An Armageddon Duology (52 page)

B
arric Bosworth stared
at the flaming sunset, one hand on a rusted fence post, the other fingering the butt of his twelve-gauge pressed into the ground like a walking stick. The dust particles and debris from the atomic explosions scattered the low rays of the sun into the most spectacular color show he’d ever seen in his seventy-three years. It didn’t even look real but reminded him of the artificial palettes modern filmmakers were so taken by.

He scowled. Something for poets and painters maybe, but not a farmer. Nothing could erase his fury over what had happened—the anger and shock of nuclear war in his own backyard. Not even when nature turned the monstrous into something miraculous.

His scowl deepened as his eyes were distracted from the sky to the grassy fields below his farmhouse. He squinted and turned his good eye toward three shapes moving toward him up the hill.
Three people
. Trespassing on his property, coming from the direction of the blasts. As they neared, he could see they were struggling. An older woman, a younger woman, and a man. Their clothes were filthy, sooted like they’d come out of a crop-burning, their faces sunburned even in the winter chill. They were ready to collapse.

Still he didn’t move. Didn’t raise his weapon. He let the trio approach within twenty feet of his fence.

“All right you three, that’s far enough.”

The older woman stumbled. Propped up by the other two, her head hung as breaths wheezing in clouds from her mouth. The man supporting her spoke.

“My name is John Savas. These are my friends. We need shelter. Food and water. A place to rest.” He spoke hoarsely through cracked and bleeding lips.

Bosworth nodded. “You come from the blasts?”

Savas nodded. “Outside the city. We’ve walked for two days.”

“Two days?” the farmer rubbed his chin. “At the rate you were walkin’, that’d put you ‘bout halfway from here to the city. But you ain’t from ‘round here.”

“Our flight was knocked out of the air by the blast,” said Savas, his voice weary. “We’re the only survivors.”

“Ain’t no flights since the troubles started.”

“It wasn’t a normal flight.”

Bosworth shifted his weight off the shotgun, his hand gripping the butt more tightly. “Well, that’s what I was gettin’ to. You’re some VIPs, or I don’t know nothin’. But what I’m wonderin’ is
whose
VIPs.” Savas simply stared at him. “Some are sayin’ we got ourselves a civil war. Some sayin’ the president’s trying to take over, like Hitler. Others the military. Other’s the goddamned Iranians. Even
aliens
.” He shook his head. “The three of you,
flyin’
. Nuclear bomb in my home state. Just
whose
VIPs are you?”

“You gone plumb senile, Barric?” cried a nasal voice. A thin woman with wild gray hair scampered down the hillside from the house, kicking up a dust cloud, a heavily patched dress billowing around her.

“Irene! Get back in the house right now!”

She pushed past him with a grunt and bent nearly in two, squinting her eyes toward the three strangers, a clawed index finger indicating York. “I swear I’m gonna make you get that laser procedure. You’re gonna give a sermon ’bout the president when she’s a-standin’ right there?”

Bosworth furrowed his brow and turned to York. The president looked him straight in the face. His eyes widened. “I’ll be goddamned.”

His hand grasped the weapon at his side firmly and he lifted it into the air, loudly racking the chamber and loading a shell. The barrel pointed above Savas’s head.

His wife put her hands on her hips. “Put that damn gun down, Barric! You ain’t shot it in twenty years!”

He ignored her, staring fixedly at the president. “They shot you down?” York nodded affirmatively. “Where were you headed?”

York sighed, beyond the point of disguise or deception. “To NORAD. The bunker in the mountains.”

“Cheyenne Mountain?” he said, the weapon not moving.

“Yes,” said York. “Government and military loyal to me are waiting. Holed up. We’re trying to ride this out there. But I had to get there from Washington.” She looked behind her. “It’s not going so well.”

“Barric—” his wife began.

“Hush, woman!” He licked his lips. “Who are these two?”

“FBI agents. Real heroes if you want to know. John Savas and Rebecca Cohen. Killed the terrorist who nearly caused a war a few years back.”

Bosworth looked between the two agents. “I remember.”

Savas spoke. “So, Mr. Bosworth, I think it’s our turn to ask whose side
you
are on? Because if it’s with our nation’s rebels, you might as well shoot us now. If you’re loyal to this president, to our elected government, then we need your help. President York needs your help. We can’t go on much farther.”

Bosworth scanned around them again, weapon at the ready. “Sons-a-bitches dropped the bomb on their own country. In
my
state.” He glanced them up and down again. “You go much farther like that, they’ll get you for sure.” He looked at his wife. “Irene, put something on the stove. You all come on in. We ain’t got much, but we got food, beds, some medicines. Maybe buy you a little time.” He patted his shotgun. “And don’t you worry, anyone coming after you is gonna have to get past me first.”

N
ight fell
, and nothing moved at Newark airport. Planes slept along the shuttered terminals, the tower looming above as a shadow in the starlight, the runways invisible and dark. The blackness was punctuated haphazardly with the faint glow of exit signs and flickering emergency lights, the electric gasps of a region still reeling from the both the worm and the EMP.

Lopez, Houston, and Lightfoote huddled on the tarmac, three small shapes beside a broad runway racing alongside the central terminal. A blue glow blossomed as Lightfoote opened a laptop, the glare forcing the three to squint as their eyes adjusted from the darkness.

“This is the longest runway,” she said, indicating a black line on a schematic of the airport. “They said it would put down here.”

“They’re late!” whispered Lopez through clenched teeth. “It’s just a matter of time before they hem us in. We’re sitting ducks.”

Houston scanned the skies. “I don’t know what we’re looking for. They’ll be flying low, trying to screw with any radar scans of the area. The airport is down, thank goodness. I don’t know what else the military could have looking.”

“I assume the lights will be off,” Lopez said. “No runway lights. How are they going to put it down?”

“I have no idea,” said Lightfoote, shaking her head and closing the computer.

The three sat in silence as the minutes dragged by. The sounds of a truck caused them to catch their breath and draw weapons, but the noise faded quickly, leaving them in the quiet of the open space.

“We ought to consider a defensive arrangement,” said Houston. “If they search the airport, we—”

“Wait!” hushed Lopez, his eyes fixed on the sky. “Listen! Can you hear it?”

For a moment, the two women followed his gaze, silent, listening.

“An engine, air turbulence, something,” said Lightfoote.

“There!” hissed Houston, pointing north-east and into the sky.

A hole in the band of the Milky Way yawned above them, a gap in the stars blurring its way across the sky. The sound grew more distinct, the churning of some machinery that was completely outside their experience.

“It’s almost on us!” said Lopez, rising from his crouch. “It’s about to land!”

The three stood back from the runway. At the far end, the shadow expanded dramatically, a shape with unfurled wings descending like a hawk on prey.

“Are the engines off?” asked Houston. “It hardly makes a sound.”

Tires screeched with a quick burst of light as the plane touched down. They watched silently as the rending sound of brakes engaged and the aircraft rumbled past them, the plane slowly coming to a stop.

“It’s the damn bat-plane,” said Lightfoote.

The three jogged toward the craft as it circled around an end of the runway and aligned toward the other, preparing for takeoff. Drawing near, they could better make out the details of the thing. Pitch black, a coating drinking all light, sharp wings framing a blade, the plane slowed to a stop. The vertical cross section was small, the engines placed like two boxes over the wings. The sounds of a hatch opening rang in the night.

“It’s a stealth bomber,” said Houston, awe on her face.

“Not a bomber,” came a man’s voice from the vehicle. From around the nose stepped a pilot in dark gear, a broad helmet like a fighter pilot’s in his hands. He marched quickly up to them.

“It’s a stealth transport. A prototype from Northrop for cargo, strategic airlift capability. Bomber doesn’t hold passengers.” He looked at the bald head of Lightfoote. “You Angel?”

“Stealth cargo transport? What the hell is that for?”

The pilot shrugged. “They always think up uses. But never went into production. NORAD said you needed a bird and we had to get it in without being seen. And this prototype runs on some new military-grade OS. Worm-proof. There weren’t too many options.”

Lopez scanned the aircraft. “It will hold all of us? Doesn’t look like much room.”

“It’s for cargo. More room than you’d imagine. It looks like a B2, but it ain’t. Doesn’t fly much like one either. Now, come on. Let’s get you three the hell out of here.”

They didn’t need any persuasion. The pilot led them to the cargo entrance, and they jogged inside. Cramped and lacking much light, they stumbled to seats along the walls and strapped in.

The pilot reached the cockpit and sat next to a helmeted co-pilot. Their hands moved over the instrument panels and the cargo doors shut. The engines powered up, the interior going completely dark as the plane began to accelerate down the runway.

“Please fasten your seat belts and stow your tray tables,” came the pilot’s voice over speakers. “Next stop, Amsterdam.”

A dark shadow leapt into the air.

“
S
o
, it’s come to this at last.”

The words were spoken by a harsh face over a computer screen, a middle-aged man in a business suit. The Director stared at the monitor from his seat underneath the Bilderberg Hotel, a panel of other monitors displaying an array of ashen faces.

“Yes, Alpha. We are in agreement,” said the Director. “York has perturbed the models too much. The equations are diverging. America is lost. Europe now has a sixty percent chance of diverging from the planned curves as well. Asia will be next.”

“But is York still alive?”

“We don’t know. But it hardly matters now. Had we secured the nation, suppressed her message earlier, exhibited her alive or dead with the proper propaganda, it might have been contained. But through NORAD and their broadcasts, it went on for too long. The Nash Criterion has been reached.”

“And you have confidence in the metrics of this madman?”

“This is what we do, Alpha. You have trusted us and been amply rewarded by our numerical simulations. The Nash Criterion was always a calculation for
in extremis
, more to calibrate the models with a high bound. We never believed the model fluctuations could reach this point. The hacker has been a disaster. There is now no way to salvage the global trajectory without dealing with America.”

“Amputation?”

“Surgical intervention. Enough to render its world influence minimal, to absorb its economy and government into that of nations to be appointed as guardians over what is left. Otherwise, the equations can’t be balanced or normalized. We will lose control.”

“And you estimate Europe and Asia will fall back on path even after this drastic event?”

“Yes.” The Director wiped sweat from his brow. “The models show a strong attractor to the established trajectories. A high confidence for stabilization within the envelope of error. But only if America is neutralized. The parameters are tight. Too large a strike and we risk major secondary effects, climate the most significant. Such disturbances could also doom us. Too small, and the divergence will not be contained. We have a set of models for minimal, decapitation strikes of government and industry. Strong ripples are unavoidable, but we believe they can be managed while putting our past models back on track.”

Alpha nodded on the screen. “Zero has decided. Do it.”

The Director glanced at the screen in horror. “Of course.”

“We remain in control over the required systems?” asked Alpha.

“We have verified several times over the last few days. Launch codes, missile command and control servers, and our personnel—everything is in place, as well as other nations’ systems to avoid panicked responses.”

“The university is on the target list.”

Alpha frowned. “You don’t need to explain the obvious. You aren’t going to impact America without a strike here. We will dismantle everything in New York and evacuate. We need several days to manage the logistics.”

The Director looked down to his desk and shook his head. “After so long. Such a perfect disguise. We won’t find another like it for some time.” He returned his gaze to the monitor. “What of the scientists?”

“Them? They are only a front. Mostly a pack of Nobel-chasing sheepdogs imagining themselves to be prima donnas. They are no longer needed.”

“And Zero?”

“His plans will remain hidden, even to you, Director. When we’ve completed our transition, you may learn more. Now, prepare everything and wait for our final contact.”

The screen turned black and Alpha disappeared. The Director placed his hand to his temples.

“God help us.”