“Yes!” Cal replied, too loud and too quickly. “I mean, yes, please. If you don’t mind?”
Laughing at his eagerness and awkwardness, she smiled at him before speaking through half a mouthful of pancakes.
“Of course I don’t mind, silly,” she said. “Shall I come back here or do you want to come to my place?” The playful smile said it all. After her descriptions about how bad her hotel was, the answer was obvious.
“Let’s stay at my place, shall we?” Cal replied with an attempted American accent.
“Yes please,” she said, attempting her own approximation of Cal’s accent and managing to make the conversation sound like a low-budget production of Mary Poppins, “if you don’t mind?”
“Not at all,” he said, blushing with excitement and happiness.
They agreed a time to meet, and he got an additional key card from the reception desk which he insisted she take despite her saying that it was too much. He told her if she got back first to grab a shower and order a bottle of something from room service, thinking that the cost would be worth it for her company.
“What are y’all doing this morning then?” she asked him, stacking up more pancakes and impaling them on her fork.
“No idea,” he replied honestly, “where would you suggest?”
“Well that depends,” she answered seriously, pausing to chew as she pointed the fork at him, “do the tourist thing, or go and see the real power of the US and visit the stock exchange!”
“Okay!” said Cal, calling her bluff and taking the suggestion seriously.
~
Riding the subway and wearing a stupid smile of satisfaction and happiness, Cal headed south and rose above ground to the packed streets around Wall Street. He felt as though he were intruding in the busy seat of western capitalism, as though every man or woman wearing a suit and walking fast with their eyes glued to their cell phones were a millionaire investment banker he associated with movies he had seen.
Wandering carefree through the streets, which yesterday had caused him to feel lonely and oppressed, he smiled at everything he saw. Turning into the street under guidance from the map on his phone, he saw military personnel patrolling in pairs, heavy barriers erected to prevent cars from entering the street, and no less than six officers of the NYPD visible in the iconic uniform which was such an everyday sight for native New Yorkers, but a tourist attraction in itself for Cal.
Craning his head back a little, he paused amidst the rushing crowds to take a picture of the Stock Exchange.
Friday 12:25 p.m. - Free America Movement Headquarters
“Butler,” he said into the phone after the room had been cleared of all personnel. “Yes, confirm we are good to go,” he said, hanging up the phone and calling his staff back inside where they had all congregated to watch the news screens.
~
On the other end of the satellite call, the voice signing off from Butler put down their equivalent device and picked up the landline on the desk. Speaking rapidly in English but using a complex series of words, which made no sense to anyone overhearing the one-sided conversation, he replaced the handset and leaned back in satisfaction.
Saturday 12:25 a.m. Local Time, Beijing
Sixty-six hundred miles away, another man had received a phone call. After listening intently to the information, he replaced the handset and leaned back to look up into the expectant faces of a half-dozen uniformed officers and one mysterious woman in a dark suit. The intelligence services wore no rank or insignia, and offered no names—only their department. That opened any door, and removed all but the most secure of resistance to their questions.
Speaking rapidly but strongly in Mandarin, he gave a short speech and issued orders.
“The operation is about to proceed as planned,” he said, feeling the nervous tension in the room. “To your duties,” he ordered, and the office emptied leaving only a black-suited woman. She approached the man at the desk, intimidating him with her sheer presence.
“You are sure of this?” she asked, the threat of failure evident in her tone.
“Yes,” he replied, meeting her gaze as though he truly believed his answer. “By tomorrow we will have crippled them and their eyes will be facing elsewhere,” he said, showing her a clenched fist to emphasize his point.
Friday 12:28 p.m. – Washington, D.C.
“Atteeeeen-HUH,” called the master sergeant. Major Taylor walked into the hangar-sized building flanked by his junior officers to the sound of his brigade stamping their boots.
“At ease,” he called out, removing his cap and surveying the front rank of his troops decked out in full battle gear.
“You know what we are doing here will be called treason by some,” he said, as though everyone present didn’t realize the danger of the mission. “Anyone wishing to stand down has my permission to do so now. You will not be punished, but you will be confined to barracks under guard until the mission is complete.” He let that hang, watching his assembled force for any sign of hesitation.
Every man and woman, every soldier under his command, stared resolutely forward. He took that as a sign that nobody had second thoughts.
“Okay then. Team one is under the command of Captain Anderson, the rest are with me as QRF. Let’s move out!”
Taylor replaced his cap and turned to the passenger side of the command Humvee. His battle helmet was on the seat and he switched the cap for the ballistic protection. Dressed similarly to his troops, including the M4 propped against the seat, his decision to lead the quick reaction force gave him an element of removal from the mission which gave him better oversight. He trusted Anderson to do his duty, and the hand-picked members of team one had his total faith. The big engine gunned and rolled out, followed by the second Humvee and the three troop carriers behind.
~
Rodriguez halted his truck just inside the entrance to the Holland tunnel and hit the four-way flashers. He checked his watch, closed the door of the cab and walked away. A dozen other small trucks were doing the same all over the city, and each stranded vehicle, one by one, caught fire from the incendiary device buried in the load of waste PVC plastic. Within minutes, almost every major route in and out of the city was a panicked mess of boiling black smoke and toxic fumes.
~
Leland checked his watch and held his breath as the seconds ticked down. His watch was analogue, a relic he had to wind up daily, but it kept good time and wouldn’t be affected by what was about to happen. Glancing up at the skyline of Wall Street, he muttered a single word to himself.
“Go.”
ORDO AB CHAO
Friday 12:30 p.m. - New York Stock Exchange
At the precise moment it was supposed to, the timer attached to the suitcase-sized EMP buried deep in the bowels of the exchange ticked to zero, and a loud click echoed amongst the whirring banks of flashing lights. A strange hum reverberated through the air, almost imperceptibly, and the banks of computers went dark all at once.
Upstairs on the trading floor, where sweat-covered men and women shouted to one another with phones pressed to their ears, the lights went out. The computers stopped working and blinked into oblivion, and the noise first rose in intensity to a deafening crescendo, then fell to a grumbling as they all waited for the backup power to come online and reboot the world market.
Seconds ticked by and nothing happened. Voices began to rise to demand the power come back on, as though rude indignation and the feeling that time was money could will it to happen. Still nothing happened.
The collective intelligence of everyone on the floor failed to grasp that their machines were not going to come back to life, and they milled about in confusion like chickens in a coop waiting to be fed.
A muted crack and an answering rumble penetrated the sounds inside the building, causing a moment of silence before shouted questions began to pierce the grumbling.
~
Outside, just as Cal was trying to get the right angle for his selfie, the screen of h
is phone unexpectedly went black. Frowning, he tried to turn it back on without success. He cursed the phone, the manufacturers, and everything else as he had just seen the battery indicator showing 88 percent before it died. Reverting to the most British of approaches when dealing with faulty technology, he tried to hit it twice and turn it on again without success.
Just as he was coming to terms that he was now in the dark ages and cut off from the world he accessed through the phone, he glanced around to see almost everyone else doing the same.
Hang on, he thought, that can’t be right.
Just as the realization hit home that something had affected the entire area and not singled him out to ruin his day, a loud crack rang out from a nearby street.
He couldn’t have known, but a trash can had exploded on the street, killing six pedestrians outright and blowing out the plate glass windows of all the nearby stores in great shards. Smoke rose from the explosion and caused instant panic.
Cal had ducked instinctively at the sudden noise, not having heard anything similar for many years but never forgetting the sound. As vivid as his distant memory was when it came to explosions and war, the city of New York had a far more intense collective memory when it came to terror attacks.
Fearing the reactions of the people more than the explosion, Cal turned and began walking fast in the opposite direction, desperate to get off the street as a second sound reached his ears. The unmistakable whoosh of a rocket and the answering crack of a second explosion ripped the air.
It was definitely time to get the hell out of there.
~
A woman with her hoodie pulled up hiding her face in shadow skipped down the steps of the subway station, her backpack bouncing uncomfortably as its heavy load impacted her lower back. Slipping it from her shoulders, she flicked a switch on the top and surreptitiously dropped it at the side of a trash can. The subway was so busy, and everyone but the crazies avoided eye contact, so it was a simple thing to do and remain unnoticed. Jumping through the sliding doors of the train about to depart, she flicked back her hood and checked her watch.
~
Captain Michael Anderson led his troops along Washington Avenue and right up to the gates of the power plant.
“Sir, you need to evacuate this facility immediately,” he barked at the guard on the gate, brandishing a blank sheet of paper as though it were his authority to demand action.
Act like you own the place, his father had once told him before he left home to join the military, and remember it’s only you who will know that you don’t have the authority.
So now he did just that, and all his bluster, urgency and authority terrified the guard. He didn’t know what to do first, but before he could even formulate any answer Anderson snapped at him again.
“Get this goddamned gate open, now, and clear the area!” he yelled, climbing back into the Humvee. The gate slid open, and Anderson’s vehicle led the way inside at speed leaving a stunned guard totally unsure what to do next. He decided that the best course of action was to hit the alarm button, and evacuate the area immediately, just as he was told to.
By the time Anderson’s convoy had arrived at the main plant, people were already starting to file out of the entrance in confusion. He had to maintain his momentum, not allow time or opportunity for anyone to question his presence there or that of thirty heavily armed National Guardsmen. Yelling at the workers to evacuate, he pushed inside. His troops followed, repeating his orders for people to get the fuck out of there and ad-libbing with pushes and curses as the confused workers sped up for the exits.
An audible alarm was sounding now, adding to the panic and making it easier to get everyone out. Their intelligence said that less than a hundred civilians would be on site, and that seemed consistent with the exodus Anderson was witnessing.
Halting, taking a knee and pulling out a schematic drawing, he glanced around and pointed toward a tall structure. No orders were necessary; the four-man team carrying a heavy load between them trotted toward it. The device had been collected in secret that morning, a tired courier giving the instruction face-to-face from memory, and to his eyes was more than big enough to perform the task. His two trained EOD—explosive ordnance disposal—guys set it up and gave him a thumbs-up sign.
“Two-minute warning, clear out,” he yelled, seeing his troops scurrying for the exit. Last man out, Anderson stole a last glance at the device from the threshold and saw a man in the uniform of the plant leaning over it and pulling a call phone from his pocket.
Anderson dropped to one knee again and raised his rifle. The man filled the optic, meaning that he couldn’t miss from that distance, and he didn’t hesitate. Firing two short bursts, Anderson reacquired the target to see the man slumped lifelessly over the device. He sensed two of his soldiers returning to offer him fire support, knowing that both would be scanning for a target which had caused their officer to fire his weapon.
“Move out,” he said, climbing back to his feet, and setting off for the Humvee at a run.
His troops were bawling at the crowd of workers to get back, to clear the area, as some had returned to find out the source of the obvious gunfire. Bypassing the vehicles, he ran to the front and pushed through the line of soldiers. Without hesitation once more, he flicked the safety off his weapon and emptied the remainder of the magazine into the air.
“Get the fuck back!” he screamed at them. “The plant is going to blow!”
This got their attention, and they turned and ran. The speed at which they were running in obvious desperation made Anderson worry about the blast radius. He climbed back into the vehicle and led the convoy back to Washington Avenue, his driver weaving around the fleeing workers expertly before he was forced to slow at the gate. Anderson was watching in the side mirror as the sudden crunch of tires jolted him forwards. Turning to his driver he saw the young man’s eyes locked ahead, just as he turned his head to see three Metro police cruisers slew to block the road. Five cops got out of the three cars and took cover behind the engine blocks, all aiming their sidearms at the lead Humvee.
Anderson was no coward. He regretted having to kill the man in the plant but his use of a cell phone next to an armed explosive device was a risk he couldn’t allow, as a premature detonation could endanger the lives of his men. Still, engaging local police in a one-sided gunfight was not a prospect he relished; these cops were like him, just troops doing their jobs.
The decision to engage was taken out of his hands.
Taylor’s QRF had been on approach when the cruisers pulled up. Without hesitation, and perhaps more bloodthirsty than Anderson, he ordered his driver to take them out. Their Humvee hit the first cruiser side-on, crushing it into the second car and the two cops taking cover between the cars with it. The two wrecks piled into the third, ramming it up the curb and flipping it onto its side where it landed on another cop and killed him instantly.
With the road clear, Anderson’s convoy fell in line behind Taylor’s as they headed for Capitol Hill. Behind them, the air turned bright red and then went black as the huge explosion ripped the power plant to pieces, shutting down the power grid to the whole city.
~
Cal regained his feet from the horror of the explosion at the subway after the backpack’s contents had incinerated the stairwell. His confusion and fear were running at previously unknown levels, but he needed the safety and security of somewhere away from this place of fire and screams. Something in his subconscious told him to start running, to get back to the hotel, and be safe. He had run almost an entire block north, at least he hoped it was north, before it dawned on him that Louise was out there somewhere. He hadn’t even asked which part of the city she was visiting, eager not to cramp her free-spirited style with such mundane questions.
He fled, breathing heavily as the deafness became a painful screeching in his skull as muted sounds returned to him. He could make out screams, and even more sirens than normal. Everywhere people ran, desperate to fin
d safety but not knowing where to get it.
Twice more he was knocked to the ground by panicked people running and not looking where they were going as the mass of bodies sought refuge off the streets. Buildings were being assaulted by crowds trying to get under cover but still Cal ran as best he could to get back to his hotel, to find Louise, and to get the hell out of there.
Traffic was at a total standstill, and when Cal got out to the bigger streets he saw vehicles being abandoned where they sat in the traffic jams with people leaving their doors open and running. A woman was trying to get the seatbelt off her terrified daughter and almost dragged the girl from the car to sweep her up into her arms. She paused, the child screaming and crying next to her ear, to lock her car with the key fob and zip her purse closed before she hefted the girl higher and ran with her left hand protectively over the back of the child’s head. Everywhere Cal looked, he saw people in need of help. People surged in and out of the subway entrances, not knowing what he knew about the explosion which could have killed him, but his shouts of warning went unheard.
Prioritize, he thought sternly, look after yourself.
Even in his current state of physical fitness, five miles would have been an easy distance to cover. Five miles over broken ground without the added incentive of staying alive would have been easier than what he faced, as five miles across a packed city where panic and chaos spread like tear gas was almost impossible. He ran so hard that he even escaped some of the terror for a time, until the news of what had happened spread further up the island.
Cal didn’t know, but the island of Manhattan was effectively cut off and things were only going to get worse.
Burning Skies_The Fall Page 6
