by John Barnes
“Exactly,” Heather said. “He saved my life after every divorce, but it takes days. And this is a lot bigger deal. And neither of us is Roger Pendano.”
“You can’t imagine how much I wish one of you were. So we have about twenty minutes to put the President on the air in a sane, coherent, grave-but-upbeat style. And probably we can’t. Dr. Yang, how bad is the panic going to be?”
Arnie waggled his hand, balancing the issues. “For a real answer, give me a week and a quarter million dollars. But my guess is free. I think it’s not going to be as bad as things got in Pensacola during Gordon. People won’t necessarily run outside and do anything at midnight on a cold fall night. And the Daybreak damage to the Internet and the phone system might work in our favor—people may be more scared individually, but it won’t be nearly so easy to spread fear and rumors. One-way open-access broadcast media like television, radio, and satellite radio are doing better because”—Heather and Allie both gave him a look—“of reasons too lengthy to explain right now. I’d make an announcement, right away, about Daybreak, and give people things they can do to help. Try to make everyone who won’t go to bed feel useful, have them buy into the recovery.”
Cameron nodded. “And what can people do?”
“I’ll call Jim Browder,” Allison said, “and extract three or four ideas.”
Heather nodded. “Get something from Edwards too. The FBI never misses a chance for favorable press. And it occurs to me that if citizens are watching for them, we could bust a lot of Daybreakers right now, while their behavior is still unusual and before people’s memories fade.”
“Good thoughts. All right, Ms. Sok Banh, get whatever Dr. Browder can give you. I’ll contact Edwards and Director Bly. Now I’ve got to run; based on what you tell me about our situation with Weisbrod and Pendano, I guess I have to think about a Twenty-fifth Amendment situation, and I’m the NCCC. Thanks for the quick answers.”
“Hope they were right,” Arnie said.
“Me too.” Cam was out the door like a flash of lightning.
Allie was already phoning Browder, so Arnie asked Heather, “Am I admitting to too much ignorance if I ask you, what’s the NCCC?”
“My god,” Heather said, “I didn’t realize what he’d said. Shit, it’s really that bad.”
“Now I’m really lost.”
“Being the NCCC is Cameron Nguyen-Peters’s other job, the one he never wants to think about, and nobody else does either. National Constitutional Continuity Coordinator. Which is defined as the person with the authority to give orders and run the government—briefly—in the event of a break in the national chain of command. ‘Break’ is the euphemism for ‘everyone in the line of succession is dead, disabled, captured, or crazy.’ So if things are that bad, Cam runs the government, as a temporary dictator, until the real government can be put back together. His job is to do whatever it takes to keep the country alive and free, and make the succession work out, or establish a new government if it can’t. He might have to locate the President’s successor, or direct the Army and Air Force to repel armed invaders, order the Coast Guard to search for survivors in DC, send the Marines to rescue the surviving cabinet from a hostage situation in the Capitol. So if everything goes totally, completely into the soup—Cam’s our emergency dictator. And he sure as hell doesn’t want to have to do that job—I know he thought about turning down being Chief of Staff at DHS exactly because that would put him in line to be the NCCC—so if he’s thinking about doing it, things really are that bad.”
ABOUT THE SAME TIME. DUBUQUE. IOWA. 10:32 P.M. CST. MONDAY. OCTOBER 28.
Chris had just finished savoring the iced cola and the Myers’s Dark Rum, and was deciding between porn, sports, or an old movie, when the phone finally rang; a glance at caller ID showed it was Cletus (as expected), with Anne the producer (as sort of expected) and a bunch of “somewhere up the chain of command” names he vaguely recognized (hunh).
Considering just how far off his instructions he’d gone, maybe that wasn’t a big surprise either. Probably the corporate counsel had said they all needed to be in on firing him.
This was definitely the way to do it. One huge satisfying act of defiance, like every American journalist since John Peter Zenger dreamed of. Besides, if they fired you out in the field, they gave you some expense money to get home with. Chris could rent a car, spend a few pleasant days driving home and enjoying the fine fall in the plains, the Rockies, and the desert, and be in a good frame of mind to start looking for his next job.
He took his last sip of his rum and cola, then picked up the call a split second before it would have gone to voice mail. “Yes, Cletus.”
“Two things,” Cletus said. “First. I fucking hate your guts. Pendano still has not gone on the air, you made Norcross look like Winston fucking Churchill as filmed by Frank fucking Capra, and the lightning polls are saying that four states that were safe for Pendano are now up for grabs. That was one brilliant piece of propaganda, you fucking goddam evil Christ-y-boy Republican wingnut.”
“I was just trying to catch what it was like in the—”
“Fuck you. It’s not ‘like’ anything, anywhere, at any time, till we decide what it’s like, and you were the one who decided to turn Norcross into presidential material when he couldn’t have done it for himself with a blender and a saw. So fuck you, asshole.”
“Am I fired?” Maybe Chris would have another rum and cola, and just get up whenever he felt like it, before starting his cross-country drive. Blow a little severance on getting a convertible, go more southerly, enjoy some sun. Since Cletus had mentioned Frank Capra, perhaps he’d watch an old Capra film tonight, toasting the master and celebrating.
The other side of the line was strangely quiet. A choking sound? Cletus… crying? “No, you’re not fired. I’m fired. They made me call you up to apologize, but I’m not apologizing, and they can’t make me—”
The line was dead just long enough for Chris to check to see if anyone was still on it; it looked like only Cletus had dropped.
Anne said, “Well, thank God that’s over with, Chris. Do you have any idea how good your work was tonight? We don’t think it could have happened by accident.”
Hunh. Funny, me either.
“Till this happened to go out live, and Cletus threw a hissy fit, we hadn’t realized just how much of your superb work he’d been sitting on, but once we hit the archive files and saw it—well, my dear god, Chris, why didn’t you just murder Cletus, and figure any jury that saw your work would acquit? I mean oh my god. You know?
“We want you to stay out there and cover the Norcross campaign the way you want to cover it, and then, after that, we were thinking that if you’d like, after the election, we could do a documentary. Call it The Norcross Factor , just as a working title, and maybe you could take all your short pieces that Cletus spiked, and put them together with some longer interviews with key players, and it might make a nice ninety minutes, like serious journalism we could all be proud of. Serious stuff. You know?”
Chris took a deep breath. “This sounds like, um, you are asking me to make a network documentary. After giving me free rein with the coverage on the campaign. Is that right?”
“That’s right, and no, you are not hallucinating.” The smile in her voice was evident. Why hadn’t Chris ever noticed before what a pleasant person Anne could be? “Look,” she said, “this is only partly politics, all right? If you’d been doing routine, ordinary work, it wouldn’t have mattered. The thing is, oh my dear god, a lot of what you’ve been shooting is great, really great, video. You are so going places. Okay?”
“Totally okay.” Sounds like Anne just barely managed to throw Cletus under the bus fast enough. Well, it couldn’t possibly have happened to a more deserving little turd with feet. “I was always kind of hoping you’d take a more active hand.”
“Exactly. Oh my dear god, we’re going to do good work together, you know?”
“Yeah.” Mmm, Chris thought.
Ass. I love ass. Kiss it when you’re in a good position, and you’ll never be in a bad one.
“Cool,” Anne said. “Well, then, this was productive, but it’s late; any questions before I let you go?”
“Just keep my paycheck coming, and we’re good.”
“You got it, Chris!” Brilliantly decisive. Completely committed to him. “Till I hire a new editor, just send direct to me. Stay on it, and good night!”
“Thanks, Anne. Looking forward to it—good night!” Click off. Hope I sounded like a brilliant guy giving his brilliant boss her props.
Chris stretched, considered another rum and cola to celebrate, and decided to just go straight to bed; no predicting what he’d have to do tomorrow or how soon it would start. Might as well be ready. In this weird world, you never knew what might be your lucky day.
ABOUT THE SAME TIME. WASHINGTON. DC. 11:32 P.M. EST. MONDAY. OCTOBER 28.
To Heather, Bambi Castro sounded nervous on the phone. “Arnie’s friend Reynolds at FBI just called. The FBI office in San Diego expects delivery of Ysabel Roth from AFI—”
“AFI?”
“Mexican Federal police, the federales you hear about in movies. Good outfit. They’ll hand her over at the border tomorrow by ten, sooner if they can, and the FBI will take her straight to their office in San Diego. Reynolds was calling because he thought we ought to have someone there, but I guess he’s not in a position to issue the invitation, but if we asked—”
“Ask. Right away.” Heather’s biggest problem with Bambi Castro—and it wasn’t much of one—was that her chief field investigator, who seemed to have no fear and complete control in the field, was afraid of every minor bureaucratic hassle.
“Well, I could go out, and I think it would be a good idea,” Bambi said, “I know the budget is tight but—”
“Ha. It’ll never be that tight. We need someone at the interrogation. Take that next flight, and I’ll make sure we pay, and they expect you. Be there when they interrogate Roth.”
“On my way, thanks.” Bambi hung up, and Heather let herself have a moment of pure envy; maybe when Bambi flew back, she’d have a couple good stories. I can listen to them over tea while I adjust my shawl. Heather turned back to her work.
“Do you always look so mournful when you have to spend emergency budget?” Lenny asked, from beside her.
“Mourning my lost youth,” she said. “Biggest crisis since I was born, and I’ve got an office job.”
ABOUT THE SAME TIME. MARANA. ARIZONA. 9:35 P.M. MST. MONDAY. OCTOBER 28.
Kai-Anne had wanted to live a long way from the base if she could, and Greg had been his usual agreeable self, even though all the extra driving fell on him. She’d sometimes worried that it was one more of her eccentricities that might mark him as a dead-ender for promotions, but he’d just laughed at her and said that compared to wanting to fly a Hog in the first place, living far from the base and marrying a tattooed lady was nothing.
Still, this was one night when she wished she’d thought about how long the drive was before locating the family; it hadn’t been easy to find an emergency sitter, when she found out he was coming home that night, and she’d owe Mrs. Grawirth a lot of favors. And it had been a long haul down to Davis-Monthan, and now it had been a long haul back.
She knew what he’d been referring to when, just out of the base, he’d said, “Hon, the A-10 that did the job was me. Maybe talk about it later?” So it had been no surprise that he’d slumped in the passenger seat beside her, not asleep but not really there, just resting his eyes on the distant hills.
Kai-Anne had known something about this; she’d seen residual bits of it when he’d come back from Pakistan, from Iran, from Eritrea. She’d just never seen it so fresh and raw before. After driving about three miles, she’d asked, as gently as she could, “Want to hear about the kids and my day and all that?”
“Yeah.”
So she’d told him, more or less as if dictating an e-mail into her iScribe, the way she did every day when he was overseas, so that he could have the news but not necessarily the catch in her throat or the tears in her eyes; she felt that dealing with her loneliness and missing him should be at his option.
Nearly always he’d call after he finished the letter, and they’d talk, and it would be company, but now and then after a bad day, or pulling extra duty, he’d drop her a note that said only, Sorry, can’t tonight.
She finished the kids’ adventures of the day as they approached the Marana city limit. “What would you like to do when we get home?” she asked. “The kids’ll be asleep.”
“Truth is, after something like this, I like to sit out and look at the stars. I was thinking I’d drag the chase lounge away from the pool and out into the back yard.”
“Would you like company? We’ve got another chaise.”
“Okay, you take the shezz and I’ll take the chase.” His favorite joke about the only thing she remembered from two years of French. “As long as you promise to try to sleep, young lady. I usually don’t till really late. Somewhere around dawn I’ll want to take a shower and go to bed.” He stretched, and said, “And thanks for going along with my weirdness. I don’t usually get to do this after combat missions.” He sighed. “Then again, I don’t shoot down and kill the vice president every day, either.”
They didn’t say anything else while they set up the chaise longues to sleep on; she left a window open in Chloe’s room, and the boys’, so she could hear if she was needed, and when she returned from making sure everything was all right inside, Greg was already focused on the stars, as if he might fall right into the sky. But he whispered, “I love you,” as she pulled the covers over herself, and she said it back.
ABOUT THE SAME TIME. WASHINGTON. DC. 11:40 P.M. EST. MONDAY. OCTOBER 28.
“All right,” Cameron said, looking around from the center of the room.
“Marshall, up on the screen please.”
The big screen displayed:
The United States and other countries have been attacked by an international conspiracy called Daybreak, which is working together with il’Alb il-Jihado, the organization that killed the Vice President. Federal authorities have identified many members of the conspiracy and are rounding them up, but they have released large amounts of dangerous nanoswarm and biotes, which are microscopic, self-replicating devices and organisms, and we need the help of all citizens to cope with the emergency. We ask that all citizens do the following:
1. Watch out for grayish or whitish crumbs around electrical/electronic devices. They may grow in less than an hour, so recheck frequently if the device is operating. If you find them:
a. Scrape sample into glass jar w/metal lid.
b. Wipe down with lye, ammonia, borax, or baking soda.
c. Rinse carefully with water.
d. Wait for instructions about where to turn in sample.
2. Check under your car’s hood for white crystals before driving and at least every fifty miles. If you find any, clean with lye, ammonia, borax, or baking-soda solution followed by clean water, making sure to remove all visible traces of the white crystals.
3. Watch out for strange smells, particularly like baking bread, mildew, mold, spoiling milk, or rotting meat, around plastic, rubber, or synthetic fibers. If plastic containers smell like they are spoiling, promptly move contents to metal or glass containers; save a sample of the spoiling plastic or rubber for government scientists if you have a clean, airtight glass or metal container you can spare for it.
4. Smell your tires before driving. If they smell like rotten eggs or ripe garbage, do not drive!
5. Keep gasoline, kerosene, lamp fuel, etc. tightly sealed in clean containers; try to use a whole container at once when you open one. If fuel smells like bread, fruit, vinegar, or beer, discard it at once—NOT down a drain—and do not use that container for fuel again.
6. Disinfect plastic you want to keep with alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, or bleach; be careful not to use strong chemicals
on materials that cannot stand up to them. Do not try to disinfect gasoline or other fuels.
7. Watch for neighbors, particularly people with passionately Green politics or members of extreme environmental organizations, who came and went at unusual times on October 27, 28, or 29.
8. Watch for neighbors who have been unusually active in computer activities, particularly if they are not regularly employed in the industry.
9. Watch for neighbors who have taken up hobby biohacking in the past three years.
10. If you suspect neighbors may have been involved in Daybreak, consider them dangerous. Do not approach them yourself but do contact the nearest law enforcement agency.
“Anyone have any ideas about what else needs to be in the announcement?”
“If they can’t put the fuel down the drain, how do they discard it?” a woman asked from the far corner.
“Working on that, but we may have no answer,” a man scribbling on a pad next to Cam said.
“Tell them to take the precautions they would if they were going to lose power or other utilities in the next few days,” Edwards suggested.
“Tell them to take special care if they have family members with electronic or plastic artificial parts,” Lenny said. “Keep plastic surfaces and electrical contacts clean, and don’t unnecessarily expose them to outside air.”
There were a half dozen more suggestions before Cam said, “All right, that’s it, that will go out on every channel as—”
From the hallway next to the big screen, Roger Pendano came in, standing tall, his eyes dry. He’d combed his hair and straightened his clothes. He still looks like hell, Heather thought.
Graham Weisbrod moved quietly into the room behind him, standing against the wall, with his hands behind his back.
“Mr. Nguyen-Peters, I have something for you,” Pendano said, “that may or may not be helpful, but I think is necessary.” His voice was flat, dull, and emotionless. He held out a piece of paper. “Here.”