He despaired of finding a cure for his malaise, but he knew one sure-fire way to forget about the problem for a little while, and that was to get stinking drunk.
Chapter Four
Washington, D.C.; August 2016
Zion Johnson waited in the antechamber of the Oval Office. He sat upright on a couch, looking straight ahead, his mind clear. Zion Johnson didn’t get nervous. “Superior attitude, superior state of mind,” Zion Johnson mouthed silently. This was his mantra. Zion Johnson had never studied Zen or Eastern philosophy, but he had watched every Steven Seagal movie ever made, many of them a dozen times. His favorite was Hard to Kill.
Twenty minutes later, he was summoned into the Oval Office. The president was seated behind his desk. He smiled as Zion Johnson entered.
Zion Johnson took a step into the room and stopped. Something wasn’t right. He had specifically been told that the president would be meeting with him alone, and yet there was someone else in the room. Zion Johnson resisted the urge to draw his gun—which wasn’t in its holster anyway; you couldn’t take a loaded gun into the Oval Office. He turned toward the interloper, sitting unmoving, unassuming, almost invisible, in a chair to his left.
It was a young girl, maybe thirteen years old.
Zion Johnson looked at her, looked at the president, and looked back at the girl. Zion Johnson was rarely at a loss for words, but he simply couldn’t process this data. She might have been the president’s daughter, but Zion Johnson knew the president had no children. And what would his daughter be doing at a top secret briefing? Also, the little girl was black. Her skin wasn’t as dark as Zion Johnson’s, but she was clearly of African descent. Flawless chestnut brown skin with long, curly black hair. She regarded Zion Johnson with what appeared to be detached bemusement.
Zion’s heart sank as it occurred to him that the ‘new phase’ of his assignment to keep tabs on Chaos Faction was in fact an entirely unrelated and highly undesirable assignment. Presumably the president wanted him to babysit this girl, probably the daughter of some paranoid diplomat, worried that his daughter was going to be abducted or get mixed up with the wrong element during the family’s stay in D.C. Twenty-eight years of government service, and Zion Johnson had ended up as Denzel Washington in Man on Fire. “Superior attitude, superior state of mind,” Zion Johnson recited to himself, willing himself back into Seagal territory.
“Mr. President,” said Zion Johnson at last. “We seem to have a visitor.”
President Danton Prowse smiled that effete Connecticut smile that would have cost him the election had he been running against anyone but Travis Babcock, the dim but affable Republican who had spent the last few months of his term mired in scandal. President Babcock had, for some reason that had never been fully explained, authorized a secret program to build a so-called “suitcase nuke”—a ten-kiloton nuclear bomb small enough to fit in a backpack. Congress had been kept in the dark about the program; only Babcock, the scientists and technicians involved in the project, and a handful of advisors knew about it. When details about the program appeared in a Washington Post story, most of those involved pleaded ignorance about the program’s purpose and lack of proper authorization, and Babcock was left to twist in the wind, defending a program that seemed indefensible.
Babcock had been a popular president up to that point, and the Democratic challenger Danton Prowse had been running a somewhat perfunctory campaign against him. Prowse had only gotten the nomination because none of the top-tier Democrats wanted the humiliation of being defeated by a grinning buffoon like Travis Babcock. But when the Wormwood scandal broke—that’s what the secret program was called, Wormwood—suddenly Babcock’s popularity plummeted and Danton Prowse was the frontrunner. Even with the inconvenient revelations about Wormwood, Babcock probably would have come out on top, except for one very troubling fact: he couldn’t explain where the bomb had gone. If Project Wormwood had one redeeming quality, it was that it had been successful: the technicians had managed to create a single ten kiloton nuclear bomb roughly the size of an Oxford dictionary. But no one seemed to know what had happened to it.
As it turns out, the American public will put up with a president who undertakes a morally dubious and illegal program, but only if it gets results. Constitutional experts disagreed on whether Babcock had the authority to run a secret nuclear weapons program in defiance of Congress and various international arms treaties, but everyone agreed that misplacing the bomb was unforgiveable. Was it tucked away in a corner of some government warehouse, its nuclear core gradually decaying? Had it been stolen by some terrorist group? Disposed of somewhere in the depths of the Pacific? There were plenty of theories, but no one—not even Travis Babcock himself—seemed to know for sure. Babcock insisted that he had only recently learned about Wormwood and planned to tell Congress about it (after the election, of course), but only the blindest of Republican hacks believed that.
Babcock, although he was no Rhodes Scholar, was at least smart enough to keep the truth to himself: that the bomb had been sent through a portal to the interdimensional hub known as the planeport, where it had detonated, destroying the planeport and cutting Earth off from every other plane of existence. That hadn’t been the goal, of course. The goal had been to blow up Heaven itself.
[4]
Three months after Wormwood came to light, Prowse was elected President of the United States, and no one was more surprised by this than Danton Prowse. A two-term senator from Hartford, Connecticut, Prowse combined the animal magnetism of Michael Dukakis with the unbridled energy of John Kerry. Zion Johnson hadn’t voted for him and didn’t particularly like him, which put him in the company of forty-nine and eighty-seven percent of the American people as a whole, respectively. For his part, Zion Johnson preferred a Commander-in-Chief who exuded more of an air of authority. Travis Babcock may have been an idiot, but at least he always seemed sure of himself. Danton Prowse always seemed to be thinking things through as he spoke, emphasizing each word that came out of his mouth in turn, eventually arriving at his point the way he had arrived at the Presidency: with a demeanor that suggested he wasn’t sure where he was or how he had gotten there, but he was happy enough to be there, all things considered.
This was the first time Zion Johnson had met Danton Prowse in person (although they had spoken several times on the phone), and if anything the man was less impressive in real life than on television. He was tall but reedy and slightly hunched over, with a sort of grayish cast to his face, as if death had decided to claim him but then gotten distracted. Zion Johnson tried not to let his disappointment—both in the president himself and in the presence of the little girl who was undoubtedly to be Zion Johnson’s charge—show, but it took a great deal of effort. Superior attitude, superior state of mind.
“This is Michelle,” said the president, indicating the girl. “She’s an advisor of sorts.”
The girl nodded toward Danton Prowse and smiled almost imperceptibly.
“An advisor,” repeated Zion Johnson, trying to make sense of the meaning of word in this context. Politicians never just came out and said what they meant.
“Please, sit down, Mr. Johnson,” said Prowse. “You’re making me nervous.”
Zion Johnson glanced again at the girl, who continued to observe him impassively, shrugged, and took a seat across from the president.
“We were disappointed with the events in South Dakota,” Prowse said.
Here it comes, thought Zion Johnson. “Mr. President,” said Zion Johnson. “I’ll do whatever is required of me in service of my country. But I have to tell you right now that personal security is not my specialty.”
Prowse seemed confused. “Personal security?”
“I assume,” replied Zion Johnson, “that you want me to babysit our young guest here.”
At this, Prowse burst into laughter. The girl—Michelle, if that really was her name—smirked a little and rolled her eyes. Her reaction made the hair stand up on the back of Zion John
son’s neck. It wasn’t the dramatic exasperation of a teenage girl; it was the knowing smile of someone who was in on a joke that she despaired of anyone else ever getting.
“Michelle is not your concern,” the president said. “As I mentioned, she is an advisor. I know she looks too young to be able to advise me on anything but the latest Justin Bieber song, but looks can be deceiving.”
Zion Johnson smiled inwardly. Danton Prowse had a reputation of being “out of touch,” and he’d just confirmed it. Even Zion Johnson knew Justin Bieber hadn’t had a hit since his meltdown in 2014.
“Zion, I need you to focus,” said Prowse. “I’ve got a job that needs doing. It’s extremely dangerous, not technically legal, and needs to be done for the good of the country.”
“I’m listening,” said Zion Johnson.
Danton Prowse leaned back in his chair. “I assume you’re familiar with the Wormwood project?”
“Of course,” replied Zion Johnson. “Illegal project started by the Babcock administration to build a suitcase nuke. It cost him the election. It’s the reason you’re president.”
Prowse smiled painedly. “Hmm, that and my winning personality,” he said.
Zion Johnson said nothing.
“That was a joke,” added Prowse.
“I know,” replied Zion Johnson coolly. “Why did you ask me about Wormwood?”
Prowse glanced at Michelle, who was still quietly observing the two of them. “As you know, Wormwood was an embarrassment for this country. Not just for Travis Babcock, for the whole country. To lose track of such a powerful weapon… it doesn’t look good.”
“It doesn’t look particularly good for the executive branch to have gone completely rogue with a secret weapons program either,” said Zion Johnson.
“No, no, of course not,” replied Prowse hurriedly. “The whole thing, it was a big clusterfuck, the way it was handled. But you know, we’ve had these sorts of Constitutional squabbles before. Iran-Contra, the Teapot Dome scandal… it’s all part of the give-and-take of a healthy democracy. Losing a nuclear weapon, though… that’s just embarrassing. It damages our image overseas. I know you understand the importance of projecting a strong image to our enemies, Zion.”
Zion Johnson nodded, agreeing in principle, but not following where the conversation was going.
“I had a few meetings with Babcock during the transition period,” Prowse went on. “We agreed that it was of utmost importance that the bomb be located. And he made it very clear to me that was very unlikely to happen, unless… extraordinary steps were taken.”
“I don’t follow you, sir,” said Zion Johnson.
“Babcock assured me that if we were to cooperate and keep any nosy congressmen from poking around, and that if we put enough money into it, a bomb could be located. Do you follow me now, Zion?”
“You’re saying that the bomb that was lost…”
“…now is found,” finished Prowse. “Technically it’s not exactly the same bomb, but there’s no way anyone could know that.”
“How the hell did you manage to build another bomb?” Zion Johnson asked. “Wormwood was shut down. The facility was cleared out. There were inspections and congressional hearings. It was all over the news for two years!”
“We had some help,” said Prowse, glancing at Michelle. “We have… allies who are very good at hiding things, and very good at convincing people not to dig too deeply.”
Zion Johnson frowned. “But, Mr. President, if your concern was loss of face with other countries, why haven’t you produced the bomb? Why haven’t you gone public with it?”
Prowse sighed. “The problem is, even with help from our friends, the Wormwood bomb took nearly three years to replicate. By that time, the damage had been done. At this point, everybody just assumes the bomb is hidden away in some top secret facility. After all, if it had been stolen by terrorists, they would have used it by now. It would almost be more embarrassing for us to come out and say, ‘Hey, look what we found!’”
Zion Johnson shook his head. “Just so I understand you correctly, your response to your predecessor’s career-ending scandal was to recreate the exact conditions that led to that scandal?”
“I suppose that’s one way to look at it,” said Prowse. “The difference is that we’re not going to get caught. And even if we do, how upset can people really get at this point? If a Republican president can run a secret nuclear weapons program behind Congress’ back, then it’s only fair that my party gets a shot at it.”
Zion Johnson shrugged and nodded. It made sense in a completely amoral, Machiavellian way—which is the way Zion Johnson tended to look at things anyway. It was why he kept getting put in charge of illegal top secret programs.
“So what is my involvement in all this?” Zion Johnson asked. “What do you want me to do?”
“Well, as you know,” Prowse said. “There’s been a lot of pushback lately regarding some of our more aggressive anti-terrorism policies. A lot of bleeding heart types making noise about civil liberties and whatnot. And I get it, I do. I mean, I campaigned on a lot of that stuff. Transparency, civil liberties, it’s all good stuff in theory. But it’s getting to the point where it’s getting difficult for me to do my job, which is to keep the American people safe.”
“I understand,” said Zion Johnson.
“The problem is, people have forgotten how great the threat to our way of life is. We prevent these attacks—like that attempted poison gas attack in the New York subway last week, but it doesn’t really penetrate. People don’t understand how close we are, all the time, to the brink of chaos. I see the intelligence reports, and let me tell you, it’s some scary shit. I mean, what if Wormwood had been stolen by terrorists? Can you imagine?”
“I can,” said Zion Johnson, carefully.
“Do you know what the original purpose of Wormwood was? They were trying to determine how small a nuclear bomb could be made, so that we’d know what to look for. I guess it turned out that the simplest way to figure that out was to actually build the bomb. Of course, nobody else has a hundred billion dollars in secret funds to spend on building a miniature nuke, but still, it’s scary to think how easy it would be to detonate something like that in a medium-sized American city.”
Zion Johnson regarded the president coldly. “How easy would it be?”
“For someone with your skills and contacts,” replied Prowse, “it would be a cakewalk.”
Zion Johnson stared at the president, trying to parse his words. “Sir, are you suggesting…?”
“Such a bomb must never be detonated in a heavily populated area,” said Prowse. He turned to Michelle, who nodded slightly. “What I’m envisioning is a scenario in which Homeland Security narrowly saves an entire city from destruction, and the bomb detonates safely somewhere nearby. Far enough away not to cause any serious damage, but close enough to put the fear of God into the citizens.”
Ah, thought Zion Johnson. This was more like it. When he had been mysteriously instructed to ‘step back’ his efforts to wipe out Chaos Faction, he suspected something like this was in the works. It was about time somebody in the Oval Office had the balls to do what was necessary to protect America from its enemies. He never expected that person to be Danton Prowse, though—and as he glanced over at the young girl sitting quietly to his left, it occurred to him that maybe it wasn’t.
“What city do you think the terrorists would pick?” he asked. “Baltimore?”
“Too big. Too close to Washington, D.C.”
Zion Johnson nodded. Medium-sized city, far from Washington, he thought. “Modesto, California?”
“Too obvious. Travis Babcock’s hometown. And have you ever been there? A nuke would improve the place.”
“Also, California’s not a swing state,” said Zion Johnson.
Prowse smiled. “I like the way you think,” he said. “I was thinking Grand Rapids, Michigan.”
“A conservative stronghold in a Democrat-leaning state,” sai
d Zion Johnson.
“Exactly.”
Zion Johnson frowned, turning to look at Michelle. She met his gaze impassively. It was clear he wasn’t going to get a straight answer about who this little girl really was. Maybe he would never know. But Zion Johnson, having worked with agents from Mossad and the Saudi Arabian intelligence service, was used to dealing with shadowy figures. If the president didn’t want to tell him who she was, he didn’t have to. Danton Prowse didn’t answer to Zion Johnson. All Zion Johnson needed to know was that this mission served America’s interests.
He turned back to Danton Prowse. “Mr. President,” he said, “is this some sort of test?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, are you pretending to propose a false flag terrorist attack just to see how I’ll react?”
“Why would I do that?”
“I’m not sure. Either you’re testing my conscience or my loyalty.”
The president leaned forward and studied Zion Johnson’s face. “Do you have a conscience, Zion?”
Zion Johnson thought for a moment. “A conscience is a weakness of the will, sir.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“My will is strong, sir,” said Zion Johnson.
“Good,” said Prowse. He turned toward Michelle. “What do you think?”
The girl eyed Zion Johnson for a moment, then said, “I think he will do.”
Prowse nodded and turned back to Zion Johnson. “So, Zion, are you in?”
“I’m in.”
“Excellent,” replied Prowse. “Oh, one more question. “Aren’t you a Republican?”
“I am,” said Zion Johnson. “But my country comes first.”
Chapter Five
Brimstone Research Facility, Milpitas, California; August 2016
Mercury Revolts: (Book Four of the Mercury Series) Page 4
