Directive 51

by John Barnes

  And all the Hog Drivers on the bench had nodded, and said, yes, yes, sir, clear.

  Greg wondered if everyone remembered what he did. Not about his own plane, but about some of the others. Some Super Hornets, on a stop-at-all-cost mission, might be carrying nukes. Whatever was on that thing had to be a nightmare.

  Behind the Noseguards, in the middle range, from just over the horizon to perhaps eighty miles out at sea, were the Tackles—the main interception force, still being gathered from a dozen air bases. Land-based Navy and Marine F-35s out of North Island, with their extra fuel and longer patrol times, were already flying search patterns up and down the coast; Air Force F-35s and F-22s out of Holloman AFB in New Mexico were arriving and joining them. The fence was getting thicker, but it still had holes.

  Along the coast, where the public could see them, the Halfbacks were just getting organized. So far the Arizona Air National Guard had just come in, flying F-22s and even old F-16s that Redmond’s grandfather might have flown in one of Reagan’s little wars. Redmond laughed privately; most of the F-16s were younger than his own A-10, but “old” in a fighter was different from old in an attack bomber, kind of like a gymnast versus a golfer. The Halfback part of the defense would grow thicker as more ANG fighters arrived from New Mexico, and extend farther north as the California Air Guard’s fighters, up in Fresno, got into the air and spread out.

  The colonel had said, unofficially, that the A-10s almost weren’t invited to the party. They were a close-air-support plane, intended to attack targets on the ground, and slower than the Dreamliner. But with the whole West Coast littered with potential good targets for attack, and minimal prep time, they needed Fullbacks, planes patrolling around any likely target—such as Game Seven of the World Series here in Anaheim—and the A-10 was meant to loiter: circle a battlefield slowly, waiting to be called into action.

  It wasn’t yet dark down below, but they were turning the stadium lights on. He took another slow wide turn over Anaheim, nursing the fuel, and wished he’d hear that the Bad Dreamliner had been picked up and nailed. It would be nice to be headed home.

  As he made a turn, he saw something out of the corner of his eye; in the setting sun, there was a black dot. He talked to his controller, got cleared to investigate, and came around, descending gently and dropping down almost to stall speed for a better look. The low late-afternoon sun made the black sphere much more visible; a stray radiosonde balloon, floating along at about twenty-two thousand feet, one of the two-meter ones that you could buy from any scientific supply house, but with no instrument package.

  Redmond made a report; it gave him something to do. In return, the controller informed him that the Pirates had just finished batting without having gotten a man on base.

  He banked around and saw that the stadium lights were clearly visible; potentially a great target for the terrorists.

  Against the red glow of sunset, he spotted three more dots, and called it in. “I think we’ve got somebody out there launching balloons for fun,” he said. “Anybody in Japan who doesn’t know the war’s over?”

  “I’ll kick it upstairs,” his controller said. “You never know what’s significant. Thanks for the word on the balloons, Fullback Fourteen.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Greg thought he might have seen a dot move abruptly, but when he looked it was gone. Probably just popped. Lord, let that be the most violent thing I see on this trip.

  ABOUT THE SAME TIME. WASHINGTON. DC. 7:55 P.M. EST. MONDAY. OCTOBER 28.

  Visualized as a fan of great circle trajectories, the West Coast reached toward Jayapura like a vast splayed hand, with parts of the coast as much as forty minutes closer than others. But which extended finger would the viper strike?

  Alaska continued to glow red; nothing happened there. A new red blob popped up in Coos Bay, Oregon, but no blow fell.

  The red cancer had spread out from Coos Bay for a few minutes until Vancouver, BC, had become another possible center of attack; in a few minutes the two red blotches had joined and begun to sweep down the coast and inland. Nothing hit; probably the enemy was not aiming at Seattle or Portland. In the Northwest, the red area moved inland in a sharp curve. A long red finger from the northwest blob reached down the coast, nearing San Francisco.

  No 787 appeared on any radar, on any ship, plane, or ground station. High-altitude satellites might have seen something, but if so, it had not yet emerged from the analysis; even the NSA’s quantum computers couldn’t instantly scan the imaging from so many millions of square miles for something that would fit into one city block. A couple of low-altitude satellites would pass over soon; maybe they’d have better luck.

  No calls came in about explosions, planes crashing, planes where there should be no planes; nothing. Perhaps they were taking some longer way round, had found a hole in the defenses or were planning to make one?

  The big red patch in the Northwest grew, and its finger slid down over the Bay Area and thickened into a wedge, and nothing happened.

  In the safe aqua zone, Newport Beach, California, well down the south coast, blossomed red, another victim of geometry that made it stick out from a great circle perspective centered on Jayapura.

  The new red blotch spread rapidly, engulfing Irvine, reaching toward San Diego, as the older, bigger malignancy crawled into the northern suburbs of LA. The whole American/Canadian coast would be solid red in another minute.

  There were down spots in the Mexican radar fence, but the holes were temporary problem spots, not where anyone—

  Check that assumption. Heather typed a quick note and posted it in general discussion: Some radars down in Mexico. NE1 chkd Y? &when?

  About five seconds later she saw MISO from Cam—his personal abbreviation for “make it so.” Shortly after that, a note came in from someone at Homeland Security, saying DoD was getting an answer through their liaison with the ministerio del ejército in Ciudad de México.

  Ejército, the Army? Why not Defense? Heather clicked up a footnote. Technically Mexico has no Defense Department: Army and Navy are separate, the Air Force is part of the Army, and so the Mexican official with the most defense radars under his control is the Minister for the Army. Pretty much the same setup as we had in the United States around 1940; but unlike us, the Mexicans haven’t had a lot of wars lately. Mostly because we’ve been behaving our asses, sorta, comparatively anyway.

  Heather looked up. The West Coast was bright red from Bellingham to San Diego. Red was now spilling down Baja, spreading east over the deserts and mountains, and racing around the northern head of the Gulf of California. She was holding her breath, as if somehow she could hear a shot or an explosion from here.

  A note popped up on her screen to say that the Mexican Army should soon have a complete report on the radars that were down. So far all reports were of people not getting the word to defer scheduled downtime; more pale green curves popped up along the west side of Baja.

  ABOUT THE SAME TIME. NEAR GUERRERO NEGRO. OFF THE PACIFIC COAST OF BAJA CALIFORNIA. 5:15 P.M. PST. MONDAY. OCTOBER 28.

  At first, Samuelson hadn’t even been sure that the dark area coming over the horizon was land, but now below him, it was not just land, but a place he knew. From the air, the Bay of Sebastian Vizcaino has a distinct hooked-curve shape that is easy to pick out, and because buildable land is scarce along its shores, the town of Guerrero Negro sits in a distinct, unusual position north of and above the bay. Just south, the Baja Highway cuts away from the Pacific to the Sea of Cortez. Guerrero Negro is a major ecotourist jumping-off point for whale watching and for the Vizcaino Desert Biosphere Reserve. Samuelson had passed through a dozen times in his twenties and a few since then with Kim, especially during the early, traveling years of their marriage.

  Now I know exactly where I am, Samuelson thought, and they don’t know I do. I just need to figure out how to use that.

  The plane began a steep descent; the pilot said something over the loudspeaker, but Samuelson’s tourist
-Arabic from thirty years ago wasn’t adequate to make out what.

  They leveled off at low altitude, flying down a canyon toward the Gulf of California. They must be—

  The hand on his shoulder made him jump. “Time to make your statement.”

  “That is impossible,” he said. “I cannot betray—”

  The man punched him, in the face, hard enough to numb it. He hit Samuelson again, drew back his fist and looked into his eyes, waited for the vice president to realize what was happening.

  He hit him again, much harder. “You must make your statement now.”

  “I will not,” Samuelson said, “and you can’t make me.”

  Those are the rules, where they come from. When anyone offers you anything, or asks for anything, refuse twice, accept on the third. Basic negotiation principle: Behave in a way that the other side is at home with.

  He thought about that while they held him up and beat his ribs sore, leaving him coughing and unable to wipe the tears and mucus from his face.

  When Samuelson had caught his breath, the man said, again, “Now, your statement.”

  “What must be in the statement?” Samuelson asked.

  They dickered and haggled. Samuelson insisted that he did not want to read the official statement because it dishonored himself and his nation. He pleaded with them—couldn’t he make his last words his own, and speak the way he always did to American audiences, wouldn’t that be more believable? And could he please begin by saying farewell to his wife? Well, because a man can be in love, can’t he?

  One of his best negotiations in a life of negotiations. He had nothing to offer, and everything to gain, and the other side did not realize that he got everything he wanted.

  When they had agreed, he was permitted a quick trip to the bathroom. Two guards watched him while he took a dump; did they expect him to hang himself in the toilet paper or pull a concealed machine gun from the electric shaver?

  Face freshly washed. Calm. Ready.

  The little light glowed on their camera. Here goes. “My fellow Americans, by the time most of you see this, I will be dead, because the men sitting just a few feet from me are planning to kill me, along with themselves. They demanded that I make a statement, which they are sending out in some kind of live webcast via cellular broadband, I’m afraid I don’t understand the technical details, but apparently they fear that we may be fired on before they can transmit a recording. So, they tell me, I am speaking to you, right now, live, in streaming video, and this is going out over the web, and they’ve notified millions of media outlets and bloggers and so on to record it; I’m sure many of them will broadcast it.

  “First let me just say, Kim—my wife, my one and only love ever—I love you as much as I did on our honeymoon in Guerrero Negro, when we hiked the canyons to the north and sailed up the Gulf of California, if—”

  A rough hand grasped his hair. Someone shouted. He tried to jab his handcuffed hands upward into the crotch of the man holding him, but other hands pushed them down, so he tried to turn and bite the man’s leg, but his head was held too tight. A knife pressed against his throat. Well, I tried.

  The pressure slackened. His head was released. He saw that they were pointing the camera at the one who had been pressing the knife to his neck.

  The man seemed to shake off the murderous rage as if it had never been, and handed the knife to one of his friends. The cameraman counted down, three, two, one, and the active-light went on. The man said, “We had hoped to present an honest—”

  Samuelson screamed, “Bullshit! What’s in those barrels? What’s in those barrels?” as they yanked him around, trying to reach his mouth while he bucked and curled away from them.

  He screamed, Barrels on this plane! twice more, and Bullshit! just as he got an elbow into someone’s balls. One of them shoved a fist into his mouth.

  He tried to bite the fist, hurting his jaw but getting no real grip, and then they forced something into his mouth; he was retching and couldn’t breathe. He badly wanted to drift down into the darkness and pain, but he wanted more to see how all this came out.

  ABOUT THE SAME TIME. YUMA. ARIZONA. 5:20 P.M. PST. MONDAY. OCTOBER 28.

  Ysabel jumped when her phone rang. She grabbed it and said, “Yeah?”

  “It’s time. Do it.” The connection went dead.

  She couldn’t quite place the accent but that was okay, too, she knew this was an international effort. It seemed strange that it wasn’t a Spanish accent, though.

  Oh, well. She jumped up, peed quickly, put her purse by the door, looked around to make sure there was nothing else for her to forget. She reminded herself again to drop the cheapie convenience-store cell phone in some place where it was likely to be stolen.

  Then she sat down and worked the Stinger gadget. Really, this wasn’t as hard as most video games. She tabbed over to the button that said, ARM ON LOCK, clicked on it, and typed the password—DAYBREAK, of course.

  A red message flashed Missile will arm when target acquired.

  She’d practiced acquiring the target all afternoon; she just slid the crosshairs across the television screen, using the little thumbwheel controls, till the red glow told her it had found the diesel exhaust (imagine the jackass nerve of those Border Patrol assholes, dumping diesel exhaust right out above a city, of all things!)

  She pushed the key combination, and jumped at the roar of the Stinger’s exhaust against the roof, a couple of feet above her ceiling. On the screen, the thread of smoke ended in a ball of fire under the aerostat.

  ABOUT THE SAME TIME. WASHINGTON. DC. 8:30 P.M. EST. MONDAY. OCTOBER 28.

  “That’s not where we had our honeymoon,” a soft voice said. Heather thought, That must be Kim Samuelson, when did they bring—

  On the screen, John Samuelson’s head was grabbed and a knife went to his throat; after a burst of shouting and a wildly swinging camera, the screen went dark.

  Lenny Plekhanov, reading NSA feed, said, “We’ve got the cell-phone towers they relayed through—east coast of Baja—”

  A young Asian woman said, “Confirmed, we have that tower’s location, thanks, and an angle on them. North and east of Guerrero Negro, latitude—”

  A message flashed up on Heather’s screen; she looked down and said, loud enough so people could hear, “E-bomb attack on the Mexican Navy’s Guerrero Negro station about forty minutes ago. Took out radio, cell phone, and the local landline station, along with the radars on the frigate and cutter in port, and at the airport. Several visual sightings of a big white plane.”

  The young Asian woman added, “Alerts out to ICE, Air Force, Air Guard, Navy, all the—shit. Yuma aerostat radar is out, and—Air Force says hostile action.”

  On the screen, one big green curve across the Gulf of California blanked out; the remaining green curves peeled back like the cross section of a bullet hole.

  “Either that’s the way they’re coming, or that’s the diversion,” Garren said. “We’ll—”

  “They’ve killed him, you know. Or they will any minute. Shoot that plane down.” Roger Pendano looked haggard and sad.

  Did he even realize that he’d given the order for that almost an hour ago? Or that the operation isn’t being commanded here anymore? Heather was afraid she might find out.

  The silence went well beyond awkward before Garren said, “We are working on that, sir.”

  Pendano sank into his chair, hands on his head; he didn’t move as everything else went on around him.

  ABOUT TEN MINUTES LATER. CLAY SPUR. WYOMING. 6:45 P.M. MST. MONDAY. OCTOBER 28.

  Jason’s Goo-22 search had found an all-organic restaurant about an hour away, on a route that would take them back to I-25 eventually, so they headed east and south. “We’ll miss being able to find places like this so easily,” Jason said, as they pulled into the gravel parking lot, “but on the other hand, instead of having these little islands of spiritual meaning in an ocean of Big System, we’ll all make meaning where we are, till the
whole world will have spiritual meaning.”

  “Spiritual?”

  Jason shrugged. “There’s more to spirit than just God.”

  Once seated, with a big pot of coffee for the table to share, and a big meal ordered for each of them, Jason sighed. “It feels good not to be driving; thanks for giving me a ride clear back to Raton. The mountains are beautiful and the challenge is fun, but after a while, dude, it’s all ‘hand on the throttle, eye on the rail.’ ”

  “Back to the spiritual already.”

  “A bunch of us at the commune like to play traditional stuff, and traditional includes gospel. No offense, but when I’m singing ‘You Got to Walk with Your Lord Every Step,’ it doesn’t mean I believe what I’m singing.”

  Zach grinned. “You look way too much like one of the original disciples to be a current one.”

  Jason nearly shot the coffee through his nose, and said, “I thought Christian types were supposed to try to convert people and didn’t have much of a sense of humor about it.”

  “That’s another outfit. They get all the . . .” Zach froze, staring.

  When Jason turned, the television over the bar showed flat Gothic letters, blue on yellow: ATTACK IN THE DESERT. SPECIAL REPORT.

  One of the waitresses, braids and big skirt flying, ran to the TV and turned the volume all the way up.

  “—joining us, again, the plane carrying Vice President Samuelson on a confidential diplomatic mission was seized earlier today, and government sources confirm that the streaming video webcast that appeared about forty minutes ago was not a hoax. Here’s a clip of that webcast; we apologize for the poor quality of the video and remind you he was being held prisoner and threatened. You may want to take small children out of the room.”