“Sir, we can’t be one hundred percent certain… it seems like one man has taken it upon himself to take over as president, and has been calling himself that in communications. You remember me telling you about John Thompson, sir? He was an analyst with the CIA before the Situation. He broke the code they were using, did some research, and was able to come up with one probable candidate.”
“How did he find out who this imposter is?” the president demanded.
“Most of the computer systems were fried when the calamity hit, because we had started using off-the-shelf civilian computers that weren’t hardened for EMPs. Some of the DoD networks are still up, but barely. A simple check though USAPERS, and we think— again we’re not sure, but we think— it’s a soldier from the 28th Infantry Division, the Pennsylvania National Guard.”
“USAPERS?”
“It’s an acronym sir. It stands for US Army Personnel Records, sir, a database,” the general stated.
“Who the fuck is he then? Does he have a name?” the president demanded.
“Sergeant Major Timothy Flannery,” the general said, then held his breath.
“A sergeant-fucking-major? You have got to be joking, General! How does a fucking enlisted man get hold of the codes for our nuclear arsenal?
“We don’t know sir,” he sighed.
“Was he the one involved in that battle you told me about before?”
“We believe so, Mr. President,” the general said, his nerves so tight now he was ready to jump out of his skin. They’d still not told the president of the missile launch, and wouldn’t, for as long as possible.
“Give me everything you’ve got.”
“From what we gathered as of this morning: after the battle, they made their way back to Hawaii, by ship, we believe. Who, we don’t know. They stayed there for a time, and right after I told you they’d taken satellite photos of the airport in Arizona, a group, including the sergeant major, made their way there to set up another settlement.”
“And are you saying they flew there?” the president asked in disbelief.
“It’s the only way they could have gotten there so fast, so yes, that fact, and the Keyhole photos of the airport they tasked, point to them having a working aircraft.”
“You’re telling me some fucking asshole enlisted man has got not one, but two fucking communities set up, he’s got a working aircraft, he’s got my fucking codes, and to top that all off, he’s calling himself the president?”
“That’s pretty much it, sir,” the general said, his heart pounding in his chest, threatening to burst out of his ribcage. He was finding it increasingly difficult to catch his breath, so he took a few deep breaths, but the calm he’d hoped for eluded him.
The man who once was the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development leaned back in the high-backed leather chair and stared at the general for some time, a blank look painted on his face. The silence was deafening, and the general sat in his seat in quiet desperation, sweat now pouring down his face. He wanted to scream, jump up and run, but pure fear kept him riveted on the chair, folder in his lap all but forgotten in his sweaty hands.
The time dragged on as the two men stared at each other, and the general almost jumped out of his skin when the president finally spoke.
“I’ll say this once, and only once,” he said in a voice so deadly calm it would have turned even the most hardened criminal into a cowering imbecile. “You go and find that dimwit major, have him mount up an operation. You tell him to go out to Arizona and find this piece of shit.”
“Yes sir!”
“When he does, he’s to secure those codes and bring them back to me.”
“Is that all, sir?” the general asked.
“No, that is not all. I want this bastard imposter brought back to me, and I want him to secure whatever aircraft they have, and the pilot, and bring them back with him also.”
“Yes sir, right away!” the general said, standing, hoping to make it out of the Oval Office in one piece.
“Just a moment, General,” the career politician said, waving him to sit back down. “Arizona is a big state. Do you have a place for them to head to?”
“Yes sir. It’s a small town just south of the Grand Canyon. The airport they took photos of, and the town itself, is called Tusayan.”
“I never heard of it.”
“I’m guessing they’re either in that town or close by. Nothing much else around there.” “Get it done, General. Don’t just sit there and gape at me!” the president spewed. “Yes sir!” the general said. He did a correct about-face and strode as fast as he could towards the door. He found his way out of the now crumbling building and to his Hum-Vee parked outside of the west entrance.
He drove himself the short few blocks over the National Guard Armory on Capitol Street that sat within sight of RFK Stadium, Kingman Lake, and the Potomac River, where he parked and entered the building. Seeing a man dressed in Army ACU utilities, he asked where the major was.
“He’s in his office… sir,” the man said, saying the word ‘sir’ almost as if an afterthought. The general ignored the slight and walked down a long, dimly lit corridor to an office at the end.
The door was slightly ajar, and the general walked in without knocking. A short, balding man in a brown Army t-shirt looked up from a paperback novel he was reading, and seeing who had entered, started to get up.
“Please, stay seated, Major,” the general said, sitting down on a chair across from the desk.
“What brings the pleasure, General?” the major asked, putting away his pulp fiction novel.
“How was the last foraging expedition, Major?”
“It was as good as to be expected, sir. We’ve gone as far as Richmond to the west this time, and we think we have enough canned food for about a year now. There was a huge Wal-Mart distribution center there.”
“So you found the mother lode, eh, Major?”
“Not quite. A lot of the cereals and other foodstuffs were long gone and spoiled, but there were a lot of canned goods. We had to make five trips, but there’s enough food for the foreseeable future, at least twelve months’ worth.”
“That’s good news,” the general said. “How soon can you mount up another mission?”
“Mission, sir?”
“The president wants you to make another mission, a big one.”
“How big, sir?” the major asked excitedly, sitting up a little straighter.
“He wants you to head out west again, to Arizona.”
“Why Arizona?”
“We think the codes, the ones you went searching for last year, are located there.”
“Is that so? We didn’t find a trace of them at the wreckage in Iowa.”
“We’ve gotten some new intelligence in the last few days, and he wants it acted upon immediately.”
This information piqued the major’s interest, and he leaned forward, placing his elbows on the desk.
“What can you tell me?” the major asked.
“It seems that an enlisted man, a sergeant major from the 28th Division, has the codes, and he’s set up a settlement in northern Arizona.”
“So this is a military operation?”
“I’d say so, Major. The president wants you to take as many men as you think necessary, head out there, find this man, place him under arrest, secure the codes, and bring them both back here to Washington.”
“Anything else?”
“We believe they also have a working aircraft. You’re to secure the pilot of that aircraft, and bring them back also.”
“Do you have any idea how many people he has with him out there?”
“That we don’t know. It can’t be very many; it’s not a very big town where we think they’re located at.”
“That’s not a whole lot to go on, sir. With all due respect, that’s a long way to go on just a few suppositions,” the major said.
“I’m afraid that’s all we have right now, Major,” the general said
, knowing the major was correct.
“I understand, sir.”
“How soon can you get an expedition ready?”
“A few days. I’ve got to put together the logistics. It’s going to be a long one. It took weeks and weeks to get as far as Iowa last time. The roads and highways aren’t in the best condition anymore.”
“I just need it done, the sooner, the better.”
“Yes sir. I understand. We’ll have the whole summer. If we get out there too late in the year, we stand the chance of getting caught in another blizzard like we did the last time,” the major said, shuddering involuntarily at the memory of that cold winter a few years ago. He didn’t want to repeat that.
“I suggest you get a move on then. The president is making this a high-priority.”
“Yes sir. I’ll start on it right away. I’ll go myself, and take a company of men with me.”
“Do you think that will be enough?” the general asked.
“I think so, it’ll leave us a little light on defense of the city, but I think we can do it.”
“Get it done, Major.”
“Yes sir, I’ll get right on it. We should be ready to go in a day or two; I’ve just got to work out the logistics.”
“Let me know, Major. And here is some information you may find useful,” the general said, standing, and then remembering the sweat-stained folder in his hands that he’d meant to give to the president, tossing it onto the major’s desk.
“Thank you, sir. I won’t let you down,” the major said eagerly, fingering the folder greedily.
“It’s not me you should be worried about letting down, Major,” the general said gravely.
“Eh, yes sir, I copy you loud and clear, General.”
The general exited the office, leaving the major to his thoughts. He walked out of the building silently, got back into the Hum-Vee, and made his way over to the Pentagon, where he found John Thompson in the conference room in front of an ancient Ham radio rig he’d set up at the far end of the table. A coaxial cable ran from the back of the radio and up through the acoustic ceiling tiles, probably to the roof, the general thought.
When John saw him, he looked up from the dials and removed a set of headphones. “So, what did the president say?”
“He wasn’t happy at all, John,” the general said, sighing and plopping down in a chair near the far end. He looked around the room with a frown. The place was filthy. Soot from kerosene lanterns covered mostly everything with a thin black film, and he could smell the mold that must be growing in the walls, leaving him wondering what kind of upper respiratory condition he’d get from the constant exposure.
“I didn’t think he would be. But we couldn’t hide it from him forever.”
“No, that we couldn’t do. I’m afraid we might have kicked up a hornet’s nest with this though.”
“What gives you that idea?” John asked.
“I don’t know, a gut feeling.”
“He is the president, like it or not. He wants those codes, and the major will get them for him.”
“I know that John, but something, deep down, is telling me we should just leave this sergeant major out in Arizona alone.”
“General, you’re getting paranoid. What are one man and a handful of people out in some hole in the wall place going to do?”
“Are you forgetting that this one man, only a few months ago, launched a thermonuclear weapon at an atoll in the middle of the Pacific?”
“True,” John conceded.
“And the major, well, you know as well as I, that he can be a little rash in his decisions.”
“What were his orders?”
“Quote: The major is to mount up an expedition, head out there to Arizona, secure the codes, and the aircraft, bringing our good sergeant major, the codes and the pilot back to Washington unquote,” the general said.
“I agree, the major can get a little excited, but everything should be fine if he takes enough men with him.”
“Have you read this man’s 201 file?” the general asked.
“I have. He’s no legendary ‘Rambo’, General.”
“No, he’s not. But he’s had an impressive career, John. Airborne, Ranger, Combat Infantryman’s Badge, Bronze Star and Purple Heart in Grenada, and the youngest instructor ever at the Jungle Warfare School in Panama. The First Gulf War, then Iraq for several tours, then again in Afghanistan for several more. Not to mention whole pages of things completely redacted in the early 1980’s, which you should know well enough shouts ‘CIA’ from the rooftops. And on top of that a civilian police officer in Philadelphia for a lot of years. That’s one man who is not to be fucked with, that I will say.”
“I also recall reading he flunked out of the Special Forces selection course, General. He’s not a super soldier,” John said.
“John, I’m not trying to argue with you. No, he’s no Rambo, but I think we should handle this a little differently. Have you tried contacting them directly?”
“Actually, I have. Just now, in fact,” John said, pointing at the radio. “They basically told me to go fuck myself.”
“Oh come on, really?” the general asked after a laugh.
“Yes, really,” John said, picking up a notepad and began to read; “Quote: To whoever this is, I don’t care if you’re the Queen of England, we have a president, so go fuck yourself, unquote,” he said, tossing the notepad on the table unceremoniously.
“Are you sure?”
“I know my Boy Scout Morse Code is a little rusty, but yeah, I’m sure.”
“And then what?”
“They sent that message and then dropped off the air. Well, not right off the air. Right after they sent that reply to me, they boosted their power, and then ripped off a five-digit number sequence, three times over, then everything dropped off. I think it was some kind of warning or something.”
“Do you know what the numbers were?”
“I don’t think they meant anything, except for a warning,” John said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “They set up a code, sometime way in the past most probably. It might have just been a word, like ‘monkey’ or ‘taxicab’, something easy to remember, and easy for a man on the Morse key to rattle off. When everyone hears it, they drop off the air, radio silence. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have a prearranged radio frequency they all went to, or some other alternative means of communication we’re unaware of. Simple field craft from a security and intelligence standpoint.”
“Just like that?” the general asked, snapping his fingers in the air.
“Yes, General, just like that,” John said, wondering how this man got that star on his shoulder. “They most probably have use of the military satellite communications network. I know they’ve been using the IVIS, and logic dictates that if they are using that, they probably have control of the former, also.”
“Can’t we access that also?”
“We could, for a time. It’s how we knew about the Keyhole tasking. Right after the last photo flyby, we were locked out of the system. Whoever is in charge out there locked the system and secured it. We’re effectively deaf and dumb from this point onwards.”
“Didn’t you just say, only a few moments ago, that this man wasn’t some super soldier, no Rambo, and we shouldn’t be too worried about him?”
“From the amount of intelligence I’ve gathered, he is rather insignificant, considering the military might we can bring to bear on him.”
“Military might? What military might? He’s the one with the codes for the nuclear arsenal, and has proven he will use them.”
“Would he really launch a missile at himself?” John asked, not knowing the full story of what had actually happened on the tiny atoll of Volivoli. If he had known that story in its entirety, he’d change his way of thinking. “I mean, come on, General, think about it. If he’s faced with our good major and a hundred or so soldiers right on his doorstep, do you think he’d nuke himself?”
“You do have a point
, John,” the general conceded. “How do we stay in contact with the major?”
“I’ll have to scare up another Ham setup, a portable one like this, and I also think I can get a few Sat-Radios working for ourselves, though I’m not going to promise anything at this point,” John said, making a motion with his thumb towards the radio. “If I can get a few Sat-Radios working, I’ll never in a million years able to listen in on their transmissions.”
“Why not?”
“They’re scrambled. We’d have to know the exact algorithm, and they’re a million or so of them they could be using, along with the frequency that they’re using. It’d be a million-to-one shot to figure it out now.”
“You can set us up one that we can use, though, right?”
“Yes, I can do that.”
“Then do it, John. The president doesn’t want any delays with this.”
“I’m going to take this set home. I’ll work from there. I’ll do what I can to see if they’re on another frequency,” John said. “I’ll let you know what, if anything, I find out.”
“Good. Please do that. Figure out a way to keep in touch with the major, also. I think that will be very important.”
“That it will be, General,” he agreed, adding, “I’ll be able to pass on any information I can gather to him, also.”
“Tell me, John. How did you find out his name?”
“It was just a guess. I never broke their code completely. I just got a name at first, and then they were calling him ‘Sergeant Major’, so I searched the database for that rank and name, and came up with him,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “It was pretty straightforward. The Army didn’t have a lot of sergeant majors. The pool of names gets smaller as you climb up the food chain.”
“Then you’re not a hundred percent sure it’s him?”
“No, not a hundred percent, but all the facts are there.”
The general sighed. “With everything as tenuous as it is here, I don’t think it’s wise at this point to go off on this errand.”
“I know, and I agree, but that’s what the president wants, so that’s what the president will get,” John said.
“We need to concentrate on things here. If we have another winter like we did this past year, things will get ugly. The power needs to be restored. We need to get food for the people, and not just canned pork and beans.”
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