“It’s possible. It would be a monumental effort…” replied the DHS secretary.
“They can do it,” replied the Director of the CIA. “And if they do, we’re talking the end of our way of life as we know it. Killing the grid will drop us back into the 1800s.”
The Secretary of Homeland Security agreed. “The death toll would be…biblical, sir.”
The president removed his glasses. “Define biblical.”
The younger man swallowed. “The Congressional EMP Commission, sir—it took place about thirty years ago? Back before the Pandemic—they estimated an EMP or solar storm taking out our electrical grid would result in 90% casualties…”
“That was thirty years ago,” the president replied. “Surely we’ve been able to harden the grid since then…”
The Secretary of Defense removed his glasses. “We’ve tried, sir, but Congress hasn’t seen fit to make it a priority for a long, long time.”
“How long do we have?” asked the president.
“The majority of civilian casualties would occur within the first year as food supplies dried up and anyone requiring modern medicine died off,” he said, barely above a whisper.
“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” President Harris groaned. He sank into his chair. “What have we done?”
“Sir, we can’t allow that to happen,” said Admiral Bennett, moving closer. “A Cyber attack of this magnitude has to be considered an act of war. We need to respond—if not in kind—”
“Our Cyber warfare capability is nowhere near that sophisticated,” the CIA director interrupted.
“Then we go kinetic,” Bennett retorted. He turned to the president. “Russia has been silent in all this mess—they haven’t actually invaded Ukraine—”
“Yet,” warned the Secretary of State.
Bennett continued. “—what if we send them a message to stay out of this and convince China to stand down at the same time?”
“How?” sighed President Harris. “How could you do that fast enough…look,” he said pointing at a new map on the wall showing the complicated web of electrical grids across the nation. “They’re starting to take out the ones on the west coast already.”
“We re-task our Russian deterrence nukes. Let them know we’re not targeting Moscow anymore—we’re taking aim at Beijing.”
The president regarded Admiral Bennett for a long moment. “And if China calls our bluff? Are we really ready to wipe China off the map in a nuclear holocaust? Can you live with that, Roger? Killing billions of people? Contaminating the planet with radioactive fallout?”
Admiral Bennett swallowed.
“If it means saving American lives, sir, I’d kill the whole fucking planet,” the Commandant said in a gravely voice. “We didn’t start this shit show, sir.”
Bennett nodded. “They have to know that’s our only play, sir. Beijing knows what they’re doing—if they take out our grid, they doom our entire nation. That’s unacceptable.” Admiral Bennett stared at the map again. “It’s the only way we can respond—you threaten our way of life, we threaten yours by aiming thousands of ICBMs at your back. The international fallout will be…something else entirely, but it should put the brakes on this grid attack.”
“‘Something else entirely’? That’s the understatement of the year!” the Secretary of State said, jumping to her feet. “Mr. President, if we nuke China, the UN is going to throw everything—and everyone—at us. How would we not be considered war criminals for obliterating billions of people?”
Admiral Bennett pointed at her. “That’s what they expect us to think and say. That line of thinking will force us to back down, and then China becomes the worlds’ savior. The age of American dominance will be over.”
“But if we put Beijing in the crosshairs…” the president mused, “…could we afford to turn a blind eye to Russian intervention in Ukraine. Again?”
“The situation there can be sorted out later. China is the immediate, existential threat, sir.”
President Harris looked at Admiral Bennett. He glanced at the other Joint Chiefs. “Is this your recommendation, gentlemen?”
They all looked to the Secretary of Defense. He rubbed his face and stood. “Mr. President, I’m in agreement with Admiral Bennett. Realigning our tactical and intercontinental nuclear arsenal to target Beijing, and letting them know we’re doing it, could be the only way to keep World War III from erupting today.”
“It’s going to be hard enough to smooth all the ruffled feathers out there after our attack on Pyongyang,” the Secretary of State murmured, “but anything that prevents a global escalation…” She shook her head. “The world is going to hate us after this.”
“I don’t give a flying fart about what the rest of the world thinks,” President Harris said, as he stood and straightened his tie. “I was elected to protect the people of the United States and preserve our way of life. Admiral, issue the orders. Madam Secretary—send a message to Beijing. Inform them of the consequences of their continued Cyber attacks on our electrical grid. Bring NATO up to speed and let Moscow know what we’re doing—and why.”
“And the NKor incursions into no-man's-land?” asked the Army general. “I’ve got several more reports now, sir. They’re pushing east along the northern half of the Occupied Zone. It’s not cohesive yet, but it’s looking like—”
“Begin the liberation,” the president snapped. “Gentlemen, it’s high time we liberate the west.”
“Finally,” muttered General Rykker.
31
Escape Velocity
West of Smolensk, Russian Federation
Mikhailovich Estate
Cooper coughed and took a shuddering breath as the world settled around him. He had been laying on the ground next to a wall before…whatever Beslan unleashed had hit the house. He blinked, realizing he was on his back now, and waited for the AR glasses to reboot. After a few seconds of checking in with his extremities, Cooper concluded he wasn’t seriously injured, and tried to sit up.
Bits of charred plaster, smoking wood, and burnt books covered his chest. He pushed the debris off and sat up coughing, his ears ringing.
What the fuck just happened?
Cooper wiped his face, his hand coming away red. He struggled to his feet and hacked up a lungful of smoke and phlegm. Staggering through what used to be a doorway, he blinked in the light of a room on fire. The heat hit him like a wall, pushing him back.
Three of the four corners of the room were gone, only the wall studs, broken and smoldering, were visible through the thick, acrid smoke. His AR glasses came back online and he subvocalized the command to switch to IR imaging. Coughing, he pushed into the room, his weapon up and ready.
The only thing remaining was the metal door he’d tried going through originally. Now scorched black with peeling and blistered paint, it still stood defiant. The wall around door was gone, Cooper noted with a grimace.
“Really?”
Cooper placed a boot on the door and pushed, sending the heavy, reinforced portal crashing down a short flight of stairs.
“Luuuucy, I’m hooooome,” he muttered.
As the smoke cleared, and his glasses pierced what remained, he saw only a small section of the mansion, a little bigger than the office itself, had been destroyed. Other than debris and rubble strewn through the hallway before him, the rest of the house appeared relatively undamaged. Which was a relief—the ambassador might still be alive.
The first room on his right, where Beslan had told him Marquadt and his wife were being kept, looked empty. He edged open the ruined door with the tip of one boot so he could see better, and swept the room with his rifle. It was smoking and filled with debris, but completely lacking in living ambassadors—or wives.
“Shit.”
“…that?” Beslan asked. His voice was tinny and distant.
Cooper lowered his rifle and stepped into the room, eyes locked on the body of the ambassador, still tied to a chair. His head rested on
his chest. To be sure, Cooper stepped forward, his boots crunching on debris, and used his teeth to pull his off left glove. He placed his bare fingers on the ambassador’s neck, just under the jaw, counted to thirty, and felt nothing.
“God damn it.”
“…in. Do you read me?” called Beslan’s voice.
Cooper put a hand to his ear as he talked. The ringing was slowly fading, but Beslan still sounded a long way away. “Yeah, I read you,” he said, his voice hoarse and cracked from all the smoke.
Beslan laughed. “We are having fun now, yes?”
“The package is dead,” Cooper reported. He nudged the bloody ropes on the floor behind the ambassador, cut with a sharp knife. They rested next to a second chair, spotted with bright red blood. “They have the bonus package.”
“Must be in the car I’m watching…”
“A car? Fuck, man, you gotta stop it!” Cooper said, already heading for the exit. “I’m Oscar Mike to the garage.”
“It will take me a minute to get in position…I suggest you use the drone.”
“The drone? How? That car’s gotta be bulletproof, your little quad-copter won’t do shit against an up-armored vehicle.”
“Who knows? Lyssa, she packs a punch.”
“Lyssa?” asked Cooper, incredulous. “You named the fucking drone?”
Beslan laughed.
Cooper tripped down the final staircase, taking the steps two at a time. “Tell me you didn’t pack C-4 in that thing.”
“I didn’t pack C-4 in that thing,” Beslan said, deadpan.
Cooper wiped the blood and sweat out of his eyes again and looked at the secured door to the garage—the over-pressure from the blast in the office had forced the garage door open, popping the security seal like a balloon. The door, bent and dented like a giant had used it as a punching bag, squealed in protest as Cooper forced it open far enough to enter the garage.
“What the hell did you do back there, anyway?” he asked, sweeping the storage area, looking for a suitable vehicle.
“S5i rocket,” Beslan replied, nonchalantly. “It was the lowest power guiding munition I have…I hope it didn’t kill the package?”
Cooper shook his head. “I don’t even want to know how you got your hands on one of those…and no, you didn’t kill the package. Someone put a bullet in his head just fine without your missile.”
“Good. By the way, if you fail to disable that car, I will lose it in the trees before I am on station.”
On station? What the hell are you doing out there?
“Roger that,” he said out loud. “I’m directing it now…”
Cooper took a knee next to a gleaming, white Land Rover and pulled up the drone controls on the tiny computer in his pack. It folded up about the size of a kid’s video game system, but the screen was interfaced with his glasses so it looked huge to him. He typed out the control commands, and the drone locked onto the black Mercedes, speeding for the safety of the forest on the other side of the property. The decorative gravel road curved back and forth around landscape features—which the drone simply flew over, zipping along at an incredible speed and gaining rapidly on its prey.
He watched as a little icon appeared on his HUD, indicating the drone was now armed. He hit the “engage” button and the on-board AI took over. A red box outlined the car, and the drone dropped low, aiming for the front right tire. A second later, the ground blurred, and the image went solid black as the little quad-copter connected with the hubcap.
“Good hit!” Beslan exclaimed. “That might have done it…wait one…”
Cooper opened the Land Rover and found the keys in the ignition. He was going to thank the fates for his good luck, then realized the vehicle had no gas. A quick check of the other two cars proved the same.
“Son of a bitch!” he hollered, slapping the roof of the last car. “Who the fuck keeps a bunch of cars in his house without gas?”
“Okay, I’m having a visual now…” Beslan reported. “Moving to engage.”
Gunfire behind Cooper reminded him he wasn’t the only one left in the house. Two men appeared in the garage from the opposite side Cooper had entered. The first shouted for his partner to move to the left, then opened up with an AK, the noise defending in the enclosed space. Rounds ricocheted off the concrete walls and shattered windows all around him.
Cooper dropped to the floor and peered under the vehicles in the bay. Two sets of feet shuffled back and forth in the distance. Cooper grinned and let fly with several three-round bursts. One man went down screaming, only to be silenced by a follow up burst. The second man wised up and took shelter behind a wheel.
Cooper reached for a grenade on his chest and realized he was out, only to see a Russian one rolling under the cars right toward him. Eyes wide, he pushed himself to his feet as if his DI back at BUD/S were on his ass, foaming at the mouth.
He had just enough time to make it take two steps beyond the car when a blast of heat and light hit him from behind. Cooper experienced an odd sensation of flying, then everything went black.
32
Rebirth
Isle of Man, United Kingdom
Jayne watched in growing disbelief as more and more of Mikhailovich’s men went down to Braaten. The ex-SEAL moved through the house like he owned the place, cutting down defenders left and right. Even when they gathered at the top of the stairs to ambush him, the wily operative slipped through their fingers, went outside, and even took out the reinforcements Mikhailovich had called in.
She sat in her recovery bed, drumming her fingers on the armrest, glaring at the ruined, smoking hulk of the van on the screen. The only good news was she was healing—far faster than anyone expected.
Her jaw hurt less than it did a few hours before, which she chalked up to her augmented healing. Her face itched. The bandages the doctors had wrapped around her head seemed excessively tight now. She wanted to rip them off, take a deep breath, and stretch.
MacTavish stood in the corner of the room, thick arms across his broad chest. He frowned at the screen, his face a mask of stone.
“Yon laddie is a bit much for Mikhailovich to take care of, I think."
Jayne turned and looked at him, arching an eyebrow. Really? I hadn't noticed.
To his credit, color crept up McTavish's neck. He cleared his throat and turned back to the screen.
Her phone buzzed, momentarily taking her attention away from the disaster unfolding on the TV. Now what? She glanced down, and her breath caught in her throat. It was a simple message, from her mole inside President Harris’ inner circle.
Couldn't stop him. Pyongyang is gone. China on the warpath. Russia quiet.
Jayne leaned back against the soft, formfitting foam of her recovery bed. The United States had obliterated the capital of North Korea. She knew it was coming, but had hoped for just a little more time. The response from China was predictable…but Russia's silence could mean only one thing—her efforts to gain some leverage in the Politburo had paid off. She had pulled out all the stops and called in every favor to ensure the Russians wouldn’t counterattack. A world war right now would disrupt everything she'd planned, everything she'd accomplished since going legit and buying her consortium.
After Harris's administration announced Jayne's death to the world—and provided evidence—the tenuous strings that connected her to the Council, and kept her in charge, had been severed once and for all. One after another, her contacts spun out of her orbit and slipped away into the darkness. Her only chance at retaining any amount of control over her own future—and keeping her head firmly attached to her neck—was to embrace the lie and become Lisa Melton, CEO of Jaynesway Incorporated.
The tight head wrap that kept her jaw for moving was the last step in that process. Once she was healed, Jayne Renolds would be forever gone, replaced with Lisa Melton. Consequently, she'd be completely safe from the US government—short of getting a blood sample, they'd have no way of proving who she was. And if they were close e
nough to get a blood sample then she already failed. Besides, they’d already proclaimed to the world she was dead, they couldn’t very well then announce she was alive if they wanted to maintain any credibility. And Harris would need every ounce he had to come through the crisis at all.
Everything changed so quickly after Scotland. Before the UN summit, she'd been on track to rule the Council with an iron fist, and possibly even usurp the young king, or at the very least be the power behind the throne. She would've been set for life, living in the lap of luxury and ruling over a vast dominion of both political and economic power.
Then that bitch Sveda and her lapdog Braaten showed up and ruined everything. The summit fell through, the trial run of her gas weapon was a complete disaster, and half of Edinburgh was killed in the process. To top it off, she hadn't even been able to capture that damn meddlesome senator from Idaho. Once again, Sveda and Braaten had foiled her plans.
And she had damn near been captured in the process.
Jayne suppressed a shiver, remembering the ice-cold waters of the Irish Sea as she slammed into the water going God knows how fast. She’d jumped out of a perfectly good airplane—well, perfectly good except that it had been sent to ferry her back to the United States. MacTavish had been on her within seconds and hauled her from the frigid water, but it had still taken her days to warm up after that experience.
Now she'd been through a drastic, personality altering surgery, and at last saw the light at the end of the tunnel…and the fucking Americans were about to start World War III.
She slammed a fist into the bed, the motion jarring the tender spots on her face and caused her to wince. I have to get out of these bandages. I have to see!
Jayne ripped the cover off her bed and swung her bare legs over the silk sheets to the edge.
MacTavish turned and raised both hands. "Whoa, lassie. Where do ye think ye’re going? The docs," he said, turning to look at the door.
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