[The Fear Saga 01] - Fear the Sky (2014) (61 page)

On the far side of the planet, it was still early evening in Washington, and the president was sitting and cupping a hot mug of coffee, and looking in confusion at the collection of people in his office. An hour beforehand, the president’s chief of staff had informed him that Admiral Hamilton was requesting a private meeting with the president immediately. He was told that the admiral had not said why, but had stressed that it concerned national security and that it was imperative that the meeting happen without delay. The president had found himself in his Oval Office just before he was supposed to be getting ready for dinner with his family, sipping his coffee and bracing for whatever news the admiral might be bringing.

The meeting had started strangely and only gotten stranger. The president was no newcomer to sudden emergency meetings being called by any one of a number of his inner circle of advisors, aides, and close political allies. But to have such a meeting called by the senior admiral of the navy was very unusual.

What was even more unusual was the list of people that had come with the admiral: some colonel in the air force stood in one corner, and the intelligent but slightly off-color White House Science Advisor Neal Danielson stood in another. His chief of staff Jim Hacker sat on one of the Oval Office’s beige couches across from the unusually enigmatic admiral.

The president focused on the navy man and said, “Well, Admiral, would you care to tell me why I am late for dinner with my wife? I mean, couldn’t this have waited till morning?”

The admiral glanced over his shoulder at Neal standing in the corner. They had rehearsed this moment for some time, but the admiral was finding that no amount of practice made it any easier to actually say what he was about to say. Neal gave the senior military man a nod of reassurance and the admiral turned back to the president. He took a long, deep breath and then said, “Mr. President, Mr. Hacker, I am sorry that I have dragged you in here tonight, but I am afraid the information I have to share with you will not wait.”

He ignored the questioning looks the men gave each other and carried on, “Sir, for about nine months now, a small team of scientists and officers have been tracking a hidden threat to our security, and preparing for the day when we would be able to respond to that threat. During that time, this team has worked to put in place a response that would be both effective at neutralizing the threat while also coming up with frankly unique and unprecedented methods for minimizing the collateral damage we fear will come once we initiate our plan.

“The team’s goal …. or rather,
our
goal,” the admiral spared a brief smile for his two associates and then went on, “has been to prepare for the day when we would be ready to strike with lethal force, for we will only have one shot, and it must be 100% effective.”

The admiral paused for a moment, and then said with as much authority as he could muster, “Mr. President, we’ve come to you this evening because today is that day.”

* * *

An hour later, the president was still in the grips of the admiral’s presentation. Neal had provided Admiral Hamilton with a plethora of information prior to the meeting, and he and the colonel stepped in to support the admiral or answer any particularly technical questions whenever it seemed prudent. The president was taking it reasonably well, as was the chief of staff, but while they were not totally incredulous, they were far from convinced. The team had wanted to get the president on his own at first, but that had proved impossible. Jim Hacker was very good at his job as the president’s gatekeeper: to get to the president, you had to go through him.

“I’m sure you understand that this is all very … hard to accept, Admiral.” said Jim Hacker, and the admiral nodded. He understood better than the chief of staff did, and they had notably left out the details of the whereabouts of all eight Agents, focusing instead on the satellites that were their first priority.

Jim Hacker continued, “You’ve shown us a lot of compelling material, but I hope you’ll understand when I say that, in my opinion, it is all fairly circumstantial.” Again the admiral nodded, and Jim went on, “I guess I am saying, Admiral, that, again, in my opinion, while such a theory from such a man as you cannot be taken lightly, I think it is my duty to say that I cannot recommend any action on the part of the United States government without further evidence and information.”

“Wait,” said the president, “action? I am not ready to even begin talking about action.”

The president went on, “We have talked a lot of theory, and you’ve shown me lots of photos of nothing in space and nothing on the bed of the Indian Ocean and insisted that all this nothing means something very important. I know you are clearly absolutely convinced of this information’s efficacy, and that, in and of itself, is very powerful, I don’t disagree. But so far I have to agree with my chief of staff’s analysis. I respect each of you enough to accept that you clearly believe you have something concrete here. But none of you have talked about action. What action do you want me to take exactly? What is this ‘response’ you mentioned earlier that you want to make to something so … incredible?”

The admiral nodded again thoughtfully, reflecting that he was probably doing that too much, and then checked his watch.

Good, they should be getting the report any moment. After a moment’s pause, the admiral spoke again, slowly, as if filling time, “Mr. President, the response I have spoken about is just that: a response. I concur that your chief of staff makes a good point. While my colleagues and I have seen enough by now to come to the strong conviction that this threat is very much a reality, we did not expect to convince either of you without significantly more …
concrete
evidence.”

The admiral glanced at his watch again, aware that it might now be starting to look like an affectation, then went on, “Plus, we knew that if we had approached you earlier you would have been forced to pursue this, possibly in ways that we know would have been detected by them, causing them to react in ways that I do not wish to contemplate.”

The admiral paused, and the two other men looked expectant for a moment, waiting for the military man to go on, but he didn’t. Jim Hacker lost his patience first, “So? That doesn’t quite explain why you are coming to us now, Admiral.”

The admiral shook his head. When he reflected on it, he was about to admit to being part of an international conspiracy that ended with the firing of billions of dollars worth of military hardware into space. He smiled. Well, here goes nothing.

“You see, Mr. President, Jim, we had actually come up with a plan that did not necessitate involving you at all. We had devised a way of, well, using the resources at our disposal to attack the satellites without going through your office.” He found he was no longer having trouble looking at them as he spoke, a weight starting to lift from his shoulders as he said, “But that plan was not a good one. For one it did not include a method for destroying all the satellites, only three of them. We have a different plan now. Part of which is even now starting to unfold.”

They looked at him, concern spreading across their faces even as a peace spread across his. He had not liked lying to his commander in chief. Now, at least, he could say that the lying was over.

The beeping of the admiral’s phone caught them all by surprise, as did the fact that he didn’t ignore it but calmly picked it up and glanced at it.

The chief of staff looked awry at the admiral, “Admiral, what could possibly be important enough that you would …” but he was interrupted by his own phone. He paused. There was a very short list of reasons that both of their phones would go off at the same time, and as he went to look at his own phone’s screen there was a knock on the door, which then opened just a crack. The president’s personal secretary poked in her head, “Mr. President, gentlemen, I am very sorry to disturb you but your presence is requested in the SitRoom, sir, as is the admiral’s.”

The chief of staff looked up from the similar message on his phone and looked at the president, then they both looked at the admiral, who was sitting serenely on the couch waiting for them.

“Mr. President, you are about to be told that there has been an incident in Pakistan. When you hear about it you are going to be stunned, and with good reason. It is, by many measures, one of the worst things any president can imagine happening on his watch. But we are here to tell you that it is not as it seems, and that we have a very specific response that we need to make to the events about to unfold across the world.

“Like I said, we have been preparing for the day when we would be able to respond to the threat that is coming our way. Whether we like it or not, today
is
that day, and we are as ready as we will ever be. Both you and the joint chiefs are about to see irrefutable proof that what we have said is true. What you do with that evidence will, of course, be up to you. But we are here to tell you that we have a plan. And that everything is in place to execute that plan tonight.”

* * *

Agent Mikhail Kovalenko drove at speed to his office in the center of Moscow. It was four o’clock in the morning, and he had already phoned the majority of his department, waking them up and telling them that their senior officer needed them at work immediately.

While he dedicated one subroutine of his machine mind to calling his colleagues, another part of his highly capable mind was focused on driving the car through the still sleeping city. Though the city appeared calm, he knew that all across it hundreds of men and women were responding to the rapidly unfolding events in Pakistan. While senior government officials were busily awaking the premier and his staff, others were activating and arming the country’s powerful defenses.

But even with all their spies and agents, Mikhail still knew more about what was happening than the vast Russian military. Even as Russian, American, European, and Chinese satellites were redirected to fly over Peshawar, Mikhail already knew what they were going to see when they got there.

He knew that they are going to see the site of a brief but bloody battle. That they will see fires raging across the badly damaged base. They will no doubt make out the three burning hulks that had been the Al-Khalid Battle Tanks sent to take out the freedom fighters and they may even see the last of the freedom fighters fleeing back into the mountains. For in the end, those same insurgents who had so boldly attacked the base had been just as shaken by how it had all ended. Even the most bloodthirsty of them had been as surprised when they had seen the six huge HATF-VI missiles thunder up out of their buried bunkers, and upon seeing that terrible sight they had fled. Even their boiling insurgent rage had been blanched clean at the thought of what those missiles would do to whatever target they had been sent to destroy. As a whole, the remaining fighters’ wills had faltered and they had run, leaving the base to shake with the aftereffects of the launch.

Back in Russia, Mikhail knew that soon the satellites of the world’s great military superpowers would confirm the broken reports each country was getting. They would find six of the long-range missile silos open. And soon Russia’s advanced ABM radar would detect six inbound signatures heading in its direction.

For his part, Agent Mikhail Kovalenko was not yet part of the upper echelons of the Strategic Command Force. The relatively unimportant analysis group he was assigned to had not been called to handle this crisis but Mikhail needed to be involved. He needed to stop the Russians from going too far in their response. He needed to make sure the wishes and needs of the Council were adhered to, and that a full nuclear conflagration was not sparked by this unprecedented action.

So while one subroutine in his machine mind called his colleagues, and another handled the task of driving his car for him, the personality that governed the entire machine mind used the relay in the back of his car to connect to yet another emergency Council meeting, the second in two days.

They all looked about the virtual meeting room. Never before had they met as an incomplete group. It was disconcerting. John remained silent. He knew more than the rest of the group what Shahim was up to, but he could not know how successful the other Agent had been. So he literally and proverbially sat back a waited.