The Prometheus Effect

by David Fleming

“She’s gotten away!”

  “There’s nowhere for her to go. Once we clear these curves, we’ll see her lights again—There! She’s stopped!”

  The deafening roar of two fighter jets startled the Chinese agents. The panicked driver jammed his foot on the brake. The jets screamed, flying ridiculously low, and headed straight for the stopped car a half mile ahead. Afterburners suddenly kicked in as they thundered upward at blazing speed, never breaking formation.

  Before either agent could comment on the spectacle, two successive detonations occurred at the red car’s location. Two growing fireballs became one. The Chinese agents ducked into their arms too late to protect them from the incendiary flash. Supersonic shockwaves lifted their car off the ground amid a swarm of shattered glass. Bits of debris steadily rained from the sky.

  They stumbled from their windowless car.

  Blinking to clear the searing afterimage, the passenger asked, “Why?”

  “Perhaps the last truck in the convoy carried the ice cream?” the driver replied. They both laughed. “Don’t mess with fat Americans’ ice cream!” More laughter. Both men were in a state of shock, and it had made them punchy.

  The driver regained his composure first. “More likely, they found her out. The United States government doesn’t care for traitors any more than we do.”

  “Should we check for a body?”

  The driver pointed to the deep flaming crater where the car had been. “What’s there to check? The body’s been vaporized. Even the car’s been vaporized. No, our job is done. Let’s move on to the safe house and send in our report.”

  Off in the distance, the fading marker lights of the remaining two government trucks continued north for an on-time delivery.

  ***

  “Wow, that was loud… and impressive,” said Jessica as she watched the distant fireball from an opening in the cargo truck’s rear panel. James peered over her shoulder, cradling the sleeping Tina.

  After the truck crashed, their car had accelerated at full speed to the first truck in the line. Its back door had clattered to the asphalt as a modified ramp, and they’d decelerated to let forward momentum carry them into the truck. It was a maneuver Jessica had seen frequently in movies, but to experience it felt truly exhilarating. The Billybob twins had been perched on an elevated shelf in the truck’s cargo area, out of the way, and they dropped down to help her and James get out of the car. Since James had his hands full with Tina, Jessica retrieved the plant he seemed so infatuated with.

  As soon as they had all exited the car, the twins pushed it back down the ramp. It slowed to a stop, and as soon as they had reached a safe distance and the pursuing car was in sight—Boom!

  “How does it feel to be dead?” a voice asked from behind Jessica. She had thought the voice sounded familiar when it had spoken through the dash; now she was sure of it.

  She whirled to face the man. He certainly resembled the man who had fired her so unjustly, but the lack of a uniform and the addition of a smile—she hadn’t thought him capable of one—made her uncertain. “Colonel?” she asked.

  “Not a colonel anymore, after tonight. I’m dead like you. Along with the EMP, they annihilated the accelerator base with a spaced-launched kinetic weapon.”

  Jessica swallowed against her sudden cold nausea.

  “According to the uploaded logs, I died at ground zero along with a few others. The rest had long been evacuated. A few rats certainly perished. Rest your mind, no humans were actually harmed at the base. My name is Cutter, by the way. But you can call me Chip.”

  Again the smile, and he held out his hand. Jessica took it.

  “Well done, Miss Stafford. Well done. Please forgive me for any grief I may have caused you in the past. That test is not an easy one. From either side.”

  “An oath without actions to back it up is an empty oath.”

  “Well said, Miss Stafford.”

  “Please, call me Jessica… Chip,” she said, returning his smile.

  “And you,” Cutter said, turning to James. “That was quite a performance the last couple of days.” His tone turned serious. “Whatever you may be feeling now, know this: you did what had to be done. If you hadn’t, the two of you might not be alive. And in all honesty, you may have saved that man from the horrors of burning to death. I’ve been in your shoes. If you need to talk…”

  James nodded his understanding. “What about Tina here?” he asked, adjusting the sleeping girl in his arms.

  Cutter brushed the hair from her face in a fatherly manner. “We’ll find a place for her. I promise you that.”

  “Where are we going now?” Jessica asked.

  “Back to the City. Our job is done. Jack has it from here.”

  CHAPTER 75

  The world around Sebastian spun uncontrollably and had been doing so since Fan’s men took him. Faces were nothing more than blurs.

  He vomited. He felt better.

  Two men on either side of him jogged clumsily, supporting his weight under each arm. Sebastian’s legs moved solely from his feet hitting the ground. If he lifted his legs, their task would be easier, but making things easy on people wasn’t in his repertoire.

  It looked like they were in a private airport terminal. But why was it so dark? People scurried all around with flashlights.

  They burst through an emergency exit. No alarm sounded.

  A jet with its turbines revving waited on the runway. An acrid smell of burning plastics registered in Sebastian’s sodden brain.

  As the men ran, he continued to let his feet drag, ruining his shoes. So what. He would be rich soon.

  The men muscled him up the rolling stairs to the plane. Here at last, the lights were on.

  Two voices spoke in a language he registered as Chinese. One of them belonged to Gang, the muscle from the hotel. The other was a man in uniform. Sebastian listened and watched, hoping to catch some phrase or body language he could interpret, but understood nothing.

  The man in uniform finally turned to him. “I am China’s Deputy Minister of State Security,” he said in slightly accented English. The Chinese writing on his nametag resembled a stick figure samurai standing next to a guillotine.

  Sebastian’s surroundings started to spin again. The whiskey had begun to reach its peak effect. He vaguely realized that the alcohol would continue to evoke its truth serum effect. His inhibitions and ability to filter thoughts were becoming more compromised by the second.

  “My name is Ji Bo,” the man said. “You will address me as Deputy Minister.”

  Sebastian nodded. He felt queasy again and didn’t trust opening his mouth.

  The plane accelerated along the tarmac. Gang and Ji took seats facing him and secured themselves. Splotches of flickering orange briefly flew past Sebastian’s window, as if the world outside moved and he sat motionless. The engine roar grew, and the nose of the plane lifted sharply. Sebastian closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on a single thought to stop the extraneous motion in his mind. It didn’t work.

  “Mr. Falstano,” Ji began. “You are now our guest.”

  Gang’s severe expression contradicted Ji’s words.

  “This plane carries no parachutes,” Ji continued. “You may remain as our guest, or leave as our entertainment.” He paused to allow his words to sink in.

  Finally, Sebastian thought. Someone who doesn’t want to shoot me. He didn’t want to die, but if it was to happen, he wanted his death to be spectacular. Something the world would remember for generations. Being thrown from a plane would be spectacular. But wait… did Ji ask a question? He tried to get a grasp on his oily short-term memory. His thoughts kept slipping away like slimy fish.

  Ji slapped him. “You will now tell me the location of the artifact,” he demanded.

  Sebastian’s mental filters had completely dissolved in the alcohol. Ji’s mere mention of the location immediately brought it to his mind, and it tumbled to the tip of his tongue with nary a hint of resistance. His head lolled f
orward as if the word rolling out of his mouth carried weight. “Seychelles,” he said. Then he passed out.

  ***

  Ji regarded Sebastian with a combination of interest and revulsion. Did he say “seashells”? No. It was more like Seychelles. That would make more sense. He would give this information to the chief minister so that his forces could act on it.

  And if it proved to be false, Sebastian would face a firing squad.

  CHAPTER 76

  Numerous old-style tube televisions formed a vast mosaic of news feeds. The president darted from screen to screen, these flickering windows into the world, reading the tickers at the bottom of each square. The United States had been attacked, but by whom? No one had come forward to claim responsibility. Only sporadic, and sometimes staticky, details came through, though that didn’t stop the media “experts” from putting forth any number of speculations and theories.

  One of the televisions flashed an “update” banner. A drone feed showed a smoking crater where the White House had once been.

  The president swore and threw a television remote in exasperation. It shattered against a concrete pillar.

  “Bastards!” he yelled, damning both the attackers and those who had placed him in this bunker with no means of modern communication. “One Goddamned phone,” he growled through clenched teeth. “How stupid do you have to be to design a bunker without a decent phone?”

  His Secret Service men stood mutely as far away from their boss as protocol allowed. They had already offered up their own phones, but unfortunately, the bunker’s depth and thick barriers made them useless—and their batteries had since been depleted in the struggle to acquire a signal.

  “The country probably thinks I’m dead. Or worse, a coward. It’s an election year!”

  The president stomped around in frustration, searching for something else to hold on to—and eventually throw. His shoes crunched over the remnants of the ancient black phone’s protective glass dome. He had kicked it to pieces in a previous tantrum. The damned phone wasn’t even connected to anything! No wires. No cords. No batteries. It was a Goddamned paperweight. Who the hell knew what it was for? A seashell produced more sound than that phone. He glared at it.

  It rang.

  The bell rang sweet and clear, startling the Secret Service men. The final strike of the bell hung in the air, dying slowly, then the ring sequence started again.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” the president said. Despite his words, hope surged into him. He kept the inward flow of that feeling in check. It was easy to allow hope in; it required more effort to rid oneself of disappointment.

  He picked up the receiver and said, more confidently than he felt, “This is the president speaking.”

  “Mr. President, this is Jack.”

  The president set his anger aside. He was essentially a prisoner in this bunker until Jack allowed him to leave. Threatening one’s jailer never worked out well for the prisoner. But once he escaped this backwards cave of a home…

  “I’m listening,” the president said.

  Jack got straight to the point. “China has initiated a preemptive strike with space-based kinetic and nuclear weapons.”

  “That’s an act of war! And a violation of the Outer Space Treaty.”

  “The United States also has weapons of mass destruction in orbit,” Jack said.

  The president remained guiltily silent. Jack’s knowledge of deep secrets disturbed him.

  “Washington, DC, Cheyenne Mountain, Rocky Mountain, a prototype particle accelerator, and numerous military bases have been attacked by both EMP and kinetic weapons. Two nuclear-tipped kinetic weapons also detonated in the Ghawar and Khurais oil fields of Saudi Arabia. The Riyadh military base has been completely destroyed. Washington and Las Vegas are without power, burning, and in the midst of rioting. The good news is, loss of life is minimal thus far—though that will change when our own people in Washington and Vegas take advantage of the power outages.”

  “We need to launch a counterstrike immediately!” the president shouted.

  “Mr. President, the affected military bases had long been closed or were previously evacuated out of caution. And those oil fields ran dry and were taken over by extremists years ago. China is using force to send you a message.”

  “They tried to kill me.”

  “No, Mr. President, they did not. They could track your phone. You had it taken to your house outside the city. Your wife and children are fine.”

  The president clenched his jaw. How could Jack possibly know these things? There must be a mole in his inner circle.

  Jack continued. “And while they didn’t know where you were, they certainly knew where you were not. They knew you were not present at any of the selected targets. Those targets were chosen not to hurt you, but to demonstrate the effectiveness and accuracy of their weapons—and force you to negotiate.”

  “Negotiate for what?”

  “Fusion.”

  Silence.

  “We don’t have fusion,” the president finally said.

  “China thinks you do.”

  “Is this all because of that crackpot on the news a while back? China can’t honestly believe that!”

  “When countries harboring a mutual distrust for one another place weapons in space, against long-established treaties, anything is possible. Sometimes people’s belief in things overrides reality. The fact is, China believes you possess the technology to control fusion. And if they can’t have it, neither can you. That’s why they destroyed the particle accelerator.”

  The president thought for a moment before asking quietly, “Did we have a working fusion generator there?”

  “No. They were merely working on fusion experiments. China was manipulated into believing otherwise.”

  “Who is responsible for instigating this?” the president dared ask. He would accuse Jack, but what did the man have to gain by starting a war? Jack wasn’t motivated by power, or fame, or money. No, this couldn’t be Jack’s doing. Else why would he have warned me and placed me in this bunker?

  “The woman responsible for inciting China to act on this misinformation has been iced. She will no longer be a problem.”

  Iced, the president thought. Jack uses the euphemism so calmly. This man truly personified Jack the Ripper. “So this was all a mistake? A misunderstanding?”

  “The weapons in space are also a mistake. They were put there with a full understanding of the consequences of using them. When China realizes there is no fusion to bargain for, they will have no choice but to gamble with the rest of their arsenal. There are not enough fossil fuels left to supply the world at the present rate of consumption. The last reserves of any significance are along America’s coastlines. As past governments have predicted, the United States will soon possess the last available fuel on earth. But Mr. President… the missiles aimed at your country have all the fuel they need.”

  “So we’re left with no choice but to go to war. An all-out liquidation of our own arsenal will at least put us on even ground when the dust settles.” The president no longer harbored any ill will toward the mountain fortress enveloping him.

  “Mr. President, a scorched-earth policy threatens the extinction of the human race.”

  “They started it!”

  “Did they? In the many years I have held my position, a number of presidents have come and gone. All but one held reelection as their top priority. The atmosphere of distrust among nations has grown with every passing year. No, Mr. President, they did not ‘start’ it. Nor did anyone in the last one hundred thousand years.

  “It started with a nomadic group of hominids encountering a new tribe and deciding that their tribe had a greater need than the other. It started with Prometheus stealing fire from the gods and giving it to men who had not yet earned it. Through the use of fire, he hoped men would acquire new knowledge and attain a greater level of productivity. But the corrupt underlying philosophy of ‘If we can’t have it, neither
can they’ remained. We have now reached the endgame of Prometheus’s misdeed. The products of that knowledge are now poised to exterminate all life. Will you be the one who brings that philosophy to its inevitable conclusion?”

  “Don’t preach to me. Tell me what to do!”

  “Be the president who is remembered as having had the wisdom not to destroy the planet. Call the Chinese president. Use your diplomatic prowess. Explain the misunderstanding. Most importantly, stall for time. Ask for a week to investigate the matter and tend to your frightened nation. Control of time allows for more rational actions, Mr. President. A lot can happen in a week. They should be eager to comply. And in the end, you will most certainly be reelected.”

  Finally, Jack was talking some sense. A week was an easy commodity to bargain for in the political world. It wasn’t a complete solution to the problem, but it was a start. “What am I supposed to do after the week passes? Sit around and do nothing? What’s to prevent this from happening again?”

  “I like that you’re starting to think about the future, Mr. President. There may be hope yet. You buy that week, and I will come up with a solution to the rest of the puzzle. Agreed?”

  Do I have a choice? “Agreed,” the president said grudgingly.

  “Good. The exits leading out of the bunker are now unlocked. There is a vehicle waiting to take you back to work. Good luck.”

  The line went silent.

  “Jack? … Jack! … Dammit.”

  The president replaced the handset on its base. Then he picked up the entire phone and examined it from all angles to see if he had missed something. It was the same as before, unconnected to anything. Another one of Jack’s mysteries.

  Of all the tasks waiting for him, the one he least looked forward to was seeing his wife. Should have left the phone at the White House, he thought.

  CHAPTER 77

  “Action message coming in, Commander,” the person monitoring the sub’s communications center said.