FOREWORD

by Ten To Midnight--Free(Lit)

  This all made for a singularly eerie atmosphere that wasn’t lost on either Middleton or Gellis. As they drove through the city, they became acutely conscious that theirs was one of the very few civilian vehicles in sight. They didn’t yet know that they were now in a hostile country; but then neither did most Germans know about their nation’s conflict with the rapidly disintegrating NATO alliance. The German Government had still not revealed this element of the escalating global crisis to its people.

  The radio was broadcasting endless pre-recorded public information broadcasts, advising people to stay in their homes. The tone of the announcements suggested to Middleton that they were not so much advisory notices as implicit orders. He pointed this out to Gellis, who ventured that perhaps the implication was a linguistic nuance that only a German would understand.

  “Maybe they’ve declared martial law,” the reporter suggested, testing his theory on the Englishman, who seemed to be quite well acquainted with the German psyche.

  “Perhaps,” Middleton conceded with a shrug. “I suppose you’d know more than me about such things. But would they use tanks to impose martial law?”

  Gellis watched another Bradley M-1 race past them in the opposite lane. That was about the tenth he had seen since leaving the airport. Good point, he thought. “I know the Germans have got a reputation for obeying rules, but this is fucking ridiculous. Where is everybody? Why aren’t they panic buying or raping and pillaging? Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen in a situation like this?”

  Middleton gestured at an Armored Personnel Carrier. “Speaking for myself, I think I’d be deterred from doing anything that would upset those lads. But that’s just me.”

  The reporter grimaced. “I guess we’ll find out more when we get to the Consulate.”

  Middleton turned the car into an expansive boulevard, which was totally devoid of traffic, military or otherwise. “Well, it’s right here,” he told the American, pointing through his windscreen.

  The American Consulate was a modern architectural masterpiece, its construction post-dating the Cold War by more than a decade. A gleaming monolith of mirrored glass and steel, it provided just one more testament to the American glory that had been suddenly and brutally mutilated in the past twelve hours. Three hundred years to build a civilization; twelve hours to destroy it, Gellis mused darkly.

  The Consulate was surrounded by tank traps, installed quite recently to deter terrorist suicide bombings. Parking was strictly prohibited on that part of the street, which meant that Middleton had to find a spot two blocks away. Gellis was desperate to visit the men’s room, but that wasn’t the only reason he would be glad to get to the building. He felt desperately exposed out here.

  As the two men began to walk back towards the Consulate building, Gellis felt the unmistakable sensation of being watched. At first, he dismissed the feeling, attributing it to the creeps. But glancing down a dark, narrow side street, he spotted a jeep moving slowly in his direction. Against the faint dawn light, he could make out the silhouettes of three figures.

  “Halt!”

  Momentarily, Gellis looked around, thinking the order must have been directed at someone else. The expression on Middleton’s face told him otherwise. Both men stopped in their tracks, watching the jeep anxiously as it drew closer.

  “Must be some kind of curfew,” the Englishman whispered. “And we’ve just broken it.”

  “Great.” Gellis began to reach for his press pass.

  As the jeep emerged from the dark side street into the well-lit Siesmayerstrasse, Gellis wasn’t surprised to see that the vehicle carried the markings of the German Army. The driver and his two passengers all wore gray-green combat fatigues. One of the passengers climbed out of the back seat and approached the two foreigners. His uniform bore the rank insignia of an Army Colonel. An inch or two shorter than Gellis, he measured the reporter through narrow blue eyes.

  “American?” he asked in heavily accented English.

  “Yes, I’m a repor…”

  “You are not supposed to be on the street.”

  “We just came from the airport,” Middleton explained. “We were about to check in at the Consulate to find out what’s happening.”

  The Colonel glared icily at Middleton, then at Gellis. “Your country has declared war on Germany and the European Union.”

  “What?” Gellis exclaimed. “You’re joking.”

  “Nobody is joking now,” the Colonel told him, his cool expression emphasizing the fact. “I will take you into arrest now. Both of you.”

  “Now wait just one…”

  Gellis was cut off by a loudsnap that sounded not unlike a firecracker. It took him a fraction of a second to recognize the sound for what it was. Instinctively, he pulled Middleton to the ground. The Englishman, disorientated by this unexpected turn of events, clearly didn’t understand what was going on. In as much time as it took for him to hit the ground, two moresnaps echoed through the deserted street.

  When Gellis looked up, he saw that the Colonel who had been questioning him was now laying face down in a pool of blood on the sidewalk. A small hole was clearly visible in the back of his head. The other two soldiers in the jeep were both motionless; their heads lifelessly askew. Middleton had never seen a dead body before. His complexion turned green, and he pursed his lips as if about to vomit.

  Before Gellis could fully comprehend what had happened, a rough pair of hands grabbed his collar and hoisted him to his feet.

  “Okay, buddy, let’s move it.” The accent was distinctively American. Gellis briefly glimpsed the youthful, handsome face. For some reason, it looked familiar, but he couldn’t remember where he’d seen it before.

  For a moment, Middleton didn’t move. His eyes were transfixed by the horrific spectacle before him. His body felt as though it were paralyzed. But a hard shove from the stranger was enough to get him moving. Gellis and Middleton were quickly shepherded towards the Consulate, the pace of their rescuer forcing them to jog. They didn’t need much encouragement. Both men wanted to get to safety as quickly as possible before more German troops appeared. This time, Gellis suspected, theKrauts would not be quite so polite.

  The stranger was behind them, jogging backwards, his pistol poised to deal with any threat.

  It was the longest twenty seconds of Richard Gellis’s life.

  Thankfully, the three men made the front gate of the compound without any further incident. A Marine guard was ready to meet them. He hurriedly guided them inside.

  It was only then, in the lobby of the U.S. Consulate that Gellis laid eyes on his savior for the first time.

  “Richard Gellis,” the man grinned crookedly. Gellis thought he saw a mischievous glint in his eye. “We do tend to meet in the most curious of circumstances.”

  As the American Consul-General arrived to greet the new arrivals, Gellis found himself staring wide-eyed at a ghost, a face from another life.

  The face belonged to the CIA field officer known asFalcon .

  OUTSIDE GILMAN CITY, MISSOURI

  The morning sky was now the deepest crimson, edged with dark gray clouds that hung low over the desolated land. It looked both awesome and unnatural. It appeared to Beth as though the skies themselves were bleeding. Perhaps they were, she thought. Perhaps the masters of this genocide had even succeeded in destroying the heavens.

  She hadn’t seen Cathy since Gardner, and had accepted the fact that her mother-in-law had probably followed Patrick into Eternity. And Martin? She instantly rejected the thought that he might be with them. He was still alive. She would have sensed it had that not been so.

  Wouldn’t I?

  Beth was exhausted, hungry and forlorn. But her suffering was nothing compared to that of the many who marched with her. She didn’t remember how she’d fallen into the human procession that was slowly trudging westwards. It had just happened that way. She had to remind herself that this time yesterday, the pathetic wretches around her had led normal, mundane lives.
They’d had hopes and dreams, ambitions and fears. They’d gone to work, made love, paid bills and complained about the weather. But now all of that, all of their worlds had been reduced to a kaleidoscope of anguish and pain. Beth found it cathartic to focus on the misery of others. It distracted from her own sense of loss.

  The images and sounds of the marching dead would stay with her for the rest of her life, she knew. The survivors shuffled forwards like zombies; shoulders hunched, heads bowed as if afraid of taking in another spectacle more grisly than the last. Some mumbled unintelligibly to themselves. Others moaned with every agonizing movement. A few collapsed, unable to walk any more, but nobody stopped to help them. Helicopters occasionally whizzed overhead, but they had long since stopped being beacons of hope.

  Beth knew little of radiation sickness other than what Martin had told her, and she couldn’t even remember that much now. She didn’t know what it looked, smelled or tasted like. She didn’t know how she would tell whether she had it. All she knew was that it was mortally dangerous, and that it could be penetrating her like an x-ray at that very moment. She suddenly wanted to vomit, although she wasn’t sure whether that was due to shock or radiation sickness.

  She had stopped being aware of the lifeless forms abandoned along the roadside. None of them had been killed directly by the bombs; most had died as a result of their injuries. Some of the bodies looked relatively unscathed, and Beth imagined that they had simply given up on life and decided to stop living. She could relate to that. Nothing shocked her any more. She was - in her husband’s parlance - on autopilot. She just kept moving forward with the marching dead, and would continue doing so until she stopped moving forever. Life was that simple now, wasn’t it?

  A small black man in front of her stumbled and fell onto his face. He would never rise again. Beth casually stepped around him. Another one gone. How many millions were dead? More to the point, how many left alive? She wondered whether all the world’s great cities - New York, Paris, Tokyo, London - looked exactly like Missouri now, or even worse.

  The first that Beth saw of the refugee camp was a string of white lights about half a mile ahead. That would be civilization, she thought. Or perhaps not. She remembered making that same false assumption earlier.

  This time, however, there were to be no tear gas canisters or stampedes. The marching dead just kept marching relentlessly towards the lights.

  And they moved beyond them.

  As she got nearer, she could see that a multitude of large green tents had been erected on a field more than twenty acres in size. Many of them bore the unmistakable emblem of the Red Cross. Military vehicles and personnel hurried around the camp, carrying casualties and supplies. She watched a helicopter land beside the field, where it was met by a group of soldiers in NBC gear. They removed several crates of medical supplies and food and loaded them onto a truck. So this is where the helicopters have been going, she realized. The speed at which the camp had been built - especially in the middle of a nuclear war - amazed her. It occurred to her that the plans for such an eventuality must’ve already been in place. For some reason, that thought offended her. They knew this was going to happen?

  A row of more than twenty makeshift desks had been set up at the entrance to the camp, manned by Army officers. Their job was to process the many thousands of casualties who were only just beginning to arrive. It was a thankless task. Like all the other military personnel she’d seen, these soldiers were accorded anonymity by their analogous white NBC suits.

  “Name, Ma’am?” the officer at Desk Fourteen asked her as she came to the front of the queue. He didn’t look up from the blank form in front of him.

  “Bethany Elizabeth Logan,” she said, having to raise her voice above the symphony of moans and screams that had become the soundtrack of the apocalypse.

  He made an entry on the form. “Age?”

  “Thirty-seven.”

  “Married?”

  “Yessir. My husband flies B-2s out of Whiteman.”

  This time, the man afforded her a cursory glance. It lasted for less than a second. She couldn’t see the expression behind the mask, and his flat monotone betrayed nothing. Like everybody else, he was just doing his job, coping with the abstract horror around him by adopting the mentality of an automaton.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Independence, Missouri.”

  “The nature of your injuries, Mrs. Logan?”

  She felt slightly embarrassed, but didn’t know why. “Well, I don’t really have any. I just came here with everybody else. I had somebody else with me, my mother-in-law, Catherine Logan. You don’t know if she’s alive, do you?” Even as she said it, she knew it was a dumb question.

  “You can look for her in the camp if you like.” The man looked up at Beth. She felt herself being appraised, although she didn’t know for what purpose. “What do you do for a living, Mrs. Logan?”

  “If it’s relevant, I’m an investment banker.”

  “Any medical or military experience?”

  “I’ve got a First Aid certificate. I trained in…”

  “That’ll do just fine. You feel up to helping out around here? We need all the assistance we can get.”

  She looked around at some of the other survivors; pathetic wretches displaying a range of injuries that dispelled her preconceptions about how much damage the human body could sustain. “What do you want me to do?”

  He pointed at a large gray tent behind the row of desks. “Head over there and report to Colonel Hollinger. You’ll undergo a quick rad check. If you check out okay, you’ll be given some inoculations and kitted out with NBC gear. You up to it?”

  Beth blinked hard. Her husband was - probably - somewhere in the upper atmosphere, taking millions of lives, and here she was being asked to save them. The irony wasn’t lost on her.

  “Yes, sir. I’m up to it.”

  PERSPECTIVE: U.S. NUCLEAR FORCES: OCTOBER 1999

  STRATEGIC BOMBERS

  As of October 1999, the United States Air Force had approximately 92 long-range bombers assigned to strategic nuclear operations. These are the B-2A - such as that flown by Martin Logan and Laura McCann - and the older B-52H. Meanwhile, the B-1B has been assigned to conventional operations, although it could quickly be reconfigured to carry nuclear weapons in a crisis. The B-2A can carry up to sixteen B83 and B61-7 gravity bombs, although it has been designated as the prime carrier of the B61-11 “bunker-buster”, America’s newest nuclear weapon. The only active B-2A wing in the United States is the 509th, based at Whiteman AFB, Missouri.

  The 93 active B-52Hs are assigned to the 2ndBomb Wing at Barksdale AFB, Louisiana, and the 5thBomb Wing at Minot AFB, North Dakota. These are tasked to stand-off missions using Advanced Cruise Missiles (ACM) and Air Launched Cruise Missiles (ALCM).

  STRATEGIC NUCLEAR SUBMARINES (SSBNs)

  The 18 active Ohio-class SSBNs in the U.S. Navy carry almost 3,500 Trident I and Trident II nuclear warheads between them. Between eight and eleven SSBNs are on patrol at any one time, conducting routine simulated strike operations. This is one aspect of American nuclear strategy that has not been diminished by the end of the Cold War. The Ohios normally patrol in the Northeast Atlantic, the Pacific south of Alaska and occasionally in the Mediterranean and other distant areas.

  The Trident missiles have a range of more than 4,600 miles.

  INTER-CONTINENTAL BALLISTIC MISSILES (ICBMs)

  America’s ICBM arsenal comprises 550 missiles at the end of 1999. These are armed with a total of over 2,000 warheads. By definition, ICBM crews are on continuous alert and undergo a rigorous training and inspection process every 18 months.

  ICBMs come in two types. The MX/Peacekeeper - deployed at Warren AFB, Wyoming - carries ten W87 warheads, although these missiles are to be phased out in 2007 under the provisions of the START II treaty. The warheads, however, are to be retained and either transferred onto Minuteman III missiles or stored in reserve.

  The Minu
teman III missile is deployed at Malmstrom AFB in Montana, Warren AFB in Wyoming and Minot AFB in North Dakota. Each missile carries three W78 or W62 warheads, although they are to be downgraded to carry only one warhead under START II. These missiles have undergone a huge modernization program, intended to prolong their operational life to 2025 at the earliest.

  XVIII

  OVERTURES

  “I want to record my strong conviction that the risks entailed by nuclear weapons are far too great to leave the prospects of their elimination solely within the province of governments.”

  (Gen. Lee Butler: Former Commander of Strategic Air Command, 1996)

  ABOARD KNEECAP

  Under wartime regulations, the Looking Glass had been reporting in to KNEECAP every fifteen minutes with status reports. The telephone call fromAlice was punctual as always. Nielsen took it in the conference room. Only Westwood was present with him. Everybody else had left the room, either because their presence was not currently needed, or because they just wanted to be left alone with their thoughts. Following Lewis’s arrest, it had become obvious that Nielsen was not about to be diverted from the course of action in which he appeared so passionately to believe. And nobody really had the stomach to watch him bring the guillotine down upon mankind’s head. Westwood was present mainly because his presencewas required by the Commander-in-Chief.