your mind? That’s good news!”
“I want this on camera.”
“You’ll be able to see this from a thousand miles away!”
“But we won’t be the closest—”
“But we’ll be the first,” Dave whispered. A sly smile crept across his face. “The moment the order comes through, we go live under a bogus story, but we’ll be able to catch it when it happens.”
“Did you sell it to the network?”
“That’s what Peter’s doing at this very moment.”
“What’s the hook?”
“We lead with the sinking raft images, then focus on the refugees. That ought to be a nice human interest angle to lead into the…well, to what’s going to happen next.”
Gabe beamed. His heart rate accelerated, pumping pure adrenaline.
“I’ll let you hold my Pulitzer,” Gabe finally said, clapping Dave on the shoulder.
“Are you kidding? I won’t have time for that with all of the offers that’ll be pouring in for me!”
“Ha!” Gabe whooped triumphantly, fist held high in the air.
“Shh!” Dave hissed, though he couldn’t hold back his toothy grin. “Not yet. We’re going to need a good twenty minutes of lead so the other networks don’t get wind from our broadcast.”
“Well… What are you waiting for?”
“You’re the boss.”
“Let’s make history,” Gabe said, snatching the microphone and cord from under Dave’s arm.
He walked to the edge of the deck, feeling his stomach rising, but he forced it down.
“How do I look?”
“Aces,” Dave said.
“The hair?” Gabe patted the hair-sprayed crown.
“Perfect as always.”
“On my mark then,” Gabe said. He took a deep breath and blew it slowly out, shaking his hands to spread the blood flow. “Pulitzer time in five…four… three…”
“This is Gabe Wilcox on the deck of the USS Talon, the most fearsome aircraft carrier to ever sail the sea. Twenty miles to the northwest is the Kuwaiti shore, barely a line on the horizon from where we are stationed in the Persian Gulf. Even the Iraqis thousands of miles from U.S. soil realize the potential ramifications of today’s terrorist attacks. Behind me you’ll see boatloads of refugees fleeing the Middle East in whatever fashion they can. Many of these vessels are hardly what would be considered seaworthy, but these brave men, women, and children would rather take their chances with Mother Nature and the denizens of the deep than face the wrath of the United States Armed Forces.”
Gabe could feel the juices flowing, the words coming smoothly and superfluously. From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a fishing boat tossing on the sharp waves, trying to get close to the hull of the Talon.
He gave Dave a discrete wave and leaned over the railing to better see the smaller ship.
“Down here you’ll see what appears to be a fishing boat trying to get our attention to haul the refugees aboard.”
The camera panned across the twenty-foot tugboat through the black clouds of smoke churning from its sputtering engine. An enormous tarp covered the cargo hold, where Dave could only assume dozens of Iraqis were packed like sardines beneath. The captain stood on the bow, waving frantically. His tan face contrasted his blindingly white serape, freshly bleached as though he had gotten dressed up for the occasion. The white paint had faded to feather-brushed timber rotting to the point that it looked close to crumbling to pieces and sinking to the ocean floor.
The vessel bore no name; just a weather beaten ship probably found abandoned on some decrepit pier.
Dave zoomed past the man through the shattered glass, where another man commandeered the helm. He had a black cloth sack over his head, twin holes torn for his black eyes. His clothes were startlingly white as well.
“The order came through,” Peter whispered into Dave’s ear. He hadn’t even heard the smaller man sneak up on him. “We’re pulling out. The feed goes live in fifteen minutes.”
Dave signaled he understood with an okay sign, never removing his eye from the lens.
“The Seawolves have already snuck in beneath us,” Peter whispered even more quietly.
This time, Dave stole his eye from the camera, looking down to the deep blue water for what he knew was now somewhere far beneath. It was staggering to think that the very weapons that were about to extinguish millions of lives were directly beneath his feet. He thought there should have been some sort of radiating aura of power, some sort of announcement like a giant’s pounding footfalls, but it was much worse. Death moved silently like a shark down there, preparing to attack without the slightest warning.
“Holy crap! What was that?” Dave shouted.
Dave spun the camera toward the reporter, seating his eye against the viewfinder.
A streak of flames tore south across the ocean between the two battleships, throwing up walls of water to either side like a jet skimming the surface.
“Was that a missile?” Gabe gasped. “Zoom in on it!”
Dave fought to focus the camera on the wall of fire, leading it just enough to get a glimpse of the source of the flames.
“What in the name of…?” Dave whispered.
In that split second, he thought he’d seen a red man atop a skeletal horse.
The flames disappeared at the horizon, leaving Dave to follow the dwindling wake back toward the ship.
“Did you get that?” Gabe asked.
“I don’t…?” Dave started to say, but lost his train of thought.
The man from the bow on the small ship below and the other from the cabin were both at the back of the boat. They’d pulled the tarp all the way off and cast it to the ocean, where it floated momentarily before starting to sink. There wasn’t a pile of frightened civilians lying on the deck as he had expected. No one at all.
There was only a long silver canister about four feet long and the width of a snare drum. A mess of wires trailed from the front end to a control panel mounted atop a small pedestal.
Dave’s eyes locked on those of the masked man below him, whose stare told him everything he needed to know.
Gabe’s footsteps raced away from him along the deck.
There was a flash of blinding light.
The lens struggled to focus only briefly before incinerating.
IV
Al Khuwayr, Qatar
WAR SAT ATOP THUNDER ON THE BANDAR-E ZAHEDAN ATOLL, SIX MILES OFF the northern shore of Al Khuwayr, Qatar at the southern rim of the Persian Gulf. The wind blew the salt foam from the crashing waves into his face, patterning the shield covering the mangled mess of tissue beneath like shotgun pellets. Thunder blasted a gust of fire from its nostrils, bucking nervously, hooves clattering atop the jagged rock formation. The beast could feel it coming; its instincts nowhere near as dead as the rest of it.
War studied the horizon, his stoic gaze focused intently on where the sea met the horizon. His job was to give them a nudge if they needed it, but as he suspected, they’d been more than anxious to do it all by themselves. His battles were still to come. His armies would bleed the fields black, but this here was not his fight. Soon, he knew. Soon he would be waging war as he had been created to. Whatever managed to survive The Fall would be ground to powder beneath his heels.
This was merely the prelude; his symphony to conduct.
The crash of nuclear thunder was music to his ears.
He watched the cloud of darkness rise straight up into the trembling sky, the column expanding at the base until it stretched from all the way to the west to where the horizon died to the east. Lightning stabbed through its roiling black belly, flaring angrily, flashing across the entire billowing mass.
The wind quickly changed directions, blowing hard enough from behind him to force Thunder to lea
n back into it, bracing its hooves against the stone outcroppings as the fission explosion drew in a great breath. It screamed past him, the specters of the pain and bloodshed to come, stealing the crashing tide from the break beneath him. The ocean fell a hundred feet, exposing rock formations and corals that had never known the light of day. Crustaceans scurried for cover and fish floundered on their sides.
War raised both arms to his sides, and as if on cue, the ocean rose against the churning black clouds, towering hundreds of feet over its former level. It expanded outward in a giant ring of tsunamis larger than the world had ever seen.
Thunder fired another gust of flame and rose to its hind legs, kicking at the air, which had suddenly become still. The heavens were silent.
The wall of water raced outward at a speed that may even have surprised War. He gripped the spines from the beast’s neck and braced for impact.
The ocean receded half a mile from the coast of the island, the swelling wave blocking out the sky hundreds of feet above his head. The smell of burnt flesh and melted metal hit him a heartbeat before the wave, which submerged the entire island. As the waves continued racing south, the water resumed a more normal level behind, still beating the face of the now bludgeoned atoll, dragging the crumbling boulders back out to sea.
Where War had once been, there was now just a disintegrated pile of rubble. The black cloud enveloped the crushed remains of the island, lightning stabbing at every inch of the ground like so many acupuncture needles.
Nuclear winter descended with flakes of human ash, covering the ground like snow. Dead fish floated to the surface of the ocean, dragged against the rocks to be beaten to pulp in the crimson foam. No gulls cried overhead, though their bodies pocked the surf. The furious roar of the cloud of radiation was the only sound, drowning out even the thunder that blossomed from its belly. Palm trees withered, the bark peeling free and catching fire. Bushes shed their instantaneously browned leaves. Sand melted and fused like butter brickle. Dried grass burned all over the scorched ground.
No life remained.
What wasn’t incinerated on contact still burned against the charcoal backdrop of finality.
A stillness fell over the land and ocean alike, forks of electricity connecting the earth to the infinitely black sky. Soon the rains would come, washing away the remains of man’s stain, killing the soil. Fissures would open in the sea floor, spewing enough molten magma to boil the Seven Seas, the earth bleeding red from the critically-deep wounds.
Those to die in the blast zone were the saved, those fortuitously chosen to pass without suffering. The end would come far more slowly for those who remained, stretching painfully into the terminal future…or what little remained of it anyway.
The earth shuddered with its death rattle, and then fell still.
Dead.
V
Washington, D.C.
“MY FELLOW AMERICANS,” THE PRESIDENT BEGAN, QUICKLY LOOKING TO HIS right to where Brigadier General Alan Barnaby stood like a statue in front of the American flag, hands clasped behind his back. He gave a subtle nod, and the President turned back to the teleprompter. “At precisely 6:16 pm Eastern Standard Time, thirteen minutes ago, a nuclear warhead was detonated in the Persian Gulf. Our entire forward fleet, including four aircraft carriers and a dozen Seawolf nuclear submarines were destroyed at the epicenter of the explosion. Preliminary indications suggest a terrorist attack as none of our captains had yet been given their launch codes. While we are unsure of the exact specifications and kilotonnage of the warhead, we can confirm that the resulting explosion was sufficient to extinguish all life within a radius of several hundred miles, while effects of the radiation may well be felt throughout Europe, Africa, Western Russia and China.”
He looked again to the general. There was a rumble from the crowd of nervous reporters.
“Exactly seven minutes ago now, our early warning systems confirmed that the Chinese have launched a battery of surface-to-air nuclear-armed missiles, strategically targeting various cities between our western and eastern coasts. We can only assume that they fired their weapons in response to the detonation in the Middle East.”
The audience of reporters fell silent.
“We are confident that our satellite defenses will be able to shoot down the missiles while still over the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. We assure you that none of these nuclear devices will even come close to American soil.
“But that brings us to the greatest dilemma a nation has faced since the dawn of time. Negotiations concerning trade and US-sponsored sanctions against the Chinese have been permanently halted. While we cannot verify that the missiles were launched as anything other than a knee-jerk reaction, we cannot afford to take that chance. Our venerable defenses are capable of withstanding a single nuclear assault, leaving us vulnerable to a second wave of attacks. That is a gamble that I, as your President, am unwilling to take. It is the first priority of this government to ensure the safety of the American people. This was a decision not taken lightly, and the direness of the consequences carefully considered. It is my duty as the President of the United States of America to ensure the survival of the millions entrusted to my care and the future generations of God-loving children to follow.”
He took in a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. Deep circles ringed his eyes, his hair tousled from nervously running his hands through it. A tear blossomed from the corner of his right eye.
“Prior to commencing this address, I gave the order to launch a reciprocal strike against the People’s Republic of China.”
He looked out upon the sea of reporters, waiting for the wave of hands to rise.
None did.
“May God be merciful and just,” he said, his voice cracking. “May He bless you and keep you.”
He stormed off the stage and disappeared through the door where a dozen Secret Service operatives ushered him hurriedly toward the waiting helicopter that would speed him to a secure location where the First Lady was already safely stowed.
“Let the warmongers have their day,” he said, then burst out into the raging wind and rumble of swirling blades, encircled by his entourage.
* * *
“Your questions will be answered in due course and in orderly fashion,” Jack Remington, the Secretary of Defense barked, taking his place at the podium. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a month.
The clamor that had ensued following the President’s departure died promptly.
“With the conflict in the Middle East escalating due to the hostile Syrian occupancy of Iraq, the resultant deployment of nuclear-armed vessels into the Persian Gulf stalled already precarious negotiations with China. It was their justified fear that any sort of nuclear detonation in Iraq would inevitably affect the Chinese people with the fallout and subsequent radiation poisoning. Foreign ambassadors have already indicated the willingness of the Chinese people to go to war against the United States if trade sanctions and United Nations-mandated disarmaments were not repealed.
“While it is not this government’s stance that war with China was a foregone conclusion, we do feel that an opportunistic Chinese regime seized this opportunity to attempt to secure world dominance while we were trying to come to grips with the tragedies both at home and abroad.”
He smiled a wooden grin, loosing the beads of sweat from his brow.
“It is our official contention that the Chinese believed that we launched a nuclear attack against the Syrian-occupied Iraq without concern for the detrimental fallout that would cross into Western China. We can now state with one hundred percent surety that the initial detonation was caused by a warhead other than our own, however it triggered a chain reaction that led to the detonation of our nuclear arms stationed in the Persian Gulf. Xiao Hung and the Chinese government made no attempt to contact the United States government to verify the facts before firing weapons of mass destruction at selected targets within American borders. Such an unprovoked act of aggression required swift a
nd proportionate resolution to ensure the survival of future generations of our children…American children.”
He hung his head momentarily, a tear slapping the podium.
“So it is with heavy heart that I stand before you today to confirm that a nuclear strike has been launched against the United States. We trust that our Star Wars defenses will effectively target and eliminate all incoming missiles, but we regret to inform you that the People’s Republic of China has no such protection.
“As of 7:03 pm Eastern Standard Time, the threat against America and her children of freedom will be no more.
“Let the reconstruction commence.”
VI
Over the Atlantic Ocean
TERROR FORCED ADAM’S EYES OPEN. THE FLOOR ROSE AND FELL BENEATH him; the harness tattooing his shoulders the only thing holding him in his seat. Electric blue lightning pounded the opposite wing through the windows above the heads of the GI’s across from him. The wind roared past and turbulence battered the lifeless bird from side to side.
The ocean rose into view at the bottom of the windows, the tumultuous, white-capped sea reaching for them to welcome the plane into its watery embrace with waves that had to be close to three stories tall. Bugs spattered the windows with streaks of guts as they passed through what appeared to be a living cloud of them.
Wind shear vibrated the body of the plane, rattling bolts loose from the fuselage. One of the engines ripped from the wing behind him with a metallic scream, banging the wall against his back before flying off into the raging storm. Everything canted to the right with the sudden shift in weight.
The Atlantic was clearly visible now, obscuring everything else outside the porthole windows. They couldn’t have been more than a hundred yards above it and falling fast.
Adam couldn’t catch his breath. His lungs had deflated like balloons and were unable to expand. His teeth ground so tightly together he felt the pressure in his nose and chin.
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