by Talbot, Luke
And so he had told them to flee.
Maybe it was the look of earnest in his eyes, the tone in his voice, possibly even having Jacqueline with him; after all, madmen rarely had accomplices, did they? In any case their ESA identity cards had definitely helped. And it was as he had explained to them: if he was wrong, they could get off at St Jean de Luz, and return the following day. He would pay their hotel, and even phone ahead to book a room just in case. Just as long as they passed Bordeaux; that was all he had asked.
Back on the train, he looked along the aisle to the other end of the carriage, where he could see the young girl was now jumping on her father’s lap. Their eyes met and they nodded at each other solemnly.
In the end it was a simple matter of planting that seed of doubt in a parent’s mind. And then their instinct to protect, combined with Martín’s powers of persuasion, meant that they only had one real option, and that was to get back on the train and leave Paris.
If Martín was wrong, then it was a ten hour round trip with two hyperactive children. On the other hand, that was a small price to pay if he was right.
They all hoped that wouldn’t be the case; and if he was wrong, he was due some holiday, anyway. Despite it being early days for their relationship, he thought it was an ideal opportunity for Jacqueline to meet his family.
The TGV would take them direct to San Sebastián, where they would hop on a relatively slow train to the family home in Asturias, sandwiched on a cliff-top between the snow-capped Picos de Europa and the rolling waves of the Bay of Biscay.
And so Martín closed his eyes and thought of home, his family and of Jacqueline as the last remnants of Parisian banlieue disappeared into the darkness.
Chapter 85
Mallus looked at the computer display: the warnings told him they were coming for him. Sooner than he had expected; but nonetheless, it had been expected.
Warnings were flashing all over the place, showing breaches on all sides and on the roof of DEFCOMM headquarters. Of course, he couldn’t see the soldiers enter the building – their light-bending body armour saw to that – but he knew the sensors never lied.
He had well-armed ex-military security personnel in the building – it wasn’t all sensors and alarms – but he decided not to send them in; it really didn’t matter anymore, because nothing could stop his code from executing in the SDN. He looked at his watch; only seconds to go.
He heard the footsteps before he saw the tell-tale warping of air in front of him. In case either of those details passed him by, the computer’s soft female voice told him someone else was in the room. It was interrupted by a gritty, military voice.
“Sir, you are under arrest. Step away from the keyboard and do not attempt any sudden movements.” The voice attached itself to a fully-suited soldier as the cloaking device was disabled halfway through the statement.
Mallus got to his feet slowly and took a step back, his hands in the air. The soldier was joined by two more who de-cloaked near the door. He was sure there were many more in the underground bunker. They would certainly find his stores and living compartments, the staff and guards who he had allowed into his circle of trust, and all the rest of the evidence needed to justify his arrest.
But that didn’t matter. With billions of taxpayer’s dollars invested in DEFCOMM over the years, many millions had been diverted into personal projects.
These included automated security systems: as the soldiers had walked round the building looking for him, they had already ingested hundreds, if not thousands, of microscopic capsules, which now circulated their bloodstream, waiting for the ultrasonic command that would unleash their deadly poison, targeting the victims’ central nervous systems. The capsules were contained in controlled bursts of vapour, fired from tiny concealed turrets along the main entrances and corridors of the building into the path of any intruders, which the system automatically identified as anyone without a valid ID chip in their forearm; you would need a spacesuit to get through unaffected, and he noted with satisfaction that these soldiers, while fully kitted-up, were not wearing full self-contained breathing apparatus. Instead, they wore the more comfortable and practical full-face respirators.
The respirator’s particulate filter was designed to remove any particles from air larger than a third of a micron. This represented over three hundred times smaller than the width of the average human hair, and was just sufficient to get rid of spores and bacteria such as anthrax. The capsules transmitted in the spray were little more than a quarter of a micron wide, and he knew from testing that his defence solution would have sailed straight through the filters, as if they hadn’t even been there.
The respirator’s second line of defence was, he knew, an activated charcoal filter; it would absorb impurities in the air, which would bind to the carbon, letting the treated air pass through. Nevertheless, even chemically treated charcoal, capable of extracting Sarin and any number of other known nerve agents, would let the silicone-based capsules through unhindered.
There was, he knew, no defence. Which was why to-date the experimental capsules had still not been certified for active use: if you couldn’t defend your own forces against it, you couldn’t use it in the field.
So, with one carefully selected voice-command from him to his computer, an ultrasonic wave would run through the building, killing all of the soldiers almost instantly.
He smiled as he looked the soldier in the eyes.
Seth Mallus, Aniquilus, would lead the New World that would rise from the ashes of the old. The loss of life was a shame, and the fallout would take time to disperse, but he would be there to see it through. His would be a different world, a more just world, safe from the out-of-control population explosions, energy crises, food shortages and petty wars and conflicts.
Sometimes, you had to start afresh, and only Aniquilus could make that happen. The ends would justify the means, he was sure of that. He looked down at his screen and saw the SDN’s display fill with missile trajectories as the war to end all wars finally began.
Looking into the soldier’s eyes coldly, he cocked his head slightly. He showed no fear, but saw only opportunity. This man, with his advanced training and high-tech weaponry, would be useful in the dark years to come.
“You’re too late,” he said simply. And as he explained the situation to the soldier, he made his proposition, taking great care not to mention that he was entirely responsible for the global devastation that was unfolding on the screen before them.
The phantom missiles crossed the Arctic Ocean and passed over the vastness of Canada. Their trajectories parted, and they homed in on their targets. Somewhere deep in the Satellite Defence Network, the sub-routine sent its alerts and confirmation codes.
Shock and confusion reigned as the blips took form. Screens filled with satellite images, trajectories, possible targets, probable origins, and weapon descriptions.
Calls were made, procedures followed.
The President was eventually interrupted in the middle of an interview.
Chapter 86
While Officer Sandra Peele called for a pickup, Frank Ancelotti eyed her up. For a cop, she was pretty cute, and just his type.
He told her as much.
“You’ve heard your rights,” she said. “Anything else you say will be taken as evidence.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” he moaned. “All this for a fridge.”
She cocked her head. “What?”
“Yeah, a fridge. Some dumbass parks in the chief’s spot with a fridge in the back, then leaves the car there. I’m the guy who’s gonna get beat because of this. The guy parks there without even asking.”
She looked at the white utility vehicle suspiciously. A fridge?
“I’ll show you,” he offered, making a move to the van door, but she brought the Taser back up to point at him and he stopped.
Minutes later, backup arrived and he was safely in the back of a squad car. She and another officer approached the van from the
rear.
“A fridge, apparently,” she explained.
New York was always on some form of alert; it just never publically displayed it unless it was absolutely necessary. As for the van, it was suspicious, but the last thing she wanted was to cordon off Broadway without at least having a look first. There were plenty of unmarked vehicles parked in back alleys, and people did sometimes move fridges around in New York. It was acceptable that the driver may have left it in the van rather than taken it with him.
She peered through the broken window and saw the tarpaulin. She agreed it did look like a normal fridge. Using her baton, she reached in and carefully lifted the cover until it slid completely from the object.
That’s no fridge, she thought. And in the split second when she realised what it was, she didn’t even have time to scream.
Nanoseconds after Sandra Peele died, the Lafayette Grill was flattened. The alley between Franklin Street and White Street, Broadway, and all of Manhattan beyond would have ceased to be in the blink of an eye, had any eyes not been vaporised instantly to witness it.
The shockwave rippled across the Hudson, pulling boats from their moorings and flipping passenger ferries over like leaves in the wind. A flat-bottomed boat rode the expanding sphere of energy, flying high into the air before disintegrating in the heat.
The Statue of Liberty was whipped-up from its pedestal, leaving just the toes behind, which quickly melted. The statue itself buckled and broke apart in mid-air, what little remained raining down onto Hudson Bay and sinking into the water.
Manhattan was completely flattened. Everything above ground level had either been ripped apart, melted or if it was small enough been blown so far into the sky that it would be deposited in a debris field over one hundred miles in diameter.
For five miles in each direction from the Lafayette Grill, from Newark in the west to Queens in the east and as far north as the Bronx, not a single human survived the explosion above ground. Underground, several thousand people survived in the parts of the New York Subway system that hadn’t collapsed or been filled with water from the river. With no lighting, fresh air or indeed any understanding of what had happened, most perished where their trains had come to a stop, in the vain hope that someone would come looking for them. The few who braved the cave-ins and flooded tunnels to reach the surface faced a bleak few days. Within a week the last survivor of ground zero, who had been in the Subway thirty metres from the epicentre of the blast, suddenly collapsed and died of internal bleeding.
He had managed to travel more than twenty miles from Manhattan by foot when he started seeing people walking in the opposite direction, towards New York, looking just as bad as he did.
Chapter 87
The President of the United States of America had been advised on the best course of action. Several hundred targets were being tracked by the SDN, which thank God was still helping defend the Nation.
Alongside New York, which had been the first, both Chicago and Los Angeles had been wiped from the map.
It wasn’t even possible to know for sure how many had died, but even the most conservative of estimates put the total at two million. The most pessimistic of reports suggested nearly ten times that figure.
Russia was probably responsible, no doubt in cahoots with China; as he sat near his military chiefs in the Presidential cavalcade barging its way through the heavy DC traffic, a dozen more blips appeared on the car’s SDN display.
They were attacking from the western seaboard. Smaller tactical weapons, heading for military installations along the West Coast.
The United States of America was about to fall.
Nuclear weapons had always been a deterrent. There was no genuinely effective counter measure. The only defence was offence.
He stared at the screen and clenched his fists till the knuckles were white. He remembered what one Senator had once told him, when he had been starting out in his political career; ‘in a nuclear war, the only winning move is not to play.’ He had no idea where the saying had come from, but he wasn’t prepared to simply stand by and watch the Russians and Chinese destroy his country with impunity. That was what had differentiated him from that Senator. Some people were born to lead; when it was time to make a hard decision, they had the backbone to act. That was why he had been elected.
That was why he was still, halfway through his second term, the President of the United States of America.
And that was why without hesitation and with full, devastating force, he gave the order to retaliate, starting with the Chinese warships out in the Pacific.
Chapter 88
Captain Tan Ling Kai had barely ten minutes to react. He reached the bridge of the DDG Hangzhou seconds after the alarm had sounded, and by then a second satellite had confirmed that they were under attack.
This was most unexpected. They were still in international waters, and had made no ultimatum to the United States. This was meant to be a show of strength and nothing more.
And yet the nature of the threat came in loud and clear from the communications officer. The Captain digested the information. He told himself that it was merely the swell of the Pacific and not nerves and weak knees that made him need to hold on to the computer console in front of him.
The first threat was from six incoming cruise missiles, Tomahawks. A defensive salvo of surface-to-air missiles from the Hangzhou’s vertical launch system dispatched the first five, with the sea-whizz turrets finishing off the sixth in a long burst of fire as it closed in, well within sight of the crew on the bridge. No sooner had the sound of the explosion reached them than reports of more incoming targets came through, this time double that of the first wave.
This was a sustained attack with only one aim: sink the Chinese fleet.
He made up his mind of what to do.
His second-in-command by his side, he pushed his hand down on an incredulous weapons officer’s shoulder. “We shall launch a counter-attack.”
At this distance their cruise missiles were at the limits of their effective range, but he entered the confirmation codes nonetheless and waited for approval from Beijing.
Approval from Beijing, along with confirmed targets, arrived as the sea-whizz were obliterating the last of the second wave of incoming missiles. This time, they had been within one kilometre of the Hangzhou, and five had slipped through the longer range surface-to-air missile defences.
China’s counter-attack, eighteen surface-to-surface missiles, aimed at military targets along the west coast of the United States, left its silos less than sixty seconds before the final American weapon arrived out of nowhere, completely undetected by the fleet’s early warning systems. It missed the ships entirely and detonated underwater, causing a thousand-foot swell to engulf anything within its reach. This included the two older frigates of the zhidui, leaving the modern destroyers untouched. Captain Tan Ling Kai looked out of the bridge at the explosion a kilometre away, aghast at the destruction yet optimistic for the survival of his command.
The swell broke and fell back into the sea, leaving no sign of the frigates. They were gone. He stared out at the site of the explosion and saw a small wave coming towards the Hangzhou. As it approached he began to realise its true scale, and within a second the roar of the incoming tidal wave had reached their ears. His jaw dropped as he watched, unsure of the kind of weapon capable of such an attack; it had clearly not missed the ships, relying instead of the destructive power of water to do most of the work.
He looked down at the silos on the deck, still open after the departure of their cruise missiles. The water from the wave would undoubtedly fill them, and from there, possibly enter the bulkheads and flood the ship. He issued the command to close them.
As the wave grew, so too did the noise of the surging water.
“Close the silos!” he repeated his order at the top of his voice.
The panicked weapons officer reset the command switch and pulled it down twice, to no avail. Some minor glitch was
telling his console that the vertical launch system’s silos were already closed. He looked at his Captain helplessly, and the Captain looked back, with a fleeting thought that the older, less advanced revolver-style VLS would never have malfunctioned so catastrophically.
By the time the wave reached the ship it towered fifty feet above the antenna array, and the men and women on the bridge instinctively covered their faces with their arms and braced for impact as the water crashed into the windows.
The ship lurched sideways and plunged down into the water as the wave forced its way over.
There had been no time to issue the order to abandon ship – in any case it would have been pointless – he told himself as he fell against the computer console. The Hangzhou, listing at forty-five degrees, was sliding down into the depths of the ocean, gathering speed as the lower decks filled with ice-cold water. The bridge was watertight, a natural design feature of the semi-submersible defence systems, but it wouldn’t withstand the pressure from the water outside. He nursed a cut on his forehead and held on to the console. The emergency lighting came on, and in the eerie-red glow he saw the faces of his terrified crew.
All were looking to the main window of the bridge, to the toughened glass that kept the water out, and the spidery cracks that were dancing their ways from the edges towards the centre. When they joined up, the cracks paused as if not knowing where else to go.
There was a terrifying groan as the pressure increased on the outer hull of the ship. In the split second before the window finally gave, the only sound from the bridge was a collective intake of breath.
Chapter 89
Air Force One left the runway and climbed quickly through the lowlying clouds. Within minutes it was cruising close to the speed of sound at sixty thousand feet, at the limit of enemy interceptor operating ceiling. Two US Navy F35 escorts trailed on either side of the supersonic stealth liner that carried, as well as several score of supporting personnel and crew, the head of state and his Joint Chiefs of Staff.