B00DSDUWIQ EBOK (23 page)

The
lights winked in their recessed overhead spot wells, and then went out. The ongoing
babble of the TV where he had been watching the breaking news went silent. The
screen was suddenly phosphor TV black. He reached for his iPad, realizing the
Internet was down as well. Ten seconds passed…a minute… It was the strangest
feeling in the world—no power. No lights, camera, action. No TV and radio. No
Internet.

Food
and Gasoline….That was the ticket now. That and the hundred items list he had started
working on last night, the ones to disappear first from store shelves in a time
of grave national crisis. He went to the window and looked out to see if he
could see any signs of other folks in the neighborhood with electricity, but all
was dark and quiet in the early morn.

He
had been through power failures before, but something about this one, coming as
it did on the heels of that morning news feed, gave him the shivers. He decided
to send an email to his buddy Aaron. If the cell system was still up he might get
it. He’d make it short, just a quick text message: WTF?

But
the message never got through because his phone was dead. That was odd, he thought.
I charged the damn thing just last night in the
Quantum Sleeper
. I still
have near 100% battery now.

The
minutes passed and the sweat on his brow was challenging that stay fresh feeling
he was supposed to have all day from his shower. Liz was already yapping at him
to call PG&E and see how long it would be before they had the power up. His
cell phone was wacky, so he reached for the land line, surprised to find that
it was also dead.

Power
down, phones dead, Internet gone, no TV. The advertizing had finally stopped. In
effect, the entire substance of his life was now toggled OFF. He couldn’t even
play his Yamaha keyboard for musical distraction because he upgraded last year
and this model didn’t run on batteries.

Holy
Freakin’ Dodge!

Robert
grabbed his car keys and was out the front door in a flash. “Be back soon!” he yelled
to Liz, seeing she was using the power failure to abandon the morning laundry
and head out to the swimming pool to lounge about.

Yet
lounging about was the last thing on Robert’s mind just then. His worries about
his stock in Goldman had vanished; his fretting over the mortgage and credit cards
was up in smoke. Now all he cared about was getting to an ATM and pulling out
as much cash as he possibly could get his hands on. But the power was down…If
this was more than a local outage then how would the ATMs work? If he went in
to see a teller how would they call up his account info? How would they even
cash a check?

Something
told him that the banks were going to be closed anyway. So, as he slipped into the
front seat of his Lexus he had already changed his mind and determined to head
for the nearest supermarket for food. They had ATMs there too. Yes…Food and
water was top of the list now. That was the smart play. Food and water would
keep the
Quantum Sleeper
functioning as a safe bedroom bunker, and they
could go easy on the battery and stretch it out as long as possible—stretch
that 8 hour emergency battery life into eight days if they just powered on for
an hour a day.

There
was no way he could think beyond that. Eight days without electricity was more desolation
and denial than he had ever experienced in his life, because he lived in that
lucky 50% of the planet that was plugged into the grid. It had taken humanity
millions of years to reach that dubious statistic, when 50% of earth’s
population had achieved access to electricity in the year 2005 and Robert was
going to find out just how the other half of the planet was living in short
order.

He
put the key into the ignition went to start his mid-sized sedan—great mileage, always
reliable; bought for nothing down and low easy payments after a song and dance
at the bank.

Nothing
happened. It was dead.

WTF?

* * *

The
meeting in the White House Situation Room was
ready to adjourn. Leyman had the recommendation of both Admiral Ghortney and
General Lane—follow up the successful B-2 strikes with the B-1s and then move
in the carriers to restore order over Taiwan. They would take the fight to the
enemy now.

At
that moment there was a soft buzz at the secure door and Leyman turned to give the
Marine guard the nod. The door whisked open and a White House staffer rushed
in, leaning close and whispering in Leyman’s ear. His expression darkened
immediately, and he dismissed the aide with a grave nod. When the room was
secure again he turned to the others and folded his hands on the table.

“Well
gentlemen, it appears the Admiral is correct about that Boomer hunt. A few minutes
ago there was a missile launch off the West coast. Your people will have this
information by now, Admiral, but to make a long story short, there’s been a
detonation…”

He
let that hang there for a moment, his eyes looking from Ghortney, to Lane, to Reed.
Then he qualified his statement with the word no one wanted to utter in that
room, but one that was in the back of each man’s mind.

“It
was a nuclear detonation, and apparently the whole west coast is as dead as a doornail.”

“What?”
Lane was practically out of his chair. “How many warheads? How many cities did they
hit?”

“They
didn’t hit any cities,” Leyman explained. “It was a single warhead. The detonation
was well up in the atmosphere over Nevada, and everything from Seattle to San
Diego went dark.”

“A
single warhead,” said Reed looking at Lane with an ‘I told ya so’ in his eyes. “A
goddamned EMP strike.”

“That
appears to be the case,” Leyman went on. “The whole power grid is down. Hoover Dam
is off line, Glen Canyon, a number of others. The grid is down and the blackout
extends as far east as the Rockies in places. I’ve got to see the President at
once, and this puts us at DEFCON 1, does it not?”

“Cocked
Pistol,” said Lane reciting the code name for the highest condition of strategic
alert. “Maximum readiness with an expectation that nuclear war is imminent.”

“That’s
what I thought,” said Leyman. “Well if you’ll excuse me gentlemen, we’ll have to
continue this briefing after I bring in the President. If we are now holding that
cocked pistol it will be his finger on the trigger, and damn soon unless we
make some other arrangements with the Russians and Chinese.”

He
stood up, buttoning his suit coat in a gesture that somehow seemed out of place.
It was a small habitual civility; well practiced decorum, yet outside the
secure underground bunker the world was about to go ballistic.

“Arrangements?”
Ghortney gave Lane a look of chagrin.

“That’s
what we do in the civilian branch, Admiral. We make arrangements. Hold tight, gentlemen.
The President is on his way here now.”

* * *

Controlled
chaos was the order of the day on the streets
of the City—barely controlled chaos. Every traffic light in the city was dead,
but that didn’t really matter because every car was dead! The traffic was
backed up for miles on the tortuous bends of the Bay Area freeways. People had
no idea what had happened for the most part, as there were no radios functioning
either, and so their first reaction was to reach into their pockets for a cell
phone, but they were all dead as well. Within minutes thousands were out of
their cars, basically exchanging versions of the very same story. They were
just driving along when the car seemed to lose all power. There were scores of
accidents, hundreds of hoods up with well intentioned men peering into the
engine compartment of their vehicles, but not one was going to be started again
anytime soon.

As
the minutes became an hour people just started off on foot, amazed and stunned by
what had happened. There were throngs crossing the Golden Gate and Bay bridges
on foot, and bike riders were suddenly kings of the highway—until people
started yanking riders out of their seats to get at the bikes. In and around
the major airports there were massive fires from wrecked planes burning uncontrolled
when airlines in mid-takeoff or landing approaches suddenly lost all power and
came crashing to earth. All across the Western United States planes were
falling from the sky.

No
aliens in orbiting ships were responsible for the falling skies, it was just a couple
of well placed missiles with EMP warheads. The pulse they created cascaded down
through the upper atmosphere, a massive sizzle of voltage faster than any
circuit breaker or surge protector could react. Virtually every unshielded
electronic device, and the entire power grid from Colorado to the Pacific
coast, was toasted in just one split second.

It
would take long months, more like years to restore the area to what it was just
a few seconds before the detonations. But the world didn’t have months or years
to do the required work. It had nine days, and of this was the twilight of Day Five.

Chapter 23

Karpov
had his verdict, the consensus of the three
Captains after a brief face to face meeting aboard
Kirov
in the officer’s
mess hall. It had been a long discussion, but the urgency of time forced them
to a hasty decision. Yeltzin had advised caution, suggesting the flotilla
should disengage and head east into the Pacific to better assess the situation
and buy more time for a final decision. Yet Karpov argued that would simply
postpone the inevitable. They would have to confront the proverbial ‘powers
that be’ at one time or another. Better now than later.

Captain
Ryakhin, younger, less experienced, seemed to gravitate to Karpov’s point of view.
He had been heartened by their earlier interventions, seeing how easily they
could handle the ships of this era and bolstered by the decision to assist the
Russian invasion of the Kuriles with naval gunfire support. A dedicated officer,
he strongly suggested that they should fight on behalf of Soviet Russia, their
homeland, even if it was not the Russia they had come from.

“We
are Stalin’s wayward sons,” he said. “He may have been a brutal father, but the
Russia we left behind was molded in his hands.” Ryakhin was also feeling just a
little guilt over the live fire incident that had downed the American reconnaissance
flight. This mishap had forced the action and seemed to stir up quite a
reaction in response. Ryakhin apologized to Karpov, stating he would enforce
better discipline in the future.

In
the end it was decided that they would make one last attempt to negotiate with the
Americans and, if they refused or pressed any further attack on the flotilla,
they would meet that hostility with equal force.

“And
I will be the judge of what ‘equal force’ means,” said Karpov. “It will be my intention
to defend the fleet with conventional weapons, and this may mean offensive
operations on our part as well. Yet I have been through all this before. We
have limited missile inventories, and when the missiles are gone, we become
little more than fast cruisers in a sea of trouble. They will harry us and
hound us until they catch us one day, and then it will come down to deck guns.
We may win some of those battles, but then again we may get hurt as well. You
have seen the damage to this ship when we returned to Vladivostok. Let that be
a stern reminder.”

“The
odds are very steep, Karpov,” said Yeltzin. “Do you really want to engage the Americans
now? Now, when their entire navy is concentrated within a few hundred kilometers
of our present position?”

“Now
or never,” Karpov returned. “If they attack us with what appears to be overwhelming
force I will issue you a coded signal—
Hellfire
. This will convey my
decision to utilize a tactical nuclear warhead, though I do not take it
lightly. I intend to give the American Admirals the opportunity to avoid conflict.
We shall see if they are wise enough to do so, but I will not back down here.
That said, I will be the sole authority on use of nuclear weapons. Neither of
you are to mount tactical warheads on missiles unless I give such an order—understood?”

“Let
us hope things do not come to that,” said Yeltsin. “But we will support you, Captain.”

“Of
course you will,” Karpov smiled, then he was suddenly serious again. “There is one
thing more,” he began, his eyes shifting as though he were trying to locate something
on the desk. “Should it come down to nuclear weapons, I must tell you that our
experience leads me to believe that our position in this timeframe could be
affected by a detonation.”

“What
do you mean?” Yeltsin leaned closer. “Affected in what manner?”

“It
is impossible to say. We have already seen how a massive release of explosive energy
sent us here. A nuclear detonation, close enough, could send us somewhere…else…”

“This
happened to you in the Atlantic?”

“It
did, but we later attributed it to the use of that control rod. Now I am not so
sure.”

“Then
perhaps this might also be a way for us to get back to our own time again,” Yeltsin
hit on the obvious point of opportunity.

“That
thought occurred to me,” said Karpov. “We might kill two bears with one shot. If
we do have to teach the Americans a lesson, and it changes the history in our
favor, that will be one thing. If it also sends us home, so much the better.”

“And
if it puts two thousand men in an early grave?”Another voice intruded from the shadow
of the half open door, and Doctor Zolkin entered, a hard look on his face.
“What then, Karpov?”

“You
were not invited to this conference, Doctor.”

“Sorry
to crash the party gentlemen, but I invited myself. I am a Captain of the Second
Rank.”

“You
are not in the primary command structure of the ship,” Karpov snapped at him. “That
rank is merely a courtesy, Zolkin. You know it as well as I do.”

“Courtesy
or not, I am here and you have heard what I just said. You think you can just fire
off your weapons and slaughter these men without consequences?”

“Not
without consequences.” Karpov stood up now. “I am well aware of the consequences,
more so than any man in this room.”

“And
what does your conscience say about that?” Zolkin looked him square in the eye,
defiant.

“That
is my concern!”

“No,
Captain. It is
our
concern, yours, mine, the good Captains here, and also
the concern of every man on this ship. If you fire off another warhead, then all
history changes.”

“That
is the point under discussion, Doctor. Yes, all history changes, and hopefully for
the better. You want what we just lived through all over again? You would prefer
the cold war, the collapse of the Soviet Union? The oil wars, and then the
final battle for our very survival in 2021? Yes, we could change all that. We
have the power.”

“How
many warheads do you have, Karpov? Suppose you destroy the American fleet here.
You think they will leave it at that? No! Fedorov says your first little act of
valor ended up changing the history and there was no Pearl Harbor. Well, you’ll
give them that right here, won’t you? Use a nuclear warhead here and all you will
do is poke a stick in the belly of the bear, the most powerful nation on this
earth at the moment. They will build three new ships for every one you destroy,
and another thing. They have the bomb as well. You say you will fight for
Russia? What if they drop one on Moscow?”

“We
don’t know if they’ve developed atomic weapons yet. You said yourself, the history
has changed. If they had the bomb, then why didn’t they use it on the Japanese?”

“Who
can say? But I am willing to bet they
do
have it—are you going to start World
War Three here?”

“I’m
not starting anything. If you were eavesdropping long enough at that door then you
heard that. Yes?”

“What
I heard was a man determined to take his second chance and get it right this time.
You are so very clever, Karpov. You think your first bomb just missed the mark,
that’s all. Now if you just fling another it will hit the target this time. Am
I correct? Well listen here—all of you—those are
men
out there—human
beings.” He pointed at the wall, to sailors unseen over the far horizon, in
their ships of steel, men of war, but men nonetheless. “They are flesh and
blood, not shadows. Each one you kill also casts a long shadow of death on
every generation yet to come. You do not just sink their ships, you kill
fathers, and you kill their sons and daughters, and their grand children, all
in one throw. You will have their blood and the blood of all their unborn descendents
on your hands. For what? Stalin? Mother Russia?”

Zolkin
waved his hand in frustration. “Alright…I’ve said what I came here to say.” He gave
them a long hard look. “Now I’m going back to sick bay to wait for the men to
start lining up at my door.”

He
turned and stepped through the half open door, his footsteps echoing on the deck
plating as he went.

Karpov
sat down again, folding his hands, his face drawn but a determined look in his eye.

“The
doctor is somewhat dramatic,” he began. “Yet what he fails to realize is that in
war the enemy makes choices too. They may give us no other option if they will
not listen to reason here.”

“Unless
we turn east,” Yeltsin put in one last time. “The Pacific Ocean is a very big place.”

Karpov
looked at him, but said nothing more. The meeting ended, faces hardened with the
realization that they could indeed commence the Third World War within the next
few hours if things went ill.

Thirty
minutes later Karpov was on the bridge. “Mister Nikolin. I want you to broadcast
on an open channel to the Americans. Tell them I want to speak with Admiral
Halsey. Tell them I am offering to negotiate the situation and reach a peaceful
resolution…to avoid any further bloodshed here.”

“Aye,
sir.” Nikolin began sending his message in English, and Karpov wished he had taken
the time to learn the language. Then again, he thought, perhaps we can teach the
world to speak Russian here. That is the voice I will speak in now, and let them
hear it well.

* * *

Aboard
Battleship
Missouri
Admiral Halsey was
sitting in the ward room office, reading the fleet manifest and thinking. They
had lost
Wasp
—again—and Ziggy Sprague’s TF 38.3 was now light a good
number of aircraft, but he still had teeth. There were over 200 planes left in
Sprague’s task force, and he was bringing 350 more on
Yorktown, Shangri-La,
Bon Homme Richard
and two light escort carriers. He also had two more
superb fast battleships with
Missouri
and
Iowa
, a fist full of
heavy cruisers, and over twenty destroyers to throw in with Ziggy’s group.

Someone
just called our bet and so we’ll go double or nothing, he thought. Whoever they
are, we’ll show them who the hell they’re messing with—rockets or no rockets.
The British Admiral Fraser had warned him not to concentrate his ships too
tightly, though that seemed to fly in the face of good naval tactics. He had
used a sledgehammer approach to bludgeon the Japanese to their knees with one
swift, powerful blow after another. The war was finally over, and all it will
take is just one more swing of that hammer to let everyone concerned know who’s
in charge here.

“Admiral,
sir…” A midshipman was knocking lightly at the door, saluting as he entered.

“What
is it Mister Wilkes?”

“Sir,
you asked to be informed of any unusual message traffic. We’re receiving a radio
transmission from the Russians up north.”

“What’s
this all about?”

“I
think you’d better hear it for yourself, sir. It’s been repeating for the last ten
minutes now. They’re asking for you by name, sir.”

Halsey
took that in. So history was calling his name again. It was not a surprise. They
know who they’re up against here now and they probably want to jaw bone about
it.

“Very
well, Mister Wilkes. I’ll take this directly in the radio room. Walk with me.”

It
wasn’t a very long walk, down one corridor and up two ladders to the small compartment
behind the main bridge, the flag radio room. Halsey listened, hearing the
obvious Slavic accent in the English transmission. Fraser was correct. It sure
sounded like these were, indeed, Russians.

“They’re
broadcasting this in the clear like that?”

“Yes,
sir,” said the radio man. “The whole fleet can hear it.”

Halsey
thought about that a moment, then folded his arms. “Then let them hear this.” He
reached for the microphone on the desk and thumbed the send switch.

“Now
hear this. Attention on all decks. This is Fleet Admiral Halsey speaking to our
Russian friends up north, and you had better listen up. You have fired on our aircraft,
downed planes, refused to yield or heave to for boarding, and further engaged
vessels of the United States Navy in active combat. I am bringing sixty warships
up there to see about it, and I can double up on that bet any time it suits me.
Now you will do exactly what I order here. Allies or not, you will heave to and
be boarded by United States Marines. Your ships will be taken in tow, and held
until such time as negotiations are concluded with the Soviet government over
this matter. Is that understood?”

He
waited, the eyes of the two radio men on him now, his arms folded over his broad
chest. A long minute later the voice came back, in the same heavily accented
English.”

“I
am speaking on behalf of Acting Fleet Commander Vladimir Karpov, Russian Federal
Navy. While we have no direct affiliation with the Soviet government, we
nonetheless will look to their interests and endeavors. They have not sanctioned
or approved our actions in defense of our ships, nor are they even aware of our
presence here. That said, I will tell you that we will
not
heave to as
ordered, nor will our ships be boarded, towed, or interned in any way. Furthermore,
the Soviet government has no say in the determination of our fate, though the
inverse may well be true. And the same goes for you.”