White (40 page)

“No.”

“How long? How could you have allowed this?”

“Forgive me, sir. He slipped past our guard. We don't know how long they were together. By the time we understood what was happening, he was gone.”

“You're absolutely sure that it was an American?”

“No, but it was clearly no one we knew.”

The phone was silent while Fortier considered the matter.

“Shall we take any action?” the man asked.

“No. Carlos stays there. Under no circumstance is he to leave. Consider the compound his prison, but he must not know. Business as usual. If he tries to leave, kill him.”

36

T
homas ducked below the spinning blades over his head and ran from the helicopter. The USS
Nimitz
's massive tower reached high just ahead. He'd seen the large fleet from the air. Over two hundred ships from the United States alone. Dots on the ocean, each leading a long tail of white foam.

The British fleet was to the north five miles. The Israelis were using mostly freighters—more than thirty, each loaded to the gills with weapons they denied they actually possessed. There was enough nuclear firepower in a five-mile radius of this aircraft carrier to blow up the world fifty times over.

The first sign that not all was normal on deck was the absence of flight crews. The fact was, the
Nimitz
was being run on fumes, with fewer than fifty troops to guide her across the Atlantic.

Thomas hardly recognized Merton Gains. The man wore a white turtleneck and dark glasses, but if he thought they hid the rash on his face, he was fooling only himself. Thomas hurried toward him. The secretary extended his hand. Wind buffeted his hair.

“Thank God you made it. Just in time.”

Thomas took his hand. “They've started?”

“Two hours ago. You have a front-row seat on the observation deck if you want it.”

“Absolutely.”

The senator paused. “You're not as bad as I thought you'd be.”

The rash.

“No. I have it under my arms.” He wasn't sure what to say. “Are you okay?”

Gains spit to one side and turned toward the door.

Thomas followed Gains out of the wind and to a large room full of electronics he could only guess at. Radar—that he could see. Large screens with hundreds of blips. Among those blips floated the sharpest edge of America's military sword—six full carrier groups, hundreds of ships carrying everything from their most sophisticated attack aircraft to nuclear weapons. A second large wave of ships was on the way with more, but this was Fortier's primary prize.

Gains introduced him to the first officer. “This is Ben Graver. He's going to talk us through the operation.”

Ben took his hand without any expression. “Can't say it's a pleasure,” he said.

“Neither can I,” Thomas said.

“Should be done in another hour.”

The plan was simple. Per French demands, each ship was to be anchored at specific coordinates and their crews off-loaded to a single ship from each country. French crews would board the vessels and verify the cargoes, and only then would the antivirus be turned over.

The obvious problem with the exchange was the lack of a guarantee that Fortier would actually deliver the antivirus after confirming his receipt of weapons. His best offer, and the one Thomas had insisted they accept, had been to anchor one ship containing the antivirus with each navy. They could examine the ship but not take control of it until after Fortier's people had taken possession of the weapons.

“The admiral's aboard?” Thomas asked.

“He is.”

“I need to speak to him. Now.”

Ben eyed him, then picked up a phone. He spoke quietly and set it back in the cradle. “This way.”

Admiral Kaufman. Brent Kaufman, personal friend to the president. The tall, gray-haired man with broad shoulders and blue eyes received them and immediately dismissed the first officer.

“Welcome to hell,” the admiral said.

“No, hell comes in two days,” Thomas said. “This is more like purgatory.”

The admiral frowned. He turned to two ranking men in British and Israeli uniforms. “This is General Ben-Gurion for the IDF, and Admiral Roland Bright from the British fleet.”

Thomas took their hands in turn. “Does the first officer know what's about to happen?”

“He does,” Kaufman said.

“My understanding was that no one except—”

“I don't know how many ships you've been on, son,” the admiral said. “But you can't do what the president has ordered me to do without at least a minimal crew. Someone's got to pull the trigger.”

He was right. Thomas regretted challenging the man.

“The French aren't going to give us the antivirus,” he said.

“What?” Gains said. “That's . . . Then what are we doing?”

“We're playing ball,” Thomas said. “We're hoping for one more chance at getting our hands on a solution that works.”

The British admiral's face had lightened a shade. “Under no circumstances am I risking this fleet and this cargo without some assurance that we have an even exchange. This was—”

“Excuse me, sir, but this is exactly what we agreed to. If we don't turn the weapons over exactly as agreed, we tip our hands. At this very moment we have a man on the inside closing in on the antivirus.”

“Frankly, I'd sign on for blowing the entire country back into the Stone Age,” Ben-Gurion said.

“And the antivirus with it?” Thomas said. “I'm not saying our alter-natives have anyone jumping for joy here. We're hanging on by a thread, that's it, but at least it's something.”

“I can tell you that I will pay dearly for this tomorrow,” Ben-Gurion said.

“Tomorrow the world's eyes will be on the mounting dead, not a few missing nuclear weapons. Our play was based on the hope that they would turn over the antivirus, true enough. Now that we know they have no intention of doing so, our plan still has merit. If we turn tail now, Israel will be hit with missiles within the hour.”

“Then we wipe them out.”

“I realize your mind is on your military, General,” Thomas said. “But trust me, the virus makes your army look like plastic toys. Please understand this: you cannot, under any circumstances, fire on Paris or anywhere near Paris. If you inadvertently take out the antivirus, ten days from now this world will have a population of two.”

“Two meaning whom?” Gains asked.

“The only two who've already taken the antivirus. Fortier and Svensson. The only chance for survival the rest of us have is giving my man a chance. That means we follow the plan with one change.”

The British admiral arched his left eyebrow. “A change?”

“Can we delay the explosives?”

“We control that from here,” Kaufman said.

“Then we delay six hours.”

“Why?”

“My man needs the time.”

“They will retaliate,” Ben-Gurion said. “You said so yourself.”

“Not if we play our cards right. Not if my man succeeds. Not if we threaten to wipe out Paris.”

“I thought you said we couldn't risk compromising the antivirus.”

“We can't. But we can call their bluff. If it gets that far, they'll know we have nothing left to lose. They won't run the risk of a final desperate launch on our part. You've held back ten long-range missiles?”

“Yes,” Ben-Gurion said.

“There you go. They might doubt our resolve, but they won't doubt yours.” He turned to the window and gazed at the battleship on their port side. The menacing guns that jutted over the water were now useless toys in a game with far higher stakes than their manufacturer's wildest imagination.

“I don't know where you learned your strategy, lad,” the British admiral said behind him. “But I like it. And as far as I can see, it's our only option.”

“Admiral Kaufman?” Thomas asked without turning.

“It might work.” He swore. “I don't see an alternative.”

“Then let's give them something to think about,” Ben-Gurion said. “We're with you.”

Thomas turned back to them. “Thank you.”

Honestly, it felt good to be commanding men after this thirteen-month hiatus in the other reality. This could be Mikil and Johan and William he was commanding. Thomas wasn't sure what President Blair had told these men to pave the way for their taking suggestions from a twenty-five-year-old, but it had worked.

The exchange took an hour longer than anticipated, but by 1600 hours the nuclear arsenals of the United States, Britain, and Israel were in the hands of the French aboard more than three hundred ships that steamed steadily toward their coast.

As payment, the USS
Nimitz
had taken ten large crates filled with canisters of powder that a team of virologists from the World Health Organization quickly confirmed contained an antivirus, though there was no way to verify its authenticity for at least ten hours. Even then, they wouldn't know its true effectiveness. A complete test would take a full day.

In addition to the crates, the aircraft carrier now carried the three thousand crew members who'd been off-loaded from the American fleet.

Thomas had left his radio with Carlos as planned. The arrangement couldn't have been clearer. He had a twelve-hour window. If he succeeded, he would activate the homing beacon. If he hadn't yet succeeded, he would not.

There had been no homing signal.

The six-hour delay had come and gone. Thomas watched the clock on the observation deck, and with each jerk of the minute hand, his hopes dropped a notch.

Come on, Carlos.

Perhaps there was no way to change history after all.

Kaufman walked into the room and removed his hat. His eyes glanced at the clock. “We're in confirmed range five minutes, then we start losing a consistent signal.”

Thomas stood. “Then what are you waiting for, Admiral? Send the message, fire the missiles, and drop the ships.”

A grin crossed Kaufman's face. “At least we go out in a blaze of glory.”

“Maybe.”

Thomas watched the plan unfold over the first officer's shoulder at the radar station. The message sent to Fortier was straightforward:
fire one
round in retaliation and the next ten will target Paris.
It wasn't worded quite so simply, but the meaning was the same.

The missiles were next. Twenty-six in all, eighteen cruise missiles from batteries outside Lankershim Royal Air Base in England and eight tactical nukes—compliments of the IDF. The targeting was straight-forward and unmistakable: every major command and control facility in and around the deposits of the Russian, Chinese, Pakistani, and Indian nuclear stores in northern France. They couldn't take out the weapons themselves without risking massive detonations that would level civilian populations, but they intended to at least temporarily cripple France's use of their newly acquired arsenal.

Admiral Kaufman gave the order calmly over the intercom. He could just as easily have been telling his wife that he would be home soon.

“Scuttle the ships.”

The observation deck quieted. The air felt stuffy. Thomas kept his eyes glued on the sea of bright dots on the radar screen. Each one represented a loaded ship, including six full carrier groups crowded with fighters. The computer displayed them as steady signals, as opposed to signatures that lit with each sweep of the radar.

“Is it working?”

“Give it time,” Ben said. “These things don't drop like stones, I don't care how you do it.”

For a while nothing happened.

“Confirmed detonations,” a voice said over the comm.

Five more minutes, still nothing.

Then the first light winked out.

“Ship down. Israeli freighter, the
Majestic.
”

A billion dollars of nuclear weapons was on its way to the bottom.

Then another and another. They began to wink out like expired candles.

“Back to the Stone Age,” Ben said quietly.

“There will be plenty more where those came from,” Thomas said. “Assuming there's anyone left to build them.”

Here in the silence of the aircraft carrier's observation deck, the destruction of the world's nuclear arsenal looked like something on a video game, but a hundred miles away, the ocean was burning with three hundred slowly sinking blazes. The weapons required far more to detonate them than random concussion and heat from conventional explosions. They would sink to the ocean floor intact, awaiting salvage at the earliest possible opportunity.

Assuming that anyone was around to salvage them.

Thomas watched the screen for nearly an hour, mesmerized by the silent vanishing of tiny green lights.

Then the screen went black.

For a moment no one spoke.

Gains stuck his head into the room. “I just talked to the president, Thomas. They're sending a plane to pick you up.”