Without Warning (16 page)

“Sit down, Colonel. Give it to me as quickly as you can without losing track of the story.”

The intelligence officer nodded brusquely, snapped a sheaf of paper in his hand, and worked down a series of bullet points.

“Both of our alliance partners in the AOR have either activated their treaties, or will have within twenty-four hours. Land elements of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces have been recalled to barracks, the naval forces are making preparations to put out to sea, and the air force is already flying CAP over the home islands. The Aussies have called up their reserves and moved all of their remaining high-readiness forces onto alert…”

“Remaining?”

“Yes, sir. They have a special forces group, a squadron of Hornets, and a naval task force in the Gulf with us, for Iraq.”

Ritchie nodded.

“All of the other regional powers have gone to varying states of high alert. Taiwan has been placed under martial law, and the armed forces have put Plan Orange into effect. South Korea has declared that a curfew will come into effect as of 2200 tonight. Their forces and ours are ready, watching the DMZ, but Pyongyang is sitting very, very still. There’s been nothing on their media at all.”

“And China?”

Maccomb gnawed at the inside of his mouth like a man with a lifelong chaw habit.

“They’ve put a lot of troops onto the streets, and our satellite cover shows a lot of activity around the Taiwan Strait batteries, but the force-projection capabilities they do have remain dormant for the moment. They’re as spooked as anyone, and they know we still have the forces in theater to check them if necessary.”

Ritchie nodded, feeling a headache building behind his eyeballs.

“That’s a dreadfully dangerous amount of hardware and armed men moving around.”

“Yes, sir,” agreed Maccomb. “It is.”

“It just reached out and took him,” said Kwan, a little breathlessly. “Like, I dunno, like a sort of liquid metal blob or something. Faster than anything I’ve ever seen.”

Musso nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak just yet. His heart was still going like a rat in a trap, and he recognized the hollow, shaky feeling of having dodged a bullet, or something just as nasty. Musso had been a marine for longer than he had been anything else in his life. He knew war from the inside, the way an addict knows his poison. He knew what it was like to make a ball of himself, tight and small, like a clenched fist, as death zipped like a swarm of bees through the air all around him. He knew too well the fragility of the human body, the way that war respects not age, not courage, gender, righteousness, intelligence, or any of the limitless personal touchstones that everyone thinks will get them through, just before everyone starts dying. He had held in his arms grown men reduced to bloodied rags and cooling meat by a few dumb grams of flying metal. He had carried a little Somali girl in his hands, no more than two she would have been, her poor tiny body burned and disintegrating as he ran for a medic. He knew the filth and horror of war as a contagion buried just beneath the surface of his own skin.

He knew fear.

But he had never known it as he had in the few seconds after Núñez was consumed. Fear like a rancid, suppurating pustule that suddenly burst all sweet and bilious in his guts, flooding his mouth and throat and stomach with a distillation of terror in its primal state.

He was going to be a few moments getting over it.

The Cubans, he saw, had freaked the hell out, but were holding it together under the lash of Núñez’s deputy, Captain someone-or-other. Musso couldn’t recall his name. His people were no less upset, although they were hiding it a little better. Everyone had withdrawn back up the road toward Guantánamo, pulling over to the side about five hundred meters from their original position. The energy wave hadn’t altered in the slightest.

Musso released a ragged breath.

“Okay. As of now, nobody gets within five hundred meters of that thing, okay? I can’t tell the Cubans what to do, of course, but I’m guessing they won’t argue.”

Kwan nodded and looked around for the nameless captain.

“I don’t even know if he speaks English, sir.”

“Me neither,” he said. “Get someone to translate. Your sergeant, Gutteres, he’s sharp. Put him on liaison if you can spare him.”

“Julio’s specialty is binary nerve agents. I don’t think I’ll be needing him,” she said flatly.

Kwan saluted and turned away to find their new translator. Musso took a sip of chilled sports drink from an insulated bottle. They had withdrawn to a spot on a slight rise where a small clearing allowed all of the vehicles to pull off the shoulder. The Americans were still attempting to take readings from something that their equipment told them wasn’t there. The Cubans had gathered into a loose line under the watchful if anxious gaze of their latest commanding officer. They were sure going through them at a fair clip.

Musso calmed his breathing. His heart rate had dropped back to something a little more reasonable, and the unpleasant low-grade voltage that had been buzzing away just under his skin had finally died down. He couldn’t help but wonder where Núñez had gone. If anywhere. That led naturally to thoughts of his wife and kids and what had happened to them. His stomach turned over again. Another slug from the drink bottle and he put it away, pushing off the side of the Humvee and walking over to his radioman, determinedly trying to ignore his personal anxieties.

“Corporal, can you hook me up with Pearl, via Gitmo?”

“No problem, General. Just give me a moment.”

Musso left him to it, taking a minute to talk to the Cubans’ new CO. Jenny Kwan and Sergeant Gutteres were deep into a three-way conference with the scared-looking officer, who snapped rigidly to attention when he saw Musso approaching. The marine gave him a tired smile and a nod in reply.

“How’re we doing, Lieutenant?” he asked Kwan.

“Pretty good, sir. Captain Álvarez here speaks pretty good English. A hell of lot better than my Spanish at any rate. Sergeant Gutteres is filling in the blanks.”

Musso addressed the Cuban directly. “I’m sorry about Major Núñez. He seemed a good man and an excellent officer.”

“He was,” Álvarez replied. “We liked him. All the men liked him very much.”

“Well, Captain, I’m about to seek guidance from my superiors, but for myself, I’d like us to keep talking, to help each other out if and when we can. I’d suggest you try and find someone further up your chain of command to report to, but son, you need to prepare yourself for the possibility that
you are
it.”

Sergeant Gutteres had begun translating quietly as soon as he’d seen Álvarez struggling to keep up with Musso. He finished a few seconds after the
general. Captain Álvarez grimaced a little at the thought that he might well be the sole surviving authority figure in his country, but to his credit he sucked it up and gave the Americanos his sternest warrior’s face.

“Cooperation, yes, General,” he answered. “Perhaps, in this emergency, we might discuss a joint command, no? A combination command?”

At the look of incomprehension on Musso’s face, he launched into a burst of Spanish. Gutteres waited, taking it all in, before passing on the gist of what he’d said.

“Long story short, General, Álvarez is offering to
temporarily
place his men under your command. He emphasizes the temporary nature of the arrangement.”

Musso nodded. He understood that the Cuban was covering himself against the unlikely eventuality that they might click their heels three times and find that everything had returned to normal, in which case he’d probably need to seek immediate asylum.

“You do me an honor, Captain,” said Musso, nodding to Gutteres to make sure he translated the phrase literally. “Your men have comported themselves with great bravery and forbearance today. They are a credit to your country, and it would be a privilege to serve with them, however
temporary
the arrangement might be.”

Álvarez, who seemed more than happy with that, asked if he might borrow the sergeant to speak to his men. Musso agreed, laying a light hand on Gutteres’s shoulder before he left them. “Take it easy, son. A light touch is called for. Let Álvarez do any yelling and butt kicking that’s required.”

“Got it, General.”

His radio operator indicated from the command Humvee that he’d established the link to Pearl, and Musso exchanged a salute and, less formally, a handshake with his newest subordinate before hurrying back.

“It’s Admiral Ritchie, sir.”

“Thank you,” said Musso, as he took the handset. “Admiral, it’s General Musso, sir. I’m afraid I have some more bad news.”

Ritchie hung up when he was done with Musso. He didn’t know which was more disturbing, the way the energy barrier had reached out and snatched Major Núñez when he strayed too close, or the fact that the surviving Cubans had been so neutered by the events of the day that they had effectively surrendered control of their territory, or what was left of it, to the United States … or what was left
of it.

A terrible melancholy had settled upon his spirit in the last hour or so. He
hadn’t noticed it stealing up on him, but having received Musso’s report he found himself in a bleaker frame of mind than he could recall having known before. He could hear an increasing hubbub outside his office as more and more people poured into PACOM headquarters. Hundreds of phones appeared to be ringing, and so many voices competed with one another to get
their
message through, to have
their
tiny part of this unfolding nightmare recognized as important, that the normally hushed environs of the command center reminded him of the stock exchange in New York. He’d visited there with his wife and daughter a few months before 9/11.

“Admiral.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, a little roughly, pretending he’d been lost in thought about something more than his own personal tragedy. His PA was at the door.

“It’s General Franks, sir. On a secure line from Qatar. He says elements of the Iraqi army are leaving their entrenched positions and appear to be heading toward the border with Kuwait.”

Just for a second Ritchie thought his heart might have stopped. Then he realized it had simply jumped. It felt as though it had gathered itself up and tried to leap right out of his chest. He felt momentarily dizzy and covered it by nodding as he leaned back in his chair.

“Patch him through if you would. Any other good news?”

“The Israelis have moved extra units into the Gaza Strip. A street party there got out of hand and turned into a riot. One of their guys got shot trying to close it down.”

“A street party?” Ritchie couldn’t keep the dismay out of his voice.

“They’re breaking out all over, sir.
All
over. Plenty in the Mideast, of course. But plenty more in Europe, even Britain, in some of the northern areas, with big … ah … migrant populations.”

“You mean big Muslim populations.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well. Patch General Franks through to me here.”

Ritchie had a few seconds alone to himself before Franks came on the line.
My God,
he thought, silently.
This is going to turn bad even quicker than I thought.

“Shoeless fuckin’ Dan,” spat Pete, with no joy in his voice at the arrival of such an old, esteemed colleague.

“And all of his little toes,” said Mr. Lee, shooting a wide, gap-toothed grin at Pete. To add to the effect he raised one eyebrow and winked, a most disconcerting sight. “Flippant humor, Mr. Pete? To ease tensions before confrontation.”

Pete forced a wan smile in spite of himself. Shoeless Dan was no laughing matter. The dude dealt in some high-octane villainy. Word was, he’d once filled the hold of a Liberian freighter with a couple of hundred orphans for the Chechen maf’. Unspoiled children paid off at the same dollar-per-key rate as good heroin if you could get them into the right wholesale chain. Dan denied it, of course, but not all that strenuously. It added to his mystique, which he needed, given the incurable fungal infection that had turned his feet into putrescent, oozing slabs of meat. The things were grotesque, as big as footballs when they really swelled up, and never smelling any sweeter than a rancid wheel of Spanish cheese.

He knew his boats, though. And he knew the smuggling biz.

“Flippant humor, Mr. Lee.” Pete nodded while watching the go-fast boats
split up and peel off to come at the yacht from opposite sides. “Does Chinese culture even do flippancy?”

“Mr. John Woo, yes,” said Lee. “Central Committee of Communist Party, not so much.”

“Who is the more Confucian, then?” asked Pete, following Dan’s boat through a pair of binoculars.

“Not Confucian,” said Lee, raising both eyebrows and positively beaming at his skipper with all of his remaining teeth on show. “Just confusing.”

The old Chinaman held up one hand in triumph. Pete allowed himself a genuine smile that crinkled the net of lines at the corners of his eyes as he smacked out a high five. It might well be the last smile of his life.