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by Al Macy

  Cronkite laid his glasses on the table. “I’m sure that you have many questions for me, but let me start with a brief statement. As I mentioned in my first broadcast, your world will soon be under attack from a malevolent entity. I apologize if I got a little worked up in that broadcast. I probably came across as a petulant teenager or an old Alzheimer who wants to shoot someone’s lights out. Sorry about that, Chief.”

  Jake’s mouth dropped open. Oh no! He’d intercepted that entire videoconference.

  Cronkite continued. “You are all aware of the sneeze and the terrible pain attack that occurred recently. Let that be an indication of the power and insensitivity of the malignant civilization that is on its way here. You are fortunate that I have chosen to help you in this matter. The attack will be ferocious, and, as I implied before, I’m not even sure if I can help you. Together, we will do everything in our power to keep your planet safe. But know this: some of the preparations we will make together will be unpleasant for you. Know that, in the long run, they will be to your benefit, no matter what happens. Sometimes I will work in ways that will be mysterious to you.”

  Cronkite folded his hands on the table in front of him. “And now, I'm sure you have many questions for me, and I look forward to answering them honestly and completely. Gentlemen?”

  Hallstrom cleared his throat. “I’d like to start by thanking you for coming to our aid. We are all—”

  “Cut the crap.” Cronkite said it quickly, with little emotion.

  “Pardon me?” Hallstrom said.

  “First question, please.”

  Charli wrote “No smirk!” on her whiteboard.

  Hallstrom cleared his throat again. “Can you tell us when we can expect this attack from … does this civilization have a name?”

  Cronkite made a sound reminiscent of an old-fashioned modem making a connection. “To translate that to your language, let’s call them the Kraken.”

  Jake said, “As in ‘Release the Kraken?’”

  “The Krakens.”

  “Is that what you call them?” Jake asked.

  Charli held up the white board and pointed to it with the marker. “Watch your tone!”

  Cronkite responded to the question. “No I call them …” and he made the noise again.

  Hallstrom asked, “Have you done this before—protected other civilizations?”

  “Many times.”

  Jake was next. “Are we talking days, weeks, months?”

  Cronkite said, “Before they come?”

  “Yes.”

  Cronkite sounded peeved now. “It could be any time, but perhaps you have a year.”

  Zaluski wrote “AVOID THAT. CHOOSE NEUTRAL TOPIC” on her whiteboard.

  “Shall we call you Cronkite?” Hallstrom asked.

  “That’s as good a name as any. I like it. Walter Cronkite was a good person. Perhaps ‘Sir Cronkite’ would be an even better choice.”

  Hallstrom said, “We are grateful for your help, Sir Cronkite. Can you tell us why you have chosen to assist us?”

  Jake frowned. Hallstrom was good at diplomacy, but wasn’t he laying it on a little thick, especially considering the ‘cut the crap’ comment earlier?

  Cronkite paused and rubbed his chin. “Your civilization has potential. You could make a contribution to the galactic community, assuming you are not wiped out. Of course, I’m talking long term, perhaps in a million years.”

  “Earth years?” Jake asked. Silly question.

  Cronkite rolled his eyes. “Yes, Jake. One million Earth years.”

  “Are you acting on your own or under orders from others in your society?” Jake couldn’t bring himself to call him “Sir Cronkite.”

  Cronkite crossed his arms and frowned. “I do not take orders from anyone.”

  “I just meant …”

  “I know what you meant, Jake. I am not acting alone, I have the backing of my entire civilization in what I do, but no one has ordered me to do it. Can you understand that?”

  “Yes, Sir Cronkite.” Hallstrom jumped in. “We can tell that you are a top-level operative and very capable.”

  Jake looked at Hallstrom. Okay, now we’re going over the top. Surely Cronkite realizes that we are kissing his butt like crazy. Can he think we’re serious?

  “Can you tell us, Sir Cronkite,” Jake asked, “what you will do to help us prepare for the battle with the Krakens?”

  “Yes, indeed. I have wonderful ideas. First, you must make progress on the devices for which you received plans. Have you been able to build any?”

  Hallstrom answered. “We have—”

  “The plans are tricky to understand,” Jake glanced at Hallstrom, “but we have made some breakthroughs, and we are confident that we can not only understand but build all the devices soon. The scientists are eager to show you what we have. You will like the results. You will have some devices in your, ah, hands soon.”

  Hallstrom raised his arm a bit, as if he were in class. “Why do you think that a decrease in population was important? Will it help us fight?”

  “Mostly, it was just stupid for you to have a population of 7.5 billion. Are you guys crazy? What possible advantage could you see in having so many people on this tiny planet? Two billion works fine. No problems with resources, fewer wars over land, oil, water.”

  “Did you do this to help us in a conflict against the Krakens?” Jake asked this quickly.

  “Well, in part.” Cronkite froze. Everything about the computer-generated reproduction of Walter Cronkite screamed “Oops.” Cronkite seemed to try to repair the damage. “In part, that could help, but of course I didn't decrease your population, that's something that you did following my suggestion.”

  Jake kept his expression neutral. Nice try, Dimwit.

  Charli scribbled furiously. “Back off!! Mission accomplished. Change subject!”

  Hallstrom said, “No, we didn't do that.”

  Charli circled “Change subject” on her whiteboard and tapped on it while glaring at them. She wrote “What he looks like.”

  Jake looked at the image of Cronkite, shook his head slightly, then tilted his head down, put his hand on his cheek, and mouthed the words “What a bozo.”

  Hallstrom asked, “Many of us here on earth are curious about what you look like—”

  Cronkite shouted, “Oh, I’m a bozo, am I? A bozo. That’s what you think? Well then, Earth’s number one problem-solver asshole, you’re so smart, why don’t you tell me what this button does?” A big red button appeared in the center of the table. Everyone but Jake looked totally mystified about this change in the direction of the conversation. Jake’s eyes were wide. Before anyone could say something, Cronkite lifted his arm into the air and smashed his fist down on the button.

  Power went out in the White House, and all the screens went black. The whole room was dark, and the battery-powered emergency lights didn’t come on. Charli’s laptop made a fizzing sound.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  In the blackness, Charli put her hand on her head. Is this really happening? “What did you say, Jake? Did you call him a bozo? Where are you?”

  “I didn’t say it. I just mouthed it to myself. He must have read my lips.” Jake sounded dejected. Charli pictured him sitting with his head in his hands.

  Charli spoke through clenched teeth. “Christ. What the hell is wrong with you? You’ve always got to speak your mind don’t you? ‘He doesn’t suffer fools gladly,’ they said. ‘He speaks his mind,’ they said. I should have told them that if you hadn’t grown up enough to control your mouth, that we didn’t want you on the team. You’re pathetic. I knew this was going to happen. The shrinks warned us.”

  Hallstrom said, “There is something wrong with you, Jake. If this is what I think it is, you’ve killed an awful lot of people. Charli, I’m going up to the roof.”

  Hallstrom and Charli felt their way out of the windowless room, climbed the stairs, and looked out the nearest window. The cars on Executive Avenue and Pe
nnsylvania Avenue were not moving.

  Up on the roof they found McGraw looking out across the city. Hallstrom and Charli walked over to McGraw, who was watching black smoke rise a mile away. A secret service agent put his head into the stairway and yelled, “POTUS is on the roof,” then went over to stand with the President and the other agents protecting him.

  Hallstrom asked, “Electro-magnetic pulse?”

  McGraw nodded.

  “Talk to me.”

  McGraw looked south, where smoke rose from the airport. “It may not have been an EMP, but it sure looks like one. Or worse. Although we’d need to set off a nuclear explosion above the atmosphere to get this effect, Cronkite may have had some other way of doing it. I suspect that he hit that button, and every electronic or electrically powered device got fried.” He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, showed Hallstrom that it was dead and tossed it off the roof.

  “Where?” Charli asked. “What areas would be affected?”

  “Well, that’s part of the problem.” McGraw put his hands on the roof’s parapet and leaned forward. “It could be just Washington, DC, or it could be the entire world. This disaster could be worse than the die-off, and it’s going to be a lot messier. People in planes are already dead, many patients in hospitals and nursing homes soon will be. In some ways, we are back in the stone age. Worse, because cave men were able to live without refrigerators and cell phones.”

  Jake appeared at the door to the roof. He came over to them and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m sorry. I realize I screwed up. But there’s something we should do. If the whole world isn’t blacked out, someone will send a plane to us. They will send it to Reagan airport, since that’s the closest. So a plane could be coming in any minute. We should set up burning oil barrels along the runways.” He turned, headed back to the door, and gave little wave.

  * * *

  Alex watched the Meet the Press broadcast with his brother and Major General Pace Stetson. They sat in Stetson’s office at Edwards Air Force Base in California eating microwave popcorn. The sixty-two-year-old general kept his head shaved and didn’t carry a spare ounce of fat, but his efforts were in vain. He looked more like a sensitive theater critic than a kick-ass military man.

  The general had taken the wisecracking twins under his wing, probably because they reminded him of his childhood with his own twin brother, now gone. His office was all business and all olive green.

  When Cronkite pushed the button, Hallstrom and Corby blipped out of existence while the set, with Cronkite at the table, remained.

  Cronkite was red in the face and breathing hard. He turned to the camera and said “Well, it looks like the world’s number one problem-solver is having a problem that he’s going to need to solve. But for now, this is Sir Cronkite saying, ‘If it’s Sunday, it’s Meet the Freakin’ Press.’”

  Alex stood up. “Looks like trouble in River City.” This was life-and-death, but he couldn’t help enjoying the excitement. Guess I’m going to Hell when I die.

  The general’s communications console came to life. “General, we’re seeing widespread power outages. Please stand by.”

  Stetson hastily swallowed the popcorn he was chewing and barked into the intercom. “Get me Colonel Woodford.”

  Davin Woodford, the base’s chief technical officer, came on the line, on speakerphone.

  “Is it just power or all electronics?” Stetson asked.

  “The GPS satellites are out, and we have no contact with aircraft east of California.”

  “Shit! Our planes are okay?” Stetson looked out the window.

  “The ones over California or the ocean, yes. The others, probably not.”

  “Colonel, do you think Cronkite hit us with an EMP?”

  “Something very much like it, yes, sir,” said Woodford, “but there are some things I wouldn’t expect.”

  “Such as?”

  “First, the GPS satellites should be immune to a conventional EMP. They are 12,000 miles above the Earth.”

  “Right. Second?” Stetson rubbed his hand over his bald head.

  “Many of our planes and installations have been hardened against an EMP strike, but they seem to be out of commission anyway.”

  “What about the range of the problem?” General Stetson typed on his computer while talking.

  Martin leaned over to the telephone. “Check a world map of IP utilization based on ICMP ping requests.”

  “Right. Just a second. Okay, I’m looking at the map, and there’s a big hole centered on Washington, DC.”

  “How far out does it extend?” Stetson looked at the world map on his wall. The twins stood by the desk, hanging on every word.

  “It’s a circle with a radius of under twenty-five-hundred miles.”

  “So, we’re just beyond it.”

  “That’s right.”

  Stetson tapped his fingers on the desk. “Okay, look. The president won’t know whether it’s just DC or the entire world that’s been shut down. How do we get a message to him?” asked Stetson.

  “Carrier pigeon.”

  “Shit, Davin, be serious.” Stetson rubbed his bald head.

  “A supersonic carrier pigeon, sir. We put a pilot in the Peregrine …”

  “Is that ready to fly?”

  Woodford said, “It was minutes away from a test flight to Pensacola. This was going to be the longest test for the new pulse detonation engine. We can just change the destination to DC.”

  “That’s a risky mission.” Stetson stood up and paced.

  “It is, but the stakes are high. We’re probably only risking the plane. The pilot can always eject if there’s a problem.”

  “Why not just send a B1?”

  “We could, and we will, but the Peregrine would get there hours sooner. It can be wheels up in thirty minutes. It’s your call,” Woodford said.

  “So we risk a three-hundred-million-dollar prototype just to get the word to DC one hour sooner. Plus, we don’t know … maybe anything that flies into that dead zone will fry.”

  “I hear you, sir, but the planet’s under attack. I can’t imagine an hour or two making a difference, but then again, my imagination sucks. We were going to fly that bird to Pensacola anyway. It’s a great opportunity.”

  Stetson looked at the ceiling and paused. “Okay, get things started. I’m coming over.”

  * * *

  September 23, 2018

  Alex entered the hangar along with General Stetson. Martin followed. Technicians swarmed over the Peregrine looking like Santa’s elves on Christmas Eve. The gleaming craft resembled the Concorde but had a second set of small wings toward the front. Alex hadn’t seen it before. Nice!

  When they approached the pilot, Major Frank Cobb, Alex heard him ask Woodford: “What’s Captain Ahab doing here?” Alex looked to where Cobb pointed. An old man with a snow-white sailor’s beard stood under the plane, pointing up at the landing gear supports. The man had skin like old leather and was thin enough to appear in a castaway cartoon.

  “He’s your copilot,” Woodford said.

  Cobb was small but muscular. He laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m kidding that he’s your copilot, but he is your passenger.”

  The old man strode over and saluted. “Erasmus Whitington reporting for duty.”

  Cobb looked at Woodford and mouthed the name “Erasmus?”

  “Call me Salty.”

  Cobb shook the old man’s hand but looked at Woodford and mouthed the word “Salty?”

  Salty was called away to have his pressure suit put on, and Cobb said, “You’ve got to be kidding me, sir. What the hell is going on? Is Captain Ahab really coming?”

  “Captain Ahab may save the mission, Frank.”

  “What is he going to do, protect us from the great white whale? And what’s in his little antique case there?” Cobb pointed.

  “That’s his sextant.”

  Cobb froze with his hand still pointing and stared at Colone
l Woodford and then at the General.

  “It’s an instrument that’s used—”

  “Yeah, I know what a sextant is, I just want to know why we need one in a twenty-first-century supersonic spaceplane.”

  “You might need it, and you might need Salty,” said Woodford, “because when you arrive in DC, you won’t have GPS. It’ll be dark and there won’t be any ground lights.

  “What about my ground-mapping radar?”

  “In the Peregrine, that requires an active satellite connection. He’s an experienced celestial navigator. He’s sailed around the world three times without electronics, but there’s another reason you need him.”

  “He knows all the latest sea shanties?”

  Woodford smiled. “No, he’s familiar with DC.”

  “Let me guess. He sailed up the Potomac in the HMS Bounty.”

  “He restored a 1931 biplane, and he flies it, day and night, over the Washington area.”

  Cobb looked over at Whitington. “So, what’s he doing here at Edwards, did his sextant run out of whale oil?”

  “Frank, there’s no time for this. The Peregrine’s almost ready. You guys can get acquainted on the trip.”

  * * *

  September 23, 2018

  Outside the third floor of the White House, Charli leaned back on the railing around the rooftop patio. Potted evergreen shrubs dotted the promenade which surrounded the rooms of the top floor. Too bad the sky was overcast. Had it been clear she figured she would have seen more stars than had been seen from this location for hundreds of years.

  Why had she come down so hard on Jake? He deserved it, right? He very well may have killed Nana-Marie and Dad.

  But maybe she got carried away. What did he do wrong? He simply didn't keep his mouth shut. Or his lips still. Whatever. But how many millions has he killed?

  Could Jake have foreseen that Cronkite could read lips? Well, yes. On the other hand, no one had foreseen that he would read our encrypted videoconference communications.

  If I loved him, would I have abandoned him so easily? What does it feel like for him? He made a public mistake viewed by billions. Nobody's perfect, right? And of course, Cronkite is the one who pushed the button.