FOREWORD Read online

  The reply was spoken in a matter-of-fact monotone. “They’re about to go nuclear in Ukraine. Just do it.”

  The Major General’s tone adopted a sudden urgency. “Yessir.”

  As Westwood cut the line, one of the President’s two telephones started to buzz. He was relieved to see that it was the black one, and not the red one. He pressed a button and was answered by a female voice from the Signals Office..

  “The Prime Minister of Great Britain is on Line five, sir.”

  “Right. Keep him holding for a moment.”

  “And the French President is on Line Two.”

  “To hell with the damn French. They can wait.” He reproached himself for allowing his frustration to show. If ever there was a time he needed to stay calm, it was now. He took a deep breath. “Get Tony Bishop on the line, and put Prime Minister Winterburn through. I’ll deal with him first.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mr. President,” the British PM said a few seconds later. “Thank you for sparing the time. I know how busy you chaps must be over there.”

  Mitchell almost laughed. “You can say that again, Harold. Are you up to speed with what’s going on?”

  Winterburn couldn’t suppress a bitter chuckle. It sounded hollow under the circumstances. “As much as you are, I shouldn’t wonder.” He didn’t explain how the British Government had found out, given that there had been no formal communication between Washington and London as yet. Mitchell decided he didn’t need to ask. The Brits had their methods of finding this out, same as did the Americans. Mounted high on one of the walls in the Situation Room was a bank of clocks showing the time in every city around the world. It was currently the middle of the night in England. Winterburn must’ve been woken with the news, Mitchell realized, and yet he didn’t sound in the slightest bit groggy.

  “What are you planning to do?” the Prime Minister asked.

  “I’ve just ordered our strategic forces to DefCon Four -”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “- and I guess now we just sit back and see what happens next.”

  Winterburn made a noise that sounded like he was clearing his throat. “Mr. President, I just want you to know that my Government will support whatever measures you deem necessary. I’ve ordered our own Trident submarines to maximum alert status. Hopefully, we won’t need them, but one can never be too sure where the Russians are concerned, right?”

  The Englishman’s jovial manner was beginning to irritate the President. He had a deep personal affection for the Prime Minister, but, hell, this wasn’t the time to be cheerful. “I appreciate that, Harold. I’ll keep you posted as soon as we have anything to report.”

  “Good luck, Mr. President.”

  “You too, Prime Minister.”

  That line went dead and another came to life.

  “Bishop here, sir.” Even on the digital line, the reception was poor. “What’s going on?”

  “Where are you?”

  “About 5,000 feet above Delaware. ETA at Andrews in about twenty minutes. I’ve got Dr Stein with me.”

  “Good. There’ll be a chopper at Andrews to bring you straight to the White House. You’ll be briefed on the way. Dr Stein’s going to be thrown in at the deep end. Is he up to it?” Aware that Bishop was using a non-secure cellular phone, the President was careful not to reveal too much.

  He didn’t see the smile on the other end. “Up to it, sir? He will be after another cup of Java.”

  OVER DOVER, DELAWARE

  Much in the same way as a virulent disease, fear and anxiety are often highly infectious things, except that unlike a virus, they can be transmitted across a telephone line. This was a case in point. The detectable tremor in the President’s voice had been enough to concern Bishop. He looked anxiously at Lewis, who recognized the DCI’s expression and immediately heard alarm bells ringing in his head.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  Bishop placed the cellular phone back in his attaché case and glanced out of the cabin window over the coastline thousands of feet below. “Something big is going down. We’re being met by a chopper at Andrews. Don’t ask me why. The boss says we’ll get the lowdown when we land.”

  “So much for the limo trip, huh?” Lewis quipped nervously. He didn’t like choppers, and had rather been looking forward to the sumptuous luxury of a Government Issue limo. Actually, he didn’t much like flying, period. Even the converted Gulfstream-IV in which he was presently traveling had induced enough nausea to ruin his appetite for the rest of the day. It wasn’t that he was afraid of air travel, just that it didn’t agree with his constitution. He couldn’t explain why that was, but he’d sure as hell be relieved to walk on real ground again.

  Still, the shower he’d taken before leaving his apartment for Bradley International Airport in Hartford had left him feeling refreshed. Meanwhile, the effects of the previous evening’s alcohol intake had been largely cancelled by a couple of Tylenol that Bishop happened to have been carrying, and several cups of Espresso-strength Java. Thanks to the concoction of caffeine and other substances, he now felt about eighty percent alert, almost ready to deal with anything the world could throw at him.

  But that didn’t stop him worrying about what was going on thousands of feet below, and what awaited him when he landed. Across the aisle, Bishop’s Special Protection Officer - a severe young woman called Amanda Stapleton - was reading the latest edition of Newsweek. On its cover, Mitchell’s likely opponent in the imminent Presidential Election beamed a brilliant smile, his portrait framed by the headlineA New American Dream? According to recent opinion polls, Massachusetts Governor Joseph Burke was considered a near certainty to be the next Commander-in-Chief, a fact about which Lewis cared very little. Politicians were much of a sameness really, weren’t they?

  “What’s he like?” he asked Bishop distantly, trying to distract himself from speculating about whatever crisis might be unfolding.

  The question broke Bishop’s reverie. He looked up. “Huh?”

  “The President. What’s he like?” Lewis was genuinely curious. Prior to being a teacher, he had been a government employee for long enough to have developed a healthy skepticism of politics. As a matter of fact, he’d never voted once since taking U.S. citizenship. Much of his apathy, he knew, derived from the insight he had gained into the psychology of political leaders from his time as a CIA analyst and field officer. But, if there was a major crisis going on down there, he would be more comfortable knowing that the Head Honcho was up to the task and wasn’t too proud to take advice.

  Lewis had always thought it would have been a good idea for politicians to sit through a Personnel Reliability Profile, the kind that Air Force pilots were required to undertake. After all, how could a politician order men and women into battle without understanding the very nature of war; without knowing what it meant to look into the eyes of another human being whose life you were about to extinguish? Of course, true war heroes were thin on the ground in an age of high-tech, remote-controlled combat, and those who remained were often sufficiently screwed up by their experiences that they would be every bit as unsuitable for public office as any civilian leader. Lewis wondered what sort of political leader he himself might make. That notion almost elicited a bitter smile. Perhaps there was a strong argument for civilian leadership after all, he mused.

  “Mitchell’s as straight as they come,” Bishop remarked. “Hell, he’s a fucking boy scout, to tell the truth. But he’s a good man, you know? Calls ‘em straight. That’s why he’s having so many political problems. He pretty much stumbled accidentally into the White House, and he hasn’t quite learned to play the game yet, if you know what I mean. He’stoo damn straight sometimes.”

  “Funny,” Lewis said, “I thought that’s the way it was supposed to be.”

  Bishop snorted cynically. “You really have been out of the game a long time, haven’t you?”

  “I’ve forgotten more than I ever knew, old friend.”


  “Ain’t that always the truth?”

  The two men laughed. It would be the last time either of them did that for a while.

  INDEPENDENCE, MISSOURI

  Martin couldn’t wait to return to the relative serenity of Whiteman AFB, where life was decidedly simpler than it was at home right now.

  After that first disastrous supper following Cathy and Patrick’s arrival, Beth had decided that she wasn’t going to be a prisoner in her own home, and certainly wasn’t going to let Cathy’s acerbic comments go unanswered. Martin knew his mother wasn’t the type of woman to back down either, and in turn Patrick usually acquiesced to Cathy’s whims. He was too terrified to do otherwise. So what resulted was something of a domestic stand-off with Martin’s wife and parents glowering at each other, firing cheap shots whenever the opportunity arose and generally creating a bad atmosphere.

  With the battle lines drawn, Martin had found himself caught in a no-man’s-land between his wife and parents. He loved his parents, and he loved his wife. But they reviled each other. What was he to do? He had the beginnings of a tension headache, and it occurred to him that, after a fashion, his peacekeeping role was turning him into a carbon copy of his own browbeaten father. In terms that made far better sense to Martin, he was on autopilot, just going with the flow. Patrick had done the same thing for over thirty-five years. That was why he had eventually become so apathetic. It was his defense mechanism. That’s why my Dad is a wimp, Martin thought angrily.

  But Martin knew that this state of affairs could not continue forever. Something had to give. He knew of a psychotic disorder - whose name presently escaped him - that caused even the meekest of men to snap, often with violent consequences. He had seen it happen to a fellow officer many years before, back in the days when he himself had been a mere First Lieutenant.

  The officer, a polite and quietly-spoken Major called Roberto Vialli, had been married to the most neurotic, demanding, loud-mouthed bitch that Martin had ever met. She was the sort of woman who expected her husband to drop everything whenever she snapped her fingers, no matter what he was doing. Martin had later found out that she had been treated for manic depression. But Roberto Vialli had loved her dearly, and would have done anything to keep her happy. Behind his back, his colleagues had referred to her asIron Tits . Of course, he had known what people thought of his wife and was aware that they sneered at his unwillingness to stand up to her. But the meek mannered Major suffered in silence for ten years, pandering to her whims and appeasing her moods. Just like Dad, Martin thought. Just like me right now.

  Nobody had ever found out what finally pushed Roberto Vialli over the edge; but one day, he simply snapped and shot his wife dead before turning the gun on himself.

  The moral to that tragic story, Martin thought, was that every man has his breaking point and should be aware of it before it’s too late. Sure, Beth was nothing like poor Major Vialli’s wife, but - not knowing where his own breaking point might be - Martin knew that he had to find a way of dealing with the situation between her and his parents before it got out of hand. They were scheduled to stay with Martin and Beth for another three days, and whatever happened in that time, he knew that their departure would swiftly be followed by a ferocious argument between him and his wife, who would by then need to blow off the steam that had accumulated since his parents’ arrival.

  He gripped Beth’s hand as they sat on the loveseat watching some pointless sitcom on TV. He stifled a yawn. The only program he ever watched with any regularity was the news. His parents were on the other couch, whispering quietly to each other. He couldn’t ascertain the topic of conversation and wasn’t particularly interested.

  At least while the TV was on, Beth and Cathy weren’t hissing at each other like a couple of junkyard cats. Small graces.

  The show’s nerdish main character was stuttering as he feebly attempted to ask the girl of his dreams on a date, unaware that she was actually a lesbian. The audience laughed uproariously, mainly because they knew something that the protagonist didn’t. Martin grimaced at the inanity of it all. He derived most of his entertainment from books rather than TV. Give me Hemmingway over Seinfeld any day, he thought

  As the woman was about to reveal her sexual orientation to the hapless geek, a plain blue screen with the caption SPECIAL BULLETIN suddenly replaced the picture. That got Martin’s attention.

  “Hey!” Beth complained at the TV, as if it could hear her.

  “Shhh, babe,” he told her.

  The network anchorman appeared on screen, wearing a stern expression as he read from the TelePrompTer.

  “We interrupt your regular programming to bring you this Special Bulletin.”

  Cathy and Patrick were still whispering, oblivious to the broadcast. Martin placed a finger over his lips to silence them. They obliged, following his eyes to the screen.

  “We’re receiving reports of unusual activity around government buildings in Washington D.C. and at military installations across the United States this evening. It is not presently known what might have provoked this development, but high-ranking Pentagon officials are indicating that the President has ordered a general military alert.”

  The hair on the back of Martin’s neck stood on end. “Holy God,” he muttered just loudly enough that Beth heard him.

  The anchorman fingered his earpiece. “I believe we can now go live to Roberta Benson at the White House. Roberta, are you there?”

  The screen cut to the White House Press Room, where a young, attractive Oriental woman began to relate what she had learned.

  “Yes, Frank, I’m here. We’re expecting a statement anytime now from General Marion Westwood, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the meantime, let me tell you what we know so far.”

  Martin leaned forward attentively. Beth placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, sensing the tension emanating from him.

  “Although Pentagon officials are remaining tight lipped about what might have provoked this flurry of activity, we do know that the alert status of U.S. military forces around the world has been increased. We’re hearing reports of heightened activity at American bases not only in this country, but also in Europe and in the Far East.”

  The screen split into two; the White House correspondent on one half, the New York anchorman on the other.

  “Roberta,” the anchorman said, “has there been any talk of a perceived threat to American forces?”

  “Like I said, Frank,” she replied, “nobody’s really telling us anything right now. There is a distinct air of tension in Washington at the present time, and quite possibly that’s because nobody reallyknows what’s happening.” A pause. “Frank, the General is just making his way to the podium.”

  The screen filled with the imposing image of General Westwood.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen,” he intoned solemnly. “The President has authorized me to issue a brief statement. For reasons of national security, I will not be answering any questions at this time.”

  Unbidden, Martin reached for the remote control and increased the volume.

  ARNOLD, MARYLAND

  Jo was just about to leave the house for another twelve-hour shift when the Special Bulletin began. Although she was well versed in current affairs, she rarely paid much attention to the TV news, preferring instead to browse the Washington Post before setting out to work every day.

  By the time Westwood had begun his statement, however, she was transfixed by the drama playing itself out on screen. She sat on the edge of an armchair in the living room and listened intently.

  “… part of a general alert,” he was reading from a script. “I am not at liberty at this time to reveal the reasons for this alert, except to say that we are confident that it is merely a precautionary measure and should provide no cause whatsoever for panic.”

  Jo snorted disdainfully, knowing that very remark was bound to have precisely the opposite effect. Tell people not to panic, and you’re implying that they have ever
y reason to do so. What sort of idiots write this shit?she mused, already knowing the answer. Dumb shits who have never lived in the real world.

  “Accordingly, all leaves have been cancelled and members of the following units are ordered to report for duty immediately, using whatever means of transport necessary to reach their posts: 2ndBomb Wing, 5thBomb Wing, 28thBomb Wing…”

  INDEPENDENCE, MISSOURI

  “509thBomb Wing,” were the words that caused Martin’s blood to freeze. He blinked, not quite believing what he had just heard. He didn’t notice Beth tightly squeeze his hand.

  “What’s going on, Martin?” Cathy asked. She didn’t really understand military jargon, since it had nothing to do with her friends in Chicago or shopping or anything else that she considered of particular importance.

  Martin remained silent. He was concentrating intently on the screen as Westwood continued to list what seemed to be an endless list of Air Force, Naval and Army units. In fact, the list took him no more than two minutes to read. Once he had finished, the General left the stage to a cacophonic volley of unanswered questions being yelled at him by the press corps.

  “What does that mean?” Beth asked her husband, already knowing the answer but not quite wanting to believe it.

  “Exactly what the man said,” Patrick answered for his son. “Martin’s got to report for duty. Sounds like a full mobilization.” Patrick knew about such things, being an avid reader of Tom Clancy novels.

  Beth embraced her husband, who was still staring at the TV. His pager started beeping. Knowing exactly what that meant, he switched it off without checking the message.

  “… just come in.” The anchorman was reading from a slip of paper, and his tone had lowered to indicate the gravity of the news he had just received. “The French News Agency is quoting government sources in Paris as claiming that a Russian nuclear attack in the Ukraine may be imminent. This is unconfirmed as yet.” He paused, listening to something on his earpiece. “And I’ve just been told that the President will be addressing the nation in just over five minutes…”