by Jay Brandon
Cell phones lay on the floor of children’s bedrooms and hospital rooms.
The culmination of the evening was a small nuclear explosion in the Nevada desert, close in fact to the area where nuclear testing had been conducted for decades. This one, though, was close enough for Las Vegans to see the mushroom cloud. The desert winds were unpredictable, no one was willing to guess whether they would blow the radioactive dust toward the city or away from it. Evacuation began haphazardly at first, then with slightly more organization, but emptying America’s fastest-growing city in only a few hours’ time was impossible. There weren’t enough ways out. As in Houston when Hurricane Rita had approached a decade earlier, the city turned into one giant gridlock, and stayed that way for hours. No one died of radiation poisoning, but several were killed in car wrecks, and looting was widespread. Even fabled casino security broke down, as guards began helping themselves to cash along with the customers. A few kept playing the slots, deep into the night.
The Next Morning
The President went on the air at 5:30 a.m., Eastern Time. It was still dark all across the country, and many people hadn’t yet heard of the attacks. Nevertheless, President Witt had an audience of eighty million viewers, which increased when the tape was replayed on all the morning news shows.
“My fellow Americans,” he began. “Some of you have heard of the mysterious attacks across this country in the last few hours. This is not a time to panic. Emergency personnel are responding. The victims are being treated and the threats ended. There have been many casualties, but we do not expect any more. The danger is being contained.
“The best thing all of you can do for your country today is to go about your normal lives. The attacks were very confined. Most American cities were not affected at all. Let us show the world the strength of Americans. We will live through this. We will prosper and grow.
“Our intelligence services have been working through the night and will continue to work to find the source of these attacks. In the first analysis, we believe this threat to our national security is not from a … not from a terrorist nation or even a terrorist group. No group has claimed responsibility.”
Now the President looked his gravest as he stared into the camera lens. Jefferson Witt had gotten elected partly because of his mature, thoughtful appearance. Exhausted by a cowboy presidency, a majority of Americans wanted someone stable and gray, even slow. Tonight Witt looked much grayer than when he’d been elected a year ago. His first visible response to the crisis was to look tired.
But there was resolve in his voice. In his next sentences he would take the first major steps of his presidency, the ones that would define him for history. And he believed deeply in what he was about to say. His eyes grew livelier and his voice stronger.
“But these attacks will not be ended by reprisals, no matter how rapidly and forcefully we respond. That kind of reaction is from another age. That page of history has been turned.
“Every nation, no matter how powerful, is vulnerable to attacks such as we have seen overnight. They will not end by our destroying some terrorist bases or even toppling regimes and occupying whole countries. We have seen the failures of such policies in recent years.
“No. We are going to do what my advisors and I had planned to do already, what I campaigned saying America should do. A large majority agreed with me. Well, now is the time.
“We are going to begin withdrawing American forces from around the globe. We are calling our men and women home. They have been stretched too thin for too long. We will not demand more of them.”
The President raised one finger and shook it as if reprimanding a class. “No more will America be the world’s policeman or the world’s whipping boy. We are going to stand down. We will be an equal at the world’s table. Other nations will have to solve their own problems.”
The President knew the danger he faced. It was difficult to put a good face on this retreat, with dead Americans, many of them children, lying in hospitals and morgues across the country. But he and his speechwriters thought they knew how America would respond, and they counted on the fact that a large majority of Americans were exhausted from years of war and intervention. Jefferson Witt was a picture of strength, not of cowardice, as he continued to stare forcefully into the camera.
“America has never run from a fight. We have plunged into so many conflicts in order to save someone else. We are not running from this. But this is not a fight, not in any sense we have ever known. There is no other country to attack. We will continue to work to bring these attackers to justice, but that doesn’t mean we have to continue to support a huge military establishment in order to protect the world. That is not our job, if it ever was. This is not a retreat, it is a consolidation. A protection of our own vital interests.
“I have ordered the immediate withdrawal of the first units of American troops from the Middle East, from Asia, from Europe. This will not be done in haste, but in a timely way we will bring all our forces home.”
The President smiled. It was a slight smile, but on his craggy face, at the end of that terrible night, it was dazzling. The President’s smile reassured. His voice was hearty as he concluded, “This is the end of the age of American domination. But it is the dawn of the age of American peace. Of America taking care of itself. This will be the golden age. My fellow Americans, I ask you to join me in asking God to bless our great nation as we step forward into a bright new day. Thank you.”
There seemed to be a long moment’s silence across the entire country. It was broken, at least in the Circle’s Colorado compound, by Gladys Leaphorn, who exclaimed, “The Age of American Selfishness. He has proclaimed it!”
“And America wants it,” Jack said quietly. “That’s why Witt got elected.”
“This is what he’s wanted to announce all along,” Arden said, then her eyes shot around the room. “You don’t think—”
“No.” Jack shook his head, and he wasn’t the only one. “He wouldn’t do it like this. Even Witt isn’t that stupid. If anything, these attacks probably slowed down his plans. But you know—”
“Yes,” the Chair said wearily. There was much more to this than the President’s public announcement. There always was. Within a few hours they should know more. “Let’s wait until the others get here,” Gladys added, and she rolled away for a morning nap. She was back in her wheelchair, and moving very slowly. Jack and Arden exchanged a glance, and Arden jumped up to help her grandmother to bed.
“But Witt is our man!” exclaimed a senior member of the Circle. “We helped get him elected. We have all kinds of—”
“We helped him because we knew his election was inevitable anyway,” Alicia Mortenson said, and her husband nodded. They were now wearing outlandish flowered shirts and touristy shorts. No one asked if they’d been vacationing when they’d gotten the call to assemble. Maybe this was just the way they dressed around the house.
“But my point,” insisted the first man, “is that we exert all kinds of influence over him. So many vectors intersect at him—”
“Perhaps we’re not so influential as we think,” interrupted Janice Gentry, the Yale history professor. “Someone certainly seems to have dominated him in the first reaction to this crisis.”
There weren’t as many members gathered as there had been at the last meeting, only a dozen or so, in the bunker at the base of the Rocky Mountains that was the group’s only fallback position, or at least the only one Jack knew about. But these dozen represented all wings of the group’s power and influence: academia, diplomatic, the scientific and entertainment industries, and one junior editorial writer from the Denver Post.
The one who had proclaimed the group’s influence was Professor Clifford Warner, currently on sabbatical at the Sorbonne, who had happened to be at an academic conference in Chicago and had rushed here when the attacks began. Warner was a tall, thin man, with long arms and legs that sometimes distracted his students from what he was saying. Today he
couldn’t sit still. He paced and fretted, making everyone tired. “That National Security Advisor,” he exclaimed, snapping his fingers. “The one none of us knows. He must be behind this.”
Jack wanted to say, “Duh,” but he was much too junior in this group. Besides, icy politeness was more this group’s style than outright insult. Professor Gentry applied the style as she said, “Excellent thinking, Clifford. I believe you’re right. But we must stop this now. Withdrawal of our forces from around the world will be like the ocean receding, exposing things we wish to remain hidden.”
Craig Mortenson said quietly, “I have one source privy to the President’s plan. It’s worse than he announced. Withdrawing troops is only phase one. He even wants to close our embassies. Leave no American presence in the world at all. He believes this will take away any incentive to attack us. Only American companies would continue to operate abroad. We would be the world’s bankers and businessmen, but not its diplomats or soldiers.”
Startled, Arden cried, “But that—!” She recovered quickly, cutting off the sentence she didn’t need to say. The grave faces told her as much.
Gladys Leaphorn asked Craig, “Does your source have any influence?”
Craig answered slowly, “My source is not a policy advisor and is not one of us. If—my source—ever offered an opinion, probably the President’s confidence would be withdrawn. We wouldn’t even have a pipeline to his thinking.”
Everyone heard the careful gender-neutrality of Craig Mortenson’s statement. He wasn’t usually so politically correct. They wondered just how close to the President his source was.
But that person wasn’t going to be any help at the moment. “Let’s go!” the Chair said. “We need to do what we do. But we need to do it more quickly than we ever have before. Some subtlety may need to be abandoned.”
“On the other hand,” Jack ventured to say, “perhaps we can slow down events to allow—”
Gladys snapped her fingers and pointed his direction, awarding Jack points. He didn’t smile. The Chair turned to someone else in the group and said, “Call General Reynolds and our other military contacts. Surely it will not be possible to mobilize such a large withdrawal very quickly.”
The member smiled. “Some of those boys can take three weeks to strike a tent. And there are always vouchers to mislay. Foot-dragging is what our forces do best. In peacetime, anyway. I’ll—”
He turned away without finishing the sentence. Another couple of members had already slipped away as well. Gladys raised her voice. “We should know more in a few hours. We’ll keep you informed. And you keep us informed as well. This is not SOP. We must coordinate. Work your contacts, but report here before you do anything. This must be a joint operation. No rogue missions. Understand?”
They were already leaving, some of them shuffling, some walking briskly on high heels. They were a very strange-looking task force for being assigned the job of saving the world. The median age was about fifty-five, and none of them was a secret agent or even a soldier. Nevertheless, their backs were straight, their eyes alight and most of all their brains churning. It was a brave band of siblings that headed swiftly for the exits.
“Go Hornets,” Jack said quietly.
CHAPTER 4
Dennis Wilkerson, the President’s new National Security Advisor, remained so largely unknown to the general American public that he could walk through the streets of Washington unnoticed. He was new enough to the high circles of government that he hadn’t taken on its trappings. He had no Secret Service protection. Wilkerson liked strolling to work from his apartment at the Watergate, stopping for breakfast along the way, taking time to marshal his thoughts. This habit sometimes made him late to meetings, but he excused himself by saying, “Mr. President, if I don’t have time to think there is no point to my being in the meeting at all.” It was this kind of pronouncement that caused the President to listen to him so attentively when he did arrive.
So his strolling-and-breakfast routine continued even during this unprecedented crisis. At 6:45 a.m. in October the sun was not yet quite up, but the streets of Washington were full. Wilkerson walked energetically, turning from Wisconsin Avenue onto a slightly less traveled way, heading toward the small, unpopular café where the staff had come to know him. Wilkerson was about six feet tall but seemed taller because he only weighed a hundred and sixty-three pounds. A few wrinkles spread outward from his eyes, but his brown hair contained no gray. He rather regretted that. Wilkerson looked forward to being a tweedy old professor, well-respected, his opinions sought out. Maybe with a pipe.
He had lived alone his whole adult life, except for his time in the Air Force, and had grown satisfied with his own company. He looked determined as he walked, but there was really little on his mind. The President had accepted his idea, and it was the only idea Dennis Wilkerson had, or had ever had. Withdraw. Take a bow and exit the world’s stage. The President had been easy to convince, and Wilkerson had nothing more to do in his role as NSA other than to keep reinforcing the idea, not let other people stop or even modify it. All-out withdrawal or nothing.
His usual table was empty. Well, so were most of the tables. The café had a small outdoor seating area. Dennis Wilkerson’s table was just inside, but close to the open doors. He liked to think of himself as sitting back and taking in the day, while everyone else in the city rushed through it thoughtlessly.
Across the way, a gray-haired man in a tweed jacket seemed to be reading both a magazine and some sort of program schedule, while his eggs grew cold. The man wore thick glasses that obscured his features, but he had all the trappings of the absent-minded professor, papers fighting out of a briefcase on the chair beside him, and a white mark that could have been chalk dust on his elbow. Dennis Wilkerson smiled at how familiar this type was. The old professor which he’d once aspired to become.
The professor sipped his coffee, frowned, looked around, and came toward Wilkerson. A self-service coffee bar stood a few feet behind the NSA’s usual table. The professor busied himself there for a couple of minutes, started back toward his table, then turned and said, “Professor? Wilkes, is it?”
“Dennis Wilkerson,” he said, and stood up briefly.
“Yes. You are a professor, aren’t you? We met at the Methods of Analysis conference two years ago in Athens. Georgia, I mean.” The speaker chuckled. “Maybe that’s why I was there. Greece is more my specialty.”
“Yes, I remember,” Wilkerson said pleasantly, not remembering in the slightest. Academic conferences were always full of types like this. He had met several.
The professor extended a hand carefully, holding his coffee cup in one hand and his magazine under the other arm. “John Owenby. Beloit College. And are you still at—Stevens, was it?”
Wilkerson avoided the name of the college where he had formerly worked. He had a little smile as he talked to Professor Owenby. This was the kind of learned man who had intimidated Dennis Wilkerson for most of his adult life. Now he had soared beyond the narrow world of academia. “No, actually I’m working here now.”
“Ah. U. Va? Georgetown?”
Wilkerson nodded vaguely.
Professor Owenby said, “Good schools,” then leaned closer confidentially and said, “A little too full of people a little too full of themselves, if you know what I mean.”
“I think I do.”
The professor still leaned close, his breath smelling like coffee-flavored mints. “Best advice is to keep to yourself for a while. Let on that you’re working on a very involved research project, can’t really socialize with the others ’til it’s done. That will earn you some respect without your ever opening your mouth. Worked for me, I can tell you.
“Say.” He leaned back, studying Wilkerson through those thick spectacles. His eyes behind them, Wilkerson noticed, were pale blue and very alert. His study of Wilkerson was penetrating as he asked, “Aren’t you the fellow who wrote the paper on—what was it called?—‘National Insecurity’—a coup
le of years ago? Yes, you sent it to the chair of my department.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well, someone sent it. The chair asked me to vet it for historical content, but I got caught up in the policy ideas myself. Not my sort of thing, really.” He winked and chuckled. “I’m not really interested in anything that’s happened since about 123 B.C. But I found it fascinating. There are some good historical analogies, of course. Rome under Claudius. Feudal Japan. All failures more or less, but still… Where was it published?”
“It never was,” Dennis Wilkerson said, and his attempt to make the sentence sound lighthearted only highlighted its bitterness. His smile was sharp and brief as he sipped coffee.
“Not surprised, to tell you the truth. It had too many ideas. Stuffy old rags like this one”—he waved the magazine under his arm, and Wilkerson saw that it was a thick academic journal— “like a lot of blather about the long dead, not policy suggestions that might actually—horrors!—have some application to the real world. They prefer my kind of thing, actually. Doddering and out of touch.”
He dropped the magazine, the Journal of Ancient Perspectives, and Wilkerson saw John Owenby’s name on the cover. “Your article was much more interesting than anything that’s been published in here in ten years. It deserved wide circulation.”
“Actually, it was seen by some influential people.” Wilkerson enjoyed saying this with becoming modesty because of the huge irony of the sentence, known only to him.
“Excellent!” Professor Owenby shouted. “The kind of thing that might lead to a government grant, maybe? But you know, that paper should still be published. Maybe after a revision. Learn the kinds of things these rags are looking for. Or maybe even something for much greater circulation. Drop the footnotes, go for learned earnestness. I’ve had a few of those, too. Atlantic Monthly, you know.”
