by Reed Sprague
The two of them looked directly at each other’s eyes as Downing spoke, “Mr. President, the Pakistani Resistance Force was responsible for setting off the nuclear bomb that destroyed Crimpton, Idaho, killing more than seven thousand Americans. And they still have one armed nuclear bomb in their possession. The USFIA could easily have prevented the bombing if they had any conceivable idea what they were doing,” Downing said, without blinking.
There was five seconds of an awkward, almost twisted silence.
“Turn the military commanders loose,” the president ordered. “I want every known asset and all known members of the Pakistani Resistance Force destroyed within twelve hours.”
“We’ll have to invade Pakistan in order to do that, Mr. President,” the secretary of defense said.
“I am fully aware of that. Don’t invade with ground forces yet. You should be able to accomplish ninety percent of what’s needed with bombers. We’ll deal with the rest later. I fully understand that it will take months for our ground forces to root out all members of the Resistance Force — and make no mistake about it, we will root them out — but you should be able to cripple them beyond repair within twelve hours.
“You all heard my orders. It’s time to get on with it.”
“What about approval from the congress?” the president’s chief of staff asked.
“To hell with them. I don’t care what they think. It’s time to move. The American people did not elect me to this office so that they could hear me whine to the congress every time I have to make a decision to defend this country against imminent danger.”
The Pakistani Resistance Force was a known radical political organization, but they were not suspected by experts to be a radical terror group. The president was not interested in the opinions of the experts. Members of the Pakistani Resistance Force were known for their intimidating ways, and they were known for an occasional murder and act of extortion, but mostly they worked from the inside. They held seats in Pakistan’s parliament. Their members were political servants and even teachers and doctors. They were woven into Pakistani society. Many were well–respected citizens of Pakistan.
Yamamoto knew this, just as he knew many of the facts of the nation of Pakistan. He had a good memory regarding the things of Pakistan. Yamamoto also had a good long–term memory. He remembered that his father and his father’s father, both of whom fought bravely against the U.S. so many years ago, died a few days apart. His father was the first of the two to be killed, in Hiroshima, on 6 August 1945; His grandfather was killed three days later in Nagasaki. Neither was buried because neither body was ever located. Yamamoto knew of his family’s torment and shame. He remembered well his relatives’ tears as they talked from time to time at family gatherings about how they missed their dear family heroes.
Peterson’s cronies found it easy to convince Yamamoto to work with them because they discovered his hated family secret. Yamamoto was now in his eighties, but the pain of his father and grandfather’s fate at the hands of the Americans so many years before was fresh in his mind when he was approached by Peterson’s disciples with an offer.
Peterson offered to “make up” for the deaths of Yamamoto’s father and grandfather by setting up all descendants of theirs with a first–class life style. Peterson had guaranteed this life style for generations unlimited into the future.
Hernandez was even more easily corrupted. He was eaten alive with jealousy and he was constantly covering his tracks for having sold his soul to a foreign spy. Peterson and his boys went from point A to point B with Hernandez’s corrupt life in about twelve seconds. The FBI and USFIA had been stuck in a political battle over Hernandez for years. Neither agency was capable of finalizing the investigation of Hernandez, firing him, arresting him and gaining a conviction, ending his corruption.
Hernandez kept getting in deeper, though he had dreams of letting it all go and turning it around somehow. Peterson learned of Hernandez taking bribe money for his father–in–law’s cancer treatment. Peterson and his supporters learned it all, then they went to work on Hernandez. So Hernandez worked for Peterson now, and he would do as he was told. It made him feel important. He hated himself for it, but he knew Peterson was all he had.
So for Hernandez and Yamamoto, work for Peterson was more than just a job. They had been completely corrupted. They were required to talk when direct lies were needed. They were required to keep quiet when silence was needed to conceal the truth and allow the lies to flow like a raging river, flooding the entire earth.
The president’s justification for the invasion of Pakistan unraveled before the last bomb was dropped on the camps of the Pakistani Resistance Force. It was too late, though. Members of the Pakistani Resistance Force hid in the open; locating and destroying them was easy. All of the Resistance Force’s known members were either dead, captured or on the run.
The USFIA was completely caught off guard by the invasion of Pakistan. Albert arrived at the White House soon after learning of the invasion but was initially denied a formal meeting with President Barnes. The Secret Service agents were under direct orders to restrict President Barnes’ access from U.S. government officials. No one was sure who, if anyone, could be trusted to meet with the president, so the policy was that the answer was “no” to nearly all requests to meet with the president. This was a blanket order that did not contain an exception, even for Sydney Albert.
Albert gambled that he could make quick work of the agents. He was allowed onto the grounds, just outside the north entrance to the White House. Once there, he challenged the agents directly to allow him to proceed or shoot him. “You are our boss, Mr. Albert, but our loyalty is to the president alone. You are forbidden from entering the White House. Please leave at once,” the senior Secret Service agent ordered.
“Yes, your loyalty is to the president and to him alone, but this is a matter of extreme urgency. I am ordering you to allow me to enter the White House,” Albert replied.
“Mr. Albert, I am ordering you to leave the White House grounds at once,” the senior agent responded.
“Shoot me,” Albert replied, as he walked deliberately past the agents and toward the door to the White House.
President Barnes was just inside the entrance to the White House and heard the exchange between the Secret Service agents and Albert. “Allow him to come in,” the president said. “I’ve got enough problems on my hands already. I don’t need to have a dead deputy chief of the USFIA to deal with on top of everything else that’s going wrong.”
President Barnes’ inner office door was not that far inside the north White House entrance door. Albert stormed into the president’s office, just behind the president, and immediately demanded to know where the president got the information he used to justify the attack on the Pakistanis. “I’ll do whatever the hell I want, Albert!” President Barnes screamed, after being challenged by Albert to tell him of his reasoning for the attack. “If you don’t like it, I’ll accept your resignation right this moment!”
“Mr. President, please, please, this is a screw up of epic proportions. I can’t imagine what you or the others were thinking. Please tell me who told you whatever it is that you were told that caused you to invade Pakistan.”
“If you had been doing your job protecting those nuclear bombs from the Pakistani Resistance Force, this would not have happened,” Barnes shouted.
“Mr. President, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I honestly don’t. If the USFIA had any nuclear bombs under our authority, we would have registered them with you. You know that.”
“No way, Albert. We know. We know that the other bomb is missing. We know that you guys screwed it all up. Don’t worry, though, Downing and Hernandez will find the damn thing before it can go off. That’s something you obviously can’t and couldn’t do.”
“I think I know what happened. Was it Downing and Hernandez from the FBI who came to you?” Albert asked.
“Yes.”
“I’
m sure Downing’s clean, but Hernandez is always scraping the bottom of the pit. That guy’s bad news. Always has been. Who else, sir?”
“Ambassador Yamamoto.”
“That’s not good. We’ve been investigating him. We suspect that he was contacted by Peterson to go to work for him, to help Peterson in his quest of delusion to become royal highness of the world. Peterson’s thugs were seen stalking Yamamoto’s great grandchildren in Tokyo. Yamamoto might have an ax to grind with the U.S.”
“How’s that?”
“His father was killed in Hiroshima, by Little Boy. Fat Man got his father’s father a few days later.”
“O, my God. You are serious, aren’t you,” the president said as it became clear to him that he had made a monumental mistake by invading Pakistan and cutting Albert out of the decision to do so.
“Yes, sir. I’m afraid I am serious,” Albert said.
“And, one more thing, Mr. President.”
“What?”
“We believe that we know where the second bomb is. I had planned to send my best agents over to get it.”
“We’re doomed,” the president said. “We are in huge trouble. Get that bomb. Make sure it doesn’t go off. I can’t do anything about the invasion of Pakistan at this point, but we have got to make certain that bomb does not go off. I am ordering you to arrest Hernandez and Yamamoto immediately.”
“That will not be easy, Mr. President,” Albert replied.
“Why?”
“They’re gone. They’ve disappeared. My guess is that Peterson realized early on that this whole thing would unravel and that we would come after Hernandez and Yamamoto, possibly connecting them to him. He’s probably hiding them.”
In the process of wiping out the Pakistani Resistance Force, the U.S. Air Force also destroyed an entire Pakistani village. Thousands of innocent Pakistani citizens died in the attack. The suspected members of the Resistance Force were not even in the village at the time of the attack. They had never been to the village. They were seventy–five miles to the south, far away from any town or village, hiding essentially in the open—not in homes, a mountain cave or government buildings.
The Pakistani people were outraged. Even if the village had not been destroyed, they would have been outraged by the attack on the Resistance Force. The world was about to learn of the reasons for the attack on Pakistan, none of which would be acceptable justification, and the entire world would undoubtedly join the Pakistani people in their outrage.
The people of Pakistan demanded that their government do something to retaliate against the United States. Pakistani options were limited, but open chaos and outright anarchy were the sure results if the Pakistani government appeared weak against U.S. aggression. The Pakistani government did something that no one dreamed they would do. They launched a small nuclear missile, purportedly aimed at a U.S. Naval fleet in the Arabian Sea. The goal was to appear to be tough on the Americans. The bomb was actually aimed at the open waters, and the Pakistanis intended for it to sink harmlessly to the bottom of the sea without causing any damage.
The bomb was terribly off course. It landed on the island city of Kavaratti, India. The Indian government’s policy, to be strictly followed, was to retaliate with full nuclear force to any like attack from its hated neighbor, Pakistan.
Indian nuclear bombs rained down on Pakistan. Every Pakistani military base and nuclear facility was destroyed within eight minutes of the accidental bombing of Kavaratti. Confusion as to exactly what had happened caused the Pakistanis to flinch, just for a moment or two, and that delay gave the decisive Indians the few precious moments needed to attack and destroy.
Before the entire country of Pakistan would be destroyed, India inexplicably stopped the bombing. The Indians were satisfied that they had destroyed the Pakistani nuclear arsenal. Then their human compassion for the general welfare of the Pakistani masses won out over their need for blind vengeance.
The war between Pakistan and India became known as the Ten Minute Nuclear War, and it killed more than two million people. Millions more were tortured with searing pain. But the war ended before it could become an all–out worldwide nuclear holocaust.
Fears of intense nuclear bombing between the nuclear armed nations of the earth gave way in a few short minutes to the sanity that there would be no winner if the madness escalated.
But things could not remain the same. The world had to come together now, or so Peterson proposed. Under the authority of the United Nations, and the leadership of Tyler Peterson, there would be meetings of all the world’s superpowers and things would be very different in the future. Millions had died, vaporized in seconds, and there were no punks or bullies who could be hunted down. Good guy/bad guy, liberal/conservative discussions were fruitless and even irrelevant.
Much of the never–ending, mind numbing rhetoric that had been so important for so many decades simply faded and was forgotten. It was all so simple now: The good could no longer be counted on to protect the innocent from the bad. Hunting down the bad guys and destroying them would not solve the problem.
The Ten Minute Nuclear War was proof of only one thing: Worldwide nuclear power must be equally shared from that day on, with no tolerance whatsoever for deviation from a yet–to–be–decided norm. There would be one acceptable standard for each major area of human need and existence.
Leaders from the United States, China, Russia and the European Union all met at a secret location in Beijing. The meeting was tense, argumentative and even explosive. All leaders came to the meeting with general agreement, though, that the way things had worked in the world had to change drastically, and that change had to happen forthwith.
In fact, the leaders had already outlined the plan. It was completed long before the Ten Minute Nuclear War. World leaders had come together many times before in secret to plan for various nuclear or otherwise catastrophic scenarios. Peterson had led several of those meetings, and he would lead this one. The plan that always made it to the top was the one that called for a simple idea, but one that would be effective nonetheless.
There would be a sharing of the triggers that are the means to launch any nuclear bomb in the world. A nuclear bomb could not be launched unless eighty percent of those with various trigger capabilities agreed. Each would then have to do precisely as his procedures called for, in the exact order required, before a nuclear bomb could be launched. Each continent and major people group, based on assigned religious beliefs for major geographic regions, would participate. Any country refusing to take part would be given the option to reconsider, and, if they refused, all other countries would launch a full–scale non–nuclear military attack against them, destroying their governmental system and replacing it. The world could take no more chances.
Exceptions or even compromises to full and absolute participation could not be tolerated. The potential for human suffering had been witnessed first hand during the Ten Minute Nuclear War. Never again would the world witness the massacre of a large number of people for such an inexcusable series of blunders that led to the Ten Minute Nuclear War, or for any other reason.
At first, Great Britain asked if it could refuse to cooperate fully. The Brits would share, they proposed, but only if they were allowed to retain trigger procedures that allowed for a team of British leaders to launch under certain well defined conditions. Their proposal was denied.
Then the United States tried to compromise. The U.S. would cooperate, except that they, as the Western Hemisphere’s only protection from attack, would retain three sites from which they could launch nuclear weapons, Atlanta on the east coast, Anchorage and Honolulu to the west. The request was denied without debate or discussion.
“You’re out of line! You will not propose exceptions just because you are from the United States. And you will not argue, because we are not allowed to argue. Our procedures and agreements are set. That’s the way it is. If we’re found to be fighting, or even disagreeing, it will be interpreted by the p
eople as a sign that our authority can be questioned. We can’t and won’t tolerate that. All people groups are represented, all religions are represented, and all power is shared. We all have a piece of the trigger and the launch capability is jointly held. Authority and power will be shared,” Vladamir Chomsky, the Russian representative said with absolute clarity in response to the U.S. proposal. Peterson agreed.
In the end, there was no compromise. There would be the establishment of a Council of Worldwide Nuclear Authority, which would control the triggers of all nuclear weapons in the entire world. The CWWNA would be under the full authority and control of the WWCA, and its president, Tyler Peterson.
Power would not be shared based upon the present economic or military might of any particular country, but would be shared based on presumed religious identification and known geographic identities. Since wars were determined to happen because of geographic or religious disputes, the power to destroy the world, or to protect the world from destruction, would be shared by the major religious groups and the continents.
The Council would be composed of eleven representatives: Peterson, 1; Christianity, Roman Catholicism, 1; Christianity, Anglicanism (representative of all non–Roman Catholic Christianity), 1; Islam, Shiite, 1; Islam, Sunni and all other Islam, 1; Atheist, Pagan, 1; Atheist, all other, 1; Buddist, 1; Hindu, 1; Chinese Traditional, 1; representative of all other major world religions combined, 1. Judaism would have no representation, and would receive no recognition as a religion.
With the exception of the arctic regions, each continent was represented with no less than one vote on the Council, and Peterson also had a representative continental vote: Peterson, 1; Africa, 2; Asia, 2; Australia, 1; Europe, 2; North America, 2; South America, 1.