Hands trembling, gun smoking, she dropped the pistol on the floor with a clank.
“Decapitation, Marshall. Your own philosophy.”
Marshall was lifeless. Powder burns surrounded the black hole in his forehead. His piercing blue eyes remained wide open in surprise. Sachs stood there numb, staring at Marshall, her heart sick, her stomach swelling.
The crackle of the radio broke her trance: “Defender One, update.”
Sachs staggered over to the console. She felt weak as she grasped the microphone with her hand and then saw blood on it. She looked down at her body. More blood. Somewhere along the line she already had taken a bullet. Now she had to recall the Defenders before that bullet took her last breath.
57
1649 Hours
The Pacific
Northern Command
High over the Pacific Ocean, ten 747 jumbo jets were strung out like white pearls in the moonlight. Inside their respective cockpits, President Deborah Sachs’ very weak voice came through the secret frequency: “Arm your phasers,” she said. “Target is now U.S. Minutemen missiles entering Chinese airspace. Repeat. Target is now ten U.S. missiles entering Chinese airspace.”
Inside Northern Command, General Block heard her too, thanks to the Defender One pilot who was patching everything through for verification since General Marshall had ceased transmission.
“Good God,” Block told his senior controller. “They’re really up there, fully operational. Ten actual airborne Defenders.”
“They’re requesting confirmation for the destruction of outgoing U.S. missiles in place of potential incoming Chinese missiles,” the senior controller said.
Even now, Block realized, elements of his own armed forces still refused to heed the words of their new commander-in-chief. “You tell them they heard right.”
Floating at 35,000 feet, Defender One swung into position. Mounted on its nosecone, a large swiveling laser cannon turret containing a beam director and infrared sensor scanned the horizon for missile launches.
The beam director shot a low-powered laser beam to track the missiles and measure atmospheric distortion.
Meanwhile, inside the forward fuselage of the Defender, a mirror adjusted while the displays of a computer console flashed. One display read Atmospheric Distortion 34.222. Another display read: missile tracking: locked.
The mirror locked into place.
Inside the rear fuselage of Defender One, walls of transparent storage tanks lined both sides of a narrow aisle—30,000 pounds of chemicals moving at supersonic speeds, mixed in a rocket engine-like chamber. A flash in the mix lit up and shot through the clear shaft.
The laser burst out through the beam director in the nosecone of the 747.
Over the Pacific Ocean, the first Minuteman exploded over black waters.
Not cheers but stunned silence lay like a cloud over the Northern Command headquarters as one by one the blips representing Minuteman missiles coming down on China disappeared.
Block exhaled with both admiration and horror. “Goddamn Marshall.”
It didn’t take long for General Zhang to call.
Block picked up his red phone. “What do you want, Zhang?”
Zhang said in perfect American English, “We wish to cease hostilities.”
“I’m sure you do,” Block said. “You saw that we can destroy our own missiles. Which means we can destroy yours too.”
Zhang continued, “We suggest an immediate, verifiable cease-fire.”
“Lucky for you, President Sachs agrees. But she wants a long-term, verifiable treaty we’ll work out later. Maybe include those artificial atolls you’ve got in the South China Sea.”
“Agreed.” Zhang said. “Over.”
Before Zhang cut off, Block caught several more curse words in Mandarin. He then hung up and looked at his senior controller, who was fluent in Mandarin.
“Tough broad,” he translated, more or less. “But what can we do?”
“You got that right,” Block said. “Tell her we’ve got teams from Grand Forks on the way to her with medical attention.”
But his senior controller said, “She’s not responding anymore, sir.”
58
1650 Hours
Bedford Country Club
Jennifer struggled as the Green Beret on top of her forced her down onto the floor of the caddy shack, one hand grabbing her hair and the other pawing at her breasts. She still had clothes on, nothing torn open yet, thank God. This drunken perv had only dry humped her so far, but his grinding repulsed her like nothing before in her life.
“This isn’t the frickin’ Islamic State!” she screamed, kneeing him in the groin. “You can’t just rape girls!”
He bellowed in agony but didn’t let go of her, pulling her tighter until she winced in pain. “Oh, I’m going to like you,” he told her, forcing his mouth on hers.
Gagging, she reached for his empty bottle on the floor beside them. Her fingers fumbled, then grasped it by the neck but couldn’t get a firm hold. She was about to lose it as he shifted on her.
She grimaced, then slipped her tongue into his mouth and he came alive. She used the moment to grab the bottle and club him across the side of his head.
“Bitch!” he cried out, staggering to the side as she hit him again, sending him face down on the floor.
“Believe it, asshole!” She kicked him out of the way, the rage in her so strong that this time instead of opening the front door, she just kicked it open with little difficulty and ran out to blazing lights and guns and froze.
A dark, knife-thin figure emerged from the lights, like one of those aliens from the movies.
“Jennifer, I’m Wanda Randolph of the United States Capitol Police. Your mother sent me to help you. She’s alive.”
Jennifer wanted to cry like a baby. Instead she fixed her eyes on the long sniper rifle in Randolph’s hands. “That’s a sweet Barrett M107 50-caliber. Can I hold it?”
59
0631 Hours
The Day After
The Safeguard Complex
It was the 91st Security Forces Squadron team that reached Sachs first at the Safeguard complex. She was unconscious on the floor under a console, her clothes, hands and hair a bloody mess. But she was breathing, and they stabilized her quickly then moved her outside.
As dawn broke over the 80-foot pyramid radar building, she blinked her eyes open into the cold light of day. It seemed like there were hundreds of soldiers, federal agents and FEMA officials on hand. News crews too, although they had been fenced off beyond the base.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“You,” said a familiar voice. “You’ll be just fine. But we’ll need to airlift you for surgery to get that bullet out of you. I got lucky. Mine passed clean through.”
She looked over to see Koz, his shoulder in a bandage. “Koz.” She paused. “Captain Li?”
Koz shook his head, clearly broken up. “Last official casualty of the D.C. attack. But it’s over, thanks to you.”
There was a shout, and a soldier ran up with a phone for Koz. “General Block, sir.”
Koz took the phone and said, “Captain Li is dead, sir. So is Marshall.”
Sachs could hear Block’s shocked voice on the other end. “You killed Marshall?”
“No, sir,” Koz said, looking at her. “She did.”
“Sachs?” Block repeated, even louder.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
There were more shouts and the snow kicked up. Sachs looked around, bewildered. Suddenly a Black Hawk chopper landed on the missile field. Her body instantly seized up in terror. Then the chopper’s big door slid open and out jumped a tall, thin African-American officer. And right behind her was Jennifer, running toward her.
“Mom!” Jennifer called. “Mom!”
Jennifer ran up to her and embraced her. Sachs cried her eyes out, kissing Jennifer all over, squeezing her until her baby could barely breathe. “Oh, baby.”
Koz had to gingerly pry them apart.
Jennifer straightened and looked over Koz once, then twice, and without disappointment. She must have seen something, because she smiled and saluted him.
Koz returned the salute, and Jennifer gave her mom a big thumbs-up, as if to say that, despite everything that had happened, America was going to be OK.
60
0900 Hours
Three Weeks Later
Looking Glass
Koz sat in the conference room of the Looking Glass plane watching the ceremonies on TV. They were raising the U.S. Constitution from the bowels of the earth where the National Archives once stood, and he noted how regal President Sachs looked as a large crane lifted the indestructible container with the sacred document into the air. But to Koz, it was sacred only so long as it lived in the hearts of Americans like Deborah Sachs.
He was so mesmerized by the scene that he didn’t notice his new communications officer walk in.
“General Kozlowski?”
Koz glanced over at Captain Lyndon Han, who was holding his digital tablet and pen out for a signature. Han was no Captain Li, but it wasn’t Han’s fault. Koz signed off the checklist on the tablet and handed it back.
Han nodded at the TV. “Dinner at the president’s again tonight, sir?”
“No,” Koz said, brightening. “I’m cooking.”
As he spoke, his phone buzzed with a text message. Only a few people besides the president were ever allowed to get through to him up here.
“Excuse me, Captain,” he said, looking at the text.
It was from Jennifer Sachs: R u really grilling 2nite? Count me in! : )
He stared at the text for a long minute. He could barely comprehend the tragic, terrible twist of fate that had created his new nuclear family from the ashes of a nuclear attack. He lost himself for a moment, remembering Sherry and so many others who perished in Washington. He should have been one of them, if not for Captain Li. Hell, they all would have perished were it not for Deborah Sachs.
Then his comm beeped with an FYI about a glitch in the VLF extension that he really needn’t worry about and his trance was broken.
“I better have a look at that myself,” he said, taking no glitch for granted since encountering Red Glare.
As he rose from his chair and stood up, he looked out the compartment window and smiled. The Looking Glass plane was moving up and away above the clouds, its starboard wing reflecting the glint of a new day’s sun against clear blue skies.
THE END
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Greanias received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Northwestern University after majoring in journalism, national security and creative writing. He started as an on-air correspondent in Washington, D.C., reporting for NBC affiliates across America before turning to conspiracy thrillers. He lives by the ocean with his wife, journalist Laura Greanias, and has two sons and a golden retriever.
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