(Wrath-04)-Breathless (2012)
Page 18
The young prince only nodded. Omar pointed at the shepherd. “You must listen to him.”
“I will, Master.”
Omar pressed his lips, then stood and touched the boy on his head.
He had no sons, only daughters, and he loved this young boy as if he were his own. He would have died to protect him. He would have done anything.
But it was time that he should go now. His presence brought danger to the village. Omar drew a long breath. Looking around the room, he wished he could think of the right words to say good-bye. In order to make it to this village with the boy, it had been necessary for Omar to leave the Prince’s mother behind. Her weakened condition was making an already arduous trek impossible. Omar was all but certain that the Princess had perished. He felt so many emotions. Then he leaned toward the child and whispered in his ear:
And brightness like that of the noonday, shall arise to thee at evening: and when thou shalt think thyself consumed, thou shalt rise as the day star.
And thou shalt have confidence, hope being set before thee, and being buried thou shalt sleep secure.
Job had spoken those words such a long time ago. It wasn’t much, but he meant it, and it was all he could think of. And the words were as true now as they had ever been.
“Hope. Always hope,” he whispered to the young prince again.
Two Blocks south of the Interstate 495 Beltway, Kensington, Maryland
Sara stood at the crest of the hill. Around her, leaves and bushes, generally full and green at this time of year, had turned brown and brittle. The sky was dark, with gray ash hanging in the air and a low bank of rain clouds forming on the western horizon.
She and her sons had been wandering around the outskirts of the city, seeking information on her husband, trying to confirm his death, trying to get as close to the bomb site as they could safely get. But after it all, they had ended up here, in a wooded park on the north edge of the city, standing on a small hill that had enough elevation to look out on the burned out capital.
Sara Brighton gazed toward the district. Farther south, the damage became more stark and terrible. If she squinted, she could make out bent metal girders and burned out cement walls in the distance. The damage was eerie and irregular, for the aircraft that had been carrying the nuclear warhead had been lower than the Saudi scientist had hoped for when the bomb went off. The blast from the heat wave had followed the contours of the ground, burning everything it touched directly but sparing those buildings that were protected behind any rising terrain. It was remarkable, almost unnatural, how some areas had been spared. Arlington National Cemetery—destroyed up to the crest of the hill, yet General Lee’s mansion and the graves on the western side of the hill had been spared. The White House and Mall—entirely destroyed, but some of the smaller buildings directly behind them had survived. Most of the government offices that housed the Congress had been destroyed, but the northern wing of the Capitol Hill building was still intact. The list went on and on, and a pattern began to emerge: areas west and south of the Potomac had been spared; east and north, turned to ash.
Sara squinted again, then lifted her hand to shade her eyes. Luke and Ammon waited behind her, their heads bent, looking down. It was just too hard to look at, too painful, too bleak. Their mother stood without moving, then turned back to them. “I wish they would let us go down there—you know, just to see.”
Ammon nodded, but inside he was relieved. He had seen enough—more than enough. He knew his father was dead, killed in the blast, and he didn’t feel a need to explore the place where he had died.
Luke shook his head. The last thing he wanted was to see any more.
It would be months, maybe much longer, before civilians would be allowed to go into any of the areas that had been affected by the blast. Out here in the suburbs, where the winds had kept the radiation at an acceptable level, refugee camps and tent cities had sprung up, but downtown was deserted except for the special military units and emergency response teams, all of them protected in radiation suits. The teams were plodding through the wreckage, looking for survivors and chronicling the damage for the day when they might be able to rebuild, or at least go in and try to retrieve some of the documents, government records, and artifacts the government needed in order to exist.
But the truth was, there wasn’t much left of the federal government. It would take many years and an unbelievable amount of work to recreate even a fraction of what had been lost.
Sara thought for a moment longer and then walked toward her sons. Ammon turned toward her. “It’s time,” he said. “We’ve got to decide.”
Sara knew that. She’d been avoiding the decision because she felt so unsure. “What do you think?” she asked.
“I don’t know, Mom. I really don’t—”
Luke ran a dirty hand through his hair. For a moment he thought of Alicia, wondering if she was alive. Had her money saved her? He doubted it, but didn’t know. He thought of his other friends and loved ones, people he really cared about. What had happened to them? It was impossible to find out. Communication was nearly impossible. He realized that he would probably never know. He watched his mother, knowing that everything about his previous life was at an end now. “We should leave,” he said. “Go west. Maybe to Denver. There’s no reason to stay here anymore.”
Sara cocked her head toward him. “You really think so?” she asked.
“Yeah, Mom. There’s nothing left here for us now.”
Sara turned and looked west. “We might be protected in the mountains. Protected from exactly what, I don’t know, but it just seems to be safer there. Less people. We could stay with my sister for a while. Let things settle. See what happens.”
Ammon followed her eyes. “It’s not going to be easy to get there. Not safe to travel. Everything and everyone is going crazy. But I think we’ll be OK.”
The three were silent a long moment, all of them thinking.
“I hate the thought of just leaving dad,” Luke said. “I mean what if—I know he’s not, but what if—it just seems like we should do something, find something—have some kind of ceremony to say good-bye.”
No one answered. They all felt the same.
“We can’t wait any longer,” Sara said. “There’s more to come. This isn’t over. It’s not the ending, it’s just beginning.”
Ammon and Luke knew immediately what she meant. Luke sadly shook his head, his lower jaw trembling as he struggled inside. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
Sara reached out and squeezed his hand. “Of course you can, son. We wake up. We keep on living. We keep our faith. And we stay strong.”
Camp Smash, Eastern Iraq
Sam Brighton stared into the small fire. It was raining and, though his poncho kept him dry, he still felt chilled to the bone. There was a scattering of tents behind him, small, camouflaged units that sat low to the ground. There were only a dozen or so men at Camp Smash, and Sam and Bono were the only ones that were awake. It was almost 3 A.M. Neither man was tired, though Sam was considering getting a few hours sleep before the sun rose, though he wondered if it would ever break through the clouds and rain.
He glanced at Bono, who had closed his eyes and tilted his head, as if he were listening to something in the night. Sam watched him a moment. “Bono?” he asked.
“Yeah buddy,” the other captain answered.
“You know that King Abdullah ordered the nuclear attack on D.C.”
Bono was silent a moment. “That’s what we’re hearing.”
“Then you know, once they confirm that, they’re going to take him out. No way the United States isn’t going to go after him. They’re going to bring him down. Drag him to the gallows. And if they do, they will use us. The Cherokees will go.”
Bono hesitated a moment. “Probably right,” he finally answered as he pulled his poncho around his neck.
Sam folded his arms, holding them near his chest. “I guess I need to repent, then.”
�
�Why’s that, buddy?”
Sam shifted his weight, leaning toward his friend. “He killed my dad. Two hundred-fifty thousand of my countrymen. Brought our nation to its knees. Now I want to be the one who gets him. I want to be the guy who gets revenge.”
COMING IN EPISODE FIVE…
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“All right, people,” the general commanded in a booming voice. “At 00:47:34 Zulu Time, the president of the United States directed a WhiteWolf operation. His orders have been formally confirmed by National Command Authority and my staff.
“We’ve prepared for and war-gamed this for more than fifteen years. You know all the procedures. Now it’s time to get to work.”
*******
The Great One looked out on the devastation that he had created in Washington, D.C.
He stood alone, his callous face dull and lifeless. Even here, in the nonmortal world, the eyes were still the windows that looked into the soul—and his eyes, once so bright and full of joy, had narrowed to angry slits that boiled from the pollution in his being.
*******
After the nuclear detonation over D.C., the small group of scientists inside Snapper worked literally twenty-four hours a day. Air and ground samples had to be taken from the bomb site, the material had to be broken down and analyzed, coded, and then matched to the existing database. The supercomputers, some of the most powerful in the world, spun through the computations, a billion calculations every second.
When they got their initial results, the director of Snapper shook his head in disbelief. “Do it again,” he demanded. “That can’t be right.”
*******
Israeli satellites watched as Iran began to fuel its long-range missiles. The United States, China, and Japan watched as North Korea did the same thing. India went to the highest level of alert. The entire Middle East sat on the edge of a razor—Hezbollah soldiers moving to the southern Israel border; Hamas (or what was left of them after the previous nuclear attack against Gaza) declaring open war against Israel from the northern Gaza strip; Jordan and Syria forming an alliance and moving most of their military forces into Lebanon and the Golan Heights; Egypt declaring (to everyone’s amazement and despair) that they had developed their own nuclear warhead and would conduct an underground nuclear test; Chechan rebels attacking again in Moscow; twenty million Muslim citizens rioting throughout Western Europe streets.
*******
King Abdullah paced, his eyes cold and sullen, his skin tight, the hollows of his cheeks deep and dark. He seemed to cast a spell upon them as he moved, drawing them in to his world. “Some of you are wondering,” he started, “so I will tell you. Yes, I killed our father. Yes, I killed Crown Prince Saud. I killed his wife, Princess Tala. I killed their children. I killed them all.”
*******
The flash was sudden and bright, white-hot, blazing and intense. It burst down from the night sky, leaving a yellow glow that quickly faded and then disappeared.
Everything fell silent. Their car stopped suddenly. No chug. No cough or sputter. It was as if someone had reached over and turned the key off.
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Table of Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
COMING IN EPISODE FIVE…