Blackmail Earth

by Bill Evans

  Bullets ripped past her, chewing up the weather screen. Holes shattered the surface where Arizona bordered with Mexico, and she heard Marv crying. Jenna detected no pain in his desperate utterances, only panic.

  Jenna rose with Parks’s weapon gripped firmly in her hands. The corner of her eye caught movement, and she wheeled, ready to fire. A North Korean actually smiled as he turned his revolver from the weather map to her, aiming directly at her head.

  But she had the jump on him and pulled the trigger. Nothing—the pistol wouldn’t fire: She’d forgot to rack the slide on top of the barrel. The Korean’s smile broadened, and she knew she was dead.

  Frantically, she reached for the slide. As she did, a blur flashed in front of her—and Kato clamped his powerful jaws down on the assassin’s arm so hard that Jenna heard the sound of a bone snapping. The gun discharged anyway. A bullet grazed the side of Jenna’s head, burning her severely. She fought the urge to cry out in pain. Millimeters closer and she would have been dead.

  She unloaded on her attacker, but Kato’s intrepid attack, and her gunfire, had made them targets. The dog yelped piteously as three bullets ripped into his side, slamming the shepherd into the news anchor’s desk with such force that he shattered the network logo.

  Enraged, Jenna turned her weapon on the man who’d shot the dog, hitting him twice in the neck. Then she saw a wounded Korean hobbling for cover and reaching for his ankle holster. From thirty feet away, she took him out with three shots.

  She spun around, as stunned by the sudden lull as much as she had been shocked by the onslaught of killing.

  Five New York City Police officers rushed into the studio, weapons drawn. The North Koreans were all on the floor, bleeding and unmoving. One of New York City’s finest was on his radio. Another came up beside her.

  “Jenna Withers,” he said gently, “can you give me your weapon?”

  She heard him, knew that he’d requested the gun, but she wasn’t giving it up. She simply couldn’t, and did not know why. The next instant, Jenna heard whimpering and rushed to Kato, shadowed by the cop who wanted her gun. The dog’s long body shook visibly and blood spilled from his mouth, but he wasn’t the creature making the sad sound.

  When she looked around she spotted a Korean aiming his gun at an officer who had his back to him. Jenna shot the Korean twice—and almost got herself killed in the momentary confusion that followed. Three officers drew their guns on her, but the cop who’d asked for Jenna’s weapon jumped in front of her, shouting, “No, don’t shoot. Don’t shoot.” He took her weapon. She did not resist.

  As the police stood down, Jenna heard the whimpering again. Disgusted, she walked to the bullet-riddled weather screen and looked behind it, finding a disturbance that felt far more objectionable than any muscle flexing by Mother Nature: Marv.

  Jenna looked at him crouched down, and checked her anger. “It’s okay, Marv. It’s over. You can come out now.”

  “It’s never going to be over. I’m going to have post-traumatic stress disorder the rest of my life because of you.”

  “Marv, I just saved your life,” she managed to say evenly.

  “You? You saved me?” He stood up. “The only reason you’re alive is that I dragged you to safety, and then you almost got me killed when you started freaking out and trying to run away.”

  Jenna shook her head and turned from him: She had no time for Marv, not with Dafoe shot and possibly dead downstairs. But as she rushed away she did notice that camera one was still on, and a monitor on the studio wall showed a wide shot with Marv clearly visible at its very center. She realized that the gun battle had been broadcast live, every gritty second of it. Every hugely embarrassing second—if you were Marv.

  She never stopped in front of the camera to warn the world about the North Korean rockets. Shock was slowly overtaking Jenna, and her thoughts could not escape the fallen. She paused only once before racing downstairs: She knelt by the German shepherd that had saved her life, and checked his pulse. Then she yelled, “Someone call a vet, please.” The stalwart heart still beat.

  Jenna bolted out of the studio, past officers and emergency medical technicians consumed by the crime and all its gruesome tally. She didn’t stop till she found Dafoe lying on his back, eyes open but unseeing. Their emptiness formed a void in Jenna that felt dark and rank and endless.

  She dropped to her knees in a puddle of her lover’s blood, and with her hands shaking visibly, she controlled herself long enough to check his pulse. He had a heartbeat, but it wasn’t strong—and the puddle swelled.

  Two EMTs ran up.

  “He was hit in the back at least once,” Jenna said, moving aside for them.

  Now, for the first time, she realized that tears were spilling down her face. She wiped them away, smearing more blood on her cheek. It also dripped to her neck from the bullet that had grazed her head.

  Slowly, as she stood, she became aware that news photographers and video camera operators were focusing on her, present like phantoms, silent and surreal.

  Jenna never could have known during these grief-filled moments that the photos of her that would appear in seconds on the Web would never be forgotten, or that one of them would earn a Pulitzer for a journalist at the Times. His carefully framed shot would reveal a beautiful young meteorologist with a wash of blood in her white blond hair and red streaks painting her face, standing with her hands hanging limply by her side, eyes wide with deepening sorrow.

  * * *

  Nicci sat in front of Dafoe’s laptop carefully—scrupulously—executing the keystrokes. No room for error. None. Dafoe had been adamant about that: “Hunt and peck only. I don’t care how good you are. Go slowly. One mistake and the whole sequence falls apart, and there’s no going back.”

  The pressure on Nicci was enormous. Jenna hadn’t given the world the warning it needed. Nicci had seen it all—Jenna’s bloody entrance into the studio followed by a brief disappearance. Then her star had gotten a pistol from somewhere and come up firing. Nicci had guessed that with every passing second, millions of new viewers had tuned into The Morning Show. Nothing like this had ever been seen on television—a gun battle in real time, with real death.

  And real consequences: Jenna had looked like she was in shock when the shooting stopped. When she’d walked past the camera without pause, Nicci had glimpsed horror on her friend’s face, and had understood her muteness: Although Jenna had grown up hunting, and had been handy with both a rifle and pistol since childhood, she’d never shot a person before. When her face had filled the screen for that fleeting second, Nicci had seen not only the horror, not only blood and tears, but sadness so deep that she herself had filled with the ghostly presence of grief. Her own eyes had quickly pooled and spilled.

  Two more keystrokes. “Don’t fuck up,” Nicci admonished herself aloud. Forensia and Sang-mi stared at her, faces wracked by tension.

  Nicci finished typing. All she had to do was hit “return.” She pointed her index finger, noticed it trembling, and tapped the bar. She breathed like it was the first air she’d taken in a century.

  “Let’s check,” Forensia said immediately.

  “You do it.” Nicci couldn’t sit still a moment longer.

  Forensia took her seat, navigated to WhiteHouse.gov, and saw the result of their hacking in all its cyber-glory: A news banner about the North Koreans and the sulfate rockets crawled across the screen beneath a photograph of President Reynolds in the Rose Garden. Nicci guessed that it might take thirty seconds for CNN, FOX, and all the other networks, cable channels, and news websites to hijack the banner as effectively as Al Qaeda had taken control of that supertanker.

  “You did it,” whispered Forensia. The Pagan witch sounded awed.

  Sang-mi took Nicci’s hand and held it tightly. Then she whispered three simple words: “Thank you, Nicci.”

  * * *

  Nine thousand miles away, Adnan stared at the TV in the wheelhouse of the Dick Cheney, struck speechless by t
he shootout in a New York City studio. Even the Shopping Channel could no longer entice him with its bejeweled watches and floral tableware. Adnan had abandoned the consumer paradise for Al Jazeera, which replayed the video of the shootout over and over. He could not look away from the mesmerizing violence.

  There they were, all kinds of people getting killed—right now—then dying all over again in slow motion. Even a big dog had been shot.

  Adnan stared in open wonder, watching each gripping moment unfold, completely unaware of the approach of a Navy SEAL, who tackled him and used a familiar-looking device to snip the wires sticking out of Adnan’s suicide vest.

  Almost in the same instant, a single bullet killed the Waziristani and ended the hijacking.

  Adnan, pinned to the floor with his vest stripped off and his hands cuffed behind his back, heard the old guy who’d been drinking Satan’s nectar talking again, speaking a sloppy language that the devout Muslim would never understand.

  * * *

  In a mountain fortress near Pyongyang—long hidden from Western eyes in the sky—Jae-hwa held the old Bakelite phone to his ear with one hand; his other rested on the world’s most powerful switch.

  All the missile silos were open. All the rockets were ready to launch. Jae-hwa had watched them roll into position, moved by an army proud of its mission, prouder still of its Supreme Leader.

  Now Jae-hwa waited to hear the most important words that would ever be spoken on this planet—an order only the Supreme Leader could give.

  Jae-hwa’s ears soon thrilled to the man’s voice. The Supreme Leader spoke gravely, as appropriate for the command that must come. But the loyal soldier, who would have given his own life to spare the Supreme Leader so much as a bee sting or splinter, could scarcely believe what he heard:

  “Do not fire the rockets. Every country in the world looks to us for guidance now. I command the world stage. Even men who think they are stronger than us are bowing to me. We do not wish to destroy the world when they know they must give us their full attention—and so much more.”

  Yes, command the world stage. That is your due, Supreme Leader. Jae-hwa wanted to say this and so much more, but he remained silent until he was sure the Supreme Leader had finished speaking. Then Jae-hwa kept his words simple and humble, as he knew he should, thanking the Supreme Leader for his wisdom, and assuring him that every man, woman, and child would fill with gratitude for his most cherished words.

  The Supreme Leader hung up. Jae-hwa took his hand from the shiny silver button, and his thoughts turned to the child in his home, the son who was the treasure of Jae-hwa’s life. He felt certain that his boy would sleep tonight—and many more nights to come—in a world no colder than the one he already knew.

  EPILOGUE

  The funerals came first. The two Joes—Joe Santoro and Joe English—had died trying to stop the North Korean assassins. Jenna attended both services, as did dozens of her fellow network employees. Genuine grief filled the faces of everyone in attendance. The men were well liked and deeply appreciated. Jenna contributed generously to funds for the families of both men.

  Geoff Parks had survived. His dog, Kato, hit three times, also pulled through. Master and dog were both healing. Jenna looked forward to seeing the pair patrolling the studio after the first of the year, when they were expected to return to duty.

  Jenna did not end up in a supermax, despite the vice president’s threats. To her surprise, her efforts to draw attention to the North Korean rockets were credited with sparking a huge surge in voting, which exit polls said proved decisive to President Reynolds’s reelection. Roger Lilton conceded the race early and eloquently.

  Not only was potential imprisonment never mentioned again but Jenna, Dafoe, Forensia, and Sang-mi, along with her father, were even feted in a secret White House ceremony. The president cited their “valiant efforts to draw attention to the worst threat the world has ever known.”

  Jenna also remained on the task force. When the group met again, Senator Higgens gave her a big boozy hug and offered her a substantial stipend to serve on the United States Energy Institute’s board of directors.

  “But that would compromise my integrity,” Jenna said, genuinely aghast at the proposal.

  “I tried,” Higgens replied with a weighty shrug, reminding Jenna that the energy industry, no matter how great its failings, never allowed itself to become mired in self-doubt, embarrassment, or remorse—not as long as profits flowed thick as crude.

  North Korea proved as difficult to deal with as Big Oil and Big Coal. On election day, President Reynolds sent secret messages to the Supreme Leader telling the tyrant that he held him in the highest esteem for his wisdom, wit, and intellect—and by the way, would the Great One please keep the sulfates in the silos in exchange for thousands of tons of food, medicine, and firearms of a distinctly smaller variety, along with luxury items that only a distinguished man with the rarefied taste of the Supreme Leader could truly appreciate?

  The pandering went on into the wee hours of the following morning, but Reynolds’s willingness to extend the most craven compliments might have saved the world from years of winter, mass starvation, and countless wars.

  The president also called on the U.N. to hold a special session to air the grievances of less-developed countries over the impact of climate change. Whether it was simply spin on the president’s part remained to be seen, but sometimes spin was a prerequisite to turning around a crisis.

  * * *

  Andrea Hanson took maternity leave the day after the gun battle in the studio. Elfren promptly appointed Jenna as the interim host of The Morning Show, and named Nicci as the new executive producer. Eight weeks later Andrea delivered a healthy baby girl, whose photo Jenna displayed the next morning to much rejoicing. Viewers of The Morning Show flooded the network with hundreds of thousands of congratulatory e-mails.

  The network had cut Marv loose faster than a trash fish on a tuna charter. While the tabloid press heralded Jenna with lively and largely laudatory headlines such as WEATHER GAL RAINS BANG-BANG ON BAD BOYZ and HURRICANE JENNA STORMS STUDIO, Marv received the less flattering sobriquet of WEATHER MAP WEENIE. The only job he could land was in Boise, Idaho, producing an early morning farm report called The Spud Spot.

  Marv wasn’t the only one caught in a lie on camera. James Elfren received video of Alicia Gant from an anonymous source. The video showed Alicia in front of the entrance to the Golden Crescent Hotel badgering Jenna to say exactly what the producer wanted to hear. Elfren promptly suspended Gant, which proved wise. The same video was leaked to a Times reporter, who wrote a scathing story that called into question all twelve of Gant’s Emmys, seven of them for reports on terrorism. The next day Elfren fired Gant, saying that the network had conducted a review of her work and found violations of news-gathering principles too egregious to permit her continued employment. She filed suit for wrongful termination. She never formally charged Nicci with sexual harassment, but Nicci showed Jenna a string of annoying e-mails asking her for a “discreet date.” Nicci ignored Gant’s messages.

  Jenna had a pretty good idea where the damning video had come from: the crew that Gant had treated so poorly. Alicia had violated more than common decency in ordering them about like slaves, she’d violated common sense: If you abuse people who can expose your lies, they’ll hoop you at the first opportunity.

  Jenna’s personal life also beamed brightly. Every Friday after work, she abandoned New York City for Dafoe’s farm. He’d healed fully from the gunshot wound that had almost taken out a kidney. Bayou also recovered handsomely and greeted her every Friday with as much enthusiasm as his master. Living together on weekends felt like a beta launch for the rest of their lives. As for marriage and children: not yet, Jenna decided. But soon. He was, after all, “the one.”

  Rick Birk had an altogether rockier experience in the days and weeks after the end of the hijacking. Initially, he was acclaimed for enduring torture, dismemberment, and extreme privation, but
almost immediately it was discovered that the captain had been the source of the chopped-off fingers, and that Birk had encouraged the savagery to spare his own hide. Coupled with his drunken appearances on camera before and during the hijacking that were deemed unbecoming of a correspondent, Elfren forced him to retire at the age of seventy-four.

  Alas, Birk did not go gently into the night. Rather, he plunged right back into the public eye, proving that in the age of the Internet, there are second acts in American life. Birk, like the shootout video, went viral—with the most unlikely companion.

  Beaver Falls Glove Company had the squirrelly but intriguing idea to bring together Birk and Captain Moreno for a Web-based ad campaign. Beaver Falls’s CEO took a considerable portion of the small firm’s earnings for the previous year to pay Birk a fat six figures—the captain half as much—to appear side by side.

  Birk, glassy-eyed but not falling-down drunk, sat wearing a pair of Beaver Falls Rick Birk Signature Edition Fingerless Gloves. A large moose head loomed over him from the wall of a hunting lodge. To Birk’s left sat a dour-faced Captain Moreno.

  “My recent experiences,” Birk intoned imperiously, “have taught me the value of fingerless gloves.” Birk offered a drinker’s generous smile and picked up a tall gin and tonic. “Because, let’s face it, sometimes you need all your fingers to handle the finer things in life,” said America’s most notorious dipsomaniac before draining the drink in a single go.

  Moreno glared at him and turned to the camera. Speaking in awkward, recently acquired English, the Spaniard said, “And sometimes you do not need to have gloves with fingers.” At this point, he raised his pitiable hand, which had been left with only a pinkie and ring finger to poke out of a red glove. “So why pay for more glove than you really need?” asked the captain, still palpably pissed off.

  “That’s one thing we can both agree on,” Birk said. Then with a glance at the steaming captain, Birk added, “Maybe the only thing.”