“Mom!” Sam grabbed his mother by her shoulders. “What is going on?”
“I’ve got to call and warn him.”
“Warn who? About what?”
She picked up the phone. “I’ll call the Strategic Command Post in Nebraska. How do I get the number?”
She held the phone up and dialed 911. “It’s ringing, Sam, it’s ringing!” She waited and waited. No answer. Nothing but a constant ring. “All right.” She disconnected. “I’ll try the number for the emergency switchboard at the White House. They might have, they must have transferred that number to a working phone.” She punched the cell phone as she talked, excited once again. She listened, holding her hand up by her face in anxious expectation. “Ringing . . . ringing,” she whispered. “It sounds like . . .” she turned her head suddenly and talked into the phone. “Yes, yes, can you hear me?” She took a step toward the edge of the roof. “Can you hear me? Yes, I can barely hear you. My name is Sara Brighton. My husband was General Neil Brighton, Special Assistant to the President. This is an emergency. I need you to connect me to the Secretary of Defense. Yes, Secretary Marino’s office.” She paused and listened. “No, no, I can’t wait. What! Are you certain he is dead? Then who is his replacement? No, this is an emergency . . .” Another short pause. “I already told you, my name is Sara Brighton . . . hello . . . hello?” The phone was dead.
She lowered the cell and looked at Sam. “He hung up on me,” she said.
Sam checked the cell phone. The low battery indicator was now on.
“He hung up. Or maybe the line was disconnected.”
“Mom.” Sam took a step toward her. Taking her by her shoulders, he looked into her eyes. The moon was barely rising now and the sky was black. “Mom?”
Sara hesitated. “But if I tell you . . .”
“It’s time to tell us, Mom.”
Sara looked at him. Her eyes were big and teary, round and glistening in the dim light. She was suddenly young and vulnerable and frightened as a child.
Sam heard her sniffle, felt her shoulders shuddering; then she fell into his arms.
When she was finished with her story, Sam sat for a long time without speaking. Then he looked down at his cell phone. “This was a huge mistake,” he said.
* * *
Missile and Space Intelligence Center (MSIC)
Huntsville, Alabama
Electronic transmissions were intercepted, identified, and flagged by a series of enormous antennas stationed throughout the country, but concentrated primarily along the East Coast and in a few locations along the western mountain ranges. Some of the radio intercept devices were the normally anticipated satellite dishes pointing upward, although these were mounted on bearings and hydraulic cylinders to move them to appropriate pieces of the sky. Others were tall and slender trestles that reached several hundred feet above the ground. Some had been built in clusters and were situated on remote, stripped-down pieces of federal land with extremely limited access, including strictly enforced no-fly zones. Others of the listening devices were positioned within the cities, hidden behind nearly translucent material alongside civilian buildings, the occupants clueless about the immensely powerful radio intercept equipment that was operating next door. A great many listening devices were disguised as cell phone towers, radio antennas, or television broadcast dishes, whatever was required to minimize the speculation as to what the devices were used for, how many there really were, and how deeply they could reach.
On a normal day, before the EMP attack, the United States government was capable of intercepting and monitoring hundreds of millions of cell and telephone conversations, emails, Internet access, and instant messages every day, the sheer volume making it possible, even likely, that this particular conversation might have been missed.
But since the EMP attack, the use of such electronic communications had dropped off dramatically.
So they listened and they noted and they passed the information on.
Chapter Fifteen
Headquarters, National Security Agency
Fort George G. Meade, Maryland
Ten Miles Northeast of Washington, D.C.
There were two enormous buildings, side by side, one a little longer and lower than the other, both of them black metal and glass cubes that reflected the sun, passing clouds, radar sensors, laser intelligence listening beams, heat, cold, conventional listening devices, everything and anything that might connect the occupants of the two buildings to the outside world. The buildings housed one of the most secret and secretive agencies within the intelligence community; for many years the federal government denied that NSA (No-Such-Agency) even existed. Once it had been revealed, extensive
precautions had been put in place to isolate it, including the construction of its own exit of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, labeled “NSA Employees Only.” Hidden behind a wall of trees (most of northern Virginia and southern Maryland was covered in dense forest), the NSA complex housed more mathematicians and supercomputers than any other organization in the world. It also drew more electricity off the grid than any other private or public entity within the entire state of Maryland, including the largest steel manufacturers and shipbuilders along the coast. (In 2006, the Baltimore Sun reported that the entire NSA complex was susceptible to severe electrical overload because of insufficient infrastructure to support the geometrically growing demand.) The agency had its own hardware, software, and semiconductor production facilities, as well as its own cryptology research center. No one knew how many people worked for the NSA, although sometime early in the century some overly ambitious counterculture guy had Google-earthed the parking lot, counted the number of parking spaces (18,000), driven northeast of Washington, D.C., pulled off the nearby highway and counted the average number of occupants in every car that passed, then announced across the Internet that the agency employed 39,000 people, which was surprisingly close. Aircraft over-flight of the area was strictly forbidden, the nearby streams and trees were scattered with hidden motion sensors and listening devices, and there wasn’t an inch of the security fence and surrounding buffer zone that wasn’t covered with redundant surveillance cameras.
Because Executive Order 12333 directed the agency to limit its resources toward the collection of information regarding “foreign intelligence or counterintelligence” and not “acquiring information concerning the domestic activities of United States persons,” the NSA’s eavesdropping mission concentrated on overseas diplomatic and military sources. With a few controversial and well-published exceptions, the NSA had complied with this directive. But it surely didn’t now. The world had tipped, almost fallen. Nuclear explosions had taken place over Israel, Iran, and other portions of central Asia, not to mention Washington, D.C. The nation had been incapacitated with an EMP attack. No one cared a whit about Executive Order 12333 anymore. The NSA was listening to everything. The agency’s footprint was huge, stretching across every continent, including North America, and the sheer volume of information that passed through its system simply boggled the mind. And though the agency had a few branches scattered around the country (the Texas Cryptology Center in San Antonio, Texas, being the most well-known), the vast majority of the dirty work was done at the headquarters building at Fort Meade.
And because the buildings were sealed, stocked, and secured, neither the EMP nor the previous nuclear attack against Washington had had any impact on the work that took place there.
* * *
The man was short, a civilian with a thin mustache and black, slippery hair. He walked into the two-star general’s office without knocking and placed the red binder on his desk.
“Sir, I think you might want to see this,” he simply said.
The general was slow to look up. “What is it?” he asked dismissively.
The small man firmed his shoulders. “A target from the presidential directive we received two days ago.”
The air force general/NSA director looked up slowly, his face filled
with instant disdain. “We don’t have a president right now,” he said.
“I know that, sir. I’m talking about our leadership out in Raven Rock.”
The NSA director scoffed.
The man nodded toward the folder. “It falls within the parameters of the priority search,” he explained.
The general didn’t care.
“Should I pass it on?” he asked.
The white-haired general snorted. “Do we have a choice?”
The man lifted up the binder. “Do you want to read it first?”
The general waved him off and repeated his first question. “Do I have a choice?”
The man waited.
“Will it matter if I read it? Will it matter what I think? Does it matter what any of us think anymore?”
The small man stared, his eyes blank as a snake’s. Yes, he thought, though he didn’t say the words out loud, it matters quite a lot what you think. And who you support now. It matters more than you will ever know.
His eyes remained expressionless as he answered, “Some of the targets they are looking for have popped up in Chicago. General Brighton’s wife . . .”
The general glared in fierce anger. “Who friggin’ cares! With everything else that we are dealing with, how can anyone consider this a priority right now!”
The greasy-haired man met the general’s angry gaze and didn’t blink. “There must be reasons we don’t know about.”
The general huffed, thought a moment, then grabbed a pen, scribbled his three initials across the routing paper, and handed the binder back. “Take care of it,” he said.
The man took the binder, turned, and started walking toward the door. Pausing without turning back, he said, “The president has given us a directive.”
The general was looking down at the papers on his desk now. “I know that, Spencer.”
“You may not like it, I understand that, but some of us feel—”
The general didn’t let him finish. “I know how you feel, Spencer. I don’t care for either your feelings or your thoughts. Now go on, take the intercept and get out of here.”
Raven Rock (Site R), Underground Military Complex
Southern Pennsylvania
At seventy-eight hours, fifteen minutes, Bethany Rosen, the former president pro tempore of the Senate, would go down in history for being the president of the United States for the shortest period of time: just more than three days from the time she was sworn in until she was dead.
After her death, it was time for what remained of the national civilian leadership to work further down the line. Next in the order of succession—fourth in line—was the Secretary of State, who had been killed in the nuclear attack on Washington, D.C. Next was the Secretary of the Treasury. Not being a fool, and having figured out—or, more likely, having had it whispered to him—what had really happened to the previous president, he utterly refused to be sworn in.
The Secretary of Defense was next. Problem was, no one knew where he was. Buried under the rubble of D.C., they were certain, along with two hundred thousand other souls.
Which brought them to the Attorney General.
Beautiful when a plan fell into place.
So it was that, after one nuclear explosion, two murders, and one very clear conversation in a small office deep in Raven Rock, they finally got to their man.
Albert J. Fuentes, current Attorney General, soon to be the next president of the United States, scheduled the swearing-in ceremony for six o’clock that evening. Once that formality was over, it would take them only a few weeks to put the necessary changes in place.
The cabal that had brought him to this point would give him very specific instructions. And they were certain the new president would comply.
The United States, as they knew it, was about to cease to exist. After years of waiting, hoping such an opportunity would one day present itself, Albert J. Fuentes and his friends were prepared to act. And while the new president would be the front man for the code of power, he would not be the brains. The real brains, the real power, went much deeper than any single man.
No, the young man Fuentes, a simple federal judge whom hardly anyone inside Washington had even known two years ago, would not be the one holding the real reins of power.
That night, at exactly 6:00 p.m., Fuentes placed his left hand upon a Bible and raised his right. Standing before a video camera, a few witnesses, the only surviving member of the Supreme Court, his wife, a couple of members of the Congress, and the press, he swore to defend the Constitution from all enemies, both foreign and domestic. Completing the oath of office, he shook a few hands, then got to work.
Offutt Air Force Base
Headquarters, U.S. Strategic Command
Eight Miles South of Omaha, Nebraska
The air force technician listened, took some notes, then hung up the secure telephone. “Some of our military guys got a trace on a couple of the individuals the SecDef was asking about,” he said to the four-star commander looking over his shoulder.
The four-star leaned toward him, resting his hands on the younger man’s chair.
“You sure it’s them?” he prodded. It had been so long since he’d received any good news that he was immediately skeptical.
“We can’t know for certain till we get them, but it sounds that way right now.”
The general hesitated. “How’d you get the information?”
The technician nodded toward the telephone. “We stole it, same as they did. The Raven Rock guys took it from the NSA. We took it from the Rock guys as they passed it up the line.”
The general swirled a cup of cold coffee in his hand. “Let me have it,” he said, reaching for the report.
Chapter Sixteen
East Side, Chicago, Illinois
The apartment was like a prison and they simply couldn’t stand it any longer. At the quietest time of the afternoon, when the streets had fallen into a lull and the sun was dropping, a few of them fled outside.
The setting sun was pale gold, giving light but little warmth as it moved toward the western horizon, and there was a jarring hint of fall in the air. The sky was pink above the horizon and dark blue, almost purple, overhead. Everyone noticed it now, the different colors in the sky, the shifting shadows and translucent hues. The cold wind blew in from the great Lake Michigan on the north shore of the city and swirled around them, stirring dry leaves at their feet as it funneled between the high buildings. The sky was full of color but cloudless, the rain clouds having moved off to the east, where they had already mixed with a blast of arctic air—months early down from Canada—to form a line of heavy snow showers over Pennsylvania and New York.
Azadeh Ishbel Pahlavi, Mary and Kelly Beth Dupree, and Lieutenant Samuel Brighton sat on a rusted metal bench in a small, littered courtyard crammed between two of the
high-rise apartments. Kelly slept, her head resting on Mary’s lap. The afternoon was calm, and for the first time in days, they had time to think.
Though they didn’t know it, very similar feelings had settled in all of their hearts. Together, they worried about the future of their terrifying new world.
The streets and sidewalks were full of people, people moving everywhere. Sam watched, wondering where they might be going, where they were getting food. He noted the different sounds: voices, footsteps, sometimes shouting, far off a sharp crack— maybe a gunshot—but never the sound of trains or cars. To their right, the elevated train tracks stood against the afternoon light, dark spindles of steel reminding them of what used to be just a few days before.
Sam wore his camouflage pants and shirt, which caught everyone’s attention. At first glance, some of them probably thought he was an imposter, for though his hair was short and tight, his face was dark with five days’ worth of beard. Seeing the holstered weapon under his left arm and the pack at his feet, most of them turned away.
Sam tried to relax, though it seemed his eyes were always moving, looking at each man or wom
an who walked by. Inside, his gut was tight. He was in America, but he felt like he was back in the Middle East and, like an American in Sadr City, he knew that he stood out. He also knew there were more illegal weapons in the neighborhood around him than there were in Sadr City, one of the poorest cities in Iraq. Funny, he thought, how much it was the same. Here, like there, unemployment was rampant, the homes in disrepair, the abandoned warehouses, old buildings, and crowded housing complexes providing a haven for criminals. Here, like there, it came down to clusters of families and tight groups of thugs. The Americans called them gangs, the Iraqis called them tribes—didn’t matter, they were the same. Even the looks on the faces of the people were familiar: vacant stares, resigned acceptance, hopelessness, uncertainty, anger, fear, some open rage, a few shy smiles. It shocked him how similar the two places felt. Opposite sides of the world. Opposite cultures. Very different people. Still, so much the same.
Azadeh sat quietly on the bench opposite Sam. Mary sat at her side, her arm around her shoulder, holding her close. Sometimes Azadeh rested her head against Mary’s arm; sometimes Mary leaned against her head. Dropping his eyes, Sam looked at Kelly Beth, who was asleep curled up on the bench, her legs tucked up to keep warm, her head on Mary’s lap. She slept contently, her breathing slow and deep. Though healed from the ravaging cancer that had taken her to just a few hours from death, she was frail and recovering from the emotional and physical ordeal. Weak still, sometimes disoriented, she would need weeks to build her strength back, maybe months before she completely regained her health. Meanwhile, she needed food and water, proper sanitation, and lots of time to heal and rest.
And everything she needed, they couldn’t give her now.
He looked down at his hands, then held them up to the light, thinking of that night along the road, hidden in the cluster of trees, running as if his life depended on it, looking for his family and finding them in the trees, giving a blessing to his brother, giving a blessing to this little girl on Mary’s lap.
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