FOREWORD

by Ten To Midnight--Free(Lit)

  A vaporous fireball almost a mile in diameter with a core temperature of twenty million degrees Fahrenheit began to expand outwards, compressing the surrounding air and pushing before it a violent blastwave at supersonic speed. The blastwave consumed everything in its path. Overpressure caused buildings to implode and human organs to rupture. And anything that survived the blastwave still had to contend with the fury of a firestorm that was following closely behind.

  For all its intensity, the firestorm was mercifully brief, since it was largely extinguished by tornado strength winds of up to two hundred miles an hour. These ferocious winds uprooted anything that wasn’t secured to the ground. Telephone poles turned into flying javelins of death. Cables danced violently in the air like charmed snakes. Vehicles, debris and trillions of glass shards became lethal projectiles, flying in all directions at impossible speeds. One fire joined another to become part of a general conflagration that would quickly reduce the heart of Washington to ash.

  Meanwhile, the fireball itself had created a vacuum and started to spin in on itself, forming a mushroom cloud as it sucked in dust and debris which would become contaminated by fission-produced radioactive isotopes and later float back to the earth as deadly fallout.

  The blast was no more than three seconds old, and nearly sixty thousand people were already dead; among them Bert Aldick, Donald and Mary Patterson; and the crack addict who had ended Elroy Simpkins’ life a short while earlier.

  They were to be the first of many.

  Philip Cole was facing away from the blast. He turned quickly in its direction, too late to see the initial flash, but just in time to see the initial blast effects. It looked as though the sun had exploded. A quick mental calculation of distance and direction told him that the blast would probably have taken out the White House and all the surrounding government buildings.

  Actually, Ground Zero was just south of Brookland, twelve miles to the northeast of Cole’s apartment. As he had rightly estimated, the White House and Capitol Hill were totally destroyed by the blastwave, along with just about every other building and living organism within the government district. Georgetown, Hyattsville and the various embassies along Connecticut Avenue had been reduced to dust. The Washington Monument had been cleanly snapped at a height of seventy feet and hurled across the Potomac, eventually landing in Arlington National Cemetery where it shattered into a million pieces of concrete.

  Cole’s jaw dropped as he watched a fiery orange and red mushroom cloud form over the city. Wow, these things look even better in real life. People on the street below were staring at it in morbid fascination, their faces contorted with horror. Some fainted as they realized the enormity of what had happened. Some took whatever cover they could in anticipation of further blasts.

  The shockwave raced towards him, a distant buzz that became a deafening roar as it got closer. Windows shattered throughout the neighborhood. The ground trembled, and several buildings collapsed, clogging the air with dust and dirt. Cole lost his balance and was knocked over by the force of the shockwave. A pressure wave swept over him, making his ears pop. He clutched his head, which felt like it was going to explode with the overpressure.

  Cole was vaguely aware that his skin was burning, but he was far enough from the blast that the effect was no worse than that of severe sunburn. The shockwave seemed to last forever, but in fact lasted no more than a few seconds. As it passed, he came to realize that he was still alive.

  He stood up and, with a gleeful chuckle, remembered that his bitch of an ex-wife had been in Brookland at the time of the blast. Now she was less than ash. She was less than nothing. She had beenatomized . His only regret was that he’d forgotten to bring his camera with him to record this historic occasion.

  By the time the nuclear wind brushed through his hair, it had become little more than a warm breeze invigorated by the deaths of thousands.

  509thBOMB WING, WHITEMAN AFB, MISSOURI

  “It’s nearly time, sir.”

  “Yes, Danny, I know.”

  Brigadier-General Joe Voeller didn’t want the other men to hear the dialogue between him and his XO, Colonel Danny Atherton. The two officers were in a makeshift shelter at Whiteman; an aircraft hangar that was normally home to one of the B-2 stealth bombers presently on its way to Russia. Also in the hangar were more than three hundred ground staff attached to the 509th. Many of them believed that the aluminum-coated hangar would afford sufficient protection from the imminent blast. But some of them knew that the thin layer of protection afforded them would be torn and roasted like paper by the awesome physical forces about to be unleashed. Voeller and Atherton were among the realists.

  Voeller turned to address his men (and women, he realized), who were all sat on the concrete floor, huddled in small groups as if nuclear bombs observed the rule of safety in numbers.

  “Okay, people, this is it. I want you all to assume brace positions, with your head between your knees. Do not, I repeat, donot look up when the bomb hits. Good luck, people, and I’ll see you all…”

  Voeller was stopped dead in his tracks by the most tremendous noise he had ever imagined; a boom that shook the very ground upon which he stood. He had barely enough time to see the terrified expression on Atherton’s face before the roof of the hangar was torn clean away, revealing a fiery orange-red sky, churning tumultuously as the air of the still unseen epicenter pushed against it. The walls of the hangar began to shake furiously in a vain attempt to resist the forces assaulting them.

  The ground rose a full six inches as the geological pressure of the blast stretched outwards from the epicenter. Voeller lost his balance and tumbled backwards. But before he hit the ground, the blastwave struck, tossing him into the air like an unwanted rag doll. Flying through the air at tremendous velocity, he was vaguely aware of his skin melting as the air around him literally ignited. He finally smashed into one of the hangar walls with such force that his spine shattered in three places, his rib cage was crushed and both his legs broken. He was not to know that he was being seared to the bone even as the blackness of death began to creep over him. His last seconds became a horrific kaleidoscope of pain, which ended only when the overpressure caused his lungs and other internal organs to rupture.

  Within twelve seconds of the blast, all that remained of Brigadier-General Joseph Voeller was a small lump of charred organic material and billions of vaporized atoms that were greedily sucked up by the voracious fireball.

  JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICAL CENTER, BALTIMORE

  When the lighting died, everyone knew what was coming. Until that point, the threat had been abstract enough to offer encouragement to the hope that it was all a false alarm; that nothing was actually going to happen. But when the hospital complex was plunged into darkness, reality struck everyone inside with the force of a sledgehammer. Cries of terror and grief filled the air.

  In the same instant that the emergency generator returned lighting to the complex, an almighty boom drowned out those screams and cries. The building shook violently on its foundations, but was far enough away from the blast not to yield to its fury.

  Jo stumbled as the floor trembled, and held onto something to maintain her balance. Her heart was racing with fear as she became aware of a tremendous roar in the distance, similar to that of a tidal wave getting rapidly nearer. She closed her eyes and braced herself for the inevitable, hoping it would be painless. Not just for her, but for those around her.

  The inevitable didn’t come.

  Johns Hopkins was approximately thirty miles to the northeast of ground zero, and withstood most of the bomb’s effects. The blastwave - much of its power having been spent long before reaching Baltimore - rippled over the complex, an orchestra of noise causing Jo to clamp her hands over her ears as they popped with the sudden rise in atmospheric pressure. She wondered if the horrendous din was ever going to end. In fact, it lasted no more than four seconds -

  - leaving only a multitude of desperate moans and cries in its wake. />
  Jo pulled herself to her feet, unable to believe that she was unscathed. She brushed herself down and looked around at the other people in the corridor. Only then did she realize that everybody was looking at everybody else, all thinking the same thing: Has everybody else been as lucky as I have? She detected the shock and terror in the air and imagined that her expression probably reflected those emotions also.

  “Is that it?” asked a young nurse, her eyes moistening with tears of relief. “Are there going to be any more bombs?”

  “I hope not,” Rosenberg said, patting the nurse on the shoulder.

  Lewis always used to say that DC was an overkill zone, Jo remembered. He told me about Russian targeting strategy once. How many warheads did he say were probably aimed at the metropolitan area? Thirty? Something like that…

  “Where did it hit?” she wondered aloud.

  There were no windows in the corridor, so nobody really knew, much less cared. All they knew and cared about right now was that they were all unharmed. There would be time enough later to grieve for those who hadn’t been quite so lucky.

  A staff doctor pointed over Jo’s shoulder. “The blastwave sounded like it came from that way. That would mean the bomb hit somewhere southwest of here, I think.”

  “Downtown D.C.,” an orderly speculated.

  Rosenberg wrapped a protective arm around Jo. “You okay, honey?” he inquired. Jo couldn’t tell from his face whether he was relieved to have survived or terrified of what might happen next.

  “Yeah,” she said flatly. “I will be once I know the fallout isn’t blowing this way.”

  Rosenberg’s jaw sagged. “Let’s deal with one thing at a time, huh?”

  She started to walk away.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To find a window,” she said without slowing her pace. “I want to see it.”

  Rosenberg followed her into a waiting room, which looked out onto a staff car park at the front of the hospital. Until a few minutes ago, one would have looked through double glazed windows. Now all that remained were empty frames. A coating of shards that sparkled like spilt diamonds on the tiled floor provided the only indication that there had ever been windows in the room.

  Jo moved slowly towards the bare window frame, mesmerized by the scene beyond. A tepid breeze brushed gently against her cheek. The smell of burned wood was already cloying, and the smoke-filled air limited visibility to a few meters.

  In fact, all that was visible beyond the thick black smoke was the glowing orange-red nuclear cloud, pushing upwards into the atmosphere. Violent infernos flickered in the immediate vicinity of the blast. From this distance, they looked no more significant than campfires.

  “They did it,” she said quietly to herself, wide eyed with shock. “The stupid sons-of-bitches finally did it.”

  Rosenberg moved to her side. He followed Jo’s eyes to the devastation outside. Had he not known that so many people had been killed or were lying injured among the burning rubble, he might have found the scene oddly beautiful. Certainly, it was an awesome spectacle; nothing like he’d imagined it would be. Until this moment, he hadn’t really known what to expect. It hadn’t seemed plausible.

  But, as he looked out towards the devastated city, there was nothing out there among the smoke and fire to indicate that what he saw had ever been America’s capital.

  In the corridor behind them, people were beginning to react to what had happened. Rosenberg and Jo became aware of raised voices becoming hysterical in tone. They looked at each other.

  “Now the fun part begins,” he said dryly.

  “Yeah,” Jo snorted. “Welcome to the Dark Ages.”

  NORAD, CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN

  General Allen had been monitoring the flow of messages betweenKNEECAP and the Kremlin with interest. For the President and his circle of advisors, NORAD had now become little more than a command facility that would shortly be erased from existence. To Allen, however, NORAD was a home and workplace for over two thousand dedicated men and women, all of whom had but moments left to live.

  Looking out across the Pit, he saw technicians and support staff shaking hands, hugging each other, saying their last good-byes. It all made for a strange atmosphere. He was surprised that nobody seemed to be getting hysterical or tearful. Indeed, the general sentiment seemed to be one of acceptance. They had all signed up for this duty in the full knowledge that something like this might happen one day. In fact, most of NORAD’s staff had spent a large part of their professional careers training for this moment. Even now, a few officers continued to work feverishly, outloading data to external sources before the complex was destroyed. Dedicated to the end, Allen thought bleakly.

  Meanwhile, the Big Board showed a squadron of SS-18’s - represented by red arrows - moving across the Nebraska state line into Colorado, edging steadily towards the blue circle that represented Cheyenne Mountain. The TTG indicator continued to tick away the seconds. 1:05…04…03…

  Allen picked up a microphone and punched a button that connected him with the PA system, which was relayed to every loudspeaker in the NORAD complex. He cleared his throat. The sound echoed throughout the facility, causing people to stop whatever they were doing.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is General Allen,” he began. “I haven’t got much time to say what I want to say, and I never was very good with words anyway. I’d just like to say how honored I am to have led the bravest, most dedicated group of men and women that have ever served in the armed forces of this great nation.”

  0:48…47…46…

  Allen swallowed back a lump in his throat. “I’m proud of you all, people. I look at you all and what do I see? I see heads held high. I see a group of men and women that are facing the end with dignity, not despair. We may not survive this catastrophe, but America will. It will survive because of people like you.” A tear trickled down his cheek.

  31…30…29…

  He opened his mouth to say something, but the words became lost in his throat. “That’s all,” he said, turning off the microphone.

  “Sir.”

  The General turned around to find Frank Mackay standing before him. Mackay offered a stiff salute to his Commanding Officer.

  “It’s been an honor, sir.”

  Allen returned the salute. “Thanks, Frank.”

  Somebody in the Pit started applauding. The applause became infectious, sweeping around the command center and gaining momentum until it became a reverberating roar. It provided an effective distraction from what was coming.

  20…19…18…

  Allen’s telephone rang. He picked it up as the cheering continued, having to shout to make himself heard.

  “This is General Allen.”

  “Rob,” came the familiar voice. “It’s Marion.”

  ABOARD KNEECAP

  Everybody in the conference room was puzzled by the sound of cheering. The President’s first instinct was that the NORAD staff was celebrating a negative detonation. Likewise, Nielsen briefly wondered if it was possible that the Russian missile attack had failed.

  Lewis, however, understood perfectly what was going on at Cheyenne Mountain. His facial muscles tightened into a knot of emotion.

  “What the hell is going on down there, Rob?” Westwood asked the speakerphone.

  “Just a last good-bye, sir. That’s all.” The cheering died as suddenly as it had started once the NORAD staff began to realize that Allen was engaged in what might be an important last communication with KNEECAP. “I take it you know about Washington and Seattle. Houston will be hit any moment now. But we probably won’t be here to confirm it,” he added as an afterthought.

  Westwood’s head dropped. “Looking Glassis keeping us posted.” The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs shuffled awkwardly in his chair. He could only imagine what was going through the mind of his fellow General at this moment. They had known each other since West Point, when Westwood had been a smart-ass black kid from the Detroit ghetto who had joine
d up simply because he was tired of his peers questioning his sexuality on the basis of his feminine Christian name, and Allen had been a rich kid who had joined up in order to prove a point to a father that had wanted his son to become a lawyer. The two cadets hadn’t seen each other again until the Gulf War, several years’ later, when Westwood had found to his surprise that he actually outranked Allen. Who would’ve thought it, huh?

  “Well, sir,” Allen said, his tone remarkably ebullient, “I think I’ve done all I can at this end. AliceandRain Flower can take it from here. I’d just like to wish you all good luck.”

  Now it was Westwood who was choking back tears, an unfamiliar sensation for the General. “Thanks Rob.”

  “And make sure that…”

  A deafening screech filled the room, causing everybody to wince. Reynolds clamped his ears shut. Nielsen reached over and turned off the speakerphone, which Westwood was staring at with wide-eyed disbelief.

  NORAD had been neutralized.

  NORAD, CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN, COLORADO

  Traveling at some 20,000 miles per hour, the penetrator from the first SS-18 slammed into the side of Cheyenne Mountain, burrowing to a depth of some 100 feet. It was trailed by a one-megaton warhead, which detonated once it had caught up with the penetrator.

  The NORAD facility was actually a complex of some fifteen buildings, each of which was mounted on giant springs designed to absorb the shock of a nuclear blast. In the first moments of the attack, they served their purpose well. The facility - buried deep within the mountain - reverberated and tilted slightly to one side, causing people to lose their balance, equipment to topple over and lighting to flicker ominously.

  In the command center, the cheers had been replaced by screams and moans. Nine people were killed by the first impact, all of them crushed by heavy equipment that had fallen onto them.