Keystone (47 page)

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.

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.

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.

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.