Dead Heat

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  on the plane, and get airborne. That said, ladies and gentlemen, the secretary-general."

  A less experienced man might have been blinded by all the camera flashes and

  distracted by the buzz and whir of autoadvancers. But Lucente didn't seem fazed.

  "You and I stand at a very precarious moment in human history," he began, dispensing with all preliminaries. "The forces of evil have attacked us when we least expected. We will strike back when they least expect. Let there be no doubt. I am a man of peace and

  diplomacy; this is true. What's more, I represent an international community that seeks peace and prosperity for every man, woman, and child on this great, green earth. But there is 'a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to heal and a time to kill, a time to tear down and a time to build . . . a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.' This, I am afraid, is a time for war."

  Devreaux looked at the faces of those in the press pool. They were clearly as taken

  aback as she was.

  "I will be talking to the American president by phone in a short while," Lucente continued.

  "I will brief him on the many conversations I have had with world leaders over the past several hours, including with President Al-Hassani. I will be telling President Oaks that sixty-three countries have pledged to me the full use of their military forces, intelligence services, and any other resources they have to help track down those responsible for this barbaric act of genocide and to impose the justice that is needed and rightly demanded."

  As Lucente continued speaking, Devreaux could barely believe what she was hearing.

  Curiosity was killing her. How was the international media playing this? She pulled up

  CNN's Web site on her iPhone and a few moments later found headlines she had never

  expected to read in her lifetime.

  TIME FOR WAR, NOT PEACE, U.N. CHIEF SAYS

  LUCENTE CALLS ATTACK ON U.S. 'GENOCIDE'

  ASSEMBLES 63-NATION COALITION TO RESPOND MILITARILY

  But Lucente was not yet finished.

  "That said, I am pleased to report that I have just spoken with Chinese

  prime minister Liu Xing Zhao. He told me that in the interest of world peace, he is

  ready to negotiate a full peace treaty with the United States and the United Nations. He said everything is on the table, including a dramatic reduction of Beijing's nuclear warheads and long-range ballistic missiles, if the U.S. will reciprocate. What's more, the People's Republic of China is prepared to send 100,000 peacekeeping forces—to serve under U.N.

  command—and $100 billion worth of reconstruction aid to the Gulf region to help stabilize the-Middle East and intensify our efforts to rebuild the oil and gas industry and thus

  sharply bring down the price of oil worldwide."

  The press corps was buzzing now. They had been expecting a pro forma press

  conference. But Lucente was dropping media bombshells one after another. And there was

  still more.

  "I am also pleased to report that President Al-Hassani told me earlier that he is ready to make some news of his own," Lucente explained, waiting a few beats until the press corps settled again and were hanging on his every word. "The president tells me that the United States of Eurasia is now prepared to forge a historic, comprehensive peace agreement with the State of Israel. Mr. Al-Hassani says that after much deliberation—and after seeing how close the world is to even further disaster—he is prepared to fly to Israel, address the Knesset, and share his vision for peace with the people of the Jewish state. He said that will include full recognition of Israel as a state, full diplomatic relations, and access to the Middle East Free Trade Area. What's more, President Al-Hassani said he has no pre-conditions. In light of unfolding events, he simply wants to sit down with the Israelis and begin their discussions as quickly as possible."

  Devreaux again scanned the stunned faces of her colleagues. They were all scribbling

  furiously and trying to make sense of this unexpected turn of events. Was the world at the brink of war or peace? How could it possibly be both?

  "There is much more to this story," Lucente noted, referring to the possibility of a peace agreement between Israel and the USE. "But these are the broad outlines that he has authorized me to share with you at this point. I can tell you that I plan to speak with Israeli prime minister Doron later today, en route to Beijing, and I am hopeful that we can begin working out a date for President Al-Hassani to travel to Jerusalem."

  4:32 A.M. MST-NORAD OPERATIONS CENTER

  Secret Service Agent Coelho stuck his head in the door.

  "Mr. President, General Briggs needs a word."

  "Send him in," Oaks said, having just finished an emergency video- conference with the National Governors Association and the mayors of the fifty largest American cities thus far unscathed by the nuclear attacks.

  The death toll was continuing to spiral. Millions of Americans were dead. Tens of

  millions more were on the move, fleeing for safety to cities, towns, and villages far from the blast sites and far from the projected radioactive hot zones.

  State and local officials were panicking, unequipped for such a disaster and looking to the president for guidance, and funding. Oaks had little of either. He barely had a

  constitutionally functioning government. He certainly had no treasury, much less the

  mechanisms with which to distribute financial aid. He was urging the governors and

  mayors to mobilize their national guards to keep law and order; to protect food, water, and fuel supplies at all costs, and begin rationing those as quickly as possible; and then to work together to pool their expertise and their resources.

  "The federal government is going to war," the president had bluntly told those patched in by satellite. "It's your job to care for people on the home front. I trust you will do your jobs, and do them well."

  Oaks hadn't had the heart to tell them more nuclear attacks might be coming. After all, he still hoped Bennett's source could stop them.

  The videoconference now over, Briggs entered the president's personal office, a hastily converted conference room right off NORAD's top secret ops center. He stood at attention and set an unmarked DVD onto the conference table.

  "Is my wife here yet?" the president asked.

  "She is, Mr. President," Briggs said. "She's not feeling well—had some heart palpitations on the plane. She's in the infirmary right now. They're running some tests, but they're not worried at all, sir."

  "I want to see her," Oaks said, starting toward the door.

  "Actually, Mr. President," Briggs continued, "there's something I need to tell you first."

  "About Marie?"

  "No, sir."

  "About my boys? Are they okay?"

  "They're fine, sir. They'll be here tomorrow."

  "Then what, General?"

  "I really don't how to tell you this, sir."

  Oaks braced himself. "What is it, General?"

  "Well, sir . ."

  "Just tell it to me straight, Charlie," the president insisted. "It's about Jon and Erin Bennett's convoy."

  "In Jordan?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "What about it?"

  "It's been attacked, Mr. President."

  "What?" Oaks gasped. "When? By whom?"

  "It happened about an hour ago. We're not sure by whom."

  "An hour? Why wasn't I notified?"

  "I just learned about it myself, sir."

  "Where did it happen?"

  "On a highway north of Amman," Briggs said. "They were en route to the airport from the refugee camp where they had been working."

  "I thought Doron had his people watching them."

  "They're all dead, sir."

  "All of them?"

  "I'm afraid so, sir."

  The president cursed and began pacing the room. "What about Jon and Erin?"

  "We're still trying to nail
down all the details, sir. It's going to take several hours at least before we can reconstruct precisely what happened."

  "That's not what I asked, General," the president insisted. "I want to know if Jon and Erin Bennett are safe."

  Briggs paused and took a deep breath. "No, Mr. President, not exactly."

  "What are you saying, General?"

  Briggs shook his head slowly.

  "Jon Bennett?" the president asked. "Is Jon alive?"

  Briggs hesitated. "I don't know, sir."

  "What about Erin?"

  "It's too early to say, Mr. President. We're just beginning to assess the damage. Jon Bennett is missing. That much I can tell you. There are many casualties on scene. It was a terrible car accident. Multiple vehicles. Huge pileup. One of the worst wrecks in Jordanian history. I've got this video uplinked from the scene from Amman Station."

  Briggs gestured to the DVD sitting in front of the president. "It's unspeakable, sir.

  And, not to be too graphic, Mr. President, but it's going to be tough to piece through. Most of the bodies are unrecognizable— crushed by other vehicles or burned beyond

  recognition. We're doing DNA tests as fast as we can."

  The president stopped pacing. "And?"

  "And as best as we can tell, Jon Bennett is not one of the ICUs." "So what's his status?"

  "We're listing him MIA at the moment, Mr. President."

  "Missing in action?"

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  "Yes, sir."

  "And Erin?"

  Briggs hesitated again, but the president insisted.

  "The initial assessment on the scene is that she was killed instantly, sir. She was strapped down in the back of the ambulance. The ambulance was pushed off a bridge by a

  cement truck, which then landed on the ambulance. It appears to have crushed everyone

  inside."

  Oaks staggered back into his seat. He loosened his collar as beads of perspiration

  formed across his forehead. "Wasn't Jon in that same ambulance?"

  "Yes, sir, he was. But the CIA station chief in Amman reports that there is reason to believe he may have escaped at the last second." "Escaped?"

  "There are a few eyewitness reports that someone crawled out of the wreckage just before the cement truck hit. But there are also reports of about a half dozen men firing automatic machine guns."

  "You think it was an ambush?" the president asked.

  "It certainly doesn't seem like a normal car accident," Briggs said. "And its too much of a coincidence."

  Oaks sat there, shaking his head. "I spoke to him only a few hours ago," he said. "I ordered him back here." He looked up at Briggs. "I thought we had people taking care of all this."

  "We had a team waiting for the Bennetts at the airfield in Amman, Mr. President,"

  Briggs noted. "He would have been in our protective care from that point forward."

  "What about on the way to the airport?"

  "We didn't anticipate that being a problem, sir."

  Oaks buried his face in his hands. He felt sick, and personally responsible. "So what are we talking about here, General—best guess?"

  "Mr. President, my guess is that Erin's dead. Jon's either on the run or taken hostage by whoever contacted him."

  "The thing in Bangkok?"

  Briggs nodded. "We've got a Delta team still en route to Bangkok now."

  "We should have sent a Delta team to guard Jon and Erin."

  "I guess so, Mr. President. So much has been happening. It's been happening so fast, I guess . . ."

  Briggs never finished the sentence, but Oaks wouldn't have wanted him to.

  Bobby Caulfield popped his head in the door. "Mr. President?"

  "Not now, Bobby," Oaks replied, waving him off.

  "I think you need to see this, sir."

  The president turned and glared at him. Caulfield stepped into the conference room,

  set a note down in front of Oaks, and left the room as quickly as he had entered. The

  president picked up the note, read it, and felt his heart sink.

  "Orlando PD called," it read. "Found Ruth Bennett's body. Kitchen floor. Double-tapped to the head. No break-in. No apparent robbery. Seems like a professional hit. FBI now on scene. How would POTUS like to proceed?"

  Oaks felt as if he'd been punched in the stomach. A wave of guilt washed over him.

  He couldn't believe what was happening. It didn't make any sense. He'd just talked to Jon, asked him to come back and help him, advise him, walk him through the prophecies of the 3

  last days. Had the Bennetts been targeted because of that? All of them? His guilt quickly turned to anger, and finally to thoughts of vengeance.

  The president looked up and turned to Briggs.

  "Somebody needs to pay for this," he said finally. "Find out who."

  4

  7:44 P.M.-KADENA AIR BASE, JAPAN

  Move fast; be invisible.

  Those were their orders, and they had come directly from the president. The pilots

  powered up, ran through their checklist as quickly as possible, then used hand signals to alert the ground crew they were ready. They were at war and radio silence was critical. Moments later, the hog- nosed Boeing RC-135 "Cobra Ball" spy plane—a high-tech military version of the commercial 707—was being pushed out of the hangar. Captain Victor "Vic" Harris, twenty-six, said a prayer for his wife of only two years and their new baby girl, barely three months old.

  He, his copilot, and his entire flight crew of thirty-two were fully briefed on what had happened back in the U.S. They had also been briefed on the latest developments with China and North Korea. They knew scores of F-15 Eagles had already been scrambled to protect the base and patrol the Sea of Japan. The 961st Airborne Air Control Squadron had been launched, and now they were being sent into action as well.

  Harris proceeded to taxi to runway 23L. Morning traffic was heavy outside Kadena Air

  Base, he noticed. Highways 58 and 74 were bumper-to-bumper, but that wasn't surprising.

  Not today. Nearly twenty thousand American servicemen and -women and some four thousand Japanese employees worked on the base, located just outside of Okinawa, Japan, and now all leaves had been canceled. Everyone had been ordered in.

  They were at Threat Condition Delta. Security was as tight as he'd ever seen.

  As his second-in-command instructed their crew to do a final check on all systems and

  prepare for takeoff, Harris checked his onboard computer monitor and got a text message from the tower giving him the winds, which doubled as their green light to go when ready.

  This was it, Harris thought. They were heading into enemy territory. No escort. No cover.

  And the stakes couldn't be higher. He took a deep breath, got the nod from his copilot, and throttled up.

  Ten minutes later, they were at forty-nine thousand feet, cruising at 520 miles an hour.

  "Everyone stay sharp," Harris said. "We really need to deliver on this one. As you know, our orders are straight from the top. Move fast; be invisible. The Boss needs our best today. Let's give it to him."

  The mood on board was somber. The flight crew from the 45th Reconnaissance

  Squadron—both pilots and two navigators—knew they had one task today: get their team of 5

  a dozen "Ravens" (electronic warfare officers), fourteen intelligence operators and linguists, and four airborne systems engineers from the 97th Intelligence Squadron close enough to get what the president and the SecDef needed, and then get them home without ever being detected.

  What they needed was real-time, on-scene intelligence and reconnaissance data on the

  rapidly intensifying North Korean military buildup near the DMZ and unconfirmed reports of heightened activity at long-range missile silos surrounding the capital of Pyongyang. To help them was some of the best spyware ever developed. Their communication equipment included high frequency, very high frequency, and ultra high frequency radios. The
ir

  navigation equipment incorporated ground navigation radar, a solid state Doppler system, and an inertial navigation system that merged celestial observations and Global Positioning System data.

  At least that's what the public was told, but that only scratched the surface. On board were the latest high-speed digital cameras, with such remarkable clarity that from five miles up they could look over the shoulder of a man reading a newspaper and actually read the headlines and much of the text. They carried infrared telescopes capable of tracking

  ballistic-missile tests at long range. They could relay all this and more to intel operators stationed at Kadena, and then back to NORAD, Site R, and any other military or

  intelligence facility it needed to go to, where it could be analyzed in real time and cross-linked to American bombers and fighter jets, if need be.

  "How's Janie?" Harris asked his copilot, trying to lighten the mood. "She took quite a spill."

  "Stitches?"

  "Nine, in her arm."

  "Ouch," Harris said. "That was quite a spill. How's the arm?"

  "Not as bad as the bike."

  "Poor kid."

  "Aw, she'll be fine. Tomboy through and through."

  "Quite the firecracker."

  "I'll say. Did I tell you she—?"

  An alarm suddenly went off, followed almost immediately by their chief navigator

  saying, "Captain, we have a bogey at two o'clock. Mach 2 and coming in red-hot. No, make that two bogeys."

  "How far out?" Harris asked.

  "A hundred and fifty miles."

  "Where'd they come from?"

  "Not sure, sir. A second ago, I had nothing; now I've got two—no make that four

  bogeys. I repeat, four bogeys."

  "What kind?" Harris asked, scanning his instruments and plotting a possible course change.

  "MiG-29s, sir."

  "Four of them? You're sure."

  "Positive, sir."

  "You sure they've seen us?" Harris asked, though he already knew the answer.

  "They're coming straight for us, sir."

  This wasn't good. They weren't ready. They certainly weren't done. They had barely

  6

  begun to gather what they needed. They were a full 240 kilometers, or 150 miles, off the coast of the Korean Peninsula. Below them was the Sea of Japan. They were still in