by Jeff Edwards
Sheldon nodded, bowed slightly to the man and to his wife, and walked back toward Ann.
As she watched him approach, Ann was struck by the notion that Sheldon came from an entirely different planet. Or maybe she did. Sheldon seemed to fit, after all. He could talk to the corporate suits, the computer geeks, the gung-ho military types, and total strangers—all with apparently equal facility. He could find a way to fit in just about anywhere, even in countries where he didn’t speak the language. Ann, on the other hand, only seemed to relate to machines. Maybe she was from another planet. If so, she was ready to go home to Planet Z-X-55, or wherever she came from.
Sheldon dropped heavily into the seat next to her. “It was a nuclear attack,” he said.
Ann sat up. “What? Where …”
Sheldon held up a hand. “Slow down. It’s okay. Some whack-job revolutionary in Siberia launched a bunch of nuclear warheads at the West Coast. Our military shot them down. All but one, anyway. That one hit about a hundred miles west of San Diego. Blew up a big piece of water. Probably killed a few million fish.”
“Wait a minute,” Ann said. “You’re telling me they missed? Somebody tried to nuke the West Coast, and they freaking missed?”
“Looks like it,” Sheldon said. “The one that got through missed, anyway.” He tugged at his lower lip. “Or maybe our guys knocked it off course. They hit all the rest of the warheads. Maybe they hit that one too, but it wasn’t destroyed. Just knocked off course, so it landed in the ocean instead of San Diego.”
He grinned at Ann. “Pretty good shooting, huh? The media’s constantly telling us that Ballistic Missile Defense is a waste of our tax dollars. But it looks like it did the job.”
Ann looked up at the television screen. The Japanese news program was showing the ambulances again. Injured and bloodied people being tended to by paramedics. Blue and red police lights flashing. Broken windows, and people running.
She nodded toward the television. “What’s all this, then? If the military knocked out all the bombs, what happened to all these people? How did so many people get hurt?”
Sheldon’s momentary grin vanished. “Panic. When the missile warnings went out, a lot of people just lost their minds. They all thought they were about to be blown to kingdom come. They freaked out, ran for the hills, barricaded their doors. All the crazy things that people do when they think they’re about to be killed.”
His eyes darted to the Japanese couple he’d spoken to a few minutes earlier. “That gentleman over there told me that some kids in Alameda torched a whole strip mall. The cops didn’t get there in time to stop the fire, but they did manage to nab some of the firebugs. Turns out that the ringleader convinced his buddies that some kinds of missiles are attracted to heat sources. I guess they thought the fire would lure the bombs away from their neighborhood.”
Sheldon shook his head. “People get crazy when they’re really scared. They hurt each other. They hurt themselves.”
“The government should have known this would happen,” Ann said. “They shouldn’t have sent out the warnings. They knew people would lose their minds. This is their fault.”
Sheldon exhaled loudly. “Come on, Ann. You’re going to think the worst of them no matter what they do. You know you are. That’s how your brain is wired.”
He unzipped his travel bag and began fishing through the contents with his hand. “If the government had kept this quiet, you’d be screaming for blood right now. You’d be sitting next to me, talking about the conspiracy of silence and the people’s right to know. You’d be telling me that the people should have been warned.”
Sheldon pulled out his cell phone and swiped the screen to life. “No offense, Ann, but you get a lot of mileage out of not liking people. You know that, don’t you?”
Before Ann could answer, he punched a string of numbers and hoisted the phone to his ear.
Ann started to slip in a comeback, but she stopped herself. What was the point? The best she could hope for would be to piss off Sheldon, the one person who seemed to be able to put up with her.
She let her eyes wander around the terminal. People were still gathered around the televisions, staring up at the curved glass screens for a glimpse of the chaos on the other side of the ocean.
Her eyes lit on a huge electronic monitor showing arrivals and departures in Japanese and English. She let her gaze slide down the list of departing flights, pretending for a second that one of them might list an outbound flight to Planet Z-X-55. She was ready to get off this planet.
With a flicker of shifting letters and numbers, the information on the monitor was updated. Times and gate numbers reshuffled themselves as various airlines adjusted their schedules.
Every flight to the United States was now listed as ‘Canceled.’
CHAPTER 27
WHITE HOUSE
PRESIDENTIAL EMERGENCY OPERATIONS CENTER
WASHINGTON, DC
SATURDAY; 02 MARCH
7:17 PM EST
The national security advisor cleared his throat. “Ah … Mr. President?”
The president didn’t answer. The Single Integrated Operational Plan lay untouched on the briefing table in front of him. The thick binder was still open to Section Orange: “RETALIATORY NUCLEAR STRIKE OPTIONS.”
Of all the documents Frank Chandler had been shown, trained on, or briefed about, this was the one he’d least expected to ever need. He understood its purpose. He knew that it had been created specifically for the kind of situation they were in now, but he’d never really believed that this moment would arrive.
And yet … somehow … it had come.
Gregory Brenthoven cleared his throat again. “Mr. President, we have to respond.”
The president raised a hand for silence. He couldn’t seem to think properly.
His eyes drifted down to the SIOP. The open section of the document was divided into numbered subheadings:
6.2-A Counterforce Responses
6.2-B Countervalue Responses
6.2-C Punitive Responses
Counterforce referred to the targeting of missile silos and military sites, to destroy the enemy’s ability to make war. Countervalue meant attacks against cities and the killing of the general civilian populace, to break the enemy’s national will. And punitive responses were designed as punishment: in essence, “spanking” an enemy nation with nuclear weapons.
The terms were so sterile, so scrubbed of emotional cues, that they invited the reader to ignore their grisly implications. There was no hint that selecting any of the proffered choices might condemn millions of human beings to death.
The president absently grasped the tab marked 6.2-C, and flipped the binder open to the section on “Punitive Responses.” Again he encountered three subdivisions:
6.2-C.1 Punitive Responses (Disproportionate)
6.2-C.2 Punitive Responses (Proportionate)
6.2-C.3 Punitive Responses (Minimal)
He selected the third tab, and thumbed the pages to “Punitive Responses (Minimal).” He read the opening paragraphs.
The decision matrices described in this subsection contain non-conventional response options calculated to demonstrate strategic restraint while signaling the willingness to employ nuclear weapons. They are designed to minimize human casualties within the target zone, and limit damage to the physical infrastructure of the target nation.
Where possible, any strike option selected under this subsection should be preceded by and followed by diplomatic overtures to the government of the target nation. The content of such overtures should include language that discourages further aggression against the United States and/or U.S. allies, by implying or overtly declaring a willingness to escalate to a more robust nuclear response. For suggested language and further information, see the U.S. Department of State Recommendations outlined in Annex-D.
Again, the words were almost mind-numbingly banal. If this had been a routine government document, the president might have chalked up t
he monotonous writing to the self-importance of the bureaucratic mindset. But such cumbersome sentence construction and oblique word-choice probably had not occurred by accident.
In the nineteen-eighties, a political satirist had referred to the SIOP as ‘The Cookbook for Ending the World.’ That little slice of dark humor hadn’t gone over well in the corridors of military power, but—with all social and political niceties stripped away—that’s exactly what the SIOP was. It was the instruction manual for ultimate genocide. Every paragraph in the fat metal binder was monstrous, in both intent and in consequence. Every neatly-numbered option lead to incalculable human atrocity.
The military officers and government officials responsible for wordsmithing the plan had understood that. And they had known that some president might one day have to sit where Francis Benjamin Chandler was sitting right now, and issue orders that would kill massive numbers of people.
So they had buried the ugly truths behind tediously flat phrases, perhaps in the hopes of granting their president a sufficient amount of emotional distance to make decisions that no human being is equipped to make.
If that had really been their intent, it had worked, at least in part. President Chandler found that the semiotically-neutral language of nuclear warfare made it possible for him to consider courses of action that would have been unthinkable if they had been couched in more accurate terms. If he’d been required to utter words like slaughter, massacre, or incinerate, he could not have forced them out of his mouth.
The drafters of the Single Integrated Operational Plan had foreseen that particular hurdle, and they’d built a corrective mechanism directly into the document. Each nuclear strike option had been assigned a so-called brevity code, consisting of a single word paired with a numeral. By referring to an attack plan or a target list by its brevity code, the president and the National Command Authority could discuss options and give orders, while avoiding the kinds of words that trigger mental shutdown and emotional overload.
The brevity code for attacking suspected nuclear weapons facilities in Iran was Typhoon Three. The code for hitting every power plant and electrical distribution facility in North Korea was Castle Eight. The code for total destruction of every city in China was Zebra Two. And the brevity code for unrestricted thermonuclear war—the end of the world—was Angel Seven.
It was the supreme euphemism: the extermination of all human life, concealed behind a hopeful-sounding word and a randomly-selected numeral.
The president slammed the heavy binder shut with a great deal more force than he’d intended.
Angel Seven.
The code phrase stuck in his brain. Einstein had named it World War III. The bible called it Armageddon. The Vikings had known it as Raganarøkr, the Twilight of the Gods. But the Single Integrated Operational Plan called it Angel Seven.
He shoved the binder away from him. The answer, if there was one, was not hidden in the pages of the Cookbook for Ending the World.
He rubbed his eyes, took a breath, and looked up at the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “General Gilmore, keep us at DEFCON 1. Have STRATCOM and NMCC prepare a list of prioritized recommendations. Make sure your personal recommendations are on the top of the stack.”
He turned to his national security advisor. “Of course you’re right, Greg. We have to respond. We cannot spend the rest of our lives squatting in bunkers and waiting for Zhukov to drop the other shoe. I want a full strategy meeting in the Sit Room in two hours. Defense, Security, and State.”
He pointed at the geographic display screen, where the red arc of the Russian weapon still burned. “Whatever we do, our number one priority must be to destroy that missile submarine. We got lucky the first time. Zhukov only fired one missile. We threw everything we had at it, but we still didn’t get all the warheads. What happens if Zhukov launches ten missiles?”
The president stood up and pushed his chair back from the table. “We’ve got a maniac out there with a nuclear arsenal, and he’s already shown that he’s not afraid to use it. This is not going to end until we end it.”
He lowered his voice. “Or until that crazy bastard ends it for us.”
CHAPTER 28
OPERATIONS COMMAND POST #3
OUTSIDE PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKI, RUSSIA
SUNDAY; 03 MARCH
1441 hours (2:41 PM)
TIME ZONE +12 ‘MIKE’
Sergiei Mikhailovich Zhukov, president of the newly-independent nation of Kamchatka and future premiere of the soon-to-be-restored Soviet Empire, rifled through the sheaf of news reports that his staff had downloaded from the Internet. The American press was so helpful—freely spreading information that Zhukov’s enemies should be keeping to themselves.
He flipped a page and smiled at a printed news photograph of smashed shop windows and battered-looking looters in handcuffs. There was pandemonium in the western states, especially California. The freeways were jammed. Businesses were in turmoil. Petrol stations were extorting ten dollars a gallon for gasoline, and bottled water and canned food were rapidly vanishing into the pockets of a burgeoning black market. Police and emergency services were being overwhelmed by a population that was rushing to escape the next barrage of nuclear warheads.
The missile launch had occurred less than three hours ago, and already opponents of the American president were criticizing their leader’s handling of the crisis. The bolder of them were calling for Chandler’s resignation, with a small but vocal minority demanding impeachment. One of the man’s more famous detractors had publicly announced that it was time for the Farm Boy President to go back to the farm. The media carried every second of the escalating controversy, and splashed it across newspapers, television screens, and Internet websites.
Such were the benefits of their so-called free press. The American news industry was not the voice of the common people as that country’s founding fathers had intended. It had become a self-important money-hungry conglomerate, peddling the worst sort of sensationalist garbage to the unknowing masses. And the people didn’t realize that things should be any different, because this filth-slinging gossip machine was all they’d ever seen.
Zhukov dropped the stack of reports on his desk. For all its shortcomings, the American media was becoming his best ally in this fight, exactly as he had planned.
Lenin had once written that one man with a gun can control 100 men without one. Well, the gun was in the hands of Sergiei Mikhailovich Zhukov now. And he was depending on the American news industry to tell the world exactly how lethal that gun was, and—more importantly—where it was pointed.
CHAPTER 29
WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM
WASHINGTON, DC
SATURDAY; 02 MARCH
9:45 PM EST
White House Chief of Staff Veronica Doyle, took her seat to the left of the president’s chair. She leaned close to her boss. “Sir, I think we’re ready to begin.”
The president nodded toward the Chief of Naval Operations. “Admiral, you’re up.”
Admiral Robert Casey, slid back his chair and got to his feet, straightening his immaculate navy blue uniform jacket as he stood. He gave a respectful nod toward his Commander in Chief. “Thank you, Mr. President.”
The CNO swept his eyes over the mix of civilians and military personnel seated around the long mahogany table. To the president’s right, sat Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Horace Gilmore, and Secretary of Homeland Security Becka Solomon. To the president’s left, were White House Chief of Staff Veronica Doyle, and National Security Advisor Gregory Brenthoven. On the admiral’s side of the table were Secretary of Defense Rebecca Kilpatrick, Secretary of State Elizabeth Whelkin, and Vice President Dalton Wainright.
The admiral picked up a small remote control and slid his thumb across a dial. The lights in the Situation Room dimmed, and a large projection screen slid out of the ceiling at the far end of the conference table. He pressed a button and a map appeared on the screen. The majority of the image w
as taken up by a large body of water, roughly rectangular in shape. The water was surrounded by landmasses to the north and west, by a dagger-shaped peninsula to the east, and by a narrow chain of islands to the south.
A black dot appeared on the eastern edge of the peninsula, near the southern tip of the dagger shape. A label below the dot identified it as Petropavlosk-Kamchatkskiy.
“Approximately four days ago, armed hostilities broke out in Petropavlosk, the capital city of Kamchatka. Our intelligence sources determined that the conflict was the opening stroke of a military revolution, led by Sergiei Mikhailovich Zhukov, the Governor of Kamchatka. Subsequent statements by Governor Zhukov confirm that he is attempting to break away from the Russian Federation, and establish Kamchatka as an independent and sovereign nation. Governor Zhukov has declared himself president of what he claims is now the country of Kamchatka. He has made it clear that he views this act as the first step toward reconstituting the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the re-conquest of the former Soviet satellite countries.”
The admiral continued. “During the early stages of the fighting, a Delta III class nuclear ballistic missile submarine got underway from Rybachiy naval station, outside of Petropavlosk.”
The admiral keyed his remote, and a black and white photograph of a submarine appeared in a pop-up window on the left side of the screen. “We identified it as this submarine—the Zelenograd, hull number K-506—built by the Soviet Navy during the Cold War, and later maintained in service under the navy of the Russian Federation. Our identification has been confirmed by the Russian Ambassador.”