by Jack Mars
Luke struggled to get out of his chute. It was a Russian parachute, and he didn’t know where the releases were. He finally kicked free of the thing and crawled away.
Spetsnaz troopers fired at the trees, lighting them up, blowing them to pieces. The sound was deafening.
“Ed! You with me?”
“Yeah!”
“You ready?”
“You know the answer to that.”
Luke moved along the ground crawling like a snake, going south, parallel to the tree line, instead of directly toward it.
After a long while, he had crawled far enough south that he was outside the lines of fire. He and Ed were out here in the dark, all by themselves. He crawled even further, in case any lucky ducky might still have a bead on them. Then he crawled some more.
“What do you think, man?” Ed said. “We gonna crawl to the South Pole? The fighting is back there.”
Luke pressed up into a crouch. Ed followed suit. The firefight was well to their right. The darkness of the tree line was just ahead. Luke indicated the fighting.
“The bad guys are holding the forest edge, right?”
Ed nodded.
“And Spetsnaz is trying to come in the front door?”
“Right.”
“I’m thinking if we come straight up the spine of these woods, we might hit the bad guys on their flank. Could be they’re exposed. I don’t know.”
Ed looked at the dark woods. “Makes as much sense as anything.”
They stood up and walked across the open field toward the trees. Soon, they were inside. They walked deeper, feeling their way. The woods were dense and dark—almost black. They had to force their way through heavy underbrush and between trees that in certain instances were less than a foot apart.
At some point, they turned north again, back toward the sounds of the battle. Luke could see flashes of light from the tracers and the muzzle signatures of the guns. He could hear the explosions and the crunches of trees disintegrating. The militants were going to hold the Russians outside the woods as long as they could—they were buying time to launch the missiles.
They crept through the woods now, quiet like deer. Gradually, Luke became aware of a clearing up ahead. There were lights inside the clearing, and the faint drone of machinery. The shooting was now far to the right.
He and Ed moved to the edge of the clearing. They ducked behind the trees.
The clearing was extensive, perhaps a football field across—it was a clear cut that had happened recently. Broken logs and stumps were scattered throughout. There was a wide path leading out the other side, perhaps to a nearby roadway.
Luke took a deep breath.
There were at least fifty men in the clearing, many of them heavily armed. There were several aluminum huts and small wooden buildings. There were several truck-mounted anti-aircraft guns pointed at the sky. In the middle of it all was a large green tandem trailer. The front was a typical tractor trailer cab, large, very out of date. The back was a missile launch platform. The platform was raised, with four missiles in launch position.
Off to the left was an identical trailer, also loaded with four missiles, the platform raised and in launch position. Men swarmed like angry bees around the two launch platforms. At the nearest platform, a payloader lifted what looked like a beer keg in the air—it was a warhead.
They were still mounting the warheads on the missiles.
Very, very quietly, Luke checked the magazine in his MP5. It was full. He patted his pockets. He had six more magazines and four grenades. They were going to get exactly one chance at this.
“What are we gonna do?” Ed whispered.
Luke stared at the problem. There was no easy answer. It was two against the multitudes. To their right, the fighting was coming closer, but they couldn’t wait for it to arrive. The missiles could be in the air before then.
“Triangulate,” Luke said. “You got your blooper?”
Ed patted the M79 grenade launcher.
“Circle over to the left and hit them with everything you’ve got. Hit and move, hit and move. Take a couple of those buildings out. Get the anti-aircraft guns. Hell, I don’t know, get the launch platforms. As soon as you start to work, I’ll come out with the machine gun. I’ll try to reach that closest platform, take out that whole crew if I can. If we can sow some chaos, we might be able to delay them until the Ruskies get in here.”
Ed looked at him closely. “Not much of a plan, is it?”
Luke grunted. “No. Not much. But I’m not working with much right now. I got you, and me, and all these lunatics.” He gestured at the men out in the clearing.
Ed nodded. He let a long breath exhale.
“I guess I’ll see you after the game.”
A moment later, he was gone.
Luke stood behind the tree, not moving. He watched the action out in the clearing. He tried to picture how it might go. Instead, he saw Becca, lying in bed, thin and frail, her skin hanging from her face, as though she were laid out for a wake. He saw Gunner growing to manhood, with no mother and no father.
He and Ed could die out here tonight. He knew it. He saw it in Ed’s eyes. They were both beyond tired. And the odds were bad this time—really bad. Why did he put himself in these positions? Didn’t he want to see his son grow up?
Didn’t he want to live?
When Ed’s first grenade hit the clearing, Luke was still deep in thought. He was so accustomed to hearing the distinctive report of Ed’s gun—doonk!—that when he didn’t hear it, he didn’t even realize Ed was shooting.
The sound had been drowned out by the machinery in the clearing, and the firefight on the other side of the woods. All that happened was one of the aluminum huts suddenly exploded.
Luke watched it rip to pieces, a red and yellow fireball blow it out, the heavy aluminum making that thunderous shuddering sound as it flew through the air.
Then people were shouting, running in the darkness, firing into the woods where the grenade had come from.
Oh man! Ed!
Now Luke was moving.
He burst from behind the trees, running hard for the nearest launch platform. He had the MP5 up ahead of him, firing off burst after burst.
The men at the platform tried to scatter. Luke’s first burst dropped one. His second burst dropped another. Now he was just running, and the men had disappeared.
Doonk!
He heard it this time.
BOOOM!
Another explosion lit up the night. A man was on fire, shrieking, screaming.
Luke reached the edge of the missile launcher. He crouched in the darkness, lit by the flickering flames. Could anyone see him? He didn’t know. The beer keg nuclear warhead was right near him, still mounted on the bomb loader.
BANG!
A gunshot rang out, ricocheting right in front of him, and whining off into the night.
He dropped to the ground. Someone could see him—that was for sure. He slid beneath the platform of the launcher.
Machine gun fire strafed the ground bare feet from him.
Perfect. He was trapped under here now.
Doonk!
Ed was taking his life in his hands.
Another explosion, a long rolling BOOOOOM, as something else went up in flames. That was a big one, very nearby, and suddenly a secondary explosion came. Ed had hit something with a gas tank.
Luke lay still for a second and took a deep breath.
Oh well. The hell with it.
He rolled out from under the platform, jumped to his feet, and dashed around the corner. He fired wildly, looking for a target. One man was ducked down behind a large control console. He was trying to launch the missiles. Luke ran toward that man.
Another man jumped out from behind the platform, aimed at Luke…
BANG!
…and died as Luke shot him in the head.
Luke turned to the man behind the console. He shot the man once, twice, three times, but the man stayed on his fee
t. The man opened a box and flipped a switch. Behind and above him, the missile launcher came to life. Flame burst out from the bottom of two missiles.
Luke grabbed the guy and dragged him away. They landed in the grass, just as the missiles shrieked out of their launch tubes and streaked off into the sky.
Luke shouted in gutter Arabic at the man. He shook him by the shirt.
“Where going? Where going?”
“Volgograd,” the man said. “Astrakhan.”
“Are they armed?” Luke said in English. “The warheads—are they armed?”
The man’s life was ebbing out through his wounds. A small sound of mirth escaped from him. He gestured with his eyes. Luke followed his gaze.
On a small mobile platform twenty yards away were three more beer kegs, just like the one on the bomb loader.
“The warheads,” the man said.
And died.
Luke stayed on the ground near him. He could not stand up. Too many bullets were flying now—to stand up would be to get sliced apart and chopped down. There were no more reports from Ed’s gun. Ed was gone—alive, dead, impossible to tell.
Suddenly, to Luke’s right, the tree line exploded. Missiles, tracers, machine guns, all coming this way—the Russians had broken through. Luke lay nearly still, like the dead man next to him.
The only thing that moved was his hand—it reached inside his flak vest, looking for his satellite phone.
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
12:37 p.m.
The Situation Room
The White House, Washington, DC
Luke Stone’s voice screamed out of the conference call speaker.
“There’s nothing on those missiles! Repeat! There are no warheads on those missiles. Repeat! There are no…”
On the big screen, there was a map of the region—southern Russia, Georgia, the Black Sea. Radar had picked up two projectiles, one streaking almost directly north, one streaking to the northeast.
“Astrakhan!” Stone shouted. Explosions and gunfire were happening somewhere near him. “Volgograd! Repeat! There are no warheads on those missiles!”
The entire room was silent, watching the missiles streak across the early evening sky half a world away.
“Kurt?” Susan said.
“We called the Kremlin,” he said. “We called the ambassador. We delivered the message. There’s been no reply. It’s the best we can do.”
On a screen nearby, a digital map of the Russian landmass materialized.
As she waited, Susan imagined seeing blips begin to appear on radar as the Russian silos launched their nuclear weapons. If that happened, she would have to respond in kind.
Haley Lawrence was on a telephone. He looked at Susan. “Strategic Air Command and NORAD await your orders.”
They watched as the minutes ticked by.
“Northeast-bound missile should hit Astrakhan in one minute or less.”
Susan took a deep breath.
“Do we have imagery from there?”
Kurt nodded. “Satellite coverage. If it’s big, we’ll know it.”
One long moment passed. Suddenly, the blip disappeared from radar.
“Was that it? Was that the hit?”
Kurt was listening to a wire plugged into his ear.
“We have an explosion,” he said.
The entire room gasped. Kurt raised a hand.
“Wait! Wait! Explosion is consistent with a small conventional weapon. We’re getting more information. It landed on the outskirts of the city. There’s a warehouse fire.”
He looked up. “It’s not a nuke.”
Susan felt all the air go out of her, like a tire suddenly deflating.
She looked at the board again. It didn’t matter. If the Russians overreacted, if they launched, then it wouldn’t matter. Still nothing on the board, though. No Russian missiles inbound. She kept watching, her eyes never wavering.
Still nothing.
The second blip disappeared.
She looked at Kurt.
“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll know in a minute.”
Suddenly, the telephone began to ring. The big heavy red one, sitting on the desk, the phone from out of a nightmare.
She picked up the receiver.
“Vladimir?”
“Hi, Missus,” he said. “We have a lot to talk about, wouldn’t you agree?”
CHAPTER FORTY TWO
11:30 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time (1:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time)
An Underground Bunker
Ketchum, Idaho
This was not going to work.
Her name was Denise Harker. She was a survivalist—a prepper was what she called herself. She’d had this fallout shelter built five years ago, in the sloping backyard behind and above her house. She had spent years slowly stocking it with food and equipment.
There was three years’ worth of canned food in here—most of which could be eaten straight from the can, if it came to that. There were two thousand gallons of water. There were half a dozen first aid kits and an entire wall of vitamins. There were ventilator masks, guns, and thousands of rounds of ammo.
There were hundreds of batteries to run everything for as long as possible—the tiny electric stove, the sunlamp, the FM/AM radio, the short wave radio, the flashlights, the DVD players. Along one wall, there were more than two hundred DVDs, plus at least a hundred books.
She was prepared for the end—she had convinced herself this was true. And on some level she was prepared, but not the way it counted.
She was down here with her two small children now—Isaac and Linda—twenty feet below the surface. An hour ago, in the mad dash to get inside the shelter, they had forgotten some things. One of those things was the family dog, Cosmo. The crazy gray mutt was currently chained to the back deck.
She could hear him above ground, barking. So could the children.
“Rowf!” Cosmo shouted. “Rowf! Rowf!”
Where is everybody?
The three of them sat in the tiny living space, staring at each other.
That was another thing—the living space was way too small. How had she imagined three people were going to get along down here? There was nowhere to stretch out, except in the bunks, and even then…
Isaac had grown a lot since she built this place. He was going to grow even more, and he was as headstrong as his father—not a good combination. Denise herself had probably put on twenty pounds since then. The space was tight. Even if they got a chance to bring Cosmo down here, where were they going to put him? The bunker predated Cosmo by two years. It was not designed with a family pet in mind.
“Rowf!”
“Can’t we just go and get him?” Isaac said.
“Honey, I told you half a dozen times already—”
“I don’t want to survive without my dog!” he screamed.
Little Linda started crying.
“Baby, don’t you cry now. We’re all right. We just need to wait and see what happens.”
“Mommy, I don’t want to die down here,” Linda said.
“We’re not going to die,” Denise said.
But was she sure of that? And if they lived, what kind of life was this going to be? How long would they be down here? If the communications were lost, how would they know when to go topside again?
A shriek of static suddenly burst from the radio, and Denise nearly jumped out of her skin. The damn thing hadn’t made a sound in twenty minutes.
“This is the Emergency Broadcast System. In the past five minutes, the White House has announced that the civil emergency has ended. A direct call was placed between Russia and the United States, and the presidents of both countries have agreed to an immediate cessation of hostilities. Strategic Air Command and NORAD report no intercontinental missiles are in the air at this time, and at no time were any launched from either side. Civil air defense and military radar stations around the globe are monitoring the situation, and will continue to do so for the next several days
. Repeat, the White House has announced…”
Denise let out a long exhale. It seemed that she had holding her breath all morning. She shut off the radio.
“See?” she said. “We’re going to be fine.”
She let the kids climb the steel ladder to the surface ahead of her. Isaac knew how to open the hatch. She worked her way up the tube, and when she pushed through out the hatch, she was surprised to see that it was a bright, sunny day.
On the sloping hill behind the house, Isaac was already running with the dog, little Linda trailing awkwardly behind them. Well behind her children, a mile away, the steep mountains towered over the foothills. It was if she were seeing that view for the first time. The whole thing was so beautiful that Denise did something she almost never did—she started to cry.
She slid on her butt and lifted her legs over the rim of the hatch. She stood on the spongy grass.
“I guess we dodged a bullet today,” she said through her tears.
CHAPTER FORTY THREE
October 23
6:05 a.m. Eastern European Time (12:05 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time)
The Presidential Palace
Ankara, Turkey
“I want to see him first,” Ismet Batur said.
He walked briskly through the marble halls of the massive palace, guarded by a contingent of more than fifty heavily armed men. The corridors were so wide that they could easily accommodate such a large group.
Once again back in the palace. What a waste.
It was the handiwork of Ismet’s predecessor—a palace so gigantic, so ostentatious, and so expensive that the public’s revulsion at it was probably the reason Ismet had been swept into power in the first place. A house with eleven hundred rooms and so many amenities they were impossible to count, never mind make use of. Though it was expected of him, Ismet found it embarrassing to live here. He pictured the American President, living in a house a tiny fraction of this size.
