Clarissa had found a note in Justice’s Bible, near the bloody thumbprint. “I was a poor husband, dear Clarissa, a poor preacher and a flawed man all my life. Raise up a stone behind the old Batesville church, saying, ‘He loved God as only a sinner can.’”
She did so.
DONAHUE REMEMBERED TOLLIVER’S apocalyptic ravings. Lakes of fire, bottomless pits, angels of doom. Within a month he had the military standing down to peacetime routine, the fleets directed to or in port, the older ships back on the way to deactivation, the army divisions and air force squadrons back at their bases, their men exhausted and their parts stores depleted.
Donahue spoke frequently with President Lebed of the Russian Federation; the Russian fleet did not sail from the Baltic. Donahue promised the Russian president that no more aid or protection would be provided to the Cuban insurgentes, but they continued to advance out of the Sierra Maestra as the people rallied to them, fed them, and hid them from Nieto Castro’s slow-moving, predictable army. By December, they held half the country. Lebed couldn’t do anything about that, and Donahue wouldn’t.
Donahue wondered when the former president had expected his Armageddon. The new year passed quietly, 2002.
Then it began. A riot in Srinigar, Kashmir, caused the burning of a mosque. Indian paratroops suppressed the rioters, and Pakistani troops crossed the frontier to defend their Muslim brothers. The Indian Army, using a plan they had written in the early 1980s, constantly updated, invaded Pakistan with heavy divisions of armor and infantry covered by fighters and bombers. The Southern Force crossed the Indus River in three days, capturing Karachi and Hyderabad, while the Northern Force advanced on Lahore, Rawalpindi, and Islamabad. The Pakistanis fought fiercely, inflicting heavy casualties, and threatened to use their nuclear missiles.
The Russians rallied to their Indian ally; the Chinese to their Pakistani. Russia and China joined the two Subcontinent neighbors on full nuclear alert.
The United States called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Josephus Austin, appealed to the Secretary of Defense, Carolyn White, to get the fleets to sea and place all the armed forces of the United States on high alert. White took Austin’s recommendations to the president, recommending immediate approval. The president called the heads of government of India, Pakistan, Russia, and China and advised caution. He did nothing else. Austin declared DefCon Two, ordered the fleets to sea, and placed the air force and navy ICBM forces on high alert. The president fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and countermanded his orders.
ADMIRAL AUSTIN APPEARED to accept his dismissal and forced retirement without rancor. He refused invitations to speak to veterans’ groups and rallies organized by both political parties. “The new president is entitled to his own team” was all he would say publicly.
Privately, he began locating old friends, military and political, over the Internet and by phone. A meeting was organized on the large motor yacht of a wealthy banker who had served two terms as governor of Maryland. When the six men and one woman were gathered, the ship set sail from Annapolis and down the Severn River into Chesapeake Bay. Drinks and hors d’oeuvres were served by uniformed stewards in the grand saloon. The stewards withdrew and the hatches were locked. Austin rose immediately and began to speak without notes.
“Lady and gentlemen, I am greatly concerned. Practically from the day of his inauguration, President Donahue has been withdrawing and dismantling the military force President Tolliver built up, and as Tolliver predicted, chaos has rushed to fill the vacuum. We stand on the brink of war, that Tolliver predicted, and indeed the Revelation predicted, would begin in Asia, then engulf the world. My question to you, bluntly put because there is little if any time for planning or politics, is whether Donahue has the wit, the will and simple courage to defend this nation if the need arises?”
“Tolliver was murdered,” said Sara McPhearson, a wealthy widow of a prominent Delaware chemical-fortune heir and a former ambassador to France. “Surely we can’t have another.”
“Tolliver was murdered by an assassin hired by conspirators. We don’t know exactly whom; they hid themselves well, although the suicide of Admiral Daniels provides leads that could be followed.” Austin paused. “If Donahue should resign or be removed, the Speaker of the House would become president. He retired from the navy as a commander and still holds a reserve commission as a rear admiral. He served under me and he shares my concerns.”
“I don’t see him among us,” retired General lorio of the marines said.
“Nor should he be,” Austin said. “If we agree, I will set plans in motion to change the president’s mind, or failing that, seek his removal.”
“Without hurting him,” Sara McPhearson said firmly. “If my support is wanted.”
“He won’t feel a thing. Are we agreed, then?”
“Agreed to what?” General Iorio asked. “What would you have us do?”
“Support the action I must take. Those of you with contacts in the active military speak to them, quickly but quietly. This country has a choice of deterring a strike on ourselves or striking ourselves to decapitate the enemies of our nation. Our enemies see no more evidence than we do that President Donahue has the balls to do either of those things.
“Those of you with contacts in the party, especially you, Sara, try to hearten the president, to make him see his duty, and if that fails, support the new government that would be formed to respond to the emergency.”
The seven looked at each other and then at Admiral Austin. They nodded. The captain was called and the yacht was turned back to its slip in Annapolis.
PAKISTAN FIRED ITS small nuclear force at India, destroying Delhi, Calcutta, and Mumbai. The Indian counterstrike, much larger, burned all the populated parts of Pakistan to white ash and green glass. A limited nuclear exchange between Russia and China occurred two days later, confined to military targets and troop concentrations near the long common border, and to a few nuclear missile sites including some in southern China and the western highlands around Lop Nor. Both sides threatened massive attacks but secretly began urgent consultations.
The American fleets remained in port, the long-range aircraft grounded. The president finally threatened to intervene and revived Admiral Austin’s revoked order. United States and Russian nuclear arsenals were placed on highest state of readiness, and targeted at each other’s cities and military and naval resources.
Admiral Austin read the reports and acted the next day. Escorted by a battalion of the 82d Airborne Division, landed by helicopters on the Ellipse, he forced his way to the Oval Office. Admiral Austin took the “football,” the launch code computer that was really a modern laptop computer with a wireless modem, from the army major who sat outside the oval office, at gunpoint. The president sat stunned at his desk as the admiral and the soldiers crowded in. “Launch the strike, Mr. President!” Austin bellowed.
“No,” Donahue whispered. “We launch, they launch. We must stop the madness, not make it worse. I have just spoken to President Lebed—”
“It’s already as bad as it can get.” Austin popped open the computer and booted it up.
“You can’t,” the president said. “I won’t give you the code.”
Austin sneered, punched in some commands. “Do you really think I don’t know it?” He immediately began punching in the complex code.
Donahue leaped to his feet. “Colonel!” he shouted at the senior army officer in his office. “I am the Commander in Chief! Arrest Admiral Austin and take that thing away from him.”
The colonel hesitated but a second, then pointed at a sergeant major. The sergeant major approached the ashen Austin, saluted, and extended his hand. The admiral pressed the enter key and handed over the laptop, his hands shaking.
“It is done, Mr. President,” Austin gasped. “I suggest you get the hell out of Washington if you want to live.”
“I don’t th
ink I want to live,” Donahue whispered.
The soldiers trooped out, leaving the laptop open in front of the president. He stared at it, at its blank screen. How to countermand the order? He had never had anything to do with the thing while vice president. “Major!” he shouted. “Get in here, please.”
The major from whom the “football” had been taken hurried in and saluted. “Mr. President.”
“Admiral Austin has ordered a strike. Illegally. How do I reverse that order?”
The major looked at his watch. “There is very little time; ten minutes I think after the launch code is entered. I know you have to begin with an eight-digit code that only you know. Wasn’t the computer reprogrammed after President Tolliver’s death?”
“No.” Jesus, Donahue thought. He abhored the whole idea of nuclear war, but after Tolliver’s death, he had allowed himself to be instructed in the codes to launch Armageddon but not how to reverse them. Why had he not? Why had none of his advisers told him?
He was responsible for Tolliver’s death. Or at least he could have stopped it. What had he done?
“Then you must find the Secretary of Defense, sir,” the major said. “She has the only other viable machine.”
NUCLEAR FIRES IN Asia were so intense that the very soil burned, giving up its oxygen and carbon. Russian missiles, unmaintained for decades, fell way outside their targets but did terrible damage. Forests flashed to ash and pillars of dense black smoke.
Volcanoes, long dormant, erupted from the terrible shaking of the earth, from the Cascades in North America to the Caucuses in Russia, and all around the Pacific Rim. Russian missiles aimed at naval bases in the very south of China skipped off the exo-atmosphere and landed in Indonesia. Volcanoes called to sudden violence split the island of Java into three parts, and two of them submerged into the sea, taking with them seventy million souls.
4
COBRA STAYED IN Rio, first in the Ouro Verde Hotel in Copacabana, luxurious even in the face of catastrophe but too white, then in an apartment he rented in Ipanema. Since few winds or ocean currents cross the equator, the effects of the nuclear fires in the northern hemisphere took a long time to travel to the southern, but every day the skies got darker and the weather colder. The people of Brazil got little news; the explosions of so many nuclear missiles triggered electromagnetic pulses that knocked out all power grids and communications, even satellite communications. No information came from the Northern Hemisphere and the people of Brazil feared that if there was news there was no one up north to tell it to them.
The Catholic churches, the grand cathedrals and the humble chapels, filled and stayed filled. Priests said masses for the unknown dead, and for the comfort of the living. Along the beaches, at low tide, the followers of the old African religions, Macumba and Candomble, lit candles and laid out offerings of candles, fruit, and flowers, and watched as the waves of the rising tide carried the offerings away to the sea gods who could touch both Brazil and Africa.
The Maizinhas, the priestesses, entered trances and allowed themselves to be taken into possession by the ancient gods, begging the spirits of darkness to release the sun. Crossroads in the countryside were adorned with candles shielded by paper shields, and offerings of fruit, flowers, and animal bones. The skies grew darker every day.
Cobra thought of going further south, perhaps to the tip of Argentina, but he did not. He wrote to Isaiah in South Africa, but got no reply. He had no idea whether international mail was functioning at all.
As Carnival neared, in the height of the Brazilian summer, the skies were dark all day. The sun, when it could be seen at all, was a ghostly blue that people could look directly at. Cobra remembered a legend of the Ndebele people of his homeland that a blue sun foretold the end of the world.
Cobra went out into the scared crowds of dancers and drummers of the grand Escolas de Samba, bravely clad in their skimpy costumes despite temperatures near freezing as they practiced for the grand parade on Shrove Tuesday. On the Sunday before the parade was to begin, a cyclone hit Rio with high winds and violent rain. Of course there had been no warning, and there was much damage along the beaches and mudslides in the favelas, the slums that perched on steep hillsides.
When the storm passed, the skies lightened, and the sun rose weak but golden. The temperature rose into the seventies. On Monday the skies were brighter still, and Brazilian radio and television stations picked up signals from Europe and North America. The Brazilian stations immediately shifted to all news, and cariocas crowded into shops and around portable radios to find out what had happened.
Fernando Botelho, Brazil’s most respected television newsman, appeared on all six channels. “People of Brazil,” he intoned. “The planet escaped death by the narrowest of margins. An American admiral ordered a launch of all her missiles as a preemptive strike on Russia, but the American president was able to countermand the order. The Russians and Americans faced each other, fingers on the trigger, for two days, then the two presidents met hastily and in secret in London. They issued a joint declaration forswearing war between them, and stating that any nation using nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons against any other nation, or even within its own borders, would be attacked by both Russia and the United States. The Chinese refuse to sign, but have fired no more. The wars in South Asia, between India and Pakistan and between Iran and Iraq, have ceased, with all sides exhausted. Russia, the United States, and the European Union have agreed to massive aid projects, and they ask nations of the Southern Hemisphere, especially the prosperous ones such as ourselves, to help as well.
“There will be more news later. Brazilians, enjoy Carnival as never before, then begin forty days of prayer to Almighty God who has spared us.”
COBRA SAW THE news in his apartment. He wondered only whose instrument he had been. A single phrase rattled around in his brain: It is done.
Fat Tuesday dawned fine and hot. When the sun went down over the hills to the west, Carnival exploded with fireworks, music, dancing, drinking, sex, and the joy of renewal.
History is an account,
mostly false,
of events mostly unimportant,
which are brought about by rulers,
mostly knaves,
and soldiers,
mostly fools.
—Ambrose Bierce
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
—The Revelation of St. John the Divine
chapter 6, verse 8
FORGE BOOKS BY FRANKLIN ALLEN LEIB
The House of Pain
Behold a Pale Horse
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
BEHOLD A PALE HORSE
Copyright © 2000 by Franklin Allen Leib
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty
Associates, LLC.
eISBN 9781429976879
First eBook Edition : March 2011
First Edition: January 2000
Behold a Pale Horse Page 29
