General Bagheri informed Farshad that he had no choice but to follow orders. He was compelled to reinforce the islands. But his reinforcement would be a single person: Farshad. When he departed General Bagheri’s office, it was to a small dhow that was waiting to take him to his new, desolate posting. Since arriving on the islands, Farshad hadn’t allowed himself to wonder how much longer he would remain there. If the Russian invasion—those Spetsnaz parachutists supported by their navy—never arrived, how long would Bagheri keep him postured to repel an assault? A week? A month? A year? The rest of his pitiful life? Farshad had come to realize that by delivering his message directly to the high command he had become the architect of his own exile.
The few hundred conscripts who manned these defenses had been enduring a similar exile, some of them for years. As Farshad mingled among them, he learned that most had a history of disciplinary infractions. These islands had become a dumping ground for hard cases. The supply depots sent them no fresh food, only packaged rations. They showered once a week. The tents they slept in were often blown away by the unpredictable winds that thrashed through the strait.
Unlike General Bagheri, the men on the island had accepted the idea of a Russian invasion, even if such an occurrence seemed like an improbability. What were the odds, one in ten? Even less? But what else did they have to do but prepare, and how long would the odds have to be on their lives for them to take no precautions whatsoever? And so they filled sandbags, they calibrated the ranges on their antiaircraft guns in precise intervals of one hundred feet, and they endured incessant inspections by Farshad while they waited for the invasion.
At night under his tent, with no special accommodations afforded him, Farshad began to think of home. He wanted to return. The desire entered his dreams. It wasn’t the comfort of his bed that he envisioned, or the warmth of his house, or a good meal. It was his family’s land, specifically his garden. With the fierce winds whipping against his tent, surrounded by the sleeping heaps of rejected soldiers, he concluded that he’d seen enough. If he ever got off this rocky island, he swore to himself that he would finally go home. And he wouldn’t again make the mistake of leaving.
These dreams recurred fitfully each night, all except for this one. It was the only night that he slept the whole way through. It was also the only night that the wind shifted its course, dying down to a gentle breeze. This night he dreamed most intensely of all.
He is back in his garden, performing the routine he’d fallen into after his expulsion from the Revolutionary Guards. He writes his memoirs in the morning. He takes his walk at around noon, lunching beneath the elm tree on the far end of his property. When he finishes his meal, he leaves the scraps out for the pair of squirrels to eat. And he waits. He is conscious that he is dreaming, and he hopes that both squirrels might again appear. He thinks that this time he might restrain himself and not kill the squirrel if it bit him. Farshad waits a long while in this dream. The longer he waits, the more the landscape changes. The trees dry up, their brittle leaves falling around him. The thirsty grass turns to stubble and then to bleached rock. The rock is the same as the island’s.
The next morning, right at dawn, the wind returned. He woke up to its howl. It stretched the fabric of his tent before yanking up the stakes and sending that same tent tumbling toward the sea. Farshad lay in the dawn with nothing between him and the sky except for the wind.
“Look!” one of the conscripts cried out.
He pointed to the east, in the direction of the rising sun. Farshad squinted, making a visor of his hand.
Dozens and dozens of them.
More than he could have imagined.
Arranged like a vast migration of birds.
“They are here!” he shouted to his garrison, but the wind drowned out his voice.
* * *
06:32 July 30, 2034 (GMT+8)
South China Sea
Weather had been erratic, thunderstorms appearing violently and then vanishing. Wild fluctuations in temperature. Golf ball–sized hailstones fell on the deck of the Enterprise one morning. That same evening, the temperature peaked at ninety-two degrees. The onboard meteorologist surmised that this erratic weather was the result of the atmospheric fallout from Galveston and San Diego. They had struggled to find a launch window for Wedge and the nine Death Rattlers. Each time they’d be given the all-clear and migrate to their ready room for a final mission brief, a fresh weather system would appear. Complicating matters further was the fact that they didn’t need passable weather but perfect weather. The Hornets that Wedge and his crews would be flying didn’t have GPS-guided bombs. Without that technology they’d have to drop their ordnance in the old way, which meant they needed clear skies over the three target cities.
After the fourth or fifth aborted launch attempt (Wedge had lost count), he found himself alone in his stateroom, sitting at his desk, trying to pass the time. Two levels above him, he could hear the ground crews working. Each iteration of stand-up-then-stand-down cost them several hours. They couldn’t allow nine fully armed Hornets (particularly given the nature of their armament) to idle on a flight deck that was pitching through rough weather. Wedge took out his flight plan, reviewing it yet again:
*Nine aircraft launch, divided between three flights (Blue, Gold, Red)
*Arrive at release point (28°22’41”N 124°58’13”E)
*Set course and speed to target: Xiamen (Blue), Fuzhou (Gold), Shanghai (Red)
*For redundancy each aircraft armed with nuclear payload
*Only one aircraft per flight drops payload
*Return
He knew that last bullet point—despite being the shortest—was the one with the least probability of success. He could feel it in his gut. But Wedge didn’t do suicide missions; that’s what he’d told Admiral Hunt and he’d meant it. Instead of fixating on the slim probabilities of his return, he diverted his attention elsewhere. . . .
He began a letter.
It wasn’t an if-you-are-reading-this-then-I-am-gone death letter. He’d always held those in low esteem, thinking of them as little better than suicide notes. Instead, he thought of it as a historical document. He wanted to capture his thoughts on the eve of victory. He addressed the letter to his father.
Wedge found himself writing in a sort of stream of consciousness, freed from the way he normally wrote, which was the composition of lists like the flight plan he’d just reviewed. It felt good to write in this way, a release. Although it was only him, alone in his stateroom, he wanted to bring all the world into this moment. The more he wrote, the more aware he became of his place in the universe. It was as though he could see his words being read by future generations of American schoolchildren before he’d even composed them. He could envision a child standing in front of the class, reciting portions of this note from memory in much the same way Wedge himself had recited the Gettysburg Address. This wasn’t his ego at work; he knew that he possessed no remarkable gifts of expression—a C-minus in freshman English could attest to that. Rather, Wedge knew it was the moment itself that was remarkable, a moment in which everything was on the line. Then he thought, Christ, Wedge, get a grip.
Except for a single page, he crumpled up the many sheets of paper and pitched them in his trash can. The remaining page sat on the desk in front of him. He didn’t read it over.
He didn’t want to.
What remained were his thoughts, as pure as he could harness them, to be handed to his father.
Wedge found himself unexpectedly exhausted from the writing. He was soon asleep in his chair, his head on the desk.
Time passed, perhaps an hour or more. There was a knock on his door. Wedge felt disoriented, as if maybe it had all been a dream. Perhaps he was back in his stateroom on the Bush. Before Bandar Abbas. Before his stint in captivity. Back to when he was still trying to get close to it.
There was another knock.
“What?” he growled.
“Sir, it’s time.”
“Tell them that I’m coming.”
He could hear the sound of departing steps as he sat up. Wedge gathered his things on the way to the ready room. His notebook. His sunglasses. A pack of Marlboro Reds. He planned to smoke one on his triumphant return. He also thought to bring the letter. After all, it wasn’t a death letter. There was no reason to leave it on his desk, was there?
He glanced at it skeptically.
Wedge eventually chose to leave the letter where it was. What did it matter? Whether for bad weather, or a maintenance issue, he’d likely be back in his stateroom in a few hours after yet another aborted launch. He could mail it then. Walking toward his briefing in the ready room, he took his time down the ship’s passageways, even as every other member of the crew rushed past as though in possession of some urgent piece of news. When Wedge came to an exterior hatch, he thought to take a minute to grab a breath of fresh air. What he saw caused him to hurry back inside the ship.
The day was sunny, clear, and crisp. The most beautiful flying weather he could remember.
* * *
06:42 July 30, 2034 (GMT-4)
Washington, D.C.
Hendrickson insisted Chowdhury catch the night flight. “Don’t wait until morning,” he said. “Get back here now.” On the phone Hendrickson confirmed everything Patel had said in the canteen. Wisecarver had rebuffed the Indian defense attaché when he’d come to the White House. The defense attaché had met with Hendrickson unofficially (at a Starbucks) to reiterate India’s intention to take military action against either party—Chinese or American—who further escalated the crisis. Hendrickson and Chowdhury had this conversation over an unsecured landline between Washington and New Delhi. What did it matter if the Indians intercepted their call? They’d already intercepted their emails. Perhaps it would assuage them if they knew two national security staffers were taking matters into their own hands.
Chowdhury’s flight had been bumpy, with heavy turbulence over the Atlantic. When he landed at Dulles, Hendrickson was there to meet him. On the drive in from Northern Virginia, Hendrickson told Chowdhury the one thing he hadn’t been able to mention over the phone. “All that’s stopping the launch at this point is the weather.”
“The weather?”
“The Enterprise is ready,” Hendrickson said gravely. “The planes are fueled and armed. The pilots are briefed. After Galveston and San Diego, the weather’s been erratic.”
“So how much time do we have?” asked Chowdhury.
“Like I said, we’ve got until the weather gets better. After that, they launch.”
Chowdhury’s flight had been virtually empty, which got him an upgrade to first class. Despite the upgrade, he hadn’t slept a wink. Exhausted, he now leaned his head against the car window. His eyes grew heavy, and as they began to close, he noticed the traffic. It was early morning, D.C. rush hour. Except no one was on the road. He wondered when, if ever, they would return.
The drive in was quick, maybe thirty minutes, but Chowdhury felt he’d been asleep for much longer. They had no trouble finding a spot for the car across from Lafayette Park. In front of the office buildings, trash was piled up. Traffic lights flashed on mostly deserted streets. When they crossed the park, they walked past the Peace Vigil. The tent was empty, though at a glance Chowdhury couldn’t tell whether or not it’d been abandoned. The White House was, of course, in perfect order. The uniformed Secret Service agents stood at their posts. The morning’s newspapers sat in reception, along with coffee and pastries. Chowdhury’s surroundings began to reassume their familiar proportions.
To his surprise, Chowdhury’s badge still worked. A part of him had assumed that when Wisecarver dispatched him to New Delhi it was with the expectation that he would never return. Soon both Hendrickson and Chowdhury sat outside Wisecarver’s office door. On the other side they could hear the murmurs of a meeting in progress.
Chowdhury and Hendrickson had no plan beyond confrontation. They would explain to Wisecarver that they knew about the defense attaché’s visit. They would demand that he disclose this information to the president. The pilots on the Enterprise needed to know about the Indian threat. They had no idea that it wasn’t the Chinese defenses alone that they’d have to contend with. If Wisecarver still refused to divulge this threat, Chowdhury and Hendrickson would go to the press, which, admittedly, wouldn’t do much.
The door to Wisecarver’s office swung open.
One by one a group of staffers Chowdhury didn’t recognize stepped into the corridor. They spoke in low tones, sharing sidebar conversations, even laughing here and there. In a word, these staffers—all hand-selected by Wisecarver—projected confidence. Last out of the room was Wisecarver himself.
He stepped across the hall, his hand on the doorknob to the Oval Office.
“Sir, do you have a minute?” asked Hendrickson.
Wisecarver froze, his hand still on the knob. At the sound of Hendrickson’s voice, he slowly turned over his shoulder. “No, Bunt, I don’t have a minute.” If there was any doubt in Chowdhury’s mind as to how much of a nuisance Hendrickson had made of himself over the preceding weeks, it was now obvious.
“Millions of lives are at stake,” interjected Chowdhury, “to say nothing of an international radiation-induced pandemic and the collapse of the global economy, and you don’t have a minute?” He was shaking, but managed to add, “You have an obligation to pass on what you know.”
Wisecarver released the doorknob. “Do I have an obligation to pass along misinformation?” He took a step closer to Chowdhury, invading his personal space. “Also,” said Wisecarver, as he ran his eyes intrusively over Chowdhury, “aren’t you supposed to be back in New Delhi?”
That word again, back.
Chowdhury didn’t hesitate this time. He knew exactly what it meant. Had he come this far, had his family endured so much, only to turn back? And back to what exactly? He was here; only a shut door separated him from the most powerful office on earth. He was in possession of knowledge that could save this country—his country—if only he could convince Wisecarver to step away and let him pass to the other side.
But there would be no convincing him.
Of this, Chowdhury felt certain.
That word, back—he conjured it into a necessary rage. If Wisecarver wouldn’t step aside, Chowdhury would move through him. He reached for the doorknob. “Where do you think you’re going?” snapped Wisecarver. Chowdhury shouldered into him. The two struggled, their arms hooking, their chests pushing against one another. Neither was a fighter, so the scene quickly turned sloppy, with both Wisecarver and Chowdhury losing their balance and taking an amateurish tumble to the floor.
Hendrickson tried to separate them.
Chowdhury lunged upward for the doorknob, as though it were the rung of a ladder placed just out of reach.
Wisecarver swatted his arm down.
The commotion didn’t last long. Three Secret Service agents charged toward them, pulling both Chowdhury and Wisecarver to their feet. Wisecarver was left by the door. Chowdhury was escorted to the other side of the corridor.
“Get him out of here!” shouted Wisecarver.
Before the Secret Service agents could lead anyone away, the door opened.
Chowdhury couldn’t see inside, but he could hear her voice. That persistent and restrained voice of speeches. The voice that had, a long time ago, convinced him that staying in government was a good idea.
It asked, “What the hell is going on out there?”
* * *
06:52 July 30, 2034 (GMT+4:30)
Strait of Hormuz
The seconds passed with strange imprecision. Farshad stood steadily among his men, a panicked swarm of conscripts scrambling to their dugouts with boots untied and slung rifles jangling over bare shoulders. Farshad watched the incoming formations of planes, calculating their altitude and distance and factoring for wind. He would pass this along to the antiaircraft gunners who were already cranking at the elevation whee
ls that raised their barrels skyward, swiveling and locking themselves into position. Farshad then ran to his command post, nothing more than a hole with a radio dug into the rocky sand.
As he crossed the beach, a half dozen impacts struck behind him, blasting up fountains of earth. Then the shock wave. It brought him to his knees. Up again, he continued to run, calculating his steps. Twenty . . . fifteen . . . he was almost there. Another group of impacts, this time closer—close enough that the shock wave blew the shirt up his back. Then he toppled over the lip of his command post, landing on his radio operator, who was gathered in a knees-to-chest bundle in the corner of the hole. “Get up,” he growled. The young conscript slowly stood, a pleasing confirmation to Farshad that among his men he remained more frightening than death.
A swift crosswind cleared the smoke from the last barrage. Farshad snatched the radio’s handset. He called out range, altitude, and windage to his gun crews, his ability to triangulate the three being one of those refined soldier skills that proved useless elsewhere in life. All at once, his several antiaircraft batteries began to chug out their fat, egg-shaped explosive rounds. The sky peppered with little detonations. Immediately, Farshad could tell they were off target. He had one battery of directed-energy cannons, but when he looked at them, he could tell their generators weren’t engaged. Another cyberattack? Or shitty maintenance? It didn’t matter.
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