by Devon Ford
Lieutenant Colonel Andy Gilbert stood at ease as he watched the signatures on the big screen split apart and head in different directions.
“Acquire targets,” he called out to his control room, “prepare to fire five Seekers.”
“Targets acquired,” came a calm response, “fire on your mark.”
“Fire,” said Gilbert instantly with no trace of hesitation, feeling the facility shake with the combined force of five rockets capable of almost Mach-9 erupting into the sky far above them.
The threat had first come from the Soviet Union, and the facility he stood in was built as a direct response to that threat of mutually assured destruction. The United States had no desire to agree to be destroyed and, just as every other country in possession of nuclear warheads, began another arms race with more intensity than the space race to develop the most effective intercept missiles. These next generation missiles were designed with another purpose, rather than another tool in the box for two heavyweights to slug it out. The threat they feared more today was a short-range attack, or a nuclear or chemical or biological attack coming in by plane. The Seekers were designed to outrun everything known to fly, and instead of carrying a warhead, it relied on kinetic energy to displace the attack.
The program started way back in the eighties and was intended for short range use as tank busters, but the project was subsequently cancelled. It was quietly reinvented in the windowless meeting rooms of government buildings, using specialists in different fields like solid-fuel propulsion and electronic guidance systems all working in information silos and never getting together until the prototypes were ready.
“Target analysis,” Gilbert called out. “Intercept percentage.”
“Missile trajectory indicates Florida, Nashville, D.C., Boston, or New York. Last missile is a slow-mover and indicates …” The analyst paused, trying to search the digital map along the projected line of the missile’s path for a target. Gilbert didn’t snap at the woman, didn’t allow his fear and nerves to dictate how he treated his team. He permitted her a few seconds.
“Sir, based on trajectory I believe it could be heading for Pittsburgh,” she said finally.
“Could be?” Gilbert asked, his need for certainty greater than ever.
“Sir, trajectory is off for direct line, but no other major population center is in the path,” she answered. Before Gilbert could ruminate on that another analyst called out with panic in their voice.
“Impact! Detonation over Florida,” he squealed in panic. Gilbert fully expected that this would happen. He couldn’t do the complex calculations in his head with other things happening in quick time, but he knew that their missiles couldn’t cover the short distance that the first missile had covered in a matter of seconds.
“Understood,” he said coolly, swallowing. “Intercept percentage,” he said again.
“Sir,” the female analyst again, “slower moving missile at one hundred per cent, D.C. thirty-eight percent.”
“And the others?” Gilbert asked, the note of his voice changing slightly as he absorbed the majority likelihood that their capital would be annihilated in minutes.
“Looks like Boston, sir.” A pause. “Negative outcome. Twenty-one per cent intercept chance. Incoming missiles are accelerating faster than we anticipated.”
“Impact!” shouted the analyst. “It’s … it’s D.C. sir …”
“Understood,” Gilbert said again in a deadpan voice, staring at the screen resolutely.
“Impact!” shouted the excitable analyst again. “North of Fayetteville,” he said, scanning a map for the target.
“Fort Bragg,” Gilbert said, not needing a map to know what was just to the north west of the city. Gilbert waited, his hands clasped together and his breathing rapid as he watched the illuminated legends creep across the screen. The missile heading for Boston blinked out, and was followed by another impact report. Gilbert barely heard it, but acknowledged it all the same. He was reminded of the serenity prayer; he had to accept the things he could not change, he had used courage to change, or at least try to change, the things he could, and now he was learning the wisdom to tell the difference.
“Intercept!” screamed the analyst. “Remaining missile taken down near Atlanta.”
The control room cheered as one, not realizing the devastation they had just suffered, or simply not fully understanding it yet. Inside of a few tense minutes they had lost one of their biggest military bases, two cities with millions of casualties, and their capital. Gilbert stayed in the position he was stood in, rooted to the spot and fighting to keep himself calm.
And the attack would go, for now at least, unanswered. Because there was nobody left alive with the authority to launch a counterstrike.
The Movement, the treasonous fools, had ensured that, unwittingly, by securing the president and making him the perfect sitting duck.
~
Just as Jake was trying to emulate the easy manner of command that he had seen in others, a flash like lightening seared across the windows. It was like lightening, but at the same time it couldn’t be because the flash lingered instead of plunging the sky back into darkness. As the flash began to wane, a rumbling of something far away hit them as though they were on the very edge on a small earthquake.
Some people didn’t notice it, others did and began to ask questions. Jake, Cal, and Sebastian all exchanged looks.
“Sir,” Jake asked Sebastian. “Do you have roof access here?”
“Yes,” he replied as he unclipped his own swipe card, “service elevator to the top.”
Jake said nothing but glanced to Cal. His eyes said, You coming? and Cal nodded. He looked to Sebastian, then to Louise, and the concierge nodded back. Inside of a second, the three men had communicated a great deal without saying a word.
Cal limped alongside Jake who swiped the card over the elevator controls. The doors opened straight away and the two men entered the small space, both unbeknownst to the other saying a silent prayer that the generator power held up. Riding upwards fast in the undecorated space in stark contrast to the decadence of the guest’s elevator, neither said a word. It creaked to a stop and the two walked out, still in silence. They scanned the horizon until Jake’s sharp intake of breath made Cal spin around.
There, in the very furthest reaches of his vision to their north east, was a glowing orb. Neither man could see it clearly, and neither knew what it was with any certainty.
But both knew that it wasn’t good.
~
Moments after the cop had got into the elevator with Cal, Sebastian was leading Louise through to the comfortable seats further inside the lobby. As he was doing so, a shout from the lounge made him divert.
“I got something,” shouted an excited voice, as the volume of a TV screen grew louder. “Oh, Jesus …”
On the screen, on some obscure news channel nobody had heard of, was the obvious devastation and recognizable profile of a nuclear detonation.
“Where is that?” shouted a guest. “Is that the west coast?”
“That’s LA,” responded a voice full of dreadful certainty.
“Everybody quiet!” snapped Sebastian as he sat the shocked Louise down in a chair. “Please, turn that up.”
“…confirmed reports of between six and ten nuclear explosions in the United States,” said the anchor’s strained voice. Sebastian didn’t hear any more as the gathering of guests who had refused to go back to their rooms erupted with gasps and shouted curses and questions.
Just then Jake and Cal returned to the ground floor and followed the source of the noise. As they rounded the corner into the lounge, both saw the iconic and unmistakable profile of a mushroom cloud, only this one was hanging over the earth instead of rising up from it. Both then knew, with absolute and utter horrified certainty, what the glow they had seen from the roof was.
“Boston,” Jake said quietly, making Cal’s mouth open. Between the report on TV and the information he had gathered w
ith his own eyes, he put together the information in the only way it could logically go. East and west coast alike, the USA was being bombed by nukes.
“It’s the Russians, it has to be,” shouted an old man in a tuxedo, angrily shaking off the restraining arm of his wife and personally reliving the cold war.
“What the hell are you doing about this?” screamed a woman with tear-streaked makeup running down her face. She directed this at Jake, as though his membership of the NYPD had made him the keeper of international relations and that he was somehow solely responsible for this. He knew it was fear transference; people when they panic look for the nearest uniform, the nearest authority figure, and either plead for help or blame them personally.
“Okay everyone, let’s all just calm down for a minute,” he said, holding up both hands to try and restore order to the small group. This only had the desired effect of making people shout louder and advance on him like a pack of hungry animals. The mob fragmented between the majority going after Jake and demanding he do something, and a smaller group who had singled out an Arab businessman in a perfectly cut shiny suit.
Cal didn’t see this, he was advancing himself toward the TV screen, reading the text scrolling across the bottom.
Los Angeles, San Francisco. Seattle. Vegas. Portland. North Carolina. Florida, and now Boston.
“How far away is Boston from here?” he asked nobody in particular.
“Couple hundred miles, straight line. Maybe less,” Sebastian said behind his shoulder.
“Prevailing wind?” Cal shot back.
“This way, more or less,” Sebastian answered, grasping the point immediately. “We need to move west or north. Fast.”
They turned, and Cal squatted down in front of Louise. He held her hand, seeing that she was coming out of the other end of whatever shock she had fallen into. Cal told her the country was under attack, and that they had to go. Now.
“My bag,” she said. “I need my bag.”
Cal glanced between her and the mob yelling at Jake. He saw that the young cop had taken a step backwards, then bladed his stance and placed a hand on his right hip; the classic stance for facing a threat and gently reminding everyone there that he had a gun. He had three actually, given that he still had Troman’s duty belt over one shoulder and his off-duty weapon in the rig under his left arm, but his instinctive stance to rely on his service weapon was ingrained. Cal heard him shouting at the others to stay back. He knew just by looking that the situation would not end well. Wordlessly he took the chrome semi-automatic from the waist of his jeans after he had retrieved it from Louise’s grasp, and went to stand beside the beleaguered NYPD officer.
The change in odds served to quiet some, whilst the others were snapped from the moment by Cal’s interruption and recognized that their own behavior was simply not acceptable.
“Enough! Everybody, listen to me!” came an authoritative shout from behind the group. Almost as one, heads turned to see Sebastian stood on a polished mahogany table with his arms out wide. “The United States is under attack.” He paused for the rising noise level to react to his repetition of the obvious.
“It’s the fucking Al-Qaeda,” a voice shouted, the owner of which pointed a finger at the terrified businessman.
“Don’t be so bloody ignorant,” snapped Cal loudly. “For one, Al-Qaeda barely even exists anymore and you’re just being bigoted, and two, why would he have anything to do with it?”
“Enough!” said Sebastian again, raising his voice but still not quite lowering himself to shout. “We all need to evacuate the city and head west. We have probably a day before the fallout reaches New York so again, I urge you to leave.”
“How do you know?” shouted a man in a suit.
“I don’t,” Sebastian answered equably, “but I doubt staying in the city is the right thing to do, so I think we should try and leave. How you do this is up to you. Thank you.”
With that he skipped down from the table and undid his tie, symbolically taking himself away from his duty to ensure everyone visiting the hotel was thoroughly cared for. People milled around, uncertain of what to do without instruction. Sebastian strode through the crowd, ignoring all the shouts and pleas to help them. Glancing back, he caught Cal’s eye, then Jake’s. Cal involuntarily stepped forward to follow before he remembered Louise and turned back for her. She was already on her feet, walking toward him with some sparkle back in her eyes.
“It’s all on the coast,” she said, “we need to go inland.”
“What?” Cal said, slightly behind her logic.
“I saw it on the news,” she said looking straight at him. “All those bombs dropped on the coast, so we need to head inland away from them. I need to go home.”
That was a concept Cal understood perfectly, only he knew now with utter certainty that he would probably never go home, even if he found an airport with something capable of crossing the Atlantic that would take him. He misunderstood her point in its entirety, however, because her need to get home wasn’t for need of a feeling of safety, but because she knew they would be far safer there than anywhere else.
Louise went to activate the elevator to retrieve her bag, but as she was waiting a noise erupted in the lobby. A series of bangs and flashes echoed throughout the ground floor, followed by strange coughing noises.
And then screams.
She ran back in, Jake and Cal appearing at her side with guns in hand.
“There a back way out?” Jake asked over his shoulder as they retreated from the noise ahead.
“Yes. Through the kitchen. The delivery entrance,” Sebastian said, walking with them and snatching up the plain black backpacks that Jake was pointing at. He handed one to Cal, which Louise took from him and strapped on.
“Go,” Jake said, hanging back slightly to cover them as the last man out.
Sebastian led the way through the kitchens, turning left and right as the head of the snake escaping the fire.
“I’m assuming a car is out of the question?” Sebastian shouted back.
“It’ll be gridlock,” replied Jake confidently. “We need to go on foot, head through Central Park and cross the Hudson somehow.”
“Shit!” cursed Sebastian, surprising them all and stopping in his tracks.
“What?” Louise asked before any of the others could.
“The keys to my boat,” he said. “They’re on the bunch in my coat pocket,” he said, looking forlornly back the way they had come. As if on cue, a door behind them banged open and shouts in Mandarin could be heard echoing toward them.
“I need my bag,” Louise said, her eyes suddenly wide and her voice distant and desperate.
“You’ll have to leave it—” Cal began to say before she cut him off.
“I need my bag!” she said more loudly, on the verge of tears as the shouts grew louder behind them.
“No time, go, go, go,” Jake whispered, urging them all onwards.
~
The lobby was secured with ease, and three of the team held positions of cover until the lead agent walked in. He was dressed and equipped similarly to the others: plain black equipment without labels to indicate their point of origin. He glanced down at the bodies of two of his team, a quarter of his fighting strength dead already. Chen, one of his favorites who he also knew had a sister high up in the Ministry at home, lay dead with most of the right side of her skull blown away. That was unfortunate, operationally, politically, and personally as he found himself drawn to her. He barked short orders and two of his remaining team members began to secure the bodies. Making eye contact with his partner, he nodded and the two moved off into the hotel to kill the people who did this.
~
Sebastian, now stripped of his beautifully tailored jacket and wearing a military backpack strapped on tight over his fitted shirt, led the way. He paused at the door and looked at Jake, then at the spare duty belt he carried, then back to his eyes.
“You know how to use it?” Jake asked him,
receiving a curt nod in return. He handed it over and watched as the concierge strapped it on and drew the Glock, chambering a round with a smooth and practiced action after dropping the magazine to check for brass.
He silently counted down on his fingers, three, two, one, then pushed open the door and stepped clear quickly to clear the immediate area. The others pushed out behind him. Jake and Sebastian clearly knew how to handle weapons, a point which Jake made sure to ask about soon, and Cal was holding the liberated hand cannon with some form of familiarity. Only Louise was unarmed, and Jake considered giving her his Glock 26, but decided that the last thing she probably needed right then was another gun in her hand.
Sebastian led the way, checking angles, and sticking to cover like a professional. Jake put Cal and Louise in the middle—Cal because he was injured and slow, and Louise because she was, well because she was a young woman and in a semi state of shock, leaving him to secure the rear of their foot convoy. Dropping to one knee at the north end of the block, Sebastian turned to the others.
“We need to get distance from the building,” he told them, full of a different kind of confidence than before. “Head for the park and up to 79th to get a boat from the basin. Agreed?”
The way he spoke told a story in itself, but for now everyone was happy to agree. Except Jake. He hesitated, holding back, and finally found his voice.
“Those people,” he said, the strain evident on his face, “we can’t just leave them …”
“We can, and we have to,” Sebastian snapped. Cal turned to face the young cop and put his empty left hand on his shoulder.
“Jake,” he said, searching for eye contact in the dark, “don’t you get it? This is beyond fucked up. We need to get the hell out of here before more bombs drop. On us this time.”
Jake’s face fell, and Cal suspected he could see a tear roll down one cheek quickly wiped away lest it betray any sign of weakness. They were all terrified, all shocked to their very cores about how quickly normal life had turned to horror. Jake nodded, whispering, “Okay,” and fighting down his pathological need to go back and help people.
