(Wrath-04)-Breathless (2012)

by Chris Stewart

  As the fireball rose, it grew dark, a horrible red and purplish hue. Below it, there was nothing but black ash and baked earth.

  The fireball began to dissipate.

  Across the city, the devastation spread for miles in a near-perfect ring. Two miles under the detonation, there was nothing but blackness and smoke, a circle of smooth ash and nearly perfect level ground. Here and there, a steel rod or square of cement protruded from the smoothed-over debris, but that was all. Three miles from the center, a few steel structures remained, the framework of once-mighty office buildings and grand hotels. Here, the sidewalks were baked into ash and the hulks of burned-out cars were tossed on their sides. Four miles from the epicenter, at Bolling Air Force Base, the presidential fleet of helicopters had been burned in their hangars, melted like wax. Cars and buses had been lifted, blown into pieces, and scattered through the air. The devastation grew less intense with each passing mile, but it was seven miles out before there could be found a green blade of grass.

  A few minutes after the explosion, the fireball rose into the atmosphere and normal daylight returned.

  Then the sounds and smells of human suffering began to drift through the air.

  NINETEEN

  Blade 45, twenty-six miles southwest of Basra, Iraq

  Captain Samuel Brighton sat in the gunner’s seat, looking out on the nighttime desert as it passed below. Bono sat opposite him. They were the only two men in the helicopter, except for the pilots, who were sitting in the cockpit in front. The cabin doors of the HH-60 helicopter were pinned back, and the cool night wind gusted though the open cabin. The pilots were talking to each other, using the helicopter intercom. Sam and Bono sat in silence. They wore their combat fatigues, and underneath their seats were four tan-and-brown canvas bags. All of their gear had been stuffed inside them. They held their Kevlar® helmets in their hands.

  “Where we going?” Sam asked Bono. He had to yell above the roar of the engines and blades to be heard.

  Bono shrugged, and then leaned closer to Sam’s ear. “We’re picking up a charter flight down in Basra. Someone’s going to meet us. That’s really all I know.”

  “Come on, come on, I think you know more than that.”

  Bono shook his head. “Really, that’s all the colonel would tell me for now.”

  Sam sat back, satisfied. “We’re going to be Cherokees, baby!” He slapped Bono on the knee. “The best of the best. The razor tip of the spear!”

  Bono leaned closer to him so he didn’t have to yell quite so loud. “I thought that Deltas were the best.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s before we were invited to join the Cherokees.”

  “You realize, of course, that we’re so good we won’t even be able to tell anyone what we do. There’ll be no pride or ego. We won’t be able to say anything. The Cherokees are so highly classified; we can’t even confirm our code word. We can’t brag. We can’t talk. And when we hear the cover story they provide us, I bet we’ll see that the girls will not be impressed.”

  Sam deflated a little, and then brightened up again. “When it’s over, we can tell them.”

  Bono smiled and nodded.

  Sam peered at the moonlit night passing by. Reflecting the moon, the desert looked like a huge, silver ocean, the dunes enormous waves that were frozen at their crest. “Why do you think they chose us?” Sam asked after a while.

  Bono was sucking on a lollipop, and he pulled it from his mouth. “They chose me,” he yelled, “because I’m fluent in Arabic. That, and I could pass for any of the locals, thanks to my mother, you know. They chose you because you’re a combat stud. Best leader in the unit. Since the day that I got here, that’s how I felt. After what you did for that girl—”

  There was a sudden motion from the front of the cockpit, and both men looked forward. One of the pilots was shaking. The other one had lifted both arms to the sky. He seemed to cry out in anguish, and the helicopter wobbled up on its side. The two soldiers glanced at the pilots, and then looked at each other. “What’s going on?” Sam asked.

  Bono shook his head.

  The helicopter suddenly dropped toward the desert, flared aggressively, then set down hard on the rocks and bounced until it came to a stop. The engines kept going, but both pilots stared ahead. One of them wiped his Nomex® glove across his face. The other one bowed his head. They seemed to have forgotten about the two combat soldiers in the back completely.

  Bono watched, shaking his head in confusion. “Might be engine trouble,” he said.

  Sam had been on helicopters when they’d had engine trouble before. This wasn’t an engine problem. This was something else.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” he shouted to the pilot nearest him.

  Both of them ignored him. Either that or they didn’t hear.

  “I’ll find out,” Bono said. He undid his harness and crawled forward. “What’s happening?” he asked.

  Both of the pilots were crying. Bono’s face showed confusion and fear. Sam watched him carefully, a sickness rising inside him. The copilot rolled the throttles back so he could talk to Bono without yelling. Bono listened, and then seemed to crumple as if someone had punched him in the gut.

  He looked up to ask another question, but the pilot shook his head.

  Bono hunched his shoulders, looked away, and then pushed himself backward across the cabin floor. Even in the dim light, Sam could see that his face was pale. “What is it?” Sam demanded.

  “Oh, geez,” Bono muttered.

  Sam felt a rising sense of dread. “Tell me!” he demanded.

  Bono took his hand. “There was a nuclear detonation. They said that D.C. is gone. They think a quarter of a million people are dead. The president, all his cabinet, the Congress, the Supreme Court, everyone, all the city, everything is gone.”

  Sam sat back. He didn’t believe it. Not at first. Then he thought of his father in the White House. His mother and brothers lived not too far from there. “No,” he muttered weakly. “Bono, you have to be wrong.”

  “Everything,” Bono stammered. He didn’t look at Sam anymore. “Everything—everybody—our government gone—” Then he stopped suddenly. How could he be so stupid? How could he have forgotten?

  He turned back to Sam. “I’m sorry, Sam—your family—”

  Sam angrily shook his head. “It can’t be!” he almost shouted. Bono just stared at him.

  Sam saw the anguish in his expression and it finally sunk in. He took a slow breath and held it, then unbuckled his lap belt and leaned over, falling out of the helicopter onto the cool desert sand.

  State Road 68, southern West Virginia

  After the explosion, Ammon wrestled the car to the shoulder and replaced the alternator, the starter, fuses and the battery with the one his father had placed in their grounded Faraday boxes in the car’s trunk, following the very specific written instructions his father left within each box. The battery was stored dry, and Ammon carefully poured the sulfuric acid into the battery. He positioned the battery charger’s solar panels and waited several long hours until the battery was full.

  After the battery was charged, Ammon kept driving, his eyes tearing, his hands trembling on the wheel. Luke was sitting in the backseat, holding his face on his palms. Sara looked straight ahead. She seemed not to react at all.

  The radio announcer cut back and forth from one special report to another. Everyone knew precious little about the situation in Washington, D.C., and the reports from across the rest of the nation were incalculably bad.

  There had been no communication with the president. Was he dead or alive? Congress had been in session at the time of the detonation, and most of them were certainly gone. The reports of destruction throughout the capital were simply unbelievable. There was little left inside the Beltway. Two hundred thousand, perhaps a million, who knew how many were dead?

  The U.S. government had not yet responded to an Al Jazeera report that five American cities would be destroyed, one city hit with a
nuclear bomb every day for the next five days. Across America, there was panic in many city streets. The grocery stores had been raided within a few hours, leaving their shelves empty. The freeways were crammed with hordes of panicked masses fleeing all the major cities. Fuel was being hoarded, the pipelines and fuel tanks that fed each major city running dry within hours. Most places still had electricity, but in order to conserve the suddenly limited reserve of energy resources, all of the power plants had been ordered to cut back their output, leaving brownouts and blackouts across almost every state.

  The reports went on and on: riots in New York City, rumors of an impending nuclear attack on Los Angeles, news of thousands of people trampled or run over in the streets as millions tried to flee.

  Within hours, order had been replaced by chaos. The sense of invincibility that had permeated the nation for more than two hundred years had been replaced by an utter sense of pandemonium and chaos.

  All in one afternoon. After a single attack.

  The reporters kept on talking. All of the airports had been closed. No civilian air traffic was allowed to take off, and all airliners already in the air had been diverted away from the major cities to alternate landing airports. The roads leading out of New York City were completely impassable now; more than four hundred accidents had been reported on the New Jersey Turnpike alone. Hundreds of thousands could be seen walking in Seattle, Chicago and Dallas. There was pandemonium, armed men stealing people’s vehicles, siphoning the fuel right out of their gas tanks. There were shootings in Nashville, looting in Manhattan, fires reported in downtown Chicago. The Secretary of Interior was the highest ranking government official to be identified. He broadcast a desperate call for order from some unknown location, but he had not been seen on television. There were false reports of foreign terrorists taking hostages in downtown Miami . . . .

  Ammon listened, shaking his head in despair. He drove west, away from the city, away from their home. West. Toward the Blue Ridge Mountains. Toward what, he did not know.

  The anchorman suddenly cut to another reporter: a military pilot had reported flying directly over the White House, or at least he thought it was the White House, or where the White House used to be . . . .

  Sara moaned in anguish as she listened to the reporter’s voice. Ammon reached for her hand and held it painfully tight. “Remember, Mom, there’s the underground Situation Room. He would be safe down there. He’s all right, I promise,” he squeezed her hand again, trying to sound convincing.

  But Sara knew it wasn’t true.

  She knew that he was gone.

  She had lost her husband, the only man she had ever loved, the light of her life for the past twenty-five years, the man who had brought her more joy than any person had a right to ask. The father of her children, the Polaris in her life, the man who had held her, loved her and kissed the tears from her eyes.

  He was gone now. She knew that, because she felt him near. He was speaking to her as he always had. The same voice. The same manner. She almost reached out for his hand. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered to her. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t there to be with you, but it was supposed to end this way. Keep the faith. Keep strong. And remember, I’ll be waiting for you, Sara. And I will always be near. You will feel my breath in the morning, in the soft warmth of the sun. I will look for you in the evenings. We will be together again.”

  Sara brought her hand to her face to hide her quivering lip. “I love you, Neil,” she muttered.

  But his spirit was now gone.

  Ammon glanced over at his mother. “What did you say, Mom?” he asked.

  She turned to him, her eyes red, her cheeks stained with tears. “I said I love . . .” she answered, then glanced back at Luke. “I love you both so much!” she repeated.

  Ammon kept driving, but he had slowed to a crawl. He wiped his eyes and bit his lip and kept the car moving west.

  Luke leaned forward from the backseat and put his arms around his mom. He leaned into her shoulder and wept like a little boy. “I want my dad. I want my dad. I want my dad,” he cried.

  Sara turned around and held him. “I love you, Luke,” she said as she held his head. “Your father loves you. You know he loves you.”

  “I want my dad,” he cried again.

  TWENTY

  Mount Aatte, north of Peshawar, Pakistan

  Omar carried the young boy on his shoulders as he made his way up the final crest on the trail. It was steep and dangerous, with a vertical drop on his left that fell almost three thousand feet. The mountain was rocky and bare, and the trail cut back and forth a dozen times as it wound its way up. Omar huffed and puffed as he toiled, gasping though his footsteps remained steady as he climbed.

  A third of the way up the mountain the ridge suddenly dropped, revealing a hidden valley on the other side, a gentle canyon tucked neatly between the extended ridgeline and the mountain: rolling green hills, a small river, fruit trees, long grass. It was wet, the ground spongy and soft from the previous night’s storms. Above the river, against the mountain, the rising terrain had been leveled, a thousand years of backbreaking work turning the side of the mountain into ascending terraces, some less than ten or twelve feet across. Poppies had been planted on each terrace, and the pods were full now, plump and almost ripe. The growing season was short on the mountain, and the poppies would barely have time to mature before the first snowfalls came.

  A small group of buildings lined the river. To call the cluster of mud huts and thatch barns a village would have been an overly generous description. There was no road to the houses, no electricity, and no water except what they drew from the river.

  Omar stood at the crest of the hill where the trail broke from a thick stand of pines. Looking down on the hidden valley, he finally smiled.

  Remote. Isolated. The people who lived here were shepherds and farmers who worked the dirt with their hands. The outside world meant nothing to them. And the feeling was reciprocated—they meant nothing to the world.

  Omar relaxed for the first time in days.

  It was a very long way from home, a long way from Iran. Even farther from Saudi Arabia. He had come to another world.

  The prince would be safe here.

  He adjusted the boy on his shoulders, and then started down the steep trail. The air grew warmer as he descended, but his burden was light.

  The village leader was waiting. Omar paused at the door to his home, the finest mud hut in the village. It had three tiny rooms, an indoor cook stove, and the ultimate luxury, an ancient clay pipe that drew water from the river upstream and brought it right to his front door.

  The leader was a young man, perhaps less than thirty years old, though his thick beard and sun-baked skin made it difficult for Omar to know. He sat on the floor in the corner and listened to Omar while chewing brown leaves. His face was hard, but it softened just a little as he glanced at the child.

  “You take advantage of my generosity,” the young shepherd said.

  Omar shook his head. “I bring you a gift. A chance to serve Allah. I call upon the Pashtun law of sanctuary, and that is always good.”

  The leader studied Omar and then nodded. That was true. And they were honor-bound, for Pashtun law required them to render aid to the homeless, the wounded, those who had no one else. Several times, the village leader had stood up to the Taliban, hiding young boys they had forced into service. On this matter the leader considered the Qur’an to be clear. He had a moral obligation to provide sanctuary and he would not disobey the holy word of Allah. And though the Taliban had threatened to destroy him and the village for defying them, they had not carried through with their promise. At least not yet.

  The village leader considered a moment, and then stood and walked toward the young boy. Kneeling, he smiled at him gently and held out his arms. Sensing safety, the young prince walked into his embrace.

  Omar watched, and then reached into a deep pocket under his robe. “You will keep him?” he asked, pull
ing out a thick wad of cash.

  The village leader glanced at the money, scowled, and looked away.

  Omar extended his hand. “Not for you. For him. His expenses—”

  “He will have no expenses that Allah will not provide. I don’t do this for you, Omar. I do this for Allah. I do this for the law.”

  Omar nodded and begged forgiveness. Then he walked toward the young prince and knelt down by him. Reaching into another pocket, he pulled out a slender gold chain, thin and fine, with a single diamond attached at the end, a beautiful star radiating slivers of light. He unlatched the chain, placed it around the boy’s neck, and kissed him on both cheeks. “I give you this to remind you of who you really are,” he said. “You are the diamond of the future. You are worth every star.”

  The boy looked at the diamond, then at Omar, and smiled wearily.

  Does he really understand? Omar wondered. Does he have any idea at all?

  He tucked the jewel under the young boy’s clothes, placing it near his chest, then pulled back and held the prince by the shoulders. They stared at each other a long moment, as if they could communicate without saying words.

  “What have I told you?” Omar finally asked him, breaking the heavy silence.

  “You will come for me,” the young prince said.

  “That is my solemn promise.”

  The boy looked at him but didn’t answer.

  “And until that day?” Omar asked.

  “I am to prepare myself.”

  “Prepare yourself for what?”

  The young boy lifted his chin and squared his shoulders, his eyes burning with a sudden light. “For the day that I will serve.”

  “Yes, for the day that you will serve. You were born to be a king. You must prepare. You must be worthy. You will reclaim the kingdom. Now, I know that is difficult for you to understand, but you are wise. Even now I can see there is wisdom and great strength in your eyes.”