FOREWORD

by Ten To Midnight--Free(Lit)

  That last conversation had ended with Jo asking him if he had given any more thought to seeing a counselor. Lewis had reacted angrily. The subsequent shouting match ended with Lewis slamming the phone down on her. He would regret that for the rest of his life, he knew. If only he hadn’t been so fucking proud, he might have found the courage to tell Jo how much he loved her.

  He closed his eyes…

  To his alarm, he couldn’t even remember what she looked like. He knew that she was beautiful, but for the first time since they’d separated, he couldn’t picture her. All he could see in his mind was a skeletal parody of his ex-wife, a few wisps of her thick black hair swaying in a wind of atomic vapor. She was wearing the bridal gown that she’d worn on their wedding day, but her eyes were missing and her fingers were charred into blackened claws as they reached out towards him.

  Lewis snapped his eyes open and realized that Bishop was staring at him across the conference table. A look of mutual understanding passed between them. The DCI’s wife had been at home in Northeast Washington at the time of the attack, virtually at ground zero. In fact, the families of most of those aboard KNEECAP had lived within the blast zone. Sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, husbands, wives. There was hardly a person on boardthat hadn’t lost somebody. It came as scant consolation to him that he wasn’t alone in his grief.

  He had to do something to distract himself from a barrage of emotions that was testing his sanity. Looking up at the President, he said, “We need to think about what happens next, sir.”

  Everybody stared at Lewis for a moment as if he’d spoken in a foreign tongue.

  “Dr Stein is right.” Reynolds broke the silence. “We can’t just sit up here and pretend it hasn’t happened. There’s bound to be mass hysteria down there at the moment. People will be confused and frightened.”

  The President nodded his reluctant agreement. “I know, Jim. I’ve been thinking about that. Thing is, there’s no precedent for what to do now. It’s not as if there’s some goddamn rulebook for this kind of scenario.”

  “Address the nation, sir,” Lewis suggested firmly. “The folks out there will need reassurance that the government is still working for them.” Not that it’s ever really worked for them before, he didn’t say. “Explain to people exactly what’s happened and that you’re in control of the situation.” He paused, carefully pondering how to word his next suggestion. “We need to discuss what to do about all the people who have been disenfranchised by the attack. How many are we talking about?” His eyes directed the question at Westwood, but it was Margaret who answered the question.

  “Rough estimate in this kind of scenario,” she speculated grimly, her eyes downcast. “I’d say at least twenty million people would be homeless. At least twenty million more wounded.”

  The President shook his head in disbelief. “Twenty million homeless Americans,” he muttered, accentuating each syllable of the incomprehensible figure. “What the hell are we supposed to do with them? Build refugee camps?”

  “It may just come to that,” Westwood acknowledged, his brow a knot of anguish. He had neither wife nor children, having always stated that,“The Army is my wife, my men are my children, the constitution my mother and the American people my father.” He grieved for all of them.

  Reynolds agreed. “And we’re not just talking about twenty million ordinary Americans,” he remarked. “We’re talking about an unpredictable mass. Twenty millionfrightened, hysterical Americans.”

  The President considered that. He felt completely out of touch thousands of feet above the chaos in a luxurious command plane. That was why, he supposed, none of this seemed any more real than a Nintendo game. He didn’t feel comfortable with the apparent gulf that separated him from his people, and it showed in his face. “What about the National Guard, Paul?” he asked the Secretary of Defense. “How stretched are they in the cities?”

  Nielsen shook his head. “The call up has been selective so far. If we’re talking about policing camps containing a couple of million people, we’d need to announce a general call up.”

  “And many of our reservists will be among the refugees,” Lewis pointed out. Not to mention among the dead, he didn’t add, even though he knew everybody was thinking it. “What about regular Army?”

  The Secretary of Defense glanced at Westwood, who answered the question. “That’s another possibility we may have to consider. I’m not very comfortable with it though.”

  “Why not?” The President asked.

  “Because supposing this thing hasn’t run its course yet, and all our regular Army are tied up policing refugees?” He paused, allowing that prospect to hang in the air. “I for one don’t want us to be caught with our pants down if Russia decides to up the ante.”

  “I don’t see that happening,” Mitchell said, just as Admiral Dunster’s telephone rang.

  “Dunster.” The Secretary of the Navy lifted his receiver and listened. “How many?” He glanced up at the President. “I’m putting you on speaker.”

  “Can you hear me?” The voice at the other end echoed in the conference room.

  “Yes,” Mitchell replied. “This is the President. Who is this?”

  “Admiral Dick Fallon, Commander of Pacific Fleet, sir. I’m on the Nimitz, about two hundred miles southeast of Japan.”

  “What can I do for you, Admiral Fallon?”

  “I’ve just received notification of a flare up in the Eastern Pacific, sir. A Russian Akula torpedoed the USS California about twenty-five minutes ago.”

  “How bad?” the President asked him, mentally calculating the wider implications of this latest incident. He remembered conducting an inspection of the California, a nuclear-powered cruiser, shortly after his inauguration. He even remembered the Captain, who had then just taken command of the vessel. That made this incident slightly more personal than it might otherwise have been.

  “Last transmission from the California came in about five minutes ago. They said they were listing heavily to port. They’re going down, sir.”

  Mitchell closed his eyes. “Have we sent a rescue ship to search for survivors?”

  “Yes, sir. But there are some real bad storms in that area right now, and it won’t be easy getting to them. We know that they’ve already sustained heavy casualties,” he added sadly. Although CINCPAC hadn’t served aboard a ship for more than a decade, he had never really stopped being a sailor and, accordingly, still felt a personal responsibility for the California’s crew.

  “And the Akula?”

  “The California managed to take it out shortly before the torpedo hit. There were no survivors, sir.”

  Somehow that didn’t make the President feel any better.

  “Admiral, this is General Westwood,” the JCS Chairman announced. “Are we certain that the Akula fired first?”

  “Sir,” came the immediate response, “I spoke to the skipper myself. I’ve known him for thirty years. He told me that the Akula fired without provocation. That’s good enough for me. I’m sure the tapes will corroborate his story.”

  “Fair enough,” the President said. “Keep us posted, Admiral.”

  “Yes, sir.” The line went dead.

  Mitchell took a deep breath and paused to consider what he’d just heard. “Two things,” he said finally, turning to Lewis as he spoke. “One: Is this an isolated incident, or are we likely to see other flare ups of this nature? Two: Are the Russians trying to pick off our conventional forces?”

  “I think one answer will deal with both questions,” Lewis replied. “Both our forces and the Russians’ are at maximum alert. Fingers are squeezing triggers, and that degree of tension often causes people to make mistakes. I think there’s an extremely high likelihood that everywhere in the world where Russian and American forces are within a couple of hundred miles of each other, there could be flare ups. But I don’t think this is what the Russians want. With their communications in disarray and heavy concentrations of their conventional forces dest
royed by our missile strike, they’re competing at a massive tactical disadvantage, and they know it. These incidents are a symptom of the crisis, rather than an element of it.”

  Mitchell nodded, understanding. He liked Lewis. Unlike most people with whom the President had to deal, Lewis hadn’t lost the knack of speaking plain English. And neither was he afraid of making bold assertions where others might have prevaricated. Perhaps he wasn’t politically astute enough to assume the National Security Advisor’s role on a permanent basis, but there were surely other applications for his knowledge and insight.

  The red phone - an encrypted line reserved for priority communications - began to trill.

  “Yes.” The President immediately placed the call on speaker. Everybody else in the room listened in on their own phones.

  “This isAlice , Mister President. I have a preliminary impact estimate.”

  “Go ahead,Alice .” Mitchell felt uncomfortable addressing a four-star General by a girl’s name, although he was certain that the day would come when there would be numerous female Generals. Old prejudices, Ed. Gotta rid yourself of them.

  “We’ve confirmed six and eighty three impacts against CONUS. It’ll still be a few hours before we’re able to conduct a full damage survey and estimation of fallout patterns, but we’re fairly certain that more than sixty percent of our strategic facilities have been destroyed. NORAD has also been taken out, as you know. But the good news is that we have established communications with Mount Weather. They took a hit, but the warhead overshot them by two miles and fizzled. They’re still alive down there. Shaken, but still alive.”

  “That’s something, I guess,” the President remarked. Mount Weather was the primary evacuation site for the Senate, Supreme Court judges, the Speaker of the House, and at least two of his own junior cabinet members. That meant America still had a working government. “What about the cities?” Even as he asked the question, he knew that the news would not be good. Had any of the city-bound missiles failed,Alice would surely have told him straight away.

  “I’m afraid that Houston, Seattle and Washington were all hit, sir. The D.C. missile detonated over Brookland, about four miles northeast of Capitol Hill. Pretty much everything inside the Beltway has been wiped out.”

  Lewis performed a quick mental calculation. Johns Hopkins was approximately thirty-five miles northeast of the blast. Far enough, providing she’s not downwind of the fallout, he calculated to his relief. He tried to imagine what conditions would be like on the ground right now but quickly shut the thought from his mind, knowing that he would find out for himself sooner or later.

  “Any news from Omaha?” Westwood asked, referring specifically to the USSTRATCOM command center.

  “No, sir,”Alice replied. “StratCom took a direct hit…” He paused. “My nephew was serving there.”

  “I’m sorry, General,” the President said, genuinely meaning it. He wondered if there was a single American alive at this moment that hadn’t lost a friend or relative.

  “That’s okay, Mister President. He did his duty.” The remark was automatic, andAlice’s tone suggested that it did not reflect what he truly felt. “I also have some preliminary data on casualties. These are only computer-generated estimates, and the margin of error could be as much as fifteen percent either way.”

  The President braced himself for the statistics. Except they weren’t statistics, were they? They were flesh and blood, lives and hopes and dreams.

  “Based on the time of the attack and the attack pattern, up to five million people were killed by the blast effects alone. Up to another twelve million have suffered burn and secondary injuries from which they will not recover. Approximately twenty to thirty million people will be homeless, although some of these will be among the dying. And all of these figures,” he added grimly, “fail to take into account the implications of fallout and other environmental damage. Until we have more data, we won’t be able to offer an accurate projection of fallout patterns.”

  A murmur swept around the room, the sound of a tortured animal. Alice’sestimations finally brought home to everybody the enormity of what had happened. Up to thirty million Americans, possibly more, were dead or would soon be dead. How many more would soon be wishing they were among them?

  “What about our missiles?” Nielsen asked, possibly the only person in the room who wasn’t showing any visible signs of distress. Lewis briefly wondered whether the Secretary of Defense was actually human. He hadn’t seemed affected by any of this. Perhaps he was just hiding it, Lewis hoped. That was a reaction with which he was acutely familiar. Even so…

  “First impacts should be in the next five minutes,”Alice reported. “No misfires that we can see so far. But one thing you should know, sir, is that the Russian ears are opening. They must’ve bust a gut to do it, but we’re monitoring a lot of UHF radio chatter between what remains of Moscow and other military installations. That’s all we know so far.” He suddenly sounded distracted. “I’ve got to sign off for a while. I’ll get back to you in precisely five minutes.”

  “Thank you,Alice ,” the President said meekly. “Good luck.”

  He allowed his eyes to shut for a few seconds, beginning to feel the first symptoms of fatigue. When he opened them again, he turned to Reynolds.

  “Jim. I want to address the nation as soon as possible. Make it happen.”

  UNDERGROUND COMMAND POST, THE KREMLIN

  The transition of power had been so smooth, Yazov hadn’t even noticed it. He wondered indeed if it had actually taken place or whether he was just being paranoid. But a cursory examination of Grizov’s eyes left him in no doubt as to whose star was in the ascendancy. There was something about the self-assurance with which the FSB Director conducted himself, a distinct haughtiness in his tone and demeanor. And, most worrying of all, other senior military officers in the underground complex were beginning to use Grizov as a conduit through which to pass information to Yazov. That afforded Grizov the luxury of passing on only what information he considered relevant. And, even in the midst of nuclear war, information was perhaps the most precious commodity of all. Indeed, more so now than ever.

  Yazov, who had thought himself to be something of an authority on the exercise of power, was beginning to realize that he’d forgotten the most basic lesson of all. If you showed weakness or gave your subordinates any reason to doubt your ability to command, power would slip through your hands like water through a colander. And I’m guilty on both counts, Yazov admitted to himself. He had shown weakness by his indecision over whether to attack the Americans, and that had given his men reason to doubt his leadership qualities. He was even beginning to doubt those qualities himself, so how could he expect others to believe in them?

  Whether, in retrospect, it had been right to attack the United States or not was irrelevant. The issue was that he had not acted on the evidence before himat the time , and that hesitation had been read as weakness; mostly by Grizov, but also by the other senior officers in the command bunker. After all, Yazov was inexperienced and untested as a national leader, whereas Grizov had more than three decades’ experience within Government. He knew how to play the game.

  But losing power was of no real consequence to Yazov. He was only concerned with Grizov’s warmongering tendencies, which had somehow attached themselves to an innate sense of paranoia. That was a highly dangerous combination at this particular moment in history, Yazov knew. Grizov had made it clear that he favored a total nuclear commitment to settle this war once and forever. He hadn’t garnered quite enough support for that yet, but from what Yazov knew of the FSB Director, he was a patient man and would be quite happy to play the long game. In fact, he had between eight and ten hours before U.S. and Russian strategic bombers reached their respective targets. At approximately the same time, both nations’ submarines would resurface for new orders. Ten hours wouldn’t have normally been much time in which to alter a nation’s strategic doctrine, but in the midst of a nuclear war i
t was an eternity.

  In the war room around him, uniformed officers were hurriedly compiling data on the Russian attack and America’s retaliatory strike. With communications still in disarray, it would take some time to form an accurate picture of events. Regional PVO stations were beginning to report in, as were conventional military units and civilian government installations that had survived the attack. But it was a disorganized and somewhat chaotic process, the main consequence of which was much shouting, running and panicking. Grizov was in the thick of it, issuing orders and receiving frequent updates.

  Yazov decided to take advantage of Grizov’s distraction.

  “Anatoly Mikhailovich,” he whispered to Kalushin so as not to attract attention to himself. “I need to speak to you in private. In my quarters.”

  A quizzical look started to form on Kalushin’s face, but it didn’t last for long. He followed Yazov along a long, dark corridor, illuminated only by yellow fluorescent wall lights spaced at twenty feet intervals. Towards the end of the corridor was an anonymous black door that led into Yazov’s quarters.

  Kalushin realized it was the first time he’d seen the room, but it already had Yazov’s touch. The first thing that struck him was how Spartan it was. It managed to contain everything Yazov might need, but no more. Books - both English and Russian - were systematically arranged on a steel shelving unit, indexed by subject and then alphabetically. The bed was neatly made to military standards. A framed photograph of Yazov’s late wife Katrina sat on a small table, facing the bed. In the corner, a drinks cabinet was stocked only with a bottle of vodka and a bottle of port.