The Seventh Angel - Страница 37

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He glanced up at the television screen in time to catch the end of the NUCLEAR ATTACK animation. “Nuclear attack? Where? I mean, who got hit?”

Ann shot him a look. “That’s what I’ve been trying to get you to find out. Now … Will you please freaking ask somebody?”

Sheldon shoved the cell phone into his travel bag. “You’ve got a mouth. Why haven’t you asked somebody?”

Ann rewarded him with another dirty look. “I don’t speak Japanese.”

Sheldon raised an eyebrow. “What am I? Secret Ninja Boy? I don’t speak Japanese either.”

He looked around. “Besides, at least two-thirds of these people speak English. I guarantee it.”

Ann stared at him without speaking. He knew why she hadn’t asked. She couldn’t deal with members of her own culture. Fifty percent of Sheldon’s job was talking to people so that she didn’t have to.

Sheldon groaned theatrically. “Okay. I’ll go ask somebody.”

He climbed out of his seat and stumped across the room to the closest cluster of locals.

Ann watched him as he struck up a conversation with a thirtyish Japanese couple. They were total strangers, but Sheldon smiled at them almost immediately. His hands flitted about like birds as he talked. His face was alive with interest.

How did he do that? She knew the smile and the interest were genuine. He could walk up to complete strangers in a foreign airport and make an immediate connection. How in the hell did he do that?

Sheldon turned toward Ann. He pointed in her direction, then to himself, and finally to the news story on the television screen. He spoke. The couple responded, and Sheldon spoke some more.

The Japanese man glanced back at Ann, nodded a couple of times, and began using the finger of one hand to trace and retrace something against the palm of his other hand. A curve? It looked like he was drawing and redrawing a curve with his fingertip. Then, he used the fingertip to point to a spot in mid-air, about six inches to the left of his open palm. He poked that spot several times with his fingertip, as though punctuating a sentence with multiple periods.

Sheldon nodded, bowed slightly to the man and to his wife, and walked back toward Ann.

As she watched him approach, Ann was struck by the notion that Sheldon came from an entirely different planet. Or maybe she did. Sheldon seemed to fit, after all. He could talk to the corporate suits, the computer geeks, the gung-ho military types, and total strangers — all with apparently equal facility. He could find a way to fit in just about anywhere, even in countries where he didn’t speak the language. Ann, on the other hand, only seemed to relate to machines. Maybe she was from another planet. If so, she was ready to go home to Planet Z-X-55, or wherever she came from.

Sheldon dropped heavily into the seat next to her. “It was a nuclear attack,” he said.

Ann sat up. “What? Where …”

Sheldon held up a hand. “Slow down. It’s okay. Some whack-job revolutionary in Siberia launched a bunch of nuclear warheads at the West Coast. Our military shot them down. All but one, anyway. That one hit about a hundred miles west of San Diego. Blew up a big piece of water. Probably killed a few million fish.”

“Wait a minute,” Ann said. “You’re telling me they missed? Somebody tried to nuke the West Coast, and they freaking missed?”

“Looks like it,” Sheldon said. “The one that got through missed, anyway.” He tugged at his lower lip. “Or maybe our guys knocked it off course. They hit all the rest of the warheads. Maybe they hit that one too, but it wasn’t destroyed. Just knocked off course, so it landed in the ocean instead of San Diego.”

He grinned at Ann. “Pretty good shooting, huh? The media’s constantly telling us that Ballistic Missile Defense is a waste of our tax dollars. But it looks like it did the job.”

Ann looked up at the television screen. The Japanese news program was showing the ambulances again. Injured and bloodied people being tended to by paramedics. Blue and red police lights flashing. Broken windows, and people running.

She nodded toward the television. “What’s all this, then? If the military knocked out all the bombs, what happened to all these people? How did so many people get hurt?”

Sheldon’s momentary grin vanished. “Panic. When the missile warnings went out, a lot of people just lost their minds. They all thought they were about to be blown to kingdom come. They freaked out, ran for the hills, barricaded their doors. All the crazy things that people do when they think they’re about to be killed.”

His eyes darted to the Japanese couple he’d spoken to a few minutes earlier. “That gentleman over there told me that some kids in Alameda torched a whole strip mall. The cops didn’t get there in time to stop the fire, but they did manage to nab some of the firebugs. Turns out that the ringleader convinced his buddies that some kinds of missiles are attracted to heat sources. I guess they thought the fire would lure the bombs away from their neighborhood.”

Sheldon shook his head. “People get crazy when they’re really scared. They hurt each other. They hurt themselves.”

“The government should have known this would happen,” Ann said. “They shouldn’t have sent out the warnings. They knew people would lose their minds. This is their fault.”

Sheldon exhaled loudly. “Come on, Ann. You’re going to think the worst of them no matter what they do. You know you are. That’s how your brain is wired.”

He unzipped his travel bag and began fishing through the contents with his hand. “If the government had kept this quiet, you’d be screaming for blood right now. You’d be sitting next to me, talking about the conspiracy of silence and the people’s right to know. You’d be telling me that the people should have been warned.”

Sheldon pulled out his cell phone and flipped it open. “No offense, Ann, but you get a lot of mileage out of not liking people. You know that, don’t you?”

Before Ann could answer, he punched a string of numbers and hoisted the phone to his ear.

Ann started to slip in a comeback, but she stopped herself. What was the point? The best she could hope for would be to piss off Sheldon, the one person who seemed to be able to put up with her.

She let her eyes wander around the terminal. People were still gathered around the televisions, staring up at the curved glass screens for a glimpse of the chaos on the other side of the ocean.

Her eyes lit on a huge electronic monitor showing arrivals and departures in Japanese and English. She let her gaze slide down the list of departing flights, pretending for a second that one of them might list an outbound flight to Planet Z-X-55. She was ready to get off this planet.

With a flicker of shifting letters and numbers, the information on the monitor was updated. Times and gate numbers reshuffled themselves as various airlines adjusted their schedules.

Every flight to the United States was now listed as ‘Canceled.’

CHAPTER 27

WHITE HOUSE

PRESIDENTIAL EMERGENCY OPERATIONS CENTER

WASHINGTON, DC

SATURDAY; 02 MARCH

7:17 PM EST

The national security advisor cleared his throat. “Ah … Mr. President?”

The president didn’t answer. The Single Integrated Operational Plan lay untouched on the briefing table in front of him. The thick binder was still open to Section Orange: “RETALIATORY NUCLEAR STRIKE OPTIONS.”

Of all the documents Frank Chandler had been shown, trained on, or briefed about, this was the one he’d least expected to ever need. He understood its purpose. He knew that it had been created specifically for the kind of situation they were in now, but he’d never really believed that this moment would arrive.

And yet … somehow … it had come.

Gregory Brenthoven cleared his throat again. “Mr. President, we have to respond.”

The president raised a hand for silence. He couldn’t seem to think properly.

His eyes drifted down to the SIOP. The open section of the document was divided into numbered subheadings:

6.2-A Counterforce Responses

6.2-B Countervalue Responses

6.2-C Punitive Responses

Counterforce referred to the targeting of missile silos and military sites, to destroy the enemy’s ability to make war. Countervalue meant attacks against cities and the killing of the general civilian populace, to break the enemy’s national will. And punitive responses were designed as punishment: in essence, “spanking” an enemy nation with nuclear weapons.

The terms were so sterile, so scrubbed of emotional cues, that they invited the reader to ignore their grisly implications. There was no hint that selecting any of the proffered choices might condemn millions of human beings to death.

The president absently grasped the tab marked 6.2-C, and flipped the binder open to the section on “Punitive Responses.” Again he encountered three subdivisions:

6.2-C.1 Punitive Responses (Disproportionate)

6.2-C.2 Punitive Responses (Proportionate)

6.2-C.3 Punitive Responses (Minimal)

He selected the third tab, and thumbed the pages to “Punitive Responses (Minimal).” He read the opening paragraphs.

...

The decision matrices described in this subsection contain non-conventional response options calculated to demonstrate strategic restraint while signaling the willingness to employ nuclear weapons. They are designed to minimize human casualties within the target zone, and limit damage to the physical infrastructure of the target nation.