Third World War (58 page)

'God knows,' said Pierce. He pressed his headset button. 'Can you correct it? . . . I know it's a guidance malfunction,' he shouted, 'but can you fix it?'

'Shit,' muttered Kozerski, as the kill vehicle of an interceptor broke away and destroyed another interceptor.

'They said it could never happen,' said Pierce, shaking his head.

There was complete silence in the room, no longer from concentration, nor from hope that things could ever get back to normal. It lasted well past the break in the line of defence. Someone should have spoken, but no one wanted to. The satellites and radar were confused because they were not meant to follow the missile as far as this. The picture jumped and skewed. The target coordinates flipped over like stock prices, as computers tried to calculate where the warheads might land. Patriot missiles were fired. One hit its target. One North Korean missile remained in flight.

Everyone stood aghast, helpless, staring at the screen, its data becoming meaningless. They were numb to what was happening.

The closer the warhead came to earth, the clearer the picture became. It changed from a spongy blue-grey mass around the outer atmosphere to images of high-rise buildings, the coastline. Highways emerged as distinct shapes. The name of the city appeared at the bottom of the screen, the district, the ground zero strike area, compiled by data from a new computer at a battle management control centre. A box screen showed a street map: the buildings, the day-time and night-time populations, the hospitals, the bunkers, the agencies, their contact numbers and their lines of control.

A yellow flare tore across the screen. Briefly it went to black. It came back with flakes of light appearing like jagged shards of heat searing up from the ground. They could see it was blindingly hot, bright and destructive, with a grey-black spiral surrounded by licking flames.

Slowly, second by second, the camera lenses were blocked out by a cloud.

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70*

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Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania*

The helicopter turned into the wind and came gently down on a tarmac quadrangle behind the Elizabethtown fire station. Caroline Brock brought the mask over her head and sealed it. She had begun to feel feverish just after taking off from Washington. But she hadn't slept, it seemed, for weeks. She was running on adrenalin. She needed sleep, but she didn't want to go home. It was too lonely.

As she jumped down, her tongue found a lesion on the side of her mouth. Her legs didn't support her weight as they should. A muscle spasm shot through her thigh. She walked quickly out from under the rotor blades, just making out the voice in her headset. 'It's Oakland . . . a single 10-kiloton warhead . . . ground zero six kilometres east of Oakland Airport.'

A wave of nausea swept through her. She couldn't see through the mask. Maybe it was clouded up. She fumbled. She had to sleep. Another lesion. Her knees buckled. Where was her strength? She righted herself. Someone was holding her up. Ahead was the red of a fire engine. She could make out the colour, but not the markings.

'Caroline, it's Tom here. Are you in Elizabethtown?' A voice, distorted and ringing. Too much information. She had to get away.

'Tom--' she managed. Her throat was on fire. She coughed. A wave of heat began rising up inside her body, striking out her energy. 'Tom, I'm no good,' she whispered. 'I'm sick. I'm infected--'

She fell with the sentence unfinished. Caroline Brock remembered nothing else until she woke up in a hospital bed and saw the pustules on her hand.

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71*

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London, UK*

'We stay with them, Charles,' said Stuart Nolan. 'Every inch. Shoulder to shoulder. No surrender. Put it out now.'

Through the window, the Downing Street garden looked idyllic, daffodils shining in clear sunlight. Nolan stood by the French windows, his hand running back and forth down the cold glass.

There were 350 dead in London and Birmingham. Variola major had been detected in both cities. The pattern had been exactly the same as in Times Square - the aerosol dispersal of the virus first, followed by the suicide bomb. The detonations had been at the optimum time, just before dawn, in dry cold conditions, so that the virus could survive for several hours before latching on to a victim.

'Are you sure?' asked Colchester, handing Nolan a Cold War document file. Nolan opened it where he was standing. For the past hour, Colchester had been feeding him with documents analysing nuclear conflict. He quickly read this one.

'A nuclear attack would mean the loss of nearly one-third of the population,' said the report. 'Blast and heat would be the dominant hazard, accounting for more than 9 million fatal casualties, against fewer than 3 million from radiation. Four million of the 16 million casualties would be caused by a single bomb on London. The standard of living of the reduced population, although substantially lower than at present, would still be well above that of the greater part of the world. The country would be left with sufficient resources for a slow recovery.'

'They write as if it's something they can plan for,' said Nolan.

'In those days they did,' agreed Colchester. 'The key was how to prepare to strike first and not get found out.' He picked up another file to give to Nolan, but the Prime Minister shook his head. 'I've seen enough,' he said, closing the file in his hand and tossing it on to a coffee table. 'Thank God, it's Jim West's call,' said Nolan.

Britain had a harsher view than America, and it was this conversation that Nolan needed to have with West before he addressed Parliament.

'He's through,' said Colchester, switching the line through to Nolan's telephone.

'Whatever you want us to do, we will do, Jim,' said Nolan. 'I am placing our forces, conventional and nuclear, under your command.'

'Caro--' Nolan heard West say. 'Right. I'm going down there . . . George Washington . . . I don't give a damn . . . Sorry, Stuart. Oakland's been hit. Of course, you know. I heard that, and thank you. Chris Pierce knows - hold a moment, Stuart - Tom, yes . . . Thank God for that - Stuart, sorry, no Chuck's called in. He lives in Oakland. Runs a transport company there. But he's fine. Damn nuclear attack and all I think about is my son. Now, give me your advice.'

West spoke fast and staccato. Nolan needed to break through and get his attention, just for five seconds. He needed to state Britain's view, however unpalatable it might be, and he didn't bother with niceties. 'We must destroy China's nuclear capability,' he said. 'If it helps, we'll fire first. China has gone the same way as North Korea and Pakistan. Except it's more lethal.'

'Memed's in China,' said West.

'Exactly. The Cold War rule was that the first to strike would be the winner. They now know our missile defence is fallible. Strike China now and stop Russia in its tracks.'

'Have you talked to Kozlov?'

'No. Have you?'

'We can't get hold of him.'

'Biological weapons were specifically designed to destroy what radiation and the nuclear explosion does not. That is why they are being used now,' said Nolan. 'Whatever moves you make towards peace now, there will be another trigger, another disaster, which they will try to blame on rogue elements, but will in fact be being carried out on the instructions of the centre. It's war, Jim, but we can win. We can pull through.'

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72*

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Washington, DC, USA*

'Everything within a one-mile radius is destroyed,' said Patton. 'Everyone is dead. It was an airburst so there is early fallout. Wind speed is twenty miles an hour. The radiation zone will be ten to twenty miles, with the contamination of water and food supplies stretching further.'

Patton was speaking, leaning heavily on the conference table in the situation room, reading off a computer screen and typing instructions into another keyboard as he did so.

'The transport system within the target area is destroyed. We will airlift out what casualties we can. But it means going in with NBC protection.' He looked up. 'Mr President, a lot more people are going to die. We are probably looking at 100,000 killed in the target area and another 100,000 dead over the next few days. We just won't be able to get them out.' He glanced up and pointed. 'This is it. We're getting the first pictures.'

The wind had carved a shape out of the heavy haze, giving a clear view to the ground. West stared at what he saw. At first, he could barely distinguish them from the images of Delhi, Tokyo and Pyongyang. These were fresher, though. The cameras had moved faster. Everything was shattered amid huge flickering pillars of yellow flames. There were no visible traces of the neighbourhood where until a few hours ago people had gone about their daily lives. It had vanished utterly, leaving not even a remnant of what it had once been. No corpses. No twisted buildings. No advertising hoardings. No sign of society at all. Just sudden and thorough destruction in the most extreme form. Hospitals, schools, homes, offices, fire and police stations - everything which made up a community was gone. No other weapon created by man could reduce a place to nothing so completely.

And what about when the rescue services had managed to cut through and evacuate and airlift? What about when the nausea and vomiting started? The diarrhoea, fever, the bleeding from the skin, the ulceration of the mouth, loss of hair, the slow, agonizing and unstoppable regression to death.

West stopped pacing the room and headed for the door. 'Mary,' he said, 'can you join me for a moment?'

They stood in the corridor, the lights seeming brighter because of their exhaustion. West's expression was difficult to read. There was fatigue as if he had taken on another age and it was still settling. His hair fell awkwardly and needed a cut. One shirt sleeve was rolled up, just underneath the elbow. The other was down, with the cuff hanging open. The ink from a ballpoint pen had leaked on to his right hand. He looked behind him to check they were alone, except for a secret service agent far down at the corner of the corridor.

'I want to say this to you, before I say it to the nation,' he said. 'I'm sorry, Mary. I should have followed your advice.'

Newman breathed deeply. 'Mr President, this is not a path we want to go down right now.'

'If I had been your age, I would have struck first. I would have been rash. But I'm an old warhorse who doesn't want to fight. I see too many sides of the story, and I have the worst handicap of them all. I have doubt.'

'There are a few leaders out there who are about to lose big time.' She took both his hands and clasped them in hers. He looked at her, his eyes boring straight through her, and suddenly he did not feel tired at all.

'If I was ten years younger, I wouldn't say this, but we're going to give it one last shot. Try Kozlov and Song. Work your way down until you get someone. And try their ambassadors here as well.' Newman dropped his hands and nodded. 'And Mary, can you ask Chris Pierce to join me out here?'

West watched his Secretary of State turn back into the situation room. In the few seconds before Pierce came out, he found himself looking straight down the corridor at a secret service agent. 'They've nuked Oakland,' said West, his voice bouncing off the walls of the narrow passageway.

'So I heard, sir,' said the agent.

'What would you do?'

'I would never have run for your office, sir.'

'Good answer.' West rolled up his loose cuff. 'But if you had?'

'I guess I'd kick ass, sir.'

Pierce, hearing the conversation, paused as he came out, glancing up towards the agent and back down towards West. 'Maybe you should have run,' said West, walking away from the agent, and letting Pierce fall into step with him.

'I'm going to give Mary an hour to get something substantive from either Kozlov or Song - or both,' he said. 'Cuba's our bargaining chip. If we can start negotiation on Cuba, maybe we can hold off on everything else. But if we don't succeed, you have to be ready.'

'Against Cuba?'

'And China, Chris,' said West firmly. 'And China itself.'

Pierce nodded. 'Just heard from CINCPAC, sir. We've seen inside Park's bunker.'

West's eyes flickered with renewed interest. 'And?'

'We're still identifying his body. But we have confirmation that he was using human guinea pigs to test the virus. Some of the chambers were intact.'

'We need any evidence that traces it back to China. Anything. A scrap. Let me know.'

Without another word, West turned and walked back into the situation room. 'Tom, I'm going to head down to the smallpox ward at George Washington Hospital. How many cases do we have now?'