The War Cloud (9 page)

“Now may I please confer with my military commanders?” She fixed her gaze squarely on Koz. “Before we waste any more time?”

“Yes, ma’am. But first the Constitution.”

Koz glanced over at a disheveled medic being slapped into consciousness by Captain Li. “Nordquist, get up off the floor and fix those cuts on the president’s face,” he barked. “Li, go grab your Bible and a camera and some make-up. We need to release an official photo of the swearing-in.”

Then Sachs watched his hazel eyes look into her own, look through them and deep into her.

“She seems fit to me,” he declared.

J
ennifer turned the minivan up the long incline overlooking her aunt’s grand 1890 carriage house that abutted the riding trails. The secluded home looked dark and foreboding. Inside the minivan, the radio was playing with continuous news reports from New York’s WCBS-AM.

Jennifer pulled to a stop and looked out the frosty window at the house in the distance. It was early afternoon, but with the January snow it felt like early evening. She hadn’t seen the Suburban for an hour, and she was tired of playing hide-and-seek. If they had hoped to find her here, they would have already come and gone.

Robbie, tense as ever, observed, “The lights are off.”

“Doesn’t mean anything,” Jennifer said. “Carla likes to keep the ConEd bills low for my aunt when she’s out of town. It’s like a freezer inside.”

“You mean your aunt isn’t even home?”

“Vacation in the Bahamas with her boyfriend,” Jennifer said. “But there’s a loaded.357 Magnum locked up in a closet, food in the kitchen, and a place to hide in the basement.”

The CBS radio news was suddenly interrupted by a flat, ominous tone. A deep, authoritarian voice blared from the speaker.

“This is the Emergency Alert System. This is not a test. Repeating. This is not a test.”

“Holy crap!” Robbie squeaked.

Jennifer looked at Robbie and suddenly wondered what she ever saw in this wus. “Shut up and listen.” She turned up the volume.

“This is the Emergency Alert Message from the president of the United States.”

But it wasn’t President Rhinehart that came on. It was a woman.

“Whereas an unprovoked nuclear attack has been launched against the United States by foreign military forces…”

Jennifer listened closely to the distant but familiar voice.

“…And whereas the exigencies of the international situation and of the national defense require the suspension of traditional democratic practices…Jennifer cocked her ear in disbelief. “Mom?”

“We’re doomed!” Robbie moaned.

Jennifer punched him in the arm. “I told you to shut up!”

“…Now therefore I, Deborah Sachs, president of the United States, hereby proclaim that a state of war exists.”

Oh, my God,
Jennifer thought, clapping both her frozen hands over her mouth.

Robbie pointed an accusing finger at the dashboard radio. “Hey, the Constitution says only Congress can declare war.”

Jennifer cracked open her door and planted one boot in the snow.

“Hey!” Robbie shouted. “Where are you going?”

“Are you deaf?” she said. “Didn’t you just hear the radio? My mom and Aunt Dina are probably worried sick about me. I can call them from inside the house and let them know I’m OK. You coming?”

“No way,” he said and slid behind the wheel. He quickly adjusted the driver’s seat so his feet could reach the pedals. “You’re surrendering.”

“I’m the First Kid now,” she told him. “Everybody has to listen to me. Including you. Fine, drive home to your folks. They’re probably just as worried.”

She shut the door and watched him put the minivan into reverse, back up, and then screech down the road, disappearing into the darkening afternoon. She then turned and trudged through the knee-high snow down the hillside, one long stride after another, toward Aunt Dina’s house.

She burst through the front door, key in hand. “Carla? Carla?” she called for the housekeeper.

The living room, filled with expensive built-ins and antiques and period rugs, was empty. “Carla?” she called out, then ran up the stairs to the bedrooms.

But the bedrooms were empty too, including her own. She looked at the shelves next to her bed lined with trophies from soccer, basketball and softball. Even the trophies, however, were dwarfed by the ribbons and cups from her horse riding conquests. But it was the solid crystal cube— a commemorative urn—on the middle shelf that caught her eye. Etched in the crystal was an outline of an old-fashioned biplane and the words:

Richard Sachs

July 7, 1955-September 11, 2001

Jennifer looked at it for a long moment, then turned and walked into the hallway again, calling Carla’s name.

Maybe Carla left, she thought as she hurried down the stairs and ran into the kitchen, tripping over a pile of laundry. She landed hard and sprawled across the floor.

“Owww,” she cried out.

She pushed up with her hands to get on all fours when she saw the blood on the travertine tiles and froze. Slowly she willed her eyes to follow the blood trail until it ended at Carla’s skull.

“Oh, my God!” she screamed and jumped back.

Carla was on her back, staring at the ceiling, a small, dark hole in her forehead. Jennifer glanced up at the window over the sink. There was a hole in the center of a spider-web crack.

niper got Carla, she realized, feeling her heart pounding out of her chest as she gasped for air.
Somebody’s out there.

She didn’t dare stand up again. Instead she crawled along the cabinetry and poked her head around to look outside the sliding glass door. A black Suburban suddenly hit its high-beams, blinding her. She recoiled and crouched back behind the counter.

“No, no, no,” she moaned.

She poked her head out again and saw the silhouettes of two shadowy figures with guns—M-16s from the profiles—walking toward the house.

She ducked back out of sight, staring at Carla on the floor in front of her. Warm tears rolled down her frozen cheeks as she bit down hard on her lower lip.

Her mom was right.

I
nside the presidential bathroom of the Nightwatch plane, now officially Air Force One, Sachs wiped off the makeup Captain Li had applied for the swearing-in photo and looked at herself in the mirror. Other than the bruises on her forehead, she didn’t look too banged up. But she also didn’t look like an American president, she thought, and she certainly didn’t feel like one. As if to underscore her testosterone deficit, she caught a glimpse of the prominent urinal behind her in the mirror.

She zipped up the flightsuit Captain Li had given her—presidential seal and all—and walked out into the presidential suite. It was a smaller compartment than she had imagined, dominated by a desk, an American flag, and a long gold couch from which a grim Colonel Kozlowski and Captain Li rose as she entered.

Sachs said, “What’s FEMA doing for the victims and their families in Washington, D.C.?”

“Everything humanly possible, Madame President,” said Captain Li. “First-response medical units from around the country are treating the wounded and tagging the dead. Communications command posts are being set up to handle family inquiries. And financial credits are being applied to all affected.”

Sachs then looked at Koz and said simply, “Jennifer.”

“Soon as we’ve located her, we’ll put you on with her, Madame President,” Kozlowski assured her. “Meanwhile, Captain Li has General Zhang on behalf of the People’s Republic of China on hold.”

Sachs said, “What happened to Premier Peng Hu?”

Kozlowski shook his head. “China has made it clear that Zhang is their point man with us.”

Not a good sign at all,
Sachs thought.

She looked at the phone on the desk in front of her, light blinking. She sat down behind the desk. There was a presidential seal on the bulkhead above her left shoulder.

She swallowed hard and then nodded to Kozlowski, who pressed the speaker button.

“General Zhang,” she said. “This is Deborah Sachs.”

She heard a quick translation from Captain Li, then General Zhang’s voice and another translation.

people of China wish to express our profound sorrow for your loss today, Madame President, and desire to offer any assistance the United States may require.”

Sachs replied, “The only thing I require, General Zhang, is confirmation from your own lips that neither you nor any agent of the Chinese military was responsible for today’s attack on Washington, D.C.”

“We are not responsible,” General Zhang said firmly. “But we will consider

any retaliation directed at us an act of war. If so, I guarantee you that many other American cities shall suffer the same fate as Washington.”

Before she could reply Zhang hung up, his transmission over. She looked at Kozlowski. “Now what?”

Kozlowski said, “You’ll review your options. The National Command Authority is waiting on screen in the conference room for your first attack conference. That’s General Norman Block at Northern Command, General Duane Carver at Strategic Command, and General Brad Marshall aboard our Looking Glass plane.”

“Looking Glass?” she asked. “What’s that?”

“An airborne command post like this plane, with a few additional military modifications thrown in,” Kozlowski told her.

Brad Marshall,
thought Sachs with mixed emotions.
She would be conferring with
the
Brad Marshall.
Wouldn’t Jennifer be impressed
?

General Brad Marshall did indeed impress from the moment she stepped into the conference center and saw him on the big screen. He was flanked by General Carver on the left and General Block on the right, who started things off with his own commentary on the D.C. strike.

“Charlie looks guilty as hell, Madame President,” Block said, full of bluster.

Sachs said, “So I hear, General Block. And we know this because?”

General Carver, the ranking general of the three, said, “Marshall, you better tell her.”

Marshall said, “Have you ever heard of an online video game called the War Cloud, Madame President?” His voice was very smooth and inspired immediate credibility and confidence.

“I know what the War Cloud is.” Sachs instinctively touched Jennifer’s “Fembot Fiona” USB drive hanging from her neck. “But what does it have to do with the real world?”

“A lot, actually,” Marshall said. “The DOD has been closely monitoring this game for almost two years now, because it is the only program or application of any kind running on the Chinese military’s Tianhe-1A supercomputer in Tianjin. The Tianhe-1A performs at 2.67 petaflops per second. The most powerful computer the U.S. has, the Cray XT5 Jaguar, tops out 1.27 petaflops. So you’ve got the world’s most powerful supercomputer running nothing but a video game.”

Sachs was hooked. “Why would the Chinese give their most powerful computer system over to a video game?”

“Same reason the Chinese have been running other Cloud-based games like Farmville and virtual worlds like Second Life on their next dozen most powerful supercomputers,” Marshall said. “The War Cloud is basically the world’s eBay for arms dealers and terrorists.”

“What?” Sachs blinked. “You lost me, General.

Marshall said, “Gamers around the world can buy or sell virtual goods or weapons with real money to help them advance to the next level in these games. Players end up spending more money on their virtual upgrades than they do buying the game itself, making the game companies—and the supercomputer’s owners—billions.”

Sachs nodded. She remembered the first time her credit cards showed charges from PayPal and Google Checkout for Jennifer’s purchases of “accessories” like exploding diamond earrings and biotoxin-tipped fingernails for her Fembot Fiona avatar. The accessories were pure fantasy, but the money was real.

“I think I follow you now, General Marshall. What looks like a grenade launcher online for a player’s avatar like Fembot Fiona or Duke Droid might actually represent a real grenade launcher—or a stolen Soviet SS-20 warhead. Is that it?”

Marshall seemed surprised at how quickly she put it together, but pleasantly so. “Exactly, Madame President.”

Sachs didn’t know if it was his surprise that bothered her or that his opinion mattered to her more than it should. “Monitoring an arms deal isn’t the same as brokering the deals, much less being party to it,” she said, pressing on. “How do we know for sure it was the Chinese who bought the SS-20 that exploded in Washington today?”

“Two things,” Marshall said. “First, the former deputy FSB intelligence chief and arms dealer who was trying to sell the SS-20 in South Africa confessed under joint CIA-FSB interrogation. He said he sold it to an agent of the Chinese military. You can call up the video on your workstation aboard Air Force One. The three warheads were placed on a Chinese freighter bound from Cape Town to Baltimore. The assembly of the housing and detonation devices took place in transit across the Atlantic.”

She glanced down at the conference table and realized there was a computer screen beneath the surface playing the footage. When she placed her finger on the table a touchscreen keyboard terminal appeared.

So cool,
she thought
, Jennifer would love this
. But she quickly pushed the thought away, along with her natural questions about what form of “interrogation” the CIA and FSB used on this arms dealer.

She asked Marshall, “So you’re telling me there might be two more warheads out there?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She exhaled. “What’s the second thing that fingers China as the state sponsor of this morning’s nuke attack and this imminent War Cloud threat?”

“A cyberweapon that we eventually tracked back to China attacked Pentagon computers nine months ago,” Marshall said. “At first, U.S. Cyber Command assumed it came from the Middle East, in retaliation for the Stuxnet worm the Israelis used to sabotage the Iranian nuclear power station at Bushehr.”