Текст книги "Keystone"

Автор книги: Luke Talbot

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Текущая страница: 32 (всего у книги 36 страниц)

Chapter 86

While Officer Sandra Peele called for a pickup, Frank Ancelotti eyed her up. For a cop, she was pretty cute, and just his type.

He told her as much.

“You’ve heard your rights,” she said. “Anything else you say will be taken as evidence.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” he moaned. “All this for a fridge.”

She cocked her head. “What?”

“Yeah, a fridge. Some dumbass parks in the chief’s spot with a fridge in the back, then leaves the car there. I’m the guy who’s gonna get beat because of this. The guy parks there without even asking.”

She looked at the white utility vehicle suspiciously. A fridge?

“I’ll show you,” he offered, making a move to the van door, but she brought the Taser back up to point at him and he stopped.

Minutes later, backup arrived and he was safely in the back of a squad car. She and another officer approached the van from the rear.

“A fridge, apparently,” she explained.

New York was always on some form of alert; it just never publically displayed it unless it was absolutely necessary. As for the van, it was suspicious, but the last thing she wanted was to cordon off Broadway without at least having a look first. There were plenty of unmarked vehicles parked in back alleys, and people did sometimes move fridges around in New York. It was acceptable that the driver may have left it in the van rather than taken it with him.

She peered through the broken window and saw the tarpaulin. She agreed it did look like a normal fridge. Using her baton, she reached in and carefully lifted the cover until it slid completely from the object.

That’s no fridge, she thought. And in the split second when she realised what it was, she didn’t even have time to scream.

Nanoseconds after Sandra Peele died, the Lafayette Grill was flattened. The alley between Franklin Street and White Street, Broadway, and all of Manhattan beyond would have ceased to be in the blink of an eye, had any eyes not been vaporised instantly to witness it.

The shockwave rippled across the Hudson, pulling boats from their moorings and flipping passenger ferries over like leaves in the wind. A flat-bottomed boat rode the expanding sphere of energy, flying high into the air before disintegrating in the heat.

The Statue of Liberty was whipped-up from its pedestal, leaving just the toes behind, which quickly melted. The statue itself buckled and broke apart in mid-air, what little remained raining down onto Hudson Bay and sinking into the water.

Manhattan was completely flattened. Everything above ground level had either been ripped apart, melted or if it was small enough been blown so far into the sky that it would be deposited in a debris field over one hundred miles in diameter.

For five miles in each direction from the Lafayette Grill, from Newark in the west to Queens in the east and as far north as the Bronx, not a single human survived the explosion above ground. Underground, several thousand people survived in the parts of the New York Subway system that hadn’t collapsed or been filled with water from the river. With no lighting, fresh air or indeed any understanding of what had happened, most perished where their trains had come to a stop, in the vain hope that someone would come looking for them. The few who braved the cave-ins and flooded tunnels to reach the surface faced a bleak few days. Within a week the last survivor of ground zero, who had been in the Subway thirty metres from the epicentre of the blast, suddenly collapsed and died of internal bleeding.

He had managed to travel more than twenty miles from Manhattan by foot when he started seeing people walking in the opposite direction, towards New York, looking just as bad as he did.

Chapter 87

The President of the United States of America had been advised on the best course of action. Several hundred targets were being tracked by the SDN, which thank God was still helping defend the Nation.

Alongside New York, which had been the first, both Chicago and Los Angeles had been wiped from the map.

It wasn’t even possible to know for sure how many had died, but even the most conservative of estimates put the total at two million. The most pessimistic of reports suggested nearly ten times that figure.

Russia was probably responsible, no doubt in cahoots with China; as he sat near his military chiefs in the Presidential cavalcade barging its way through the heavy DC traffic, a dozen more blips appeared on the car’s SDN display.

They were attacking from the western seaboard. Smaller tactical weapons, heading for military installations along the West Coast.

The United States of America was about to fall.

Nuclear weapons had always been a deterrent. There was no genuinely effective counter measure. The only defence was offence.

He stared at the screen and clenched his fists till the knuckles were white. He remembered what one Senator had once told him, when he had been starting out in his political career; ‘in a nuclear war, the only winning move is not to play.’ He had no idea where the saying had come from, but he wasn’t prepared to simply stand by and watch the Russians and Chinese destroy his country with impunity. That was what had differentiated him from that Senator. Some people were born to lead; when it was time to make a hard decision, they had the backbone to act. That was why he had been elected.

That was why he was still, halfway through his second term, the President of the United States of America.

And that was why without hesitation and with full, devastating force, he gave the order to retaliate, starting with the Chinese warships out in the Pacific.

Chapter 88

Captain Tan Ling Kai had barely ten minutes to react. He reached the bridge of the DDG Hangzhou seconds after the alarm had sounded, and by then a second satellite had confirmed that they were under attack.

This was most unexpected. They were still in international waters, and had made no ultimatum to the United States. This was meant to be a show of strength and nothing more.

And yet the nature of the threat came in loud and clear from the communications officer. The Captain digested the information. He told himself that it was merely the swell of the Pacific and not nerves and weak knees that made him need to hold on to the computer console in front of him.

The first threat was from six incoming cruise missiles, Tomahawks. A defensive salvo of surface-to-air missiles from the Hangzhou’s vertical launch system dispatched the first five, with the sea-whizz turrets finishing off the sixth in a long burst of fire as it closed in, well within sight of the crew on the bridge. No sooner had the sound of the explosion reached them than reports of more incoming targets came through, this time double that of the first wave.

This was a sustained attack with only one aim: sink the Chinese fleet.

He made up his mind of what to do.

His second-in-command by his side, he pushed his hand down on an incredulous weapons officer’s shoulder. “We shall launch a counter-attack.”

At this distance their cruise missiles were at the limits of their effective range, but he entered the confirmation codes nonetheless and waited for approval from Beijing.

Approval from Beijing, along with confirmed targets, arrived as the sea-whizz were obliterating the last of the second wave of incoming missiles. This time, they had been within one kilometre of the Hangzhou, and five had slipped through the longer range surface-to-air missile defences.

China’s counter-attack, eighteen surface-to-surface missiles, aimed at military targets along the west coast of the United States, left its silos less than sixty seconds before the final American weapon arrived out of nowhere, completely undetected by the fleet’s early warning systems. It missed the ships entirely and detonated underwater, causing a thousand-foot swell to engulf anything within its reach. This included the two older frigates of the zhidui, leaving the modern destroyers untouched. Captain Tan Ling Kai looked out of the bridge at the explosion a kilometre away, aghast at the destruction yet optimistic for the survival of his command.

The swell broke and fell back into the sea, leaving no sign of the frigates. They were gone. He stared out at the site of the explosion and saw a small wave coming towards the Hangzhou. As it approached he began to realise its true scale, and within a second the roar of the incoming tidal wave had reached their ears. His jaw dropped as he watched, unsure of the kind of weapon capable of such an attack; it had clearly not missed the ships, relying instead of the destructive power of water to do most of the work.

He looked down at the silos on the deck, still open after the departure of their cruise missiles. The water from the wave would undoubtedly fill them, and from there, possibly enter the bulkheads and flood the ship. He issued the command to close them.

As the wave grew, so too did the noise of the surging water.

“Close the silos!” he repeated his order at the top of his voice.

The panicked weapons officer reset the command switch and pulled it down twice, to no avail. Some minor glitch was telling his console that the vertical launch system’s silos were already closed. He looked at his Captain helplessly, and the Captain looked back, with a fleeting thought that the older, less advanced revolver-style VLS would never have malfunctioned so catastrophically.

By the time the wave reached the ship it towered fifty feet above the antenna array, and the men and women on the bridge instinctively covered their faces with their arms and braced for impact as the water crashed into the windows.

The ship lurched sideways and plunged down into the water as the wave forced its way over.

There had been no time to issue the order to abandon ship – in any case it would have been pointless – he told himself as he fell against the computer console. The Hangzhou, listing at forty-five degrees, was sliding down into the depths of the ocean, gathering speed as the lower decks filled with ice-cold water. The bridge was watertight, a natural design feature of the semi-submersible defence systems, but it wouldn’t withstand the pressure from the water outside. He nursed a cut on his forehead and held on to the console. The emergency lighting came on, and in the eerie-red glow he saw the faces of his terrified crew.

All were looking to the main window of the bridge, to the toughened glass that kept the water out, and the spidery cracks that were dancing their ways from the edges towards the centre. When they joined up, the cracks paused as if not knowing where else to go.

There was a terrifying groan as the pressure increased on the outer hull of the ship. In the split second before the window finally gave, the only sound from the bridge was a collective intake of breath.

Chapter 89

Air Force One left the runway and climbed quickly through the low-lying clouds. Within minutes it was cruising close to the speed of sound at sixty thousand feet, at the limit of enemy interceptor operating ceiling. Two US Navy F35 escorts trailed on either side of the supersonic stealth liner that carried, as well as several score of supporting personnel and crew, the head of state and his Joint Chiefs of Staff.

They watched the horror unfold from the screen built into the wall of the President’s office.

 “Mr President, Sir,” an aide entered the office bearing a clipboard and a grave face. She didn’t bother with further formalities, striding to the screen and tapping it abruptly. The mash-up of video feeds from surveillance satellites and various computer programs gave way to the video conference setup.

“Neither Russia nor China are taking responsibility for the attacks on New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.” She passed the clipboard to the President. On it were some simple bullet-points in large bold font. The President took one look at the notes and discarded the clipboard on his desk.

“They think we made it up? We tracked those missiles from their silos all the way here, and then bang!” he slapped his fist into his palm. “Three American cities wiped off the map.”

“Mr President, there have been some reports coming to us from NASA. There were allegations made that one of the Satellite Defence Network contractors was planning an attack this afternoon.”

“Any reason why we should believe them? This wasn’t mentioned earlier, so I’m guessing none of the Federal agencies knew anything about it?”

“Well,” the aide looked straight into his eyes, “a counter terrorist unit was sent in as a matter of course, but we’ve not heard anything from them since. All communications with the team were lost shortly after they entered the contractor’s headquarters.”

The President stared fixedly at the young aide. There was something cocky about the way she addressed him. A lack of respect of his judgement, he was sure. Right now ICBMs, the American counter-attack, were racing through the stratosphere on their parabolic trajectories that would take them to their targets on the other side of the planet. At the same time, the SDN was tracking dozens of similar weapons coming the other way.

The Chief of Staff of the United States Army stepped forward and voiced what the President was thinking. He was a large man with deep-set, cold eyes and a lack of compassion she had always disliked.

“Don’t doubt for one second that these attacks are real,” he pointed at the screen dramatically. “What do you think our enemy wants most of all? Do you think they want global destruction? Of course not!” he threw his arms in the air. “They want us to recall our weapons, while theirs head towards us as we speak. They want to take us out of the picture, while at the same time minimising any damage to themselves.”

She looked around the room. These dinosaurs, she thought with contempt. She struggled hard to fight back her emotions. Her beloved Nation, at its knees, was about to wipe out half of Asia, and she was certain that it was a mistake.

For even if the attack on the United States was real, the only just course of action was to not respond in kind. In the same way she abhorred the death penalty, she could not understand the basic premise that mutual destruction was in any way justifiable.

 “Mr President, Sir,” she said, taking great care to ignore the Chief of Staff.  “I do thank you for your patience.” Humility was the best way to subtly get what you want, she had decided years ago when first faced with the egos of men. “Our counter attack will destroy China and Russia almost completely. If we are wrong, and NASA is correct, then we will have performed the first strike.

“The Chinese are enraged by our destruction of their Pacific fleet, but at the same time they accept that the fleet’s counter-attack, authorised by Beijing, has caused considerable damage to military targets along the West Coast. They are willing to talk to avoid this escalating any further.”

The President looked down at the clipboard on his desk; a bullet-point list of events, one by one, leading up to the now. He rubbed his chin pensively.

Seeing the hesitation the Army Chief of Staff tried to interject but the aide quickly capitalised on her short advantage.

“Our ICBMs are still in disarm range,” she said quickly. “We have less than two minutes to destroy them harmlessly in the upper atmosphere.”

“And if their attack is real, and destroys us?” the Army Chief sneered.

She didn’t take her eyes off the President. “Then if you still decide that a counter-attack is appropriate, the combined strength of our deployed nuclear submarine fleet and remaining domestic silos is still enough to destroy both China and Russia.”

“Damn you,” the President muttered under his breath. Damn her, he thought, for sowing this seed of doubt. Counter-attack was justifiable, he knew that, but only with enough evidence on their side to make it clear-cut. “When will we have visual confirmation of the ICBMs launched against us?”

“No sooner than five minutes, Mr President,” she replied. It was simple maths: they couldn’t confirm that the next wave of attack against them was real until their own counter attack was three minutes beyond the point of no return. In effect, the President had launched his nuclear weapons too soon, and based on too little evidence.

“General,” he said addressing his Army Chief of Staff, “can you confirm we will still be in a position to launch a counter offensive should the weapons we believe to have been fired against us prove to be real?” He stared his aide in the eyes as he addressed the Chief of Staff, and she stared right back.

There was a pause, followed by a frustrated intake of breath from the Chief of Staff. “Mr President, that scenario is not my recommendation. We will have a reduced capability to respond.”

“Is reduced still enough?”

“Yes,” the General eventually conceded.

“Then cancel our attack,” he replied.

“Sir, I must insist that –”

“General, your orders are to stop the attack, now!” the President barked.

Reluctantly, the General returned to his computer and tapped in the command sequence. Looking up briefly at the President and his aide, he shook his head in disgust.

They then both entered the codes that would destroy their counter-attack in mid-air.

The SDN received the command from Air Force One.

A loop in the security protocol detected that this command had initiated a previously unused, new, function.

The SDN was intelligent enough to know this function was new. It had been received during the latest update, which it had accepted. But it hadn’t yet been tested or proven. That wasn’t so unusual; as an advanced defence system, many of the SDN’s commands and events had yet to be exercised for real.

Basic logic tests confirmed the validity of the commands, and ensured that the parameters received did not exceed the specified data types. A simulation of the function call was tried, and completed with success.

The SDN was an array of independent devices positioned in Geostationary orbit above the United States of America. Covertly, of course, some dozen or so other satellites in lower non-geostationary orbits were also part of the SDN, allowing for surveillance of other parts of the world to be linked in to the defence network.

Each independent satellite’s processing and memory contributed to the network’s ‘brain’, which could be thought of as self-aware insofar as it knew of its own component parts, what it was designed to do, and had an understanding of the importance of that role in the defence of the United States of America, which to it was simply a geographical location that contained a number of potential military and civilian targets.

The SDN’s brain had proven the validity of the command it had received. It did not understand the logic of the command, as it was not part of the brain’s known scenarios. But human logic was still tantalisingly out of its reach, as for all its intelligence it was still simply a machine.

Taking its attention away for a nanosecond from the highly classified simulation exercise it was still running, the brain executed the strange new function.

“In an effort to achieve peaceful resolution of the current situation, we have issued the command to destroy our counter-attack until the nature of the threat to the United States of America is more clear.”

The President addressed the video wall. His aide stood nervously behind him. She had made a potentially dangerous enemy in the Chief of Staff, who stood threateningly behind her left shoulder.

The video wall was split between the Russian and Chinese leaders.

“We are still tracking your missiles.” The Russian President didn’t try to hide his anger. “You must recall them now.”

“A delay in your satellite feed, surely,” the President’s voice wavered.

“You bluff!” cried the Chinese head of state. “You seek to destroy us and avoid us destroying you!”

The President turned to his aide. “Can you confirm our offensive has been recalled?” he asked.

She stooped over the computer screen on the desk and tapped a few commands. The results popped up. She typed the commands in again and the same result returned.

“The command was received and confirmed. However,” she swallowed hard, not knowing where to look, “our offensive has not been recalled. It’s too late to recall them now.”

“Mr President,” the Chinese President said with disdain, “Your acts of unprovoked aggression towards the People’s Democratic Republic of China and our friend and ally Russia have left me with little choice but to launch full counter offensives against the United States of America before we are left completely defenceless.”

The video wall blanked out, and a stunned silence fell on the office.

“So what command did you actually send?” The President turned on the Chief of Staff.

“The command to self-destruct all of our missiles,” he said defensively. “I cannot understand why the command failed, when we can clearly see it was received and confirmed by the SDN.”

“Unless NASA is right,” the aide said slowly. She turned the screen towards the men, showing the Russian and Chinese weapons finally reaching their targets around the United States. Seconds after each one hit, the live text feed below updated: RUS010:Negative Impact... RUS018:Negative Impact... RUS006:Negative Impact...

One by one, the weapons reached their targets. One by one, the ground reports confirmed that no impact had occurred.

“The SDN was compromised.” She let the fact sink in. “Our attack on Russia and China has not been recalled, and therefore we can probably expect a real attack from them to reach us in the next half hour.”

The Army Chief of Staff looked at her screen and double checked on his own. His silence confirmed what she had said.

“So, we have been deliberately provided with false information by our own defence systems, on top of the real nukes that blew up this afternoon. Whoever planned this knew we would possibly try to recall our own weapons, so made sure that wouldn’t work,” the President said, astonished.

“God help us,” the aide whispered.

Air Force One’s alarm system broke the long silence that followed. The Captain’s stern voice came over the speakers in the office.

“Get the President to the evac’ pods, we are under attack!”

Guards ran in to the office and bundled the President down a staircase that had opened up in the floor, leaving the Joint Chiefs and the aide above. Moments later, through the small window, they saw the starboard engine of the aircraft explode, severing the wing a third of the way along its length.

The plane lurched to the right, inexorably falling into a downwards spiral in slow motion as the pilots valiantly battled with the one-and-a-third remaining wings to keep Air Force One as steady as possible while the President was evacuated.

“Laser!” the Army Chief of Staff shouted. “The SDN has a built-in network of lasers designed to bring down ICBMs. Only they’re not as effective as we hoped – the power draw is too great and ICBMs move too quickly. We, on the other hand, are an easy target.”

“Why did the SDN never try to use those lasers against the nukes that hit New York, Chicago and Los Angeles?” the aide asked in disbelief.

They were being ushered down another flight of stairs to the secondary evac’ pods. The President’s pod was now clear, and the pilots had confirmed that Air Force One was going down.

“They’re not active,” he said shaking his head. “Not technically allowed by international treaty. They’re not even supposed to be up there. But we still have them in case we need them.”

“And you didn’t think that would be now?”

Each evac’ pod took five occupants. She was relieved when she and the General were each herded into separate capsules opposite each other.

“Like stopping the holes of a sieve with your fingers,” he shouted over to her as the door closed.

The door to her own pod closed. She found herself sat next to a cook, two stewards, a man in a dark suit and a marine. The rockets on the evac’ pod fired and the negative G force pushed her against the restraints towards the ceiling. The cook’s harness was badly fastened and he knocked his head against the side of the cabin, losing consciousness instantly.

She caught a glimpse of the crippled Air Force One through the small window in front of her, but any hope of seeing its fate was swallowed up by a blanket of clouds.

The pod jerked sharply as the parachutes deployed to control its descent, and they floated gently down towards an already different world.