Ultimatum (69 page)

“To tell you the truth,” said Katz, “no one seems to know how fast it’s safe to move in there. We’re just trying to get enough radiation suits for people to use. If you’ll excuse the French, sir, it’s a fucking nightmare.”

“Weren’t we prepared?” demanded the president.

“For this, sir?”

Katz’s tone said it all, the sheer overwhelming magnitude of what he was trying to deal with. Benton nodded. How could they have been prepared for this? How could anyone be?

“It’s a hell of mess, Mr. President. I just hope whoever dies in there dies quick.”

Joe Benton closed his eyes. He had had exactly the same thought.

He came back and Heather looked up at him. “The situation’s still very confused,” he said.

He went into the situation room. They had satellite pictures of China. The U.S. strike had targeted Changsha in south central China, a city of eight million people. A dust cloud smeared the image, like the one that hung over San Francisco Bay.

There had been no response from the Chinese government. As news of the U.S. retaliation came out, governments around the world were condemning both attacks. Hugh Ogilvie got through to Benton. He just kept saying they had to stop this. They had to stop it. Benton asked him to try to talk with the Chinese government, try to get a message to them, tell Wen that he stood by the statement he had made from the bunker. There was a way out of this. Ogilvie said he had tried, and he couldn’t find anyone senior to take a call. Benton assumed they were bunkered, just like him. Then it occurred to him that he didn’t know who was in charge in China. Who was calling the shots? There was no way of knowing that it wasn’t Ding, or some other hardliner, or the army that was now in power.

Ogilvie said he didn’t know either.

~ * ~

Between briefings, he sat with Heather and stared grimly at the screen. His thoughts veered wildly. At one moment he’d be thinking about Amy, numb with disbelief, like any father, like thousands of other fathers who had a child at Stanford or somewhere else in the Bay area when the strike hit. And then suddenly he’d be the president again, and he found himself wondering how he’d got to this position, what he’d done wrong along the way, if he’d done anything wrong. He must have done something wrong if he had brought a nuclear strike down on his own people, the first president in history to have achieved that distinction. There must have been a misjudgment. Maybe he had backed Wen too much into a corner, given him no room to wriggle out. Maybe he had misread the signals. But who would think Wen would
do
it? No one thought anyone would ever do it. If India and Pakistan had managed to keep their fingers off their respective buttons for thirty years, surely anyone could. And what should he do now? If he had made a misjudgment already—he and all his advisors—what was to stop him making a misjudgment again? Should he keep waiting for a Chinese response? Shouldn’t he preempt it? Where was Larry Olsen when he needed him? Still out of communication. Alan Ball seemed to be having some kind of breakdown. He was surrounded by military, military advice. He had absolutely no idea what the government in Beijing was doing. Should he try to contact Wen? But Wen hadn’t tried to contact him, and Ogilvie, who was trying to mediate, still hadn’t been able to get through to the Chinese leader. But by sitting here like this, waiting, he was allowing the other side to make the running. That wasn’t what the doctrine said he was supposed to do. But the doctrine was pure theory. But then what was he supposed to do? Make another statement? Announce that he was. . . what? Backing down? Or should he go ahead and nuke the hell out of them, like Enderlich wanted? And then he would glance at Heather again, and all he could think about was Amy.

Heather had said hardly anything. Hadn’t eaten. Just kept watching the news streams, hungry for information, any information, looking up at him each time he came back from a briefing with Enderlich, and then, when he had nothing more to offer, looking away again.

He hugged her, and they held each other, and then she turned back to the stream.

There was a pair of pundits on the screen. They were discussing what was going to happen next. One argued that the U.S. should have hit back harder. One argued it shouldn’t have hit back at all. The first one responded that an all-out Chinese strike was now inevitable. “So we’re all about to die?” asked the anchor.

“I believe so, yes,” replied the pundit smugly, as if it gave him some kind of satisfaction.

Joe Benton wanted to scream. Could nothing get these people off the screen? Why weren’t they at home with their families?

~ * ~

Waiting. For what? Was he at war? Nothing seemed to be happening, nothing real. Just briefings and more briefings. Armed soldiers were everywhere in the bunker. Above him, outside, up there, the United States was in lock-down. Forces in every ocean and every airspace were ready. It was like a trigger. Under his finger. He didn’t know himself what would make him pull it.

He was exhausted, he felt hollowed out with a tiredness beyond reason. It seemed like days ago, weeks ago, that he had issued his statement in this bunker. A statement. Another statement. What was the point? All he ever seemed to do was issue statements. And now five million people were dead, or maybe ten million, or maybe more, people who had been alive thirty-six hours ago. Who could even start to comprehend it? And how many more would be dead before he issued his next statement?

There was a room for him with a bed. People were telling him to get some sleep. He needed sleep, he knew that. He lay down, closed his eyes: Thoughts of Amy. Restlessness, agitation. Maybe he slept for a minute. More thoughts. Disoriented. He hoped everyone in there died quick. The last time he had seen Amy, she had run out on him. The only time she’d ever done that. Amy. Maybe she was alive. Could the whole thing be concocted? Could it be a coup? You could doctor pictures. You could prepare web streams and make them look as if they were live. Chavez would know only what she was told as well. What about Lou Katz? But you could fool him too, if you were sufficiently prepared. Or he could be in on it. So could Chavez. So could everyone.

He sat up.
Was he going mad?

In the other room, he found Heather watching a screen. What time was it? Here in the bunker, it could be day, it could be night. He stood staring at the screen. The news stream was showing some kind of vox pop on the streets. Cameras were out in various cities. People were shaking their heads, some searching for words, some almost incoherent with anger. One woman in Boston, tearstained, shocked, cried at the camera, “Where’s our president? How do we know he’s even alive?”

The words hit him like a slap. Like a splash of cold water to the face.

There was a knock. Enderlich came in. He looked grave.

“What is it?” asked the president.

Enderlich glanced meaningfully at Heather.

Benton had no patience for that. “Admiral, what is it?”

“Mr. President . . .” Enderlich hesitated, glanced again at Heather. “Mr. President, it appears the Chinese military has responded.”

The president stared at the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “How?”

“The United States has come under a second nuclear attack, sir.”

Heather gasped. Benton continued to stare at Enderlich.

“Kansas, sir. The town of Junction City was the strike point.”

Junction City, Kansas? Benton had never heard of it.

“At this stage we have little information, sir. We’re estimating a population of up to a quarter million in the critical radius.”

“Do we have missile silos in the area?”

“No, sir. We’re assuming the missile came down early. The continued trajectory of the flight path would target it close to Miami. Alternatively, if it went off course, it was probably heading for one of the population centers on the East Coast. Possibly Washington. Mr. President, we’re facing a clear escalation. We have to counterattack with serious force.”

Joe Benton said the first thing that came into his head. “What if it didn’t come down early on its flight path?”

“There’s a military facility outside Junction City but it’s a small conventional base. Never had a nuclear role. The Chinese wouldn’t even know about it. There would be hundreds of bases like that in China we wouldn’t know about.”

“Then why would they attack it?”

“Mr. President, I just said, they didn’t.”

“But, Admiral, they just did.” Maybe he wasn’t thinking straight— Benton was aware that was possible, more than possible—but why assume the strike had been an error? Why not assume it had taken place as intended, and look for the message in that? “What did you say exactly, Admiral? Was the trajectory targeted on Miami, or close to Miami?”

“Mr. President, we’ve had a lucky escape on this and right now we need to take every ounce of luck we can get. If that missile didn’t come down early we’d be talking about a place a whole lot bigger than Junction City. We need to launch a serious counterpunch. A single strike is no longer enough.” The Admiral put the briefcase on the sofa beside the president and snapped it open.

Heather stared at it with revulsion.

“Sir? Your thumb?”

Joe Benton didn’t move. He gazed at Enderlich.
Could
this be a coup? Could it be an attempt to get him to launch a major strike to create the conditions for the military to take over. Led by who? Jay MacMahon? Larry Olsen? In the meetings over the last few days Olsen and Enderlich had been saying pretty much the same things. And Olsen wasn’t here, even though he was meant to be. Where was he? Maybe he was up there, on top, orchestrating things.

“Sir?” Enderlich pointed at the briefcase. “We have to act. They’re escalating.”

“Put it away.”

“We have to respond.”

“What if they’re de-escalating? They attack the Bay area. They kill, how many? Three million? We respond and kill the same. Or more. Then they attack Junction City. It’s a de-escalation, Admiral. Isn’t that obvious?”

“It’s an error, sir. A lucky escape. We have to take our chance—”

“What if they’re looking for a way out?”

“What if the next missile is already on its way?”

Benton stared at the admiral. Suddenly the bunker seemed unbearable. Benton felt utterly cut off from reality, dependent on information filtered through to him by people he didn’t know, didn’t trust, didn’t understand.

The woman’s face on the vox pop flashed into his mind. Tearstained. Shocked. Her voice. “Where’s our president? How do we know he’s even alive?”

“Get me out of here,” he said suddenly.

“What?”

“Get me back to Washington.”

“Sir, I can’t do that. Remember what your position is.”

“Your commander in chief. I said get me back to Washington.”

“Sir, Alpha Plan requires—”

“I don’t give a damn about Alpha Plan. I’m giving you an order. Get me back to Washington!”

“Mr. President, we have complete airspace shutdown over the United States. Any plane up there gets shot out of the sky.”

“Then you’ll inform whoever’s going to shoot me out of the sky that they’re not going to do it.”

“No, sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

“No, sir. It is my responsibility to secure the person of the president in case of mortal danger to his person and I will do that, sir, whether you or anyone around you . . .”

Benton walked out of the room. Outside, he found one of the armed military detail that seemed to be everywhere in the bunker.

“Give me your gun,” he said.

The marine looked at him in surprise.