Oblivion (17 page)

Mickelson took his usual place on the white couch nearest the main door. Long ago, Franklin had told him to make himself comfortable no matter when he came into the room. Franklin hated walking into his office to find his Cabinet members standing on the blue rug like children waiting to be told to sit down.

“You’re running this meeting?”

Mickelson started, and turned slightly. General Clarissa Maddox had entered the room. She was in full uniform— all five stars glistening on her broad shoulders—and she seemed to be in a take-no-prisoners mood. But there were shadows under her eyes, and new lines around her mouth that Mickelson had never seen before.

“If I were, we wouldn’t be meeting in here,” Mickelson said.

Maddox sank onto the couch beside him. The cushion didn’t sag as much as he thought it would. It always surprised him how she could look so powerful and be so slight at the same time.

“I’ve got so much to do,” she said, so low that only he could barely hear her. “I hope he doesn’t make us sit here for an hour like the last time.”

“The last time he got a call from Britain’s prime minister. He couldn’t exactly blow it off,” Mickelson said. He hadn’t been able to tell anyone during that last meeting what was going on. But now he could. A lot had come out of the call. And it seemed like months ago, instead of just ten days. Strange how time slowed when every minute of every hour was being used.

“I suppose not.” Maddox looked at him sideways. “Do you even know what time zone you’re in?”

Mickelson grinned. “Lessee. A round room, lots of blue, gold, and white decor, and oh yeah, an American flag behind the desk. Must be Washington, which puts me in Eastern Daylight officially.”

“And unofficially?”

“I think I’m still working on strict Greenwich Mean.” “Your last stop was England?”

“I hope so,” Mickelson said, “or that rather shy man I was referring to as Your Royal Highness was too polite to tell me I should have been calling him something else.”

Maddox laughed. “If he was too polite to say anything, you were either in England or Minnesota.”

“What about Minnesota?” Shamus O’Grady, the president’s national security adviser, sat down across from them. He was a slender redhead with hazel eyes. His light skin, which he never allowed in the sun, gave him a more youthful appearance than he deserved. It also showed every line, every mark of fatigue. And there were dozens of them. If everyone else on the president’s team looked this tired, Mickelson thought, he wondered how bad he looked as well.

“Just saying that the folks there are polite,” Maddox said. “Wow,” O’Grady said. “Are we talking about regional customs? Because I know a few that might shock you.”

“I doubt you do,” Maddox said.

Mickelson held up a hand. He’d been in this conversation with these two before. They had a sort of one-upmanship going that he found amusing most of the time, and disgusting the rest. He once told them that it seemed as if they brought out the high school in each other, or maybe even the middle school. It was as if gross-out humor were the highest form they could aspire to.

“Let’s not go there,” he said. “It probably won’t shock General Maddox, but it’ll shock me. Think of me as though I’m as naive as your twelve-year-old son, O’Grady.”

“Then nothing’ll shock you, Mickelson,” O’Grady said. “We’re playing that game again?” President Franklin walked into the room. Everyone stood. He waved them back down. “The last time you played it, I walked in to hear my staff discussing which was more disgusting, eating monkey brains or goat brains. And if I remember correctly, it was you, Doug, who actually had an opinion.”

“I was just trying to shut them up, sir.”

“Well, it seemed like encouragement to me.” President Franklin sat down in the armchair. He was a slight man who had his mother’s button eyes and mobile mouth. His dark hair fell across his forehead naturally, and that, combined with his incredible personal charm and aquiline nose—apparently the only thing he’d inherited from his father—got him voted
People Magazine On-Line's
Sexiest Man in America in 2016, the year of his successful reelection campaign.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Mickelson said with mock humility. “I won’t do it again, sir.”

“See that you don’t,” Franklin said, his black eyes twinkling. “I chance upon too many of these conversations as it is.”

Maddox’s cheeks were slightly rosy, and O’Grady’s neck was flushed. Mickelson suppressed a smile. Franklin could embarrass them any time.

Of course, he could embarrass Mickelson, too. Franklin had a wicked sense of humor, and it was so dry that most people rarely caught it. His staff usually caught the blunt end of it, and Franklin liked nothing more than to razz people who gave him the opportunity.

He leaned back in the armchair and seemed to gather himself. Franklin had looked exhausted since the day of his inauguration, and Mickelson thought that a good sign. In all his years in Washington, Mickelson noted that there were two kinds of presidents—those who aged five years for each year they were in office and those who looked the same when they emerged as they had on the day they entered. Or, as Mickelson once put it to Cross, there were those presidents who haunted the hallways at night and those who slept like babies.

Mickelson preferred to work for the ones who aged and didn’t sleep. They were the ones who were in office to do some good, not because they’d reached the political Holy Grail.

“All right,” Franklin said. “I guess we’d better do this. You’ve got the ball, Doug. How do we stand?”

Mickelson straightened, as if his posture suddenly made a difference. The last ten days had felt like ten years. He’d hit most of the major nations, inspecting their weapons, their military, their production facilities, talking with their leaders about the best methods to approach the next attack by the aliens.

When he was visiting the U.S.’s traditional allies, he had little trouble. Britain welcomed him with open arms. But in countries with which the US. had shaky relations, or a history of bad relations, Mickelson also had to have meetings in which he reassured the countries’ leaders that cooperation didn’t mean a loss of sovereignty.

Mickelson’s argument had been simple: this was a global threat, and it needed global leadership. The United States was the logical choice.

China’s leaders had argued for a U.N.-led effort, which would have made sense fifteen years before. But the last two U.N.-led efforts had dissolved into infighting and slow movement. Mickelson argued, parroting Franklin’s words, that slow movement in this case would be deadly.

China really didn’t need much more convincing. And since the entire argument hadn’t taken longer than lunch, Mickelson suspected the entire interchange was intended only to save face.

“I spent most of my time touring military facilities,” Mickelson said, “and talking to each country’s leadership about the best methods to proceed. Everyone seems to understand the need for speedy action. Even China.”

Maddox made a soft sound and leaned back on the couch. “They’re going to cooperate?”

Mickelson nodded. “It took very little persuasion on my part.”

“So they think the world’s going to end,” O’Grady said.

Mickelson smiled. He’d had the same thought. In fact, before he left he’d said to Franklin that it would be a cold day in hell before China cooperated. Apparently that long-predicted cold day had finally arrived.

“I saw weapons facilities and military outposts that we’ve been trying to get into for years,” Mickelson said.

“I need a full debrief,” Maddox said.

Mickelson nodded as Franklin grinned. Franklin had warned Mickelson of that the night before. “You’ll get it,” Mickelson said. “Although you might get more out of Lieutenant Rogers. She, at least, knows more of what she was looking at.”

“I didn’t realize you’d taken her as your aide,” O’Grady said. “With the president’s permission.”

“But not mine,” Maddox said. “They’re taking all my best people for these political tasks, when I need them onboard for military work.”

“This is military work, Clarissa,” Franklin said without a trace of irritation. That was more than Mickelson could have done. Maddox simply had no comprehension of diplomacy.

“Forgive me, sir,” Maddox said. “But that’s not military work. You could have sent a flack with Doug. But to send a perfectly good officer, that’s bullshit and you know it.” Mickelson thought he saw a smile play around Franklin’s lips, but he couldn’t be certain. “Was it bullshit, Doug? Could you have used a flack?”

Mickelson suppressed a sigh. Meetings should be banned, and yet the government thrived on them. “No,” Mickelson said. “Lieutenant Rogers had some valuable insights that I don’t think I would have gotten without her along.”

“Such as?” Maddox said.

“Such as,” Mickelson said, struggling to keep the irritation from his voice, “the fact that much of the First World’s military might is very out-of-date. We haven’t had much more than border skirmishes since the turn of the century. The last significant worldwide military buildup was during Kosovo, and the last great one was during the Cold War. I saw missile silos in Russia that had completely rusted out. Most of this world, to put it flatly, isn’t in shape to fight the aliens if we let them get back here.”

O’Grady leaned forward. “Then this is terrible news. The plan won’t work without functioning warheads.”

“We almost have enough warheads in orbit now to do the job,” Franklin said.

Doug sat in stunned silence. He had no idea the launches had gone so fast.

“But we can always use more,” Maddox said. “And we need to have everyone ready to fight in case our first plan fails. We’ve known for a decade about the world’s aging military-industrial complex. We even have a scenario on what to do if some of the oldest equipment malfunctions and starts a war.”

Franklin spoke softly. “Granted, we knew about this. Mickelson’s junket only confirmed it. In fact, the news about the Chinese is good. We hadn’t counted on them.”

“They really must think the end of the world is near,” Maddox mumbled.

“I think they do,” Franklin said. He was looking at her. “I think we’d all be fools not to consider that.”

“Aging warheads? Come on, Mr. President. We can’t send ancient warheads to the ISS.” O’Grady had shifted in his seat.

“We already have. And we’ll send more, if we need to,” Franklin said.

“We have more than we planned on,” Mickelson said. “We have full Chinese cooperation. Russia has been maintaining its weapons production—at lower rates than fifty years ago, but nonetheless, they have some up-to-date equipment. So do the Saudis and the Israelis, and most of Southeast Asia. Japan is the only country that’s a bit farther behind than we expected. Even Germany is going to contribute more than we had planned on. The aging warheads do exist, but they’re going to be our last-ditch effort if, and this is a big if, we don’t have time to step up production worldwide.”

“You think we can?” Maddox asked.

Mickelson nodded. “That was the most encouraging news I got from this entire trip. A lot of factories can be converted quickly to military supplies and weapons productions. I’m gathering our biggest problem worldwide isn’t going to be weapons or equipment or production. It’s going to be manpower.”

“And getting through the alien screens to use the weapons,” Maddox said.

No one said anything to that.

“I don’t completely agree with the manpower problem,” O’Grady said. “We have satellite photos showing almost every nation on Earth has fully deployed its military. If anyone is behind the eight ball, it’s us. We haven’t deployed enough.” “We’ve explained that, Shamus,” Maddox said.

“It’s making me nervous, Clarissa.”

The whole thing made everyone nervous, but Mickelson didn’t say that.

“The problem isn’t numbers,” Mickelson said. “It’s talent. We need astronauts and shuttle pilots and ground control crews. We need very specialized talent to fight this war, and it’s precisely the kind of talent we haven’t trained. And not just us. The Japanese and the Russians are the only other countries with a significant number of trained astronauts and pilots. The rest of the world didn’t have the money or the time to pursue a space program like we did.”

“Exactly,” Franklin said. “If our attack doesn’t work, the coming war with the aliens isn’t going to be fought on the ground. It’s going to be fought in the air and in space.”

“The Australians have something.”

“The Brits have something, the French have something, the Germans have something, even Israel has something,” Mickelson said. “But something isn’t enough.”

“I’ve already got my people changing the focus of training,” Maddox said. “They think they can find candidates and train them to operate in zero g within six months.”

“That’s a short time frame,” Franklin said.

“It’s more than what we’ve got, sir,” Maddox said.

Her words hung in the air for a moment. Then Franklin leaned back and templed his fingers. “The question is, Doug, whether or not the other countries are with us.”

“If they have the capability to build a warhead, they have the capability to send it into space,” Mickelson said. “I’ve got to tell you, I didn’t expect that, and that turned out to be good news. A lot of countries can convert the system they use to launch satellites to get the warheads to the ISS. We’ll have some accidents, but a small number is to be expected. We can be ready for a second wave of attack if we need it.”