by Noah Mann
“Sir, why do I need the capability you’ve just given me?” she asked, considering her own question for a moment before emphasizing its focus. “Why do I need that authority?”
The president didn’t answer quickly, though it was clear he could have. He seemed to take a moment to choose his words. To temper them with only as much reality as was necessary.
“Because there is every chance I will not survive what’s to come,” he said.
“Just what is to come?” I asked, interjecting myself into this sobering, delicate exchange. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“The final battle,” the president answered without a hint of melodrama. “We have some reconnaissance ability, limited, but enough in this instance to know that the Unified Government forces in the east are massing and maneuvering.”
“Maneuvering in this direction,” Schiavo said.
The president nodded and led us to the conference table. A map of the continental United States was spread upon it.
“We hold Hawaii,” he said. “An ocean protects it. I believe you were initially deployed from there, colonel, yes?”
“When I was a lowly lieutenant, sir,” Schiavo confirmed.
The president pointed to a spot near the border between Kansas and Colorado.
“Remnants of the Second MEF hold a position at Colby, Kansas,” he said.
“Marine Expeditionary Force,” Schiavo said.
“Their expedition is Kansas, now,” the president said. “What’s left of them. They were our blocking force east of the Rockies.”
His finger shifted to the area where we were, Middle America, blocks from the Scioto River in Columbus, Ohio.
“And we hold this city,” he said.
There was a very obvious locale he’d left out.
“Washington?” Schiavo asked.
He shook his head.
“D.C. is gone. Burned and bulldozed.”
“What?” I prodded, unclear as to whether he was being dramatic or literal in his description. “Bulldozed?”
“You heard correctly,” the president said. “When they drove our forces out, they set everything that would burn afire and took the wrecking ball to every last gleaming monument.”
I took a moment to imagine what the man had just told us, but could not. For all the faults of the men and women who’d inhabited the political class occupying that great city, it was a beacon, to those fortunate enough to inhabit the land between the shining seas, and to those beyond our borders who dreamed of the same thing that made our very nation possible—freedom.
“We also hold this,” the president continued, his finger pressed directly where Bandon lay on the map. “And by ‘we’ I mean ‘you’.”
“We’re one country, sir,” Schiavo told him.
“For now,” he said, his finger shifting to the south along the California coast. “The Unified Government forces have moved north again after taking Yuma and San Diego. They’ve halted near the border between California and Oregon.”
I understood, finally, why the man hadn’t reacted with some glee when sharing the news of the ash fall shifting away from the coast.
“The way is clear for them to move north again,” the president said. “They feel emboldened after their success in San Diego. Your BA-Four Twelve gambit had an expiration date, it would seem.”
“How do you know about that?” I asked.
The president managed a smile. Some small reaction to one success in a string of failures.
“You don’t believe our enemies are the only ones who’ve mastered the art of infiltration...”
“We have someone inside the Unified Government,” Schiavo said.
“We do,” the president confirmed. “And from that person we know that the leadership no longer feels that the biological agent Mr. Moore stole is a viable threat.”
Neil had taken the deadly virus to prevent its use against the very people our government had let down. That was his fear, and, recalling those dark days as the blight exploded across the globe, and across our nation, I could understand the wrenching worry that must have weighed upon him. He was a lone man striking out to prevent a catastrophe which might have dwarfed what the blight had done. It had killed the plants, and the animals which fed upon them, and the predators which preyed upon those herbivores. But we’d survived that. If Four-Twelve had been unleashed, a virus which targeted humanity directly, it was unlikely any of us would be standing here discussing the continuing survival of our species.
We would have gone extinct.
“We no longer have instantaneous and reliable communication, Colonel Schiavo,” the president said. “If there is a grave threat on the west coast, I need a commander with the experience and judgement to deal with it. You’ve exhibited both of those qualities. Bandon exists today because of you.”
“It exists because everyone refused to give up,” she told the Commander in Chief.
He didn’t take her correction as insubordinate, smiling and nodding instead, acknowledging her humility. But to a large degree the president was right. Lieutenant, then Captain, and now Colonel Angela Schiavo, onetime piano player for Army dignitaries, had demonstrated extraordinary leadership at places like Mary Island, and Skagway, and during the Unified Government siege of Bandon.
Still, in light of recent contacts we’d had, a question remained. At least in my mind.
“Sir...”
The president looked to me.
“You have an admiral in the west,” I said, recalling what the SEALs who’d come ashore had implied. “I can’t remember his—”
“Adamson,” the president said. “Lionel Adamson.”
“Adamson, yes,” I said, remembering now. “With no offense to you or Cap...I mean Colonel Schiavo and her accomplishments, shouldn’t this responsibility you’re handing off more logically belong to him? Or to some general you could dispatch?”
“I don’t have spare generals lying around, Mr. Fletcher. And even if I did, my decision would be the same.”
I sensed that even Schiavo was having difficulty with the explanation the president had offered to my question. As it was, the man had no problem going further with his reasoning.
“If I give to a warfighter what I’ve just given to you, they’ll fight a war. But it will be a war of conquest, not the kind that you’ve been fighting.”
“What kind is that?” I asked.
“A war for survival,” the president said. “I’ve given you access to a weapon of last resort. I’d expect that you will see it as such, Colonel Schiavo, and wield it accordingly.”
Schiavo reflexively brought a hand to the shirt pocket where she’d placed the code card, touching the spot with reverence. And with a hint of fear. Obvious fear.
“It’s good to be afraid of it,” the president said, noticing her reaction. “That you express such an emotion tells me I made the right decision. You’ve spent enough time trying to build the world back up that the idea of destroying it turns your stomach.”
“A bit, sir,” she confirmed.
The president nodded, satisfied. But that state of contentment was only momentary.
“I wish I could say the Unified Government is the only military threat you may face,” he told us, pointing to a place on the west coast north of Bandon, along the coast of Washington state. “We have some intelligence reports that a Russian force may have landed here. Your encounter on the way to Air Force One would seem to confirm that.”
A report from the Stryker crew had clearly reached the man in advance of our arrival. But what they’d seen, what we’d all seen, was thin in the area of confirmation.
“We only saw a handful of troops,” Schiavo reported. “None were quality fighters. Nothing like Kuratov’s men in Skagway.”
The president nodded, not disputing her assessment.
“They could be twenty in number, or two hundred,” the president said. “What’s most troubling, though, is why they’ve apparently come ashore.”
“We have reason to believe that the Unified Government has secured some kind of agreement with the surviving Russian forces in the east of their country.”
“What sort of agreement?” Schiavo asked.
“A treacherous quid pro quo,” the president answered. “The Russians have been promised Alaska if they help the Unified Government eliminate our forces on the west coast.”
“You mean eliminate us,” I said.
Again, the president nodded.
“I doubt the Russians will be spoiling for a fight on their own, however,” the president suggested.
Schiavo innately knew what he was saying.
“Defeat the Unified Government forces to Bandon’s south, and the Russians will pull out.”
“That’s the assumption,” the president confirmed.
For a moment, the discussion paused, all that needed to be shared complete. But not all questions had been answered.
“Sir, why do you feel you won’t survive?” Schiavo asked her commander in chief. “You can be evacuated. If we can get in, you can get out.”
“Yes, I can. But if I go, the reason for our enemies to attack this city goes away.”
Both Schiavo and I puzzled at the man’s reasoning for a moment. But just for a moment.
“You’re the bait,” I said.
“I’m the bait,” the president confirmed. “Their lead elements have penetrated the city perimeter already.”
“The snipers,” I said, recalling the shots taken at us just after landing.
“Precisely,” he said. “We have the northern approach to the city relatively clear. It’s our planned escape route.”
“You didn’t bring us in that way,” Schiavo said, understanding now. “You brought us through the gauntlet.”
“If the Unified Government suspected that we have a way out, they’d move to shut it down,” the president explained. “They would shift forces and have us truly encircled.”
Giving the enemy targets of opportunity, as we had clearly been, was a necessity, the man was saying.
“I’m sorry you had to come through that,” he told us, true sincerity in his apology. “But we need their forces concentrated.”
“Why?”
He considered my very simple and straightforward question for a few seconds.
“I’ll show you why,” he said.
Twenty Two
We climbed the building’s stairs with members of the president’s security detail ahead of and behind us. On the landing just outside the door to the 28th floor we came face to face with two soldiers guarding the way forward, armed to the teeth, their weapons at the ready even when they saw their commander in chief approaching.
“Open it,” the president instructed.
“Yes, sir,” one of the guards said.
His partner stepped away from the door, allowing us to see right then a large chain and padlock securing it, several additional layers of reinforcement welded and bolted to the barrier and the frame that contained it. Great effort had been expended on securing whatever lay beyond.
Twenty seconds after he’d begun to remove the lock, the guard had it off and several sliding bolts around the door edge thrown. At that point he took hold of a levered handle and twisted it upward. A slight push inward allowed just a sliver of a view beyond.
The space I saw looked as black as night.
“Sir,” the guard who’d stood back from the door said, his hand held out, a flashlight in it.
“Thank you,” the president said, taking the device and activating the beam. “Let’s go.”
The nation’s leader pushed the door fully open and stepped through. Schiavo followed without hesitation. I did, however, hold back for just an instant, an almost imperceptible pause while images from old movies flashed in my head. Ones where some Mafioso would step into a room and have a bullet put into his head from behind.
* * *
“This way,” the president said.
He kept the flashlight aimed low, brightening a path on the bare concrete floor ahead of us. We’d landed in daylight, and it was certainly still that outside, but whatever windows there’d been in this space had been covered completely. Not a hint of the sunlight shining outside was apparent anywhere in the darkness.
“You covered the windows,” I said.
“We sandbagged the windows,” the president corrected me, shifting the beam briefly to illuminate a continuous wall of sandbags stretching from floor to the exposed concrete ceiling above. “The entire floor is ringed with them. They’re stacked six feet thick. The floors directly above and below are fully filled with loose sand and stone blocks.”
He wasn’t saying it, but what he was describing was a bunker in the sky. One which we’d just been led into.
“You’re protecting something,” Schiavo said.
“Very astute,” the president said. “You didn’t say someone.”
Doing so wouldn’t have been out of the realm of possibilities. Providing a safe space for the commander in chief would have been a logical act. But so would evacuating him from a city supposedly being targeted by a large enemy force. Schiavo was right—something precious was being kept in this space.
“Right here,” the president said, stopping finally, his flashlight directed at the reason for our visit to the makeshift bunker.
“Jesus...”
The exclamation was mine. Schiavo stood silently next to me and stared at the object, which, most appropriately, rested on a pedestal, as if on display. Two thick cables snaked from its conical body and ran to a large plastic tub, the size of a child’s coffin, which sat on the floor a few yards away.
“A W-Eighty Eight warhead,” the president said, staring at the device as we were, reverence and fear in his gaze. “Removed from a Trident missile off one of our subs before she was scuttled near Norfolk.”
I knew what we were looking at now. The thing had a designation, and an origin, though its lineage rightly stretched all the way to a New Mexico desert where the first of its kind had been detonated more than seventy years earlier. This descendant of that city killer looked to be a bit over five feet tall, and not quite two feet across at its widest part near its base. In that relatively compact package was more power than the armies of Genghis Khan or Napoleon could have dreamed of. It was the power that the president had just given Schiavo the ability, and the authorization, to deploy.
But that would come from a different delivery system. This destroyer sat here, landlocked. It was going nowhere. That, I suspected now, was by design.
“You can see now why we want the Unified Government forces here,” the president said, gesturing with the flashlight to the box connected to the warhead by the stout wiring. “The timer mechanism is in there. Once I give the word and that’s activated, I’ll leave with the last of our troops. We’ll have forty-five minutes to reach a safe distance to the north.”
He redirected the beam of light back to the warhead.
“If all goes right, a four hundred kiloton blast will wipe out our enemy on this side of the country once and for all.”
We stared at the warhead for a moment, the quiet breaking only when Schiavo turned toward the commander in chief and spoke.
“I wasn’t your first choice.”
The president eyed her, not with surprise at her statement, but with an unexpected admiration at her prescience. He smiled, and I thought, even in the dim light cast only by the man’s flashlight, that, for the first time since we’d met him, the blood of a politician flowed freely through his veins.
“Mr. MacDowell said a bird had to be destroyed after its crew landed not long ago,” Schiavo told him. “But on our way in we saw a crash site. A Blackhawk went down into a house.”
I understood now why she’d directed my attention to the place where the helicopter had gone down. She was sending me a quiet signal that MacDowell might be telling the truth, but he wasn’t telling the entire truth. Or al
l truths.
And neither, Schiavo was implying, was the president.
“I think a bird getting shot down is worthy of a mention over one landing,” Schiavo continued. “Unless you’re not keen on letting on just who went down with it.”
The president nodded, some faux contemplation in the gesture.
“Colonel, I’ve just given you the ability to destroy what’s left of the world. Does it matter if others never got the chance to wield that power?”
“With all due respect, sir, that’s not my concern,” she said.
“This isn’t a high school dance, Colonel Schiavo,” the president said. “Your two prettier friends didn’t turn me down, leaving you as my only hope for a date. This is cold, hard reality. This is about the survival or the destruction of what’s left of humanity. I chose you, and whether I chose anyone before you shouldn’t matter, because you’re on the dance floor now and the music is about to start.”
She accepted his metaphorical explanation. Most of it.
“Sir, we’ve been lied to,” she said. “We’ve been kept in the dark. When pieces of the truth bubble up I begin to wonder about that truth. And about motives.”
“You can wonder all you want, Colonel Schiavo. Just keep those codes safe and your mind right when it comes to our enemies, because, in the event that you ever need to make the call, everyone will be wondering about your motives. That’s what comes with the responsibility I’ve just given you—eternal second guessing. Constant doubt. As long as you’re not the one engaged in that pointless reflection, then I’ve made the right decision.”
He let that hang there for a moment, then motioned with the flashlight, directing us toward the door. Schiavo didn’t, but I gave the warhead a last look before moving toward the exit. It was dull and unimpressive. The wires snaking from a port on its side looked like lines keeping a patient on life support. In a short time, if what the president expected came to pass, a simple electrical signal, maybe five volts of current, would set it off. Seconds later the capital of the state of Ohio, and all those within ten miles, would be dead or dying. The war that was never meant to be would be over in this part of our once great nation. I wondered—no, I feared—that the same cataclysmic act might be necessary to save those of us clinging to life on the west coast.
