by Sean Ellis
The president sagged in her chair, feeling defeated. Collier was asking her to take a leap of faith, or rather another leap. She was so far from anything remotely resembling stable, solid ground, it wouldn’t make much difference now.
“God help us if you’re wrong.”
Collier inclined his head. “Be sure of it.”
“Madame President!” The voice didn’t belong to Collier, and it was accompanied by a vibration like an earthquake. She tried to isolate the source of the tremor…and jolted awake.
The PEOC was back to the way she remembered it, people milling about the room, conversing quietly in small groups. The television screens on the wall, where just a moment before she’d seen Collier’s face, were now showing various news and data feeds. Someone was shaking her shoulder, trying to get her attention. “Madame President.”
She had fallen asleep in her chair. Did I dream that, or did it really happen?
“I’m awake,” she growled. She now recognized the voice, as well as the face of the man who was trying to rouse her. It was her Chief of Staff, and he was not alone. Behind him stood the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Director of National Intelligence. “What is it?”
The DNI took a step forward. “Ma’am, there’s been a development. Satellite recon indicates that the Chinese have opened the doors to their CSS-4 silos and are fueling the missiles. We’re also seeing increased activity at several DF-31 mobile launch positions.”
She didn’t need him to explain the significance of these developments. Older intercontinental ballistic missiles like the CSS-4 used liquid rocket fuel, which was highly corrosive, so the missiles were kept empty in their silos. If they were being fueled, it was in preparation for a launch.
“I’m sorry, Madame President,” intoned the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “But I must recommend that we go to DEFCON One.”
“DEFCON One,” she echoed. There was a roaring sound in her ears. She clutched at the armrests of the chair, overcome by a wave of vertigo. If she had not already been sitting, she probably would have fainted. The Chairman turned away as if by repeating what he had said, she had given the affirmative.
“Wait!”
He stopped. “Ma’am?”
Collier had told her to do just the opposite. Had that really happened? Did she dare put her trust in what might have been just a dream?
“Is there a chance that this is just posturing? That they’re trying to psych us out?”
“Maybe. That’s why we have to answer in kind. We have to let them know that we’re as serious they are.”
Give the order to stand down. The threat of war has served its purpose.
The Chinese will not attack.
She took a deep breath. “No. Withdraw our naval forces. Give the order to stand down to DEFCON Three.”
To their credit, the men did not question her, but neither did they move to comply. She resisted the impulse to assert her authority, and instead did her best to manage a calm demeanor. “This crisis arose because the United States of America decided it was time for the religions of the world to come together, to put aside the differences that lead to violence, and pursue peace together as God’s children. The Chinese may oppose that, but they cannot stop it. God is on our side, gentleman. We don’t need to fear China.”
The men continued to stare at her in disbelief.
She could almost see the gears turning in their heads. They’re wondering if they can declare me non compos mentis, remove me from office. Probably won’t be too hard to do; I just told them our strategic policy is ‘trust God.’
That was what she was doing. If Collier’s Wise Father really was God, then her political future, and maybe the future of everyone on earth, was now in His hands.
∞
As the order to stand down radiated out through the command network, the world breathed a cautious sigh of relief. The Chinese, caught off guard by the unexpected reversal and fearful that it was a trick designed to lull them into complacency, were slow to respond in kind, but as the hours passed and the American fleet moved farther away from their shores, the Politburo in Beijing began to consider its options.
There had been no word from Minister Xu since his decision to head south on a secret mission. A few senior officials began to voice long-held doubts about Xu, wondering if he had not overstepped his authority by ordering the strike in Tibet, and probably the assassination of the Dalai Lama as well. The latter action, something that most of them were secretly pleased with, was a public relations disaster. Xu was out of control, he had brought them to brink of war with the United States, and no one was even sure why.
Now the Americans were backing down. It was a victory.
None of the ministers were able to articulate what exactly it was that they had won, but it seemed prudent to begin deescalating the situation.
There was no advantage to a military attack. China had long ago conquered America on the economic battlefield. The American government owed Chinese banks more than a trillion dollars. American consumers were hopelessly addicted to cheaply made consumer goods which Chinese laborers could produce in mass quantities. To destroy America now would be to destroy the source of China’s own fortune.
Eighteen hours following her decision to step back from the brink, the president stood in front of the cameras in the White House Press Room and told the world that there would be no war. Instead, in just two days’ time, representatives of all the world’s religions, great and small, would be meeting on the National Mall in Washington D.C. to take the first meaningful steps toward true world peace.
The hands on the Doomsday Clock began to slowly run backward.
The world watched. The world waited.
PART FIVE: REVELATION
62.
Booker quickly discovered that biding his time was not going to be quite as easy as he had first believed. His place as part of Collier’s entourage ensured that he was never far from the self-proclaimed emissary of God, but that cut both ways. He felt that Collier was always watching him, waiting for the inevitable act of betrayal.
You’re being paranoid, he told himself. You haven’t done anything to make him suspicious. He’s just weird, that’s all.
Weird was an understatement. Collier seemed less human with every passing day. Booker never saw him eat or sleep or get up to take a piss. He rarely spoke to anyone, and when he did, it was only to give them precise instructions relating to their long voyage. This was not the same Eric Collier he knew from the team.
They left the George Washington by helicopter and flew north. Despite his complaints about the ponderous nature of travel by sea, Booker had never truly appreciated just how big the Pacific Ocean was, or how remote their area of operations. Aside from New Zealand, where they would almost certainly have received a rancorous welcome for having destroyed North East Island for no apparent reason, the closest piece of dry ground was Australia, more than twelve hundred miles away. That was beyond the range of the Sea Stallion, but a rendezvous with a tanker plane got them as far as Canberra, where they transferred to a waiting Air Force transport jet, the first in a string of connections in the ten thousand mile journey to the other side of the world. They flew north and east, stopping to refuel and change planes only at American military installations. Booker got the sense that, even though the war with China had been averted, things were still pretty tense.
On the plane from Hawaii to California, Booker managed to sit beside the still bound and gagged Atlas. He feigned indifference to the man, but as the hours passed and the rest of the SEALs began drifting off to sleep, he decided his need to know more outweighed the risk.
“Can you hear me?” He whispered, covering his mouth with a hand as if stifling a yawn. “Move your left foot if you can hear me.”
For a few seconds, there was no response, but then Atlas slid his left foot forward a few inches.
“Do that again for ‘yes.’ Right foot for ‘no.’ Got it?”
Atlas signaled
that he understood.
“Do you know what’s really going on? What he’s got planned?”
Atlas’ right foot moved, then his left.
Well, that’s helpful. “If I help you, can you stop him?”
Atlas’ reply was similarly uncertain, but this time, it was his left foot that moved first.
“I’m going to try to find a way to get you free. Be ready to move.”
Atlas’ left foot moved, then he did something strange. He lifted his left foot slightly and began tapping it, as if in time to a song that was playing in his head.
What the hell?
Tap, tap. Pause. Tap, tap, tap, tap. Pause.
He’s counting. “Numbers?” Booker whispered. “Start over.”
Atlas moved his left foot, then began the sequence again. Booker memorized the string of numbers, ten in all.
“Is that a phone number?”
Yes.
“Someone who can help us?”
Yes.
“Okay. I’ll see what I can do. Just be ready.” Booker lowered his hand and shifted in the jump seat as if trying to get comfortable. Across the cabin, Collier sat statue still, gazing at nothing, but Booker felt a flush of fear…or was it guilt? Did Collier know what he was planning?
Was he doing the right thing?
A few hours later, the plane landed at Edwards Air Force Base in southern California, where another plane was waiting to bear them east to Washington D.C. Booker waited for an opportunity to slip away, just long enough to call the number Atlas had given him. However, Collier’s schedule was airtight and they never left the tarmac, shuttling in a government issue van from one aircraft to the next in the span of twenty minutes.
The squad of SEALs that had accompanied them from the George Washington were dismissed to make their own way back to their headquarters in Coronado, but an Air Force Security Force team wearing tiger-striped Airman Battle Uniforms and blue berets were waiting to take up the slack. The military policemen regarded Collier with something approaching awe, while evincing suspicion toward Booker and Atlas.
As the plane reached cruising altitude, Booker tried breaking the ice with one of the security men. “Crazy days, huh?”
The airman returned an irritated nod.
Damned Chair Force, Booker thought. Probably butt hurt over having to turn off his Xbox.
The response felt automatic. Inter-service rivalry was like a knee-jerk reaction, but this wasn’t a dive bar off base where he could work out his frustrations with a little trash talk and fisticuffs.
“I’ve been a little out of the loop,” Booker continued as if the nod had been genuine. “Are we still at war?”
“No.” The airman shook his head and then added in a low voice. “Thank God.”
“No kidding,” Booker said, sympathetically. “So what’s been happening?”
Once the airman finally started talking, the dam broke. He related the tense days of the stand-off with China and the terrible news out of India. He spoke, in very personal terms, about the horrible moment when the Chinese appeared ready to launch their missiles, some of which would almost certainly have been able to reach the California coast. And then, like a miracle, it had ended. The young airman offered grudging and guarded praise for the president—it was clear that he did not share her political affiliation—but gave most of the credit to the man who sat just a few seats away, the emissary of God.
Booker supplied a few carefully chosen platitudes to keep the young man talking, and learned that preparations for what was being called the Faith Summit were moving ahead quickly. The brush with global war had galvanized everyone. People who had been at each other’s throats over differences of belief had set aside those contentions and were eager to hear the divine revelation that would set them all straight.
Booker thought it more likely that the believers were, one and all, expecting to hear that they were in the right and everyone else would need to fall in line, and wondered how long the unity would last when Collier finally started talking. Yet, it wasn’t what Collier might say that concerned him. There was some darker purpose behind the summit, and based on what Booker had already seen, he wondered if they weren’t all headed for something much worse than World War III.
As the airman started to wind down, Booker asked a few more questions to avoid making too abrupt of an end to the conversation. The summit, he learned would be taking place on the National Mall, in the shadow of the Washington Monument. That struck Booker as a little odd, and perhaps important, though he wasn’t sure why. Security in the capital was extremely tight, with most of the surface streets closed to all but official traffic. Most people—not just in D.C. but all across America—were staying home, glued to their television sets, eager to hear the words of the Wise Father’s emissary.
It was an unprecedented moment in human history, and Booker felt a pang of regret that he could not share the young airman’s enthusiasm. Nevertheless, he did his best to mimic it. “That’s fantastic.”
“And can you believe that we get to be a part of it? Front row seats?”
“Amen, brother. I can’t wait to tell my mom.” He paused a beat. “Speaking of which, do you think I could borrow your cell phone?”
63.
New Zealand
The outboard ran out of fuel a few minutes after Mira sighted land on the northern horizon, not the New Zealand coast, but rather Stewart Island about twenty miles further south. The island had been mostly set aside as a nature preserve, but there was a small settlement there, which Mira and Kiong reached after a couple more hours of rowing and hiking.
Mira felt like she was slowly bleeding to death. Every second spent just trying to get to civilization was excruciating. New Zealand was already so remote that it might take days for them to pick up Collier’s trail, and her intuition told her that they didn’t have days.
Shortly after reaching the settlement of Oban, and explaining how she and Kiong had survived after their tour boat had capsized, Mira gained access to a telephone. She dialed a number from memory, and then waited as the signal was routed around the world. In one corner of the room, a muted television was tuned to a satellite news channel, and although she couldn’t hear what was being said, the ticker at the bottom of the screen asked the teasing question: “War averted?”
A tentative voice cut through the static on the line. “Hello?”
“It’s me.” She didn’t use names. Hopefully, Carlson would recognize her voice. “This line isn’t secure.”
There was a long silence; signal lag or disbelief, Mira couldn’t guess, but probably a little of both.
“Jesus, Mira?” So much for security. “I thought you were dead.”
She started to reply, but then his voice cut in again. “Wow, did you ever blow this one. You had one job.” Despite the verbal reproof, Carlson did not sound angry, but rather amused. What should she tell him?
“It looks like things are finally starting to blow over,” he went on. “The world is safe again. If you had anything to do with it, give yourself a pat on the back.”
His jocularity stopped her cold. He had no idea that anything was amiss. How would he react if she told him the truth about what had happened, or revealed her concerns about Collier? Would he believe her? Or would he send someone to finish the job Collier had started?
She couldn’t take the chance.
“Thanks, Jack. I’ll tell you all about it when I come in.” Then, without waiting for an acknowledgement, she hung up.
“I think we just dodged a bullet,” she told Kiong. “Unfortunately, we can also kiss our ride home good-bye.”
Kiong said nothing and it occurred to Mira that the blind woman probably had a very different idea of what home was. As if sensing her despair, Kiong reached out a hand and placed it on Mira’s forearm, but it wasn’t a gesture of consolation.
Mira closed her eyes and found herself in the utilitarian interior of a cargo plane, probably a military transport. She saw Booker and she
saw Atlas, and knew that the one person she could not see—Collier—was probably the man through whose eyes she now peered.
He was on the move. Almost certainly on his way back to the States.
“Is that supposed to cheer me up?” Mira asked Kiong. She knew the blind woman wasn’t trying to reassure her. The vision was a warning. Time’s running out. Get moving.
“We’ve got no passports and no money, and somehow we have to get to the other side of the world. I’m open to suggestions.”
Kiong, as it turned out, had more than just a suggestion.
A helpful local took them across the Foveaux Strait to the city of Invercargill on New Zealand’s South Island. From there, they managed to slip away unnoticed before the local authorities could accost them, and made their way to the nearby airport where they were able to board a shuttle flight to Christchurch, and subsequently get on a flight leaving for Honolulu.
Passports and money weren’t an issue. Kiong, it seemed, had an ability Mira guessed even Xu had not been aware of. She could make them invisible.
Or something very close to it. Mira guessed that what Kiong was actually doing was akin to the way that she was able to share her remote viewing ability with others, only instead of looking through another’s eyes, she was sharing a little bit of her own blindness, erasing the two of them from view. They walked right past customs and security officers, strolled past gate agents and flight attendants and simply stowed away.
Although they were at the mercy of international airline schedules, the layovers gave them a chance to eat and get a little rest. Their escape from The Snares had left them bruised and exhausted. The fact that they had avoided serious injury verged on miraculous, but as the rush of adrenaline subsided, the aches and fatigue became almost debilitating. Without Kiong’s “cloak” their ragged condition would doubtless have attracted unwanted attention.
