They sat a long time in the quiet darkness.
“Do you think it means anything?” he finally asked.
Sara brought her hands together in a fist before her face and gently bit her finger. “I don’t know, son. I really don’t. It might mean something, but I don’t know what it’d be. If I were to think about it, maybe pray about it, maybe I would know.”
Luke took a deep breath and held it before he sighed. “I’ve thought about it, Mom.” He looked away. “They’re out there, the wolves. Yeah, we’ve got to worry about food, water and the cold, and where we’re going to go and all that kind of thing, but that’s not the thing that’s going to kill us. It’s going to be the wolves. They’re not afraid anymore. No matter what we do, they’re not going to go away. And they hate us. They want to kill us, to destroy us. All the other stuff, I think it’ll be OK. But not the wolves. They’re the thing we’ve really got to worry about.”
*******
Sam was staring out the kitchen window when Sara came up behind him and stood close. “I need to talk to you,” she whispered.
Sam turned around. “Yeah, Mom.”
She put a finger to his lips. “Alone.” She nodded to the door.
They slipped out of the apartment and stood in the hall. “Azadeh told me you have a cell phone that is working.”
Sam reached into a thigh pocket and pulled it out. “I was in the Metro subway in D.C. when the EMP struck.”
“It’s working, then?” She sounded so hopeful, he thought she was going to cry.
“No, Mom. I mean, the cell phone is working, yes.” He flipped it open and held the green switch to turn it on. The screen glowed red and blue and he showed it to her. “But there’s no coverage. All the cell towers are down.”
“What about the military stations on the lake? I know there are some Navy and Coast Guard stations along Lake Michigan.”
“I’ve tried them, Mom. Nothing.”
“When was the last time you tried? How long has it been?”
Sam thought. “I don’t know. When we first got here.”
Sara took his hand, pulling him toward the stairs. “Let’s go try again.”
Four minutes later, they were standing on the roof. Sam watched his mother carefully. “Mom, it’s time you told me what’s going on.”
Sara ignored him, reaching for his phone. The soft light from the small screen bathed her face in a ghostly silver. “I know the military has all kinds of communication facilities,” she said. “They contract with local carriers for their service, even for the military stuff. It’s not like the Coast Guard or Air Force own their own phone lines, cell phone towers, that kind of thing. They’re going to push to get that stuff up so they can use it.”
Sam continued watching, not saying anything.
“Where’s the nearest military station?” Sara asked.
Sam hesitated, thinking, then waved vaguely off to his right. “I don’t know, Mom. I think there’s a Coast Guard training facility somewhere east of here.”
She pointed the cell phone in that direction and lifted it over her head. “They would have hardened some of their facilities. They would have the equipment to rebuild.” She gasped suddenly. “Look at this,” she whispered.
Sam took three steps toward her and looked at the phone. A single bar. Sometimes two. “Whoa,” he said. “No kidding.”
Sara gasped again. “Good, good, good. OK,” she almost dropped the phone as she thought, suddenly flustered and unsure of what to do. “OK, OK, who, who, who do I talk to?” She acted as if Sam wasn’t even there. “I can’t call the Pentagon. No one there. No, no, not no one, nothing there. OK, OK, who? How do I get a hold of them? What am I going to say—”
“Mom!” Sam grabbed his mother by her shoulders. “What is going on?”
“I’ve got to call and warn him.”
“Warn who? About what?”
“I’ll call the Strategic Command Post in Nebraska. How do I get the number?”
She held the phone up and dialed 911. “It’s ringing, Sam, it’s ringing!” She waited and waited. No answer. Nothing but a constant ring. “All right.” She disconnected. “I’ll try the number for the emergency switchboard at the White House. They might have, they must have transferred that number to a working phone.” She punched the cell phone as she talked, excited once again. She listened, holding her hand up by her face in eager expectation. “Ringing . . . ringing,” she whispered. “It sounds like . . .” she turned her head suddenly and talked into the phone. “Yes, yes, can you hear me?” She took a step toward the edge of the roof. “Can you hear me? Yes, I can barely hear you. My name is Sara Brighton. My husband was General Neil Brighton, Special Assistant to the President. This is an emergency. I need you to connect me to the Secretary of Defense. Yes, Secretary Marino’s office.” She paused and listened. “No, no, I can’t wait. What! Are you certain he is dead? Then who is his replacement? No, this is an emergency . . .” Another short pause. “I already told you, my name is Sara Brighton . . . hello . . . hello?” The phone was dead.
She lowered the cell and looked at Sam. “He hung up on me,” she said.
Sam checked the cell phone. The low battery indicator was now on.
“He hung up. Or maybe the line was disconnected.”
“Mom.” Sam took a step toward her. Taking her by her shoulders, he looked into her eyes. The moon was barely rising now and the sky was black. “Mom?”
Sara hesitated. “But if I tell you—”
“It’s time to tell us, Mom.”
Sara looked at him. Her eyes were big and teary, round and glistening in the dim light. She was suddenly young and vulnerable and frightened as a child.
Sam heard her sniffle, felt her shoulders shuddering; then she fell into his arms.
When she was finished with her story, Sam sat for a long time without speaking. Then he looked down at his cell phone. “This was a huge mistake,” he said.
*******
Missile and Space Intelligence Center (MSIC), Huntsville, Alabama
Electronic transmissions were intercepted, identified, and flagged by a series of enormous antennas stationed throughout the country, but concentrated primarily along the East Coast and in a few locations along the western mountain ranges. Some of the radio intercept devices were the normally anticipated satellite dishes pointing upward, though these were mounted on bearings and hydraulic cylinders to move them to appropriate pieces of the sky. Others were tall and slender trestles that reached several hundred feet above the ground. Some had been built in clusters and were situated on remote, stripped-down pieces of federal land with extremely limited access, including strictly enforced no-fly zones. Other listening devices were positioned within the cities, hidden behind nearly translucent material alongside civilian buildings, the occupants clueless about the immensely powerful radio intercept equipment that was operating next to them. A great many listening devices were disguised as cell phone towers, radio antennas, or television broadcast dishes, whatever was required to minimize the speculation as to what the devices were used for, how many there really were, and how deeply they could reach.
On a normal day, before the EMP attack, the U.S. government was capable of intercepting and monitoring hundreds of millions of cell and telephone conversations, emails, Internet access, and instant messages every day, the sheer volume making it possible, even likely, that this particular conversation might have been missed.
But since the EMP attack, the use of such electronic communications had dropped off dramatically.
So they listened, they noted and they passed the information on.
FIFTEEN
Headquarters, National Security Agency, Fort George G. Meade, Maryland
Ten Miles Northeast of Washington, D.C.
There were two enormous buildings, side by side, one a little longer and lower than the other, both of them black metal and glass cubes that reflected the sun, passing clouds, radar sensors, laser intelligence liste
ning beams, heat, cold, conventional listening devices, everything and anything that might connect the occupants of the two buildings to the outside world. One of the most secret and secretive agencies within the intelligence community, for many years the federal government denied that NSA, known facetiously as No Such Agency, even existed. Once it had been revealed, extensive precautions had been put in place to isolate it, including the construction of its own exit of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, labeled “NSA Employees Only.” Hidden behind a wall of trees (most of northern Virginia and southern Maryland was covered in dense forest) the NSA complex housed more mathematicians and supercomputers than any other organization in the world. It also drew more electricity off the grid than any other private or public entity within the entire state of Maryland, including the largest steel manufacturers and shipbuilders along the coast. (In 2006, the Baltimore Sun reported that the entire NSA complex was susceptible to severe electrical overload because of insufficient infrastructure to support the geometrically growing demand.) The agency had its own hardware, software, and semiconductor production facilities, as well as its own cryptology research center. No one knew how many people worked for the NSA, though sometime early in the century some overly ambitious counterculture guy had Google-earthed the parking lot, counted the number of parking spaces (18,000), driven northeast of Washington, D.C., pulled off the nearby highway and counted the average number of occupants in every car that passed, then announced across the Internet that the agency employed 39,000 people, which was surprisingly close. Aircraft over-flight of the area was strictly forbidden, the nearby streams and trees were scattered with hidden motion sensors and listening devices, and there wasn’t an inch of the security fence and surrounding buffer zone that wasn’t covered with redundant surveillance cameras.
Because Executive Order 12333 directed the agency to limit its resources toward the collection of information regarding “foreign intelligence or counterintelligence” and not “acquiring information concerning the domestic activities of United States persons,” the NSA’s eavesdropping mission concentrated on overseas diplomatic and military sources. With a few controversial and well-published exceptions, the NSA had complied with this directive. But it surely didn’t now. The world had tipped, almost fallen. Nuclear explosions had taken place over Israel, Iran, and other portions of central Asia, not to mention Washington, D.C. The nation had been incapacitated with an EMP attack. No one cared a whit about Executive Order 12333 anymore. The NSA was listening to everything. The agency’s footprint was huge, stretching across every continent, including North America, and the sheer volume of information that passed through its system simply boggled the mind. And though the agency had a few branches scattered around the country (the Texas Cryptology Center in San Antonio, Texas, being the most well-known), the vast majority of the dirty work was done at the headquarters building at Fort Meade.
And because the buildings were sealed, stocked, and secured, neither the EMP nor the previous nuclear attack against Washington affected the work that took place there.
*******
The man was short, a civilian with a thin mustache and black, slicked-back hair. He walked into the two-star general’s office without knocking and placed the red binder on his desk.
“Sir, I think you might want to see this,” he simply said.
The general was slow to look up. “What is it?” he asked dismissively.
The small man firmed his shoulders. “A target from the presidential directive we received two days ago.”
The Air Force general/NSA director looked up slowly, his face filled with instant disdain. “We don’t have a president right now,” he said.
“I know that, sir. I’m talking about our leadership out in Raven Rock.”
The NSA director scoffed.
The man nodded toward the folder. “It falls within the parameters of the priority search,” he explained.
The general didn’t respond.
“Should I pass it on?” the man asked.
The white-haired general snorted. “Do we have a choice?”
The man lifted up the binder. “Do you want to read it first?”
The general waved him off and repeated his first question. “Do I have a choice?”
The man waited.
“Will it matter if I read it? Will it matter what I think? Does it matter what any of us think anymore?”
The small man stared, his eyes blank as a snake’s. Yes, he thought, though he didn’t say the words out loud, it matters quite a lot what you think. And who you support now. It matters more than you will ever know.
His eyes remained expressionless as he answered, “Some of the targets they are looking for have popped up in Chicago. General Brighton’s wife—”
The general glared in fierce anger. “Who cares? With everything else that we are dealing with, how can anyone consider this a priority right now!”
The slick-haired man met the general’s angry gaze and didn’t blink. “There must be reasons we don’t know about.”
The general huffed, thought a moment, then grabbed a pen, scribbled his three initials across the routing paper, and handed the binder back. “Take care of it,” he said.
The man took the binder, turned, and started walking toward the door. Pausing without turning back, he said, “The president has given us a directive.”
The general was looking down at the papers on his desk now. “I know that, Spencer.”
“You may not like it, I understand that, but some of us feel—”
The general didn’t let him finish. “I know how you feel, Spencer. I don’t care for either your feelings or your thoughts. Now go on, take the intercept and get out of here.”
*******
Raven Rock (Site R), Underground Military Complex, Southern Pennsylvania
At seventy-eight hours, fifteen minutes, Bethany Rosen, the former president pro tempore of the Senate, would go down in history for being the president of the United States for the shortest period of time: just more than three days from the time she was sworn in until she was dead.
After her death, it was time for what remained of the national civilian leadership to work further down the line. Next in the order of succession—fourth in line—was the Secretary of State, who had been killed in the nuclear attack on Washington, D.C. Next was the Secretary of the Treasury. Not being a fool, and having figured out—or, more likely, having had it whispered to him—what had really happened to the previous president, he utterly refused to be sworn in.
The Secretary of Defense was next. Problem was, no one knew where he was. Buried under the rubble of Washington, D.C., they were certain, along with two hundred thousand other souls.
Which brought them to the Attorney General.
*******
Albert J. Fuentes, current Attorney General, soon to be the next president of the United States, scheduled the swearing-in ceremony for 6 p.m. Once that formality was over, it would take them only a few weeks to put the necessary changes in place.
Beautiful when a plan fell into place.
The cabal that had brought him to this point would give him very specific instructions. And they were certain the new president would comply.
The United States, as they knew it, was about to cease to exist. After years of waiting, hoping such an opportunity would one day present itself, Albert J. Fuentes and his friends were prepared to act. And while the new president would be the front man for the code of power, he would not be the brains. The real brains, the real power, went much deeper than any single man.
No, Fuentes, a simple federal judge whom hardly anyone inside Washington, D.C., had even known two years ago, would not be the one holding the real reins of power.
That night, at exactly 6 p.m., Fuentes placed his left hand upon a Bible and raised his right hand. Standing before a video camera, a few witnesses, the only surviving member of the Supreme Court, his wife, a couple of members of the Congress, and the press, he swore to defend
the Constitution from all enemies, both foreign and domestic. Completing the oath of office, he shook a few hands, then got to work.
So it was that, after one nuclear explosion, two murders, and one very clear conversation in a small office deep in Raven Rock, they finally got their man.
*******
Offutt Air Force Base, Headquarters, U.S. Strategic Command
Eight Miles South of Omaha, Nebraska
The Air Force technician listened, took some notes, then hung up the secure telephone. “Some of our military guys got a trace on a couple of the individuals the SecDef was asking about,” he said to the four-star commander looking over his shoulder.
The four-star commander leaned toward him, resting his hands on the younger man’s chair.
“You sure it’s them?” he prodded. It had been so long since he’d received any good news that he was immediately skeptical.
“We can’t know for certain till we get them, but it sounds that way right now.”
The general hesitated. “How’d you get the information?”
The technician nodded toward the telephone. “We stole it, same as they did. The Raven Rock guys took it from the NSA. We took it from the Rock guys as they passed it up the line.”
The general swirled a cup of cold coffee in his hand. “Let me have it,” he said, reaching for the report.
SIXTEEN
East Side, Chicago, Illinois
The apartment was like a prison and they simply couldn’t stand it any longer. At the quietest time of the afternoon, when the streets had fallen into a lull and the sun was dropping, a few of them fled outside.
Wolves in the Night: Wrath & Righteousness: Episode Seven Page 12