FOREWORD

by Ten To Midnight--Free(Lit)

  Lewis reproached himself for his earlier outburst. That was not the way to get through to Nielsen. Unfortunately, he couldn’t think of a better tactic right now. He composed himself before speaking. “But they’ve still got enough subs,” Lewis pointed out, “to blow whatever’s left of our country back to the Stone Age.”

  “And so have we,” Nielsen retorted. “They have ICBMs airborne as we speak. I anticipate that their subs will also launch at any time. We can’t stop that. The fact of the matter is that we still have time to save the world from those bastards.” He turned back to Westwood. “General, get meAlice . And I need the launch codes. We’re sending the bombers in. I want to target population centers, leadership bunkers and industrial targets. I want to rip the heart out of Russia.”

  “Sir,” Westwood protested, “let us just wait.”

  Again, Nielsen waved a dismissive hand. “I haven’t got time to wait. America hasn’t got time to wait.”

  Lewis closed his eyes in despair. He had failed. Hellish images of apocalypse passed through his mind, of an entire species dying a slow, agonizing death under the freezing shroud of nuclear winter. He wasn’t a religious man by any means (he’d renounced his Jewish upbringing many years’ ago) but he couldn’t prevent himself thinking that Hell was descending upon Earth, and Nielsen was its champion.

  When he opened his eyes, the Marine Warrant Officer carrying the ‘Football’ was standing beside Nielsen, opening up the attaché case on the table. Nobody said a word. Lewis momentarily locked eyes with Bishop, whose gaunt expression reflected the fear that the National Security Advisor felt.

  Lewis had never been a quitter before. God knows, he’d had his chances to lay down and die when it seemed as though he’d had nothing left for which to live. But this time, it was more than just his own life at stake. It was that of an entire planet. If his agnosticism was proved wrong and he was brought before his maker, he wouldn’t be able to face Him knowing that he’d sat here and done nothing while a death sentence had been passed upon mankind.

  He sensed the E-4’s engines slowing as it began its descent into Baltimore-Washington. This moment was the checking balance to which Lewis would have to reconcile at the end of his life; however many minutes, hours or years away that proved to be. It would be the test of everything he was, everything in which he believed. And if he didn’t act then everything else he’d done in his life would be meaningless.

  He felt himself rise from his chair. When he spoke, his voice was edged with a grim flatness, his face devoid of emotion. Only Bishop recognized the fierce intensity that burned within those deep-set brown eyes. The DCI immediately sensed the danger of the moment, but knew there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  “Mr. Nielsen, can I offer you just one piece of advice before you issue that order?”

  Nielsen looked up. He sensed an implicit threat in Lewis’s tone. And something in the National Security Advisor’s eyes told him that this was not a man with whom to fuck. “I’m always open to advice, Dr Stein. Make it quick.”

  “Take a deep breath, sir. Don’t act on impulse over something this important. Think about what you’re doing, because if you’re wrong, it can’t be undone. There is still just enough of America left to salvage. If you want to punish Russia some more, fine. There are other ways to do it. But if we send in those bombers, we’re almost certainly committing ourselves to launching our sub-based missiles too. And that means their subs will also launch. Yazov is due to call again in the next few minutes. Wait until you’ve heard what he has to say. Wait until we can ascertain where those missiles are headed.”

  A cold smile flickered across Nielsen’s lips. “Ironic, isn’t it, how they choose to launch just before we’re due to speak with them again? They figured we’d hesitate for the reasons you’ve just outlined. And while we’re wasting time talking to Yazov, their subs will be launching their missiles. Well, they might have fooled you, but they sure as hell won’t foolthis President, Dr Stein. Never.”

  Lewis felt the rage well up inside him until he could no longer contain it. Words were wasted on this megalomaniac. He was intent on waging a nuclear war just to prove that he could be a proper leader. Astrong leader. And to hell with the billion poor souls whose lives would be sacrificed for that point.

  In as much time as it took for that thought to pass through Lewis’s mind, he felt himself lunging across the table at Nielsen, knocking him backwards onto the floor in one swift movement.

  In fact, the movement was so swift that by the time the two USSS agents in the room reacted, Lewis’s hands were already throttling Nielsen’s neck. But, as Nielsen began to comprehend that he was about to die, Lewis felt something hard and cold strike the base of his skull. The impact rang through his head, completely disorientating him.

  By the time he’d regained his senses, he was flat on his back, looking up at the two agents whose pistols were trained on him. Their eyes told him that they would have no compunctions about pulling the triggers.

  Nice one, Lewis, he thought bleakly. The world just blew up because you couldn’t control your fucking temper. Explain that one to God.

  Nielsen was gasping for breath as he pulled himself upright. “Put this man under arrest. When we land, I want him off this plane and out of my fucking way.”

  The agents hoisted Lewis upright, their guns still trained on him. Had they been two ordinary soldiers, he might have fancied his chances of disarming them both and turning the situation around. But these weren’t ordinary soldiers. He knew just how well trained they were. It was in the eyes. If he so much as flinched, they’d shoot him without hesitation. And what would that achieve?

  Lewis knew that for as long as he was alive, he still had a faint chance of preventing a global catastrophe.

  Nielsen stood eyeball to eyeball with him, their noses almost touching. There was a glint of smug, self-satisfaction in his eyes, the look of a man who reveled in Absolute Power. The look of a man whose perverse sense of superiority forbade normal rationality or logic. He rubbed his neck where Lewis had gripped it.

  His words were quiet and deliberate. “Dr Stein. You’re fired.”

  “Mr. Nielsen,” Lewis warned quietly before being led from the room. “You’d better pray that we never meet again.”

  GCN STUDIOS, ATLANTA

  “Millions of Americans are just waking up to the terrible events that have transpired overnight,” Jack Sullivan reported solemnly, “having slept through the first nuclear conflict in history. They are awakening to an America that has become unrecognizable in the past twelve hours; an America that might never be the same. In what we believe is the first measure of public opinion since the conflict, our New York bureau has taken a straw poll of five hundred New Yorkers. We asked them whether the President should further prosecute the war against Russia. The results are somewhat surprising considering the damage this nation has suffered.”

  A pie chart indicating the poll results filled the screen.

  “Eighty-two percent want the Mitchell administration to pursue military action against Russia. Of those, fifty-three percent advocate the use of nuclear weapons to achieve that goal. Only eleven percent of those polled call for a cease-fire.

  Another graphic appeared on the screen.

  “We also asked people what U.S. objectives should be in pursuing this conflict. On this issue, the response was less unanimous. Fifty-two percent advocated the destruction of Russia’s nuclear arsenal as a primary objective. Thirty-nine percent called for the military occupation of Russia. The remaining nineteen percent did not know.”

  Sullivan’s face filled the screen again.

  “We’re now going live to Steve Carlisle in Times Square, where thousands of New Yorkers have gathered this morning in a spontaneous demonstration calling for further military action against Russia. Steve, can you hear me?”

  The image of GCN’s New York correspondent appeared, the reception extremely distorted. He was fingering his earpiece. The air was f
illed with the chants and roars of irate multitudes, many of them flying American flags.

  “Yes, Jack, I can hear you.”

  Sullivan spoke over the image. “Steve - what’s the atmosphere like in New York right now?”

  Carlisle used his hand to gesture the scene, sweeping it in a semi-circular motion. “As you can see,” he yelled above the noise, “the emotions of New Yorkers have been fired up by events overnight. Americans are discovering for the first time what it’s like to be directly attacked by a foreign power, and they don’t like it. Earlier, I witnessed a violent assault on a man who was calling for a cessation of hostilities. The vast majority of people here want President Mitchell to punish the Russians with extreme force for what they’ve done to America.”

  “Are people afraid?” Sullivan asked him.

  That question elicited a wry smile from Carlisle. “I think furious would be a more accurate adjective than afraid, Jack. If New Yorkers are afraid, then they’re taking comfort in numbers. Although there has been isolated rioting and looting in Queens and Brooklyn, the atmosphere in Manhattan is almost like a carnival, albeit an extremely combustible one.”

  At that point, three teenagers standing behind Carlisle - two boys and a girl - spotted the camera. They started waving an American flag and chanting.

  “Steve - can you ask those kids behind you what they think?”

  Carlisle turned around. “Hi, Steve Carlisle from GCN.” That got their attention. “Are you guys all from New York?”

  “No,” the girl answered, “we’re students from Florida on vacation. We were in a nightclub when we heard.”

  “And what did you hear?” Carlisle asked.

  One of the boys dealt with that question. “Those sons-of-bitches nuked us. And we nuked ‘em back.”

  “What do you think about that?”

  “We oughta make the motherfucks fry in hell,” the second boy said; too quickly for the program editor to beep out the profanity. “We’re goin’ down to the recruitment office later to join up. We’re gonna make those fuckers pay with interest for what they’ve done.”

  “Time to get even,” the girl stated.

  “Fuckin’ A!” the first boy added.

  Spontaneously, the three students hoisted the flag aloft, chanting, “Hey, Hey, U-S-A! Hey, Hey, U-S-A!”

  “I think,” Carlisle said to the camera, “that pretty much sums up the sentiments of most New Yorkers this morning. This is Steve Carlisle, for GCN in Times Square.”

  Sullivan’s image replaced that of the New York link, but he didn’t say anything for a few moments. His brow was furrowed as he listened to something being shouted into his earpiece. “And I’m just hearing,” he said hesitantly, “that we’re getting reports of a medical emergency aboard the President’s airborne command post, from where he’s been conducting operations since the beginning of this crisis. I understand that this incident involves the President himself, and the E-4 command plane is making an emergency landing at an undisclosed location so that he can receive medical treatment. In the meantime, Secretary of Defense Paul Nielsen has been sworn in as acting commander in chief. Let me emphasize that this report is unconfirmed, although I understand it derives from a well-placed source at the Mount Weather government bunker. If it is true, then we can only speculate on what implications this will have for the swift resolution of the conflict with Russia.”

  GOVERNMENT COMMAND BUNKER, LONDON, ENGLAND

  The Prime Minister reread the Top Secret electronic intercept, rubbing his brow in disbelief. It was a little known secret that, since the Thatcher era of the 1980’s, Britain’s Security Services had been routinely eavesdropping on communications between other European countries, particularly France and Germany, who were blissfully unaware that their encryption codes had been broken by experts at the British Government’s GCHQ communications facility at Cheltenham.

  Less than fifteen minutes after the conversation between President Betin and Chancellor Berger, a transcript had been prepared at GCHQ and forwarded to the headquarters of Britain’s foreign counterintelligence service (MI6) in London, where the duty officer realized that the intercept demanded the immediate attention of the Prime Minister.

  Winterburn shook his head incredulously, muttering, “Those mad, mad bastards. Do they realize what they’re doing?”

  “They see it as an opportunity to establish the self-reliance of the European Union,” Foreign Secretary Roland noted, a derisive edge to his tone.

  “But the EUisn’t self-reliant. Not militarily. Not yet. When the Americans find out…” Winterburn left the rest unsaid. He didn’t need to elaborate. The Prime Minister, having spent two years at Yale many years earlier, thought he had the measure of the American people. Right now, they were at war. The heart of their nation had been physically attacked for the first time in American history. And now two of their most important allies - with whom they had binding treaty obligations - were hanging them out to dry. “What about American bases in Germany?” The question was directed at General Rhys-Jones.

  The Chief of Defense Staff leaned forward, clasping his hands on the conference table. “Well, if I understand this correctly, the French and German governments are going to deny airspace to any U.S. military aircraft. If this conflict continues, that will severely impede American operations. They’ll have lost the use of a third of their European forces. Not to mention supply and support facilities that have always provided an integral element of European defense planning. They’ll go through the bloody roof when they find out.”

  Winterburn took no more than a few moments to consider his options. There weren’t many to choose from. “Fine. If that’s the way they want to play it. America’s always been there for us, so I’m damned if we’re going to let them down now. And I don’t think we’ll find ourselves alone on this.”

  “Belgium, Luxembourg, Portugal, Austria and Greece are likely to side with the Franco-German axis,” Roland pointed out. “Those countries are all strictly within Berlin’s sphere of influence right now. Spain and Holland, who knows?” He shrugged dismissively. “Who cares? I reckon the only governments that’ll side with us and the Americans are Italy, the Scandi countries and the Eastern Europeans. They won’t sit this one out. Particularly the Poles and Czechs.”

  Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic were still only associate members of the EU, but their political influence was nonetheless important for that. And they all had long, bitter memories of domination by both Germany and Russia in turn.

  “Okay,” Winterburn concluded, turning to a military aide, “set up a conference call with the leaders of Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Hungary, Italy and the Czech Republic. And then I want to speak with President Mitchell. He needs to know about this.”

  And, in that moment, Winterburn began to set in motion the dismemberment of the European Union.

  JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICAL CENTER, BALTIMORE

  It was a scene redolent of Jo’s worst nightmare. The steady stream of casualties from Washington was continuing unabated. Until now, she hadn’t realized just how much damage could be done to the human body. It was a disturbing revelation. She had found herself treating injuries so horrific that they had until now been mere textbook abstractions to her. The sound, smell and sight of human misery on a Hadean scale assaulted her senses, and she wasn’t certain that she’d come through this with her sanity intact.

  The pristine white corridors were now stained with blood. The normal fragrance of detergent so prevalent in hospitals had been replaced with that of scorched flesh and human waste. The wards had long ago filled to capacity, and medical staff were being forced to treat casualties in corridors and waiting rooms.

  Sandler had just informed his staff that stocks of painkillers, morphine, plasma and certain blood supplies were running low. Jo and other senior doctors had been instructed not to prescribe drugs to those who were clearly going to die anyway.

  One thing that particularly struck her was how nuc
lear bombs failed to discriminate between young and old, rich and poor. They were all suffering together, and their howls of agony all sounded alike.

  She was currently bandaging the severed arm of an elderly woman called Rose, whose strident cries of pain caused Jo to wince as if she herself were suffering. The woman, laid flat on the floor of a waiting room, had lost her arm when a large fragment of something or other had severed it during the blast. Her eighty-five year old husband hadn’t been so lucky. The same fragment of something or other that had sliced through Rose’s arm had continued on its path through the air and decapitated him.

  A severed arm didn’t provide the full extent of Rose’s injuries, however. Her hair had been scorched from her head, leaving her exposed scalp reddened like an overripe tomato. The left side of her face was charred black where it had been facing the thermal pulse. She had third degree burns over at least twenty percent of her body. At seventy-eight years old, it was a miracle that she was still alive.

  “Please… Please…” she was howling.

  Jo wiped the sweat from her brow as she pulled the bandage tight. She was trying to stop her hands shaking with the emotional trauma of everything she’d experienced tonight. “I can’t do anything to help you, Rose,” she wept. “I would if I could, but I really can’t.”

  “Can… can… Husband die… I die…”

  Jo knew what the old woman was trying to say. She wanted to be relieved of her misery. She’d lived a long life, only to see her husband of however many years killed in the most horrible of circumstances. Why would anyone want to live after that? Jo nodded her understanding.

  “I’ll see what I can do, Rose. I promise.”

  Jo stood and headed along a corridor, weaving her way through an obstacle course of victims. She saw Sandler holding down a hysterical patient while another doctor performed an emergency amputation without anesthetic. She placed a hand on Sandler’s shoulder, but he was preoccupied with the patient, who was biting on a piece of wood, grunting against the pain.