‘Governor ready?’ asked Culver. ‘I got the admiral. Pulled him from the mouths of the lions by my own hand.’
The second receptionist, the one having so much trouble making her call, nodded at them. ‘Go on through, Mr Culver,’ she said tersely. ‘They’re waiting.’
As the big man led him through, a thought occurred to Ritchie. ‘Why pack the suit, if you’re on holidays, Mr Culver?’
The lawyer smiled back over his shoulder. ‘Ah, you’re a man who thinks like my good wife, sir,’ he replied. ‘Come on, meet the Governor.’
Culver seemed unnaturally assured of his place, given that he was little more than an interloper, but he’d obviously been of some help to the administration through the madness of the last twelve hours. There was any number of legitimate government officers trapped behind the velvet rope down the corridor who had more claim to be here than him. But here he was, and there they were, frozen out by a couple of state-sponsored bouncers. In a way, it gave Ritchie some hope. Perhaps things weren’t as shambolic as they seemed.
Governor Linda Lingle was waiting for them just inside the office, flanked by a couple of suits. Her eyes were framed by the same haunted appearance he was beginning to recognise on everyone. If he looked in the mirror he’d doubtless see the same expression staring back.
‘Admiral, thank you for coming down,’ said Lingle, sounding very tired. ‘I understand you must be very busy. Please, sit down. We’ll get on with this as quickly as we can.’
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ said Ritchie, shaking her hand and then those of the other people in the room, whom the governor introduced as heads of various departments.
‘How did the city look to you, Admiral, on your drive down here?’ she asked.
Ritchie didn’t see any point in using weasel words. ‘Your curfew isn’t holding, ma’am. It’s being widely ignored. The state troopers and police are using a very light hand. I wouldn’t say there was panic on the streets, but the shops will run empty very soon, and then you’ll see some real fear and probably some violence. There’s a lot of people trying to get out, tourists, I suppose – although, who knows. If you want my advice, do everything you can to get them on a plane with all dispatch.’
Lingle nodded and pursed her lips. Her staffers’ reactions were mixed. One bristled, two others nodded vigorously. Jed Culver remained impassive.
‘I don’t want to see any more troops on my streets. In fact, I’d prefer not to see any out there at all, Admiral, and I’m sure you’d rather not have to employ your people here either, but it might not be a bad idea to prepare for the worst anyway. I’m sure you must have a plan in some bottom drawer somewhere for this sort of thing.’
‘Not really,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘But there’ll be something somewhere about aid to the civil power in situations of extreme crisis – such as a mega-tsunami or super-volcano, or similar catastrophes. It shouldn’t be beyond our abilities to adapt. But, Madam Governor, if I may, there is a related issue I’d like to raise very briefly, that of executive authority.’
Culver and Lingle did an odd, unrehearsed double act. The lawyer leaned forward keenly on his chair, while the governor rubbed her eyes and sat back in her own.
‘Go on, Admiral,’ she said.
Ritchie snapped open his briefcase and handed over a sheaf of documents. ‘I had the JAG office here run up this brief for you, ma’am. It’s about the line of succession. Realistically, the President isn’t coming back. Nor any of the cabinet or other nominated successors. In terms of elected officials who can assume the office of Presidency, as best we can tell right now it’s you, the deputy governor in Anchorage, or maybe the Speaker of the state house in Washington.’
‘Oh,’ said Lingle, as an uncomfortable stillness wrapped itself around the room. ‘So, which one of us?’
Ritchie glanced over at Culver, who was now watching him like a rattler. ‘Frankly, ma’am, it could be any of you. There is no statute or precedent covering a disaster of this magnitude. Between you and me, we may have to make it up as we go.’
Jed Culver eased himself back a little. His shoulders, which had been noticeably hunched up, relaxed.
‘He’s right, Madam Governor,’ the lawyer offered, unbidden. ‘Elaine Chao, the Secretary of Labor, is in Geneva – I checked – but she is not a native-born citizen and so is specifically barred from the office. There is no procedure for dealing with this. Even a nuclear war would not have decapitated the government as cleanly and completely. The admiral is correct. We need to make it up as we go. And we do need to act. I’m sure Admiral Ritchie is thinking of his comrades in the Gulf, and that’s only reasonable, but there are still millions of US citizens who haven’t been taken up, or whatever, by this thing, and they need to be protected.’
‘But can we protect them from the Wave?’ she asked. ‘My understanding is that you have no idea what it is, Admiral.’
Before Ritchie could answer, Culver butted in again. ‘That may be so, ma’am, but that’s not what I mean. Maybe that thing will gobble us all up before breakfast. In which case, too bad. But the world is a cruel and unusual enough place, even without bad Star Trek episodes suddenly leaping off the screen at us.’
One of the younger aides couldn’t help himself. ‘There was a Star Trek episode…?’
Culver shrugged. ‘I’m extemporising.’
‘Oh. Okay.’
‘Gentlemen,’ said Lingle, raising the sheaf of papers. ‘I’ll read these tonight, I promise. But you’ve seen what’s happening out there. My immediate responsibility is to the people of Hawaii. That’s who I was elected to serve and protect, and, for now, that is the extent of my office. Admiral, I can understand, given the situation in Iraq, why you need to resolve this, but for now can I suggest that you simply use whatever chain of command has survived the day. You know what you have to do and how to do it. I presume you won’t be going ahead with any attack?’
Everyone in the room was suddenly staring at him, hard. Ritchie had spent decades in the military and every cell in his body rebelled at the idea of having to discuss operational issues in a forum such as this, but what choice did he have?
‘Madam Governor,’ he began, ‘given the circumstances, no, at this stage we are not intending to commence hostilities. For one thing, as I’ve made clear, we have no executive authority to begin a war.’
‘Bush signing a bit of paper wouldn’t have given you -’
‘Quiet, Jim,’ Lingle snapped at the staffer who’d spoken out of turn. ‘It’s not the time or the place. Go on, Admiral.’
Ritchie ignored the distraction. ‘But in any event, that decision may be taken out of our hands if the Iraqis themselves attack.’
‘Is that likely? It would be suicide for them.’
‘Yes, ma’am, it would,’ agreed Ritchie. ‘But rationality went down the toilet today.’
A few moments’ silence followed, with everyone locked inside their own thoughts.
‘Well,’ Lingle said at last. ‘As I said, you have an intact chain of command – use it as necessary. For now, we have our own problem right here. These islands cannot feed themselves. There isn’t going to be any food coming from the mainland and people are going to starve if we don’t get it from somewhere else, and soon.’
* * * *
14
KUWAIT
The night-time desert was a crumpled drift of blue-white silk below the chopper, which was all hot metal and grease and the suffocating body odour of soldiers. In the gloom it enfolded him like an unpleasant memory. Bret Melton had jumped out of helicopters and into another war not far from here, not long ago, and at times while riding out towards the line he had wondered if he’d be doing the same thing in another ten years. And ten more after that, forever and ever, amen. Now he knew that he wouldn’t.
The thundering engine and rotors made normal conversation impossible but the four troopers in the cabin with him all needed to talk, to know what was happening back in the real world.
In the faint glow leaking through from the cockpit, their faces were hollowed out and haunted. They all knew him, or knew of him. As a former Ranger, Melton was a popular embed. His shit was stowed according to regs and he could be trusted. He was as close to a believer as an outsider could be. Hitching the flight back to 3rd Infantry Division, the questions started as soon as they recognised him.
‘What the fuck’s happening, man?’
‘What about our families?’
‘Is it a fucking attack or what, dude?’
He’d done his best to explain what he knew, but really, what did he know? As Melton had laid it out for them, bellowing over the thump of the rotor blades, the looks on their faces had made him feel like a mental case. They gaped in horror and disbelief as he described what he’d seen and heard – and how could he blame them? He couldn’t really believe it himself. He sounded authentically mad. After twenty minutes they’d all lapsed into silence and the rest of the flight passed in a sort of stunned, half-catatonic state. Melton knew that by the time these guys relayed the news to their friends, it’d be totally bent out of shape, but he didn’t see much point in holding anything back. Everything they were defending was gone. Their homes and loved ones – everything. They had a right to know. In fact, that was the only reason he was still here. He had open tickets back to Paris and could check out any time he wanted, but he could no more fly out to Paris than he could to New York now. He had no immediate family. No steady girlfriend. His relationships had always been short term and contingent. One woman he’d been closer to than most called him ‘commitment phobic’, but she was wrong. Melton wasn’t scared of commitment; he just wasn’t committed to her. Ever since he’d left the army after Somalia he’d had one faith, one love from which he could not be diverted: the telling of soldiers’ stories.
The pilot’s voice came through, a clipped monotone announcing they were five minutes out. Melton craned around on his perch and briefly popped his head out into the slipstream. The 1st Brigade Combat Team’s desert base wasn’t totally blacked out, but it was much darker than the last time he’d come in, three days ago. Even so, under the moon it still glowed as a bed of pearls in the wide vessel of shadows that was the desert at night. On a satellite image, the tent city and masses of equipment would show up as a vast glowing metropolis of blood and iron, but what the hell. There was no sense in making it easy for Saddam, hence the blackout.
They flew in low, flaring and pivoting for the touchdown on a steel-mesh landing pad. A storm of gritty, stinging sand blasted into the cabin, scouring any exposed skin and working its way in through the layers of clothing Melton had drawn tightly around himself. One of the soldiers slapped him on the shoulder and grimly mouthed, ‘Thanks anyway, buddy’, before leaping out and hurrying off, bent double. The Army Times correspondent – or was he a former correspondent now? – followed the others out into the chill darkness, intending to head for the tent where some of the journalists maintained a rudimentary press club with a small stash of carefully hoarded bourbon and beer.
‘Mr Melton? Sir?’
‘Lieutenant Euler?’
Melton recognised him immediately. The platoon commander, who, at six-and-a-half foot, was forced into a very exaggerated stoop by the Blackhawk’s spinning rotors, hurried forward and took Melton by the elbow, steering him away from his intended heading.
‘Captain wants to see you, sir. We’re getting set to roll on fifteen minutes’ notice.’
‘Roll where?’
‘Don’t know, sir. But Captain Lohberger needs you over at headquarters. The squadron commander will want to hear what you have to say as well.’
‘About what’s happened back home?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Both men carefully stood up as they cleared the track of the rotor blades. Melton hoisted his backpack into a slightly more comfortable position and tried to take in as much as he could of his surroundings. Something was going to happen soon and the knowledge of it left a weird coppery taste in the back of his mouth. They hurried down from the rise of the makeshift helipad, diving into a small tent city laid out in a strict grid pattern, much of it obscured by the tan camouflage nets. Away from the overwhelming din of the chopper, he began to hear shouts and curses as non-coms wrangled their squads towards assembly points while junior officers like Euler gathered up platoons and began clicking them into larger units for deployment in the field. He could hear the whine of Abrams gas turbines and the snarl of Bradley fighting vehicles somewhere nearby, and overlaying it all was the ceaseless thumping of rotor blades as dozens of helicopters pirouetted through the inky black sky above them. The metallic, oily taste of diesel mixed with the grit and dust kicked up by the Blackhawk filled his sinuses. He pulled out a rag and blew his nose, knowing that the snot would be blood-flecked from the dirt.
‘Do you mind if I ask you a question, sir?’ said Euler, as they double-timed past a tent where a group of men in uniforms and berets he recognised as British SAS were hunkered around a table. One of the commandos levelled a hard stare at him and flicked the tent flap closed. ‘Is it true, sir, what we’ve been hearing?’
Melton squinted against the sand, which was already coating the inside of his mouth and nostrils. ‘I don’t know what you’ve heard, exactly, Lieutenant. But it’s gone. Home. Everyone there has gone.’
Euler’s face twisted into a mask of despair. ‘I’d heard it was a jihad attack. Bio weapons or nukes, or something. Took out a bunch of cities.’
They turned a corner, nearly running into a couple of MPs.
‘Watch where you’re going, asshole,’ one of them barked, surprising Melton with a female voice. She was built thicker and closer to the ground than him. He muttered a hasty apology and moved on.
‘No, this is nothing to do with the jihadis. Unless it was merciful fucking Allah, of course, like Saddam is telling everyone. But nobody knows. Some kinda weird energy bubble or something. Seems to have zapped away all the primates inside its boundary.’
Euler looked aghast. ‘Primates?’
‘Just before I took off, that was the latest on CNN. Some Japanese blogger checking webcams of the San Diego Zoo noticed all the monkeys were gone. Didn’t take long to work it out from there.’
‘Holy shit,’ said the lieutenant in a small, choked voice that was completely at odds with his towering frame.
The reporter knew exactly what was going through his mind. He’d seen that same reaction many times today. Lieutenant Euler was counting his losses. Children and partner, if he had them. Mom and dad, ditto. Brothers. Sisters. Old friends and new. Neighbours. Faces on the streets where he once lived, even if he didn’t know their names. Ex-girlfriends. Classmates from school. A widening gyre of personal history, all of it sucked away in some freakish moment when the laws of physics got turned inside out. Any moment now he’d look around, like a child who’d woken up in a strange room, trying to figure out where he was and how to put everything back in its place. There.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Melton, but Euler just shook his head.
‘This sucks,’ he breathed. ‘Everyone?’
‘Most everyone,’ he confirmed. ‘Seattle’s still there. Alaska. Hawaii. Coupla places in Canada. That’s it, though.’
‘Man… Oh shit, here we are.’
They stepped into a large frame tent, one of the newer types that came with power outlets and lighting. It was nicer than the Korean War-era GP Mediums he used to spend time in. Melton recognised the tense, guarded body language of men who were used to facing the worst possible situations, but had never really expected anything this bad. He was almost rocked back on his heels by the concentrated force of their attention when they recognised him.
‘Come in, gentlemen,’ a voice called out. ‘We’re pressed for time here, Bret.’
Melton nodded a quick greeting at Captain Christian Lohberger, Bravo Troop CO, 5-7th Cav, and the only man in the tent who routinely used Melton’s first name. Everyone else referred to him as ‘si
r’, or ‘Mr Melton’. Being called ‘sir’ beat ‘hooah’ or ‘Rangers lead the way’., the last of which Melton found increasingly annoying over the years, especially hearing the Ranger war cry from pukes who most definitely were not Rangers and were never going to be Rangers. And as a former grunt, the ‘sir’ thing had greatly amused him at first. Nothing much amused him at the moment, however.
‘I’m guessing Iraq’s not why you wanted to see me,’ he said.
Lohberger shook his head and cut straight to the bone. ‘No. We’re getting nothing but smoke blown up our asses from Division on down. What the hell is going on?’
Melton dropped his bag by the trestle table, on which a map of the Kuwait-Iraq borderlands rested. It was a covered in a swirl of red and blue lines and unit markings. The faces around the tent were grim and focused entirely on him.
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