Edge of Apocalypse (3 page)

The XO unholstered his weapon and handed it to the admiral. The admiral raised it and aimed it at the captain's head.

"Are you going to give me the key now, Captain?"

"Admiral, I beg you, we don't know what's happened yet..."

The sound of the gun going off in the closed space was much louder than the admiral had expected. The bullet entered the captain's right cheekbone and exited the back of his skull, spattering the steel panel behind him with blood and brain matter.

The admiral's hand was shaking as he reached down to retrieve the firing key from around the captain's neck, where he had slumped dead onto the corrugated metal floor.

No one said a word as the admiral, with the gun still in his trembling hand, passed the bloody key to the XO.

The admiral stared out at the sea for a moment, then smiled with an air of manufactured confidence. "They'll write stories about us someday." He turned slowly to the XO and nodded. "The ship is yours now,
Captain.
Make us proud."

A phone rang in the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was 7:00 at night, but the chairman was still there. He liked to use the early evening hours, when the rest of the staff was gone, to think over the next day's agenda. His secretary had gone, so he picked up the phone. "This is--"

The voice on the other end of the phone didn't let him finish. "General, we have a status red, repeat, a confirmed status red."

The general's body shot up in his chair. "What and where!?"

"Two birds incoming, U.S. East Coast," intoned the voice on the phone.

"Specify!" roared the General. "Where?!"

"New York City."

THREE

There was one unusual thing about that night for Abigail Jordan. At long last she and her nineteen-year-old daughter, Deborah, had managed to book tickets for an opera at the Met. Puccini's
Madame Butterfly.
Abigail tried to arm-twist her husband, Joshua, into going, but she had to laugh at the improbability of that. Besides, Joshua was scheduled to fly back to New York from a meeting with some military brass in Washington. He was taking the shuttle to JFK and would then, in his private helicopter, go directly to his Manhattan office to do some late-night work with his research and development team. Which meant Joshua Jordan had a built-in excuse to miss the opera.
Much to his relief,
Abigail figured.

Still, Abigail had applied her powers of persuasion. Clever arguments came easy for her. She'd been trained as a lawyer. "Look, Josh," she'd said to him on her cell phone earlier, "I know you don't like the opera, but
Madame Butterfly
is actually a story about a lieutenant in the Navy who has this conflict--" Her husband chuckled and cut her off. He even managed to say it with a straight face: "Navy? You got to be kidding. Abby, honey, even if I didn't have to work late, let's remember that I retired from active duty as a colonel in the Air Force. The
Air Force.
Sitting through an opera about a sailor, hey, that'd be a betrayal to all my flying buddies..."

She'd tried not to laugh at his sly comeback, but it was hard. At least this way she would have some private time with Deborah--first a wonderful dinner together, and now they were looking for a cab to whisk them to the Met before curtain time. In some ways her daughter was so much like her dad. A cadet at West Point, Deborah was heading for a career in the military. Yet Abigail was delighted that she still loved
girly
things. A good love story, even in Italian, would be right up their alley.

As the two of them walked quickly through Times Square looking for a taxi, she glanced at Deborah. She had Joshua's dark, penetrating eyes and a softer, pretty version of his square-jawed face. Like her mother, Deborah was tall, thin, and athletic. Abigail had missed her, even though West Point wasn't that far from their penthouse in New York City, and she and Joshua had seen her several times during her third year at the academy. It was still so good to have her around, even if only for a weekend.

The two of them crossed Broadway, underneath the brazen illumination of the giant three-hundred-foot-high LED screens, neon signs, and flashing JumboTrons of Times Square. Abigail and Deborah were almost to the island in the middle of the street that housed the large glass-encased TKTS discount tickets booth. They would have to get off of Broadway to find a cab. For many years traffic had been banned from Times Square, so Abigail and Deborah were about to head to a side street to hail a taxi.

But just then they heard the awful sound. A sickening metallic crash.

Abigail and Deborah quickly whipped their heads around. A cab had just smashed into a vendor's hot dog cart.

Abigail was stunned.
What's a cab doing in Times Square?

Unbelievably, the taxi didn't stop. The cabbie continued to gun his engine down 47
^th
Street, first dodging around pedestrians and then hopping the curb onto the sidewalk at full speed, toppling pedestrians like bowling pins. Several theater lovers, waiting in line at the TKTS booth, started to race across the street to get to the fallen pedestrians.

Deborah turned to sprint after them. "Come on, Mom; they need help!"

But Abigail saw something and grabbed her daughter's arm. "Look out!"

A large black limo and then a minivan streaked into Times Square and almost mowed down the good Samaritans. A second cab attempted to veer around the crowds and jumped the curb, this one slamming through the foldout tables where hawkers had been selling Yankees and Mets memorabilia moments before.

Abigail stared in shock. She couldn't compute the odds. Almost as if orchestrated, vehicles were racing into the no-traffic zone of Times Square. Two taxi drivers had jumped curbs, committing the same insane act in the same place within seconds of each other. What was going on?

Suddenly cell phones started to ring all around her. For a moment it was as if the world encompassed in that twenty blocks of Times Square had stopped to answer the same communal phone call. Abigail had her cell with her, but it was turned off on purpose. She cherished her alone-time with Deborah.

Deborah looked as if she was trying hard to figure it all out. Trying to make sense of it. "Something big's going down, Mom."

Abigail grabbed for her Allfone, the new generation multifunctional cell phone, to turn it on. Every person around her with a cell phone, as if on cue, was moving now--some running, others crying, some screaming wildly. Everyone else simply stood there with bewildered faces.

Abigail punched the speed dial for her husband. By then Joshua would be up in the chopper high over Manhattan, heading to his office. But a homeless man in a dingy Knicks hoodie stumbled past her and knocked her Allfone out of her hand.

He was yelling, "It's the end, man; it's the end!"

Abigail reached down to snatch up the phone, but another reckless vehicle, an airport van, came speeding toward her. She jumped back as it brushed past, but it slammed into the homeless man from behind. He flew over the top of the van and landed several yards behind it in the gutter. The driver never slowed down. More cars and trucks began careening into Times Square at breakneck speed.

"What's happening?" a woman with shopping bags screamed out to no one in particular. No one stopped to answer. From Abigail's vantage point on the traffic island, people were swirling madly around her, running in all directions. The sidewalks had become deadly speedways for taxis and cars, smashing into anyone and anything, trying to get around the intersection crowded with scrambling pedestrians and out-of-control traffic.

Abigail could not imagine what chaos had just been loosed. Cars and buses were colliding, creating bottlenecks, forcing more people to spill onto the streets on foot. Subway entrances were jammed with people trying to escape the mayhem above ground. People pushed and shoved, knocking others to the pavement in a mad exodus to nowhere. The plate-glass window at the empty Nike store was shattered by looters who had already grabbed overpriced shoes, jerseys, and anything else they could get their hands on.

A few confused souls had taken refuge with Abigail and Deborah on the traffic island--a relatively calm eye in the middle of the storm. Most simply stood and watched in horrified confusion. Others cried. Some prayed.

Deborah was circling around helplessly, watching, and shaking her head. "We've got to do something..."

But Abigail's mind was whirling. She shouted back. "Have to figure out where it's safe. Where the danger is..."

Just then she noticed people looking up at the sky, mesmerized, as if waiting for something beyond their control, something catastrophic to fall on them.

An elderly man behind Abigail pleaded, "I need to get to my granddaughter's. Can anyone tell me what's going on?"

Then Abigail noticed something on one of the largest of the building-sized electronic billboards. Instead of the usual glitzy ads for the latest designer jeans and blockbuster movie was a simple aerial shot of the sparkling Manhattan skyline, an eerie reflection of the skyscrapers towering around them.

"I don't understand," said someone in the crowd, pointing to the looming video feed.

Then Abigail saw it. She pointed down the street to a giant ribbon of digital text wrapping around a building. The breaking news headline scrolling high above Times Square was too outrageous to make sense of. Then it sank in. The digital words were announcing a headline that was too horrible to comprehend:

TWO NUCLEAR WARHEADS HAVE BEEN LAUNCHED FROM A N. KOREAN SHIP OFF THE COAST OF GREENLAND...TARGET: MANHATTAN

Involuntary sobs escaped from the woman with the shopping bags. People screamed in terror.

Deborah shouted, "Got to find a bomb shelter..."

Abigail grabbed her hand. "Stay with me. Let's run to the Crowne Plaza. Maybe they've got a basement level..."

The two women began to sprint together across Broadway toward the hotel. A human flood of screaming pedestrians were scattering in all directions.

Deborah yelled as they ran, "The sign said nukes.
Nukes,
Mom! A basement won't save us. We're ground zero!"

"Maybe they're wrong. Maybe they're not nukes."

"But what if they are?"

They were at a full sprint now, blowing through the chaotic crowds. But Abigail knew something that even Deborah didn't know. A few details about her husband's top-secret project. Joshua ought to be very close to his office by now. His R&D team was supposed to be waiting for him. Maybe. Just maybe...

Abigail yelled over to her daughter as they were locked into matching strides, "If they're nukes, we have to pray that Dad can stop them..."

"Dad?"

Without breaking her stride, Abigail started to pray. Tears were starting to come. But it didn't stop her voice as she shouted out a prayer.

"Heavenly Father, oh, please, God, please save us...and help Josh...help him, Lord!"

FOUR

The private executive helicopter glided high in the night sky over the glittering lights of New York City. Joshua Jordan, the lone passenger, was in the back. Forty-three, square shouldered, athletic, and dressed in an expensive Italian suit, he looked like a man on top of the world. But he didn't feel that way.

On a normal evening, heading to his office for late-night work, he'd be paging through his Allfone--checking emails and tabbing through a variety of documents that had been scanned-in for him to review. The digital revolution had finally merged all the major information, communication, and entertainment functions into one platform: a small handheld device that became all things--cell phone, fax sender, two-way Skype video camera, television, radio, and, of course, Internetaccessible computer. The big versions replaced TV sets in the entertainment cabinets of homes across the country. But it was the small handheld units, the top-of-the-line Allfone and its cheaper imitators, that had become the primary personal communication link for the public.

Ordinarily Joshua would have been accessing Fox News, CNN International, GlobalNetNews, BusinessNetwork--anything he needed to stay on top of the economy, politics, business, and world affairs.

On his mini-laptop-sized Allfone, he would be reviewing the headlines from four key publications:
The Wall Street Journal, Barons, International Financial Times,
and the
Daily Economic Forum,

while keeping an eye on a second Allfone laptop opened to a graphic of the world, where charts would appear in the four corners and updated data would scroll under the banner "Global Risk and Security Assessment."

Then again, if this were an ordinary evening he'd be mulling over disturbing new developments that were gutting the nation that he loved. He had served America as an Air Force test pilot and secret reconnaissance officer flying in some of the world's hottest spots. Now he was serving the U.S. as a defense contractor. But in the light of catastrophic current events, that wasn't enough for Joshua. So he and several others had begun an audacious new venture. Under normal conditions all of that would have been bouncing around his head like a pinball.

But this wasn't a normal evening. Joshua couldn't get yesterday's conversation with his son, Cal, out of his head. Why did he have to blast his son like that? All Cal wanted was to talk about changing his college major. What was the big deal? He'd already accepted the fact that Cal wanted to go to Liberty University; after all it was a good school, and maybe Cal wasn't cut out for the military. Joshua's own father had been a military man. Joshua himself had spent almost twenty years in the Air Force. Even Debbie, his precious little girl, was at West Point now. But Cal was different. He'd turned down the military academy and said he wanted to go to a Christian college. So there was also that religious issue that Joshua had to deal with. Cal, like his mother, Abigail, and even Debbie, had all said at different times that they had become "born again Christians." Joshua just couldn't see the whole Christian thing, at least not for himself. But he had worked hard at trying to support Cal's decision about college. Now that Cal was in his second year at Liberty, Joshua had settled into the idea.