Power Play- America's Fate

by Diane Matousek Schnabel

  The Russians are outnumbered and outgunned, Kyle thought, so the only way they can prevail is by dividing us. That’s why they favor a psychological siege over a kinetic attack; mind games and word play over bullets and bombs.

  “If Governor Murphy won’t come out,” Ivans shouted with a phony Texas drawl, “then we’ll go in after him!”

  Kyle’s mouth curved into an unconscious grin.

  On cue, another throng of civilians approached from the east, and the two groups began exchanging barbs and threats, waggling their long guns.

  The propagandists arrogantly strode into the narrow corridor separating the opposing sides.

  “How can y’all defend a man who ordered police to fire on children?” Ivans shouted through cupped hands. “How can you condone the murder of innocents?”

  “Teenagers flinging pipe bombs are not innocents!” Roger Simmons replied. The bearded rancher had previously tussled with Ivans, and their venomous exchange served as a catalyst, igniting a string of verbal skirmishes.

  The buffer zone between combatants shrunk.

  The conflict progressed from oral to physical, both sides posturing and jostling.

  Then Ivans sucker-punched Simmons and wheeled around, intending to retreat behind his wall of American protestors. Instead, he found himself at the wrong end of seven rifles and a shotgun. His colleagues shared his fate, and all six propagandists were stripped of weapons and handcuffed.

  Their baffled facial expressions made Kyle laugh aloud. Then, relief surging through him, he exited the house and strolled toward the prisoners. “Yes, Alex, the protest was a farce,” Kyle told him. “You saw only what you wanted to see. You were blind to the trap that played into your pompous ego, and we captured your entire PsyOps team ... without firing a shot.”

  125

  District Three, Washington, D.C.

  WITH ENEMY SOLDIERS closing from the north, south, and west, Abby Webber darted for her only source of cover—the Washington Monument. The site made for a lousy hide: signal-deadening stone walls; a fifty-story climb to acquire a field of fire; no “back door” through which to escape; not to mention being surrounded by an enemy who knew her location.

  The monument’s circle of fifty flagpoles stood naked, a fitting symbol for all that had been stripped away from the besieged nation.

  A swarm of bullets, blown off target by gusting winds, began plunking against the obelisk’s marble exterior.

  Abby stumbled through the hurricane-ravaged remains of a security screening room. Despite turning her ankle on a felled metal detector, she didn’t slow down. The fifteen-foot thick walls may have been bulletproof, but the confined space still left her vulnerable to a grenade attack.

  She bowed reverently, limping past a statue of George Washington, then ventured into the darkness, a hand groping for her red-filter flashlight. Abby located a stairway, closed to visitors since the 1970s, and began her ascent. Each flight of steps was connected by a level walkway and bounded on one side by stone; on the other, by a chain-link fence which caged the elevator’s array of steel girders.

  Abby halted in the middle of the fifth flight, listening for encroaching soldiers in the lobby below. From her backpack, she retrieved a length of rope, an unopened water bottle, and her tactical knife. Working furiously, she cut two segments of cordage, a twelve-inch section and another twenty feet in length. She attached both to the neck of the water bottle, eased the plastic container overtop the chain-link barrier, and lowered the bottle until it sank below the stair treads. Then she fished the longer strand through an opening in the wire-mesh fence.

  She strung the rope over the handrail, across the steps, and looped it through the open risers, knotting it beneath the tread. The weight of the dangling water bottle was enough to keep the rope taut, and she added a layer of duct tape to the knot to prevent it from sliding across the step.

  Stifled murmurs set off a spurt of anxiety.

  Cautioning herself not to rush, Abby fed a stick grenade through the wire netting of the fence, handle aimed downward. Gently, she removed the plug, mindful that a mistake would end her life; then she threaded the short rope through the grenade’s detonation ring and knotted it.

  After stowing her gear, she resumed the climb. Her saturated battle dress uniform was a weighty, clingy mass, heightening her fatigue, and she grimaced noting the stiffness in her ankle. Five floors later, the injured muscle began to swell. The pain sharpened with each step, and she reminded herself that it was inconsequential—relative to getting shot.

  At the twenty-fourth floor, she tied the remaining forty feet of rope around a steel girder in the southwest corner and pitched the loose end into the elevator shaft. Abby backtracked four floors and, using her red-filter flashlight, found the end of the rope. After affixing a stick grenade to a girder with duct tape, she detached the plug, connected the rope to the detonation ring, and gimped up to the twenty-fourth floor.

  She settled onto the bottom step to bolster her sprained ankle with tape, and her thoughts reverted to Bradley. He had bandaged that same ankle at Haywood Field and carried her halfway home.

  I wish he was here to watch my back, she thought.

  Will anyone find me if I don’t make it out of here?

  Will Bradley and my parents ever know what happened to me?

  Abby downed a bottle of water and tore into a room-temperature chili-and-macaroni MRE, a decidedly unsatisfying last supper. Eyes cast downward, she stared into the southwestern corner, watching for movement, listening for footsteps.

  How many peacekeepers will they send up after me? she wondered. Abby guesstimated that eighteen had encircled the monument. A difficult, but not insurmountable number—if the Chinese cooperated.

  Nearly a half hour elapsed before sweeping beams of light appeared. The Chinese had breached the second floor, their progress betrayed by rifle-mounted flashlights.

  The glow faded for nearly a minute then reemerged, larger and brighter.

  They’ve reached the fourth floor, she decided, maneuvering face-first into a stone corner to brace for an explosion nineteen stories below.

  Instead, a sickening silence reverberated through her.

  Did they spot the water bottle and disarm the booby trap?

  Are they advancing on me?

  126

  Langden Air Force Base, Texas

  RYAN ANDREWS STORMED from the ops center, feeling like someone had carpet bombed his world. Bradley was isolated inside Volkov’s lair; Abby was being battered by Hurricane Anna; Grace was probably being tortured; Gwen was dead; Sybil was fighting for her life—and he couldn’t do a fucking thing for any of them.

  Ryan marched into Med Center South, barged into the intensive care unit, then hesitated at the threshold of the room, taken aback by the octopuslike network of wires and tubes streaming into Sybil’s body.

  He still hadn’t told Franny about Gwen or the terrorist attack, a decision supported by a broad range of rationalizations: Insufficient information—he needed to wait until he could answer all his wife’s questions regarding their daughter’s condition. Undue heartache—after all, there was nothing Franny could do except worry. The baby’s well-being—because the emotional trauma could spike Franny’s blood pressure.

  Those arguments were all valid, but hardly the driving force behind his procrastination. The truth was that he needed to contend with his own avalanche of emotion before he could hope to comfort and reassure his wife.

  “Major Andrews?”

  Ryan glanced over his shoulder; and recognizing Major Pavlick, he revolved slowly, bracing himself for the physician’s prognosis.

  “Sybil is in serious condition. The bullet penetrated her lung, and she lost a substantial amount of blood.” Pavlick’s chin dipped. Compassion glimmered in his dark eyes. “In the next few hours, we’ll know whether she’s going to make it—”

  “She will!” Ryan said adamantly, then he approached the bed.

  Sybil’s complexion was ash
en; and wary of the intravenous line, he rested his palm atop her fingers. Dried blood was caked around each cuticle.

  Sybil’s blood? he wondered. Or one of the recruit’s?

  He hovered over her, mouth inches from her ear, and whispered, “I know what happened out there, Sybil. What you did ... it was gutsy and heroic! You are strong and brave, just like your father ... He would be so proud of you. I know I am ... but this battle isn’t over, Sybil. You need to keep fighting because Franny and I love you and ... and we just found out that we’re expecting a baby ... And that baby needs a big sister ... So you fight, damn it, as hard as you can ... Consider that an order!”

  Emotion coiled around Ryan’s throat, making it impossible to breathe.

  This is my fault, he decided. If I hadn’t intervened—calling in favors to get her drafted into the Air Force, to keep her here, at Langden—she would’ve been nine hundred miles away, at Fort Bennetton training with the Army. My attempt to protect Sybil actually endangered her.

  127

  North of Scoville Air Force Base

  District Five, Illinois

  BRADLEY WEBBER HEARD no boom, sensed no recoil.

  Why didn’t the Springfield discharge?

  Misfire?

  Jam?

  His backside bounded against the cement floor, inducing a torrent of pain that undulated along his spine. Dizzy and nauseous, he slumped back against the brick wall and closed his eyes in an effort to stop the room from spinning.

  Volkov squatted beside him and tugged at the weapon.

  Bradley tried to tighten his grip, but his strength had evaporated.

  “Tell me, Master Sergeant, did you bother to contemplate why I would allow an unshackled prisoner within arm’s reach of a weapon ...?”

  It was never loaded, Bradley thought. That’s why the bastard was so cavalier.

  He heard Volkov eject the empty magazine, presumably insert its loaded twin, and rack the slide to chamber a round.

  “... Heatstroke and dehydration have exacted a heavy price on your judgement.”

  “Save us both some time,” Bradley mumbled. “And kill me now.”

  “I don’t want you dead, Master Sergeant. You and I are going to work together.”

  I will NEVER take orders from you!

  The thought depleted the last of Bradley’s energy, and he succumbed to a whirling darkness.

  128

  District Three, Washington, D.C.

  SERGEANT CHUNG WEN led a team of six PLA soldiers into the darkened stairwell of the Washington Monument in pursuit of General Sun’s assassin.

  That kill was a manifestation of luck rather than skill, he decided, mouth contorting into a vengeful pout. An idiotic private had allowed a grenade to be hijacked by the wind, and the concussive blast had stunned the general and his bodyguards, rendering them all sitting ducks.

  If the “jackal” hadn’t shot the simpleton, I would’ve done it myself! Wen thought.

  The TEradS assassin was equipped with a sniper rifle and a sling of plundered stick grenades, formidable weapons that required vigilance.

  His rifle-mounted flashlight surveyed the stairway with a deliberate pattern. Each soldier in the raiding party was responsible for clearing a particular sector of fire, a strategy that would maximize their six-to-one advantage and ensure that the target would be promptly eliminated.

  The grenades, although lethal, only had an effective kill radius of a couple meters; and Wen was confident that the “jackal” would be shot dead long before his team closed within throwing range.

  He sidled up the second flight of steps, his back to the stone wall, then crept across a landing that spanned one side of the monument. Subsequent flights were a monotonous repetition, the only indication of progress an occasional commemorative stone, dedicated to honor the capital’s namesake.

  At the base of the fifth flight, he halted.

  The beam of his flashlight traced a segment of black rope from the base of a step, up over the handrail, and down to a stick grenade that jutted from a cagelike fence girdling the elevator shaft.

  An amateurish trip wire, easily spotted and disarmed, Wen thought, removing his military shovel from his pack. The multi-tool was a hallmark of Chinese ingenuity, able to serve eighteen functions including sawing, chopping, hammering, measuring, can opening, hoeing, rowing, nail pulling, and of course—wire cutting.

  He aligned the blades and cut through the rope.

  The right portion fell limp onto the step, as expected.

  The left was whipping through an opening in the fence, and an icy fear twisted around Wen’s heart.

  He scurried after the waggling cordage, pawing the steps like a blind cat repeatedly missing its prey.

  As the frayed end of the rope vanished into the elevator shaft, he shouted a warning.

  Wen grabbed the business end of the grenade and wrenched it free of the fence, intending to toss it into the shaft.

  Mercifully, he never felt the shock wave of compressed air blow out his eardrums.

  He never experienced the pain of his eyes, lungs, and organs rupturing.

  Or the rapid dismemberment of his body.

  In that instant, he simply ceased to exist.

  129

  Langden Air Force Base, Texas

  MAJOR RYAN ANDREWS had been in the ops center for nearly an hour, and the conflict inside him was brewing into an emotional storm the likes of which he’d never encountered. He wanted to be at the hospital, keeping vigil over Sybil; but he needed to be here, trying to locate Abby and Grace Murray, trying to contact Bradley.

  “Keep that bird on standby for at least another hour,” Ryan said, his tone sharp and inconsolable. He was worried about the Rear Admiral, but Abby’s plight was tormenting him because she wasn’t supposed to be in Washington. He’d overstepped the rules of engagement in order to decapitate the Chinese insurgency, a partial-truth that ignored his personal stake in General Sun’s demise—retribution for Izzy.

  I never should’ve sent Abby, he thought.

  Not even a month ago, he’d watched Bradley mourn his wife and, at the time, Ryan honestly believed that he understood what his best friend was going through. A silly notion dispelled the moment Franny had been kidnapped. Now, he truly comprehended the heartache, the unrelenting emptiness, the anger, the helplessness.

  “Sir ...? Major Andrews ...?”

  Ryan blinked; his head cocked toward the voice.

  “You have a phone call, sir,” a Corporal told him, extending a tethered handset.

  He took two steps, leaned over the desk, and said, “Andrews.”

  “Major Pavlick calling from Med Center South.”

  There was a slight pause, and the weight of the physician’s silence felt like an anchor dragging him underwater.

  “Sybil is awake and she’s asking for you.”

  “I’ll be right there.” Ryan hung up and stalked from the ops center, saying, “Call me the instant you hear from either of the Webbers.”

  He walked to his apartment, contemplating the best way to break the news to his newly pregnant wife. Would word choices really make a difference?

  There’s been an accident versus a terrorist attack? Sybil’s been injured versus shot? Gwen has passed on versus has been murdered?

  Ultimately, phraseology was not going to change reality, so any relief garnered would be fleeting.

  He nodded to the MP standing guard and unlocked his front door.

  Franny was sitting on the couch, legs curled beneath her, reading a book. “You’re home early,” she said, smile wilting. “Oh no, what’s wrong?”

  Ryan tugged his lower lip as if trying to pry the words free, then in a hushed voice, he said, “Sybil’s been shot and we need to get to the Med Center.”

  Franny’s complexion paled. Her gaze fell to the floor, then she rose to her feet.

  Perplexed by her sedate response, he draped an arm around his wife’s shoulder, and they set off at an urgent pace. Franny
didn’t ask for details or a prognosis. Was she assuming that he had no additional information?

  He led her through the hospital; and upon seeing the sign for the intensive care unit, he felt her body tense. Franny hesitated at the entrance of the room. Her jaw quivered, then her glassy eyes traveled from Sybil back to Ryan.

  “Please don’t cry.” Sybil’s frail voice was barely audible.

  His wife walked to the bed and began stroking Sybil’s strawberry-blonde hair. “It’s okay, Sweetheart. We’re here.”

  Ryan edged forward, noting that his daughter looked less gray than she had earlier, and he clasped her hand.

  “Sybil, I tried to keep you safe,” he said, voice breaking. “I tried to keep that promise. I’m sorry I failed you ...”

  His words dissolved. Pent-up emotion shuddered through him; then he felt Sybil squeeze his hand.

  “You didn’t fail me or Izzy,” she whispered. “Because it was never in your control.”

  130

  District Three, Washington, D.C.

  SINCE THE GRENADE’S detonation, Abby Webber had heard no expletives, no shrieks of pain. Did that mean the entire squad of peacekeepers had been killed? Or did the blast temporarily damage her hearing?

  Forehead resting against the chain-link fence on the twenty-fourth floor, she continued staring down into the southwestern corner until another flurry of lights appeared. She blinked to be sure she hadn’t imagined them. At least six more peacekeepers were clambering up the stairs, and because of the monument’s layout—a square with an alternating pattern of steps and landings—she knew that each circuit of their flashlights equated to a two-story rise.