Oblivion (25 page)

“I’m guessing more than fifty,” Cavendish said.

“Probe Eight is on-line,” said someone from the far comer of the room. Archer didn’t even try to identify the voice. She was still looking at the U.S. Government stamp on the side of that missile.

“Those are nukes, aren’t they?” said Melissa Carter, Archer’s newest assistant.

“Yeah,” Archer said. Nukes. Heading into space.

She raised her head as if she could see through the ceiling, into the sky above. Then she stood, feeling more unsettled than she ever had in her life.

Nukes.

No wonder this had been a secret.

Not from the aliens, but from humans.

She thought about the destruction she and Cross had watched less than a month ago, the black dust, the melting people, the screaming. She’d even dreamed about it—or more accurately, had nightmares about it. She had vowed that she would do everything within her power to prevent that from happening again.

Her power didn’t include nukes, but human power did. Humans had the ability to defend themselves, and some of those ways were uncomfortable to say the least.

She was feeling ambivalent about this, and she at least understood it. Imagine if this had been announced. The peaceniks would have been protesting, and those nutcases who had blown up the IRS building in Memphis, along with their friends all over the country, would have been calling this a big government conspiracy and using it as a way of rallying their sick programs.

They were getting enough help as more and more people started figuring out that the tenth planet was going to have to pass Earth again.

No. The secrecy had been right. And it was her job, at least for the time being, to keep that secrecy until someone else told the world.

“Probe Nine on-line,” Cavendish said.

“Probe Ten right behind it,” Roosevelt said.

Archer swung her chair forward, divided her monitor among all the views, and also brought in the telemetry.

It was going to be a very long night.

June 15, 2018
12:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time

121 Days Until Second Harvest

The curtains were closed in the Oval Office, the thin sheers not enough to stop the light from the cameras from reflecting in the bay windows. Grace Lopez, the president’s chief of staff, was standing behind the antique partner’s desk, arguing with the White House correspondent for CNN. He wanted to close the blue curtains, and she wasn’t going to allow it.

Grace Lopez was a short, round woman with curly gray hair, and a manner that reminded Mickelson of his second grade teacher—a woman who had terrified him throughout his grade school years. If Grace Lopez wanted something done, then someone had better do it.

But the lights were a problem, and President Franklin had been insistent: he wanted to make his speech from this room. The television reporters were suggesting the Map Room or even the Press Room, but Lopez was having none of it.

She would have to compromise, though. Even Mickelson knew that no vid reporter worth his salt would record in a room with that kind of reflection.

He turned his back on the argument and watched the White House press corps prepare for the big speech. The pundits had been guessing all evening about what the president would talk about. Fortunately Franklin hadn’t announced that he was even giving a speech until dinnertime, or the punditry would have gone on for days.

Mickelson’s palms were wet. He was wearing what he privately called his duck suit—the next step down from a tuxedo. It was an Armani suit, black, with a stylish long coat, and matching trousers. He wore a round-collar shirt to follow the modem style, and he felt as if he were choking. But at some point in the evening, he would go in front of cameras himself. The president had spent the entire day briefing his Cabinet. He planned to send them out, like troops, to mount a verbal assault defending his chosen plan of action.

General Maddox and the other Joint Chiefs were still in the president’s study, going over last minute details with the president and his press secretary. Which was why Lopez was doing battle with CNN.

Other Cabinet members were scattered about the south end of the room. The secretary of agriculture was pretending to be interested in the musty books that lined the bookshelves, while the secretary of defense stood silently, her hands clasped before her as if she were waiting to be graded on her posture. Mickelson wondered if he looked as uncomfortable as she did.

“I don’t like this.” Tavi Bernstein, director of the FBI, stopped beside Mickelson. She was a slight woman who wore her dark hair in a conservative knot at the back of her neck. She, too, wore a long waistcoat, but instead of pants, she had on a knee-length skirt that showed off surprisingly good legs. Mickelson had once considered dating her, until he listened to her resume during her confirmation hearings. The woman had been a special agent in undercover work for half of her career, and the other half she had run, with an iron fist, some of the most elite units in the agency. She was smart, and tough, and she intimidated him more than anyone else he had ever met.

“You don’t like the speech?” Mickelson asked. They were keeping their voices low, so low that it was almost impossible to hear each other. But with this many members of the press around, it was always better to be cautious. In fact, Mickelson noted, they were both keeping an eye out for the errant boom mike or passing reporter.

“I haven’t seen the final draft of the speech,” Bernstein said. “But I spent all of yesterday arguing that he shouldn’t make it at all.”

“People have a right to know—” Mickelson started, but Bernstein waved an impatient jewel-covered hand.

“Spare me the liberal bullshit,” she said. “We’re at war. And it’s time we acknowledge it. This country is a powder-keg, and no one outside my department seems to understand that. Everyone else is looking skyward.”

“That’s where the danger is coming from,” Mickelson said. “Not for a few more months. Right now, we’re running triple the number of hate crimes and conspiracy arrests. We got a tip, fortunately, that led us to a huge supply of anthrax just outside Denver last week. And so far we’ve managed to stop five more bombings like Memphis.”

Mickelson turned his head so that he could see her face. She raised her eyebrows.

“Don’t look so serious,” she said through her teeth, then smiled, obviously for the benefit of all the reporters in the room. “And don’t look so surprised. We’re not broadcasting any of this, except to a handful of folks.”

“Not even Cabinet members?”

She shrugged. “You have enough on your plate, Doug. The anthrax thing is one of many my office has been dealing with since that damn planet appeared. My people are working harder than they’ve ever worked, and on more cases, from more areas, than ever before.”

“What the hell do you think is going on?” he asked.

She looked at him for a long moment, then turned her gaze pointedly on the reporters. “How long do you think we have?”

He glanced at his watch. “We’re only fifteen minutes late at this point. No one’s left that office yet. They’re fine tuning. I think we’ve got five minutes at least.”

“Yeah, and ball-buster Lopez hasn’t acquiesced yet,” Bernstein said. “What the hell is she thinking? The drapes have to be closed if they’re going to do a press conference in here at night. It doesn’t matter if they haven’t been closed since the Kennedy Administration.”

Mickelson grinned. “I think I saw a photo of LBJ with them closed.”

“Yeah, to keep the glare off all his television sets.”

They both laughed, and Mickelson thought how rare it was to have someone else who knew the details of modern American history. He would wager they were the only two people in the room who knew that right where half the press corps was standing, President Lyndon Baines Johnson had had a console with three television sets built in, one for what was then every network.

That good ole boy from Texas would certainly be surprised now. Hundreds, maybe thousands of channels, not counting all the video on the Web, and the low-wattage stations. Now there was so much noise, Mickelson was amazed anyone heard anything. He knew that Franklin’s press people spent most of the evening making certain that all the networks knew this was the most important speech in Franklin’s career— maybe in the world. Even then, Mickelson doubted if more than half would carry it, and those would have pundits dissecting everything instantly afterward.

He was scheduled to appear on NBC and its subnetworks. He had no idea where Bernstein was supposed to lend her two cents.

She led him out the door and into the office of Franklin’s private secretary. There was a crowd here, too, but none of them were reporters. More Cabinet members were here, waiting, and some of the deputy officials.

“Okay.” Bernstein pulled him into a corner near a Remington statue of a cowboy on a horse, purchased during the Reagan administration. “You wanted to know what’s going on? Here’s what I think. I think people are terrified, and they don’t know how to express it. They’re also feeling helpless. We’ve had a huge rise in voluntary military recruitment. But that’s not helping like it usually does in war. This threat is an unknown, it comes from the sky, and it seems all-powerful.” “So the speech should help,” Mickelson said.

“Oh, for sensible people, maybe,” Bernstein said. “But most people aren’t sensible, not in the way we want them to be. And those crazed groups out there are spreading the word that the aliens aren’t real. So when Franklin uses the ‘n’ word—”

Even in this more private room she didn’t dare say nukes. Franklin had impressed on all of them the need for secrecy on this point. Mickelson had been avoiding discussing it all day.

“—who are those crazies going to believe is being attacked? If they don’t believe aliens exist, there’s only one other answer.” “Some international target.”

“Fuck, Doug, sometimes your job colors your vision,” Bernstein said. “No. We’re not talking rational folk here.”

“Used to be,” he said softly, “the rational people were the ones who
didn't
believe in aliens.”

She smiled grimly. “Well, times change. And our crazy friends aren’t going to be worrying about an international target. They’re going to be worrying about a local one. They know that we’ve been on their butts and so have the ATF, and the U.S. Marshals. They’re going to think this is some kind of code.”

Mickelson still didn’t get it. “Yes, but you’re talking about a fringe element.”

Color rose in her cheeks. “That’s what Franklin was saying. He’s so focused on the skies he’s forgetting about the homefront. He does this and I guarantee that cities’ll be burning in the morning.”

Mickelson let out an exasperated sigh. “Why are you telling me this now? Why didn’t you bring it up at the Cabinet meeting?”

“Because I’ve been talking to Franklin about it all week, and he didn’t want the dissent at the damn meeting. He says, and I quote, ‘What happens here doesn’t matter a rat’s ass if we don’t get rid of those aliens.’ ”

Mickelson bit his lower lip. In his own way, Franklin was right. What happened in the next few months didn’t matter if the aliens returned. A lump formed in Mickelson’s stomach. His shoulders were so tight, it felt as if he’d snap every muscle in them simply by moving.

“You agree with him, don’t you?” Bernstein said.

Trapped. Mickelson glanced at the door. Some of the reporters were in position, but Lopez was still arguing over the drapes. What a weird stalling tactic that was.

“Don’t you?” Bernstein asked.

There was no way she was going to let him off the hook. “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

“Damn,” Bernstein said. “He listens to you. I was hoping you could get him to call this off at the eleventh hour.”

“Sorry, Tavi,” Mickelson said. “I think in this case, we’re on the right path.”

He left her side, feeling more uncomfortable than he had in days. There were no good options anywhere. And now the missiles had been launched.

He stepped back into the Oval Office just as Lopez closed the drapes. The reflection disappeared. She walked across the room, and let herself through one of the many doors. The CNN White House correspondent was shaking his head as if he hadn’t seen anything like that for a long time.

Bernstein entered and pointedly went to a different part of the room from Mickelson. What had she expected? Yeah, he and Franklin went way back, almost as far back as he and Cross did. Franklin and Mickelson were both Rhodes scholars, and were in Oxford at the same time. They’d been part of a small enclave of Americans—it wasn’t a popular time for Americans abroad—and they had stuck closer together than they would have if they had been going to graduate school in the States.

But Franklin hadn’t chosen Mickelson just out of loyalty. He had chosen Mickelson to represent the US. abroad because he and Mickelson had similar views. Bernstein had been promoted from within the ranks. When the director’s job came open, she had been the natural choice for it. But Mickelson had been chosen from the outside, and he had done his best to serve both his country and his president.

Which he was also doing now. Bernstein had presented her argument. Franklin had rejected it. End of story.

At that thought, the door to the president’s study opened, and Franklin walked in, flanked by the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his press secretary. As Franklin approached the desk, lights went on all around him, illuminating that entire section of the Oval Office. Even the cracks in the ceiling were visible.