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  “Here’s the situation,” Rapp said. “This mountain is full of medical personnel and professional interrogators. And they aren’t going to make the deal I did with you. I believe that you don’t know anything, but they won’t. They’re going to want more than your phone’s password and they’re going to be a lot more scientific about it than me. They’re going to shove a thermometer up your ass and chain you to a tree. Then, when you’re just about dead, they’re gonna bring you inside and put you in a nice warm bed. And they’re going to keep doing it until you die of old age. No one deserves to live like that, Rashad. Not even you. Now this is your last chance. Tell me what I want to know and we’ll finish this.”

  The man stared up at him, though one of his eyeballs was covered in a thin film of frost. After a few seconds, his mouth began to move. Rapp leaned in close and entered the string of letters and numbers as Asfour said them. It worked. He was in.

  He pulled his Glock and pressed the barrel against the man’s chest. “A deal’s a deal.”

  Both soldiers jumped back at the sound of the shot, reaching for their weapons, but uncertain whether they had the authority to do any more. Rapp climbed back into his pickup and pointed at the gate.

  “Open it.”

  CHAPTER 24

  THE chaos inside the bunker’s entrance was just below that of full-fledged combat. The space was massive—probably fifty feet high by two hundred and fifty wide. Rapp couldn’t see as far as the back. People were running in every direction, dodging trucks, forklifts, and occasional bicycles. The dull buzz of countless voices combined with the stench of sweat to give the air a strange weight.

  He waded in, making it about twenty feet before he saw a woman angling toward him from the right.

  “Mr. Rapp,” she called when she got close enough for him to hear. “I’m Amy Case. Sorry to be late. I assumed you’d pull into the indoor parking area.”

  “I have something in the back that needs to stay cold.”

  She gave him a quizzical look but had clearly been trained not to ask questions. Instead, she held out a yellow badge that he hung around his neck.

  “That gives you full access,” she said. “It’ll open any door in the place, but be careful how you use it. One wrong turn and you’ll be lost for a week.”

  “Got it.”

  He followed her for a good ten minutes before they entered a significantly less crowded passageway that terminated in a heavy steel door. Her card opened it and they passed into something that looked like an oversized NASA mission control room. People wearing headsets were lined up at desks and a huge screen depicting the United States dominated the wall in front of them. He paused to examine the pulsing lights on it, but his guide grabbed him by the arm and kept him moving. They crossed unnoticed, finally stopping in front of a more nondescript door at the back. This time she pointed to his badge. “This is as far as I can go.”

  After a respectful nod, she started back the way she’d come, leaving him to tap his badge against a pad next to the door. The room he entered had a similar monitor hanging on the far wall, this one spanning probably fifteen feet by ten. At the center of the room was an oval table so large that the people around it had to have microphones to be heard. The resemblance to the war room from the movie Dr. Strangelove was obvious enough that Rapp wondered if some smart-ass architect had done it intentionally.

  The president was sitting quietly while the secretary of the interior made full use of the microphone in front of him. Rapp couldn’t find Irene Kennedy in any of the chairs, but finally spotted her standing against the wall with the directors of the FBI and NSA.

  “… we’re still in the process of evaluating the fires based on satellite imagery and weather forecasts. What I can say without further analysis is that there are too many and they’re too spread out to fight in a conventional way, even if we were at full capacity. We’re going to have to prioritize the ones threatening large population centers and let a lot of the others just burn. Calls for evacuations are already under way, but communications are spotty and the logistics are a nightmare. As they start moving out, people are going to find gas stations out of commission and their cars are going to block the roads when they run out of fuel. And then there’s the matter of not having anywhere to send them. We don’t have the capacity to set up refugee camps—”

  “TJ?” the president interrupted, sounding exhausted. “What about that? What can you do for these displaced people?”

  The head of FEMA leaned hesitantly into his mike. “Not much, sir. It’s too many people in too many places. State and city systems are spooling up and we’ll have to rely on them to a large extent. The problem is that over the next few days their resources are going to start to run out. After that—”

  “We’re not worrying about next week,” the president said. “We’re worrying about right now. You’ve told me in the past that the water supply is your number one concern in a scenario like this. What can we do to keep it online?”

  Burton swallowed. “This is one of our better emergency scenarios in the short term—a lot of the agencies actually do drills to train for potential disasters. Also, a lot have fairly robust backup power systems. They won’t last though. The problems will come in waves, depending on the individual situation and design of the delivery system. We’re prioritizing aid based on that and based on whether we realistically think we can help. With the exception of the fires, this is absolutely the most critical piece right now. Without drinking water, everyone dies in a few days. And without water for sanitation, disease is going to run rampant, which would be—”

  “What about food?” the president said before Burton could fall down another rabbit hole.

  “Less crucial in the short term. Cities tend to carry about a three-day supply and in winter spoilage won’t be as bad. We have to take control of food production, distribution, and storage, though. Security will also become an issue pretty quickly. When the grocery stores go empty, it won’t take long for people to start looting the entire supply chain.”

  “How long can people survive without eating?” someone asked.

  “A month. Maybe a little more. By then, we need to have food production back online and a way to distribute that food. But it has to be completely government controlled. The free market ceases to exist when banks do because no one has money. In fact, pretty much everything has to be government controlled. For instance, after initial evacuations, I can’t think of a single reason anyone should be out at night in the middle of the winter. If they are, I can pretty much guarantee you they’re up to no good.”

  Everyone looked to the president, who considered the issue silently for a few moments before speaking. “I understand the need for a curfew, but my question is can we enforce it?”

  General Templeton shook his head. “Not at this time, sir.”

  “I’m hesitant to make decrees that we can’t enforce. It’ll undermine the authority of the government and potentially add to the panic. So, let’s put that on the back burner for now.” He paused for a moment. “While we’re on the subject of the military, General, what’s your status?”

  “Obviously, our power is down, too, sir. We can deploy mobile medical facilities and we’re recalling all feasible nuclear vessels. They can provide at least some power to coastal areas and particularly the docks that we’re going to need to unload critical supplies. Obviously, we have a lot of troops stationed in foreign countries and we’re going to have to consider whether to bring them back. Right now, we don’t have the capacity to absorb them, but we might in the future.”

  “Okay,” Alexander said, obviously fighting to stay outwardly calm. “How long do we have before this thing turns south hard? TJ?”

  “Assuming we can keep the water on, about a week. That’s when a significant number of people will start getting hungry. Most Americans have no experience with that. They won’t be dying, but they’ll think they are. At that point, we’ll need the military to maintain order, particularly
in the warmer areas of the country where the weather will be more conducive to civil unrest.”

  “Then we need to get the power on before that.” He turned to Janice Crane, the Department of Energy’s representative at the meeting. “Where do we stand?”

  She looked a little stunned and there was a good five seconds of silence before she spoke. “The scope of this attack was… incredible. We don’t even know what we’re dealing with yet. Power company computer systems were lying to them and now they’re locking down. We know that the infrastructure damage is massive, but it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to be any more specific than that without a physical inspection. That’s hundreds of thousands of miles of lines and tens of thousands of substations—much of it difficult to access and some of it completely cut off by fires. Once that evaluation is done, then we’re going to have to come up with a repair plan and execute it.”

  “What are we talking about time-wise?”

  “If everything goes right, maybe two months.”

  “You’re telling me the power is going to be out for two months? That’s not acceptable, Janice.”

  “No, sir. Two months to complete the initial inspection.”

  The room fell into a deep silence. After a desperate-looking sip of water she continued. “During that time, we hope to bring back power selectively. Essentially, islands around power plants. Also, renewables remain online, though obviously they’re intermittent. There’s potential for moving people to camps around those areas.”

  “The problem with that is what can you really do with the power?” TJ Burton interjected. “Heat in cold areas and maybe some light? But what people need is food, water, sanitation, and shelter. Those things tend not to be in the same place as power plants. It’s the same problem we have with the navy’s ships. Unless we have some really long extension cords, we can’t get the power to the critical industries that keep the country alive.”

  “I’m doing the best I can,” Crane snapped.

  “Relax, Janice, he’s not blaming you,” Alexander said, and then turned to the secretary of state. “I hate to say it, but what about foreign aid?”

  “The European Union is one hundred percent behind us, sir. The problem is that the question is capacity not willingness. The US is the largest food exporter in the world and that spigot is about to be shut off. Their first order of business is assessing how they’re going to feed their own people. Not ours.”

  “And even if they can ship us the food and other supplies we need,” Burton said, “we still have to figure out a way to unload and transport it.”

  “What about closer to home?” Alexander said.

  “With the exception of part of Canada, which is interconnected to our grid, the attack doesn’t seem to have extended past the continental US in any meaningful way. So, we have Hawaii and Alaska as well as the territories. Latin America has pretty limited capacity and the collapse of our trade with them is going to hit hard.”

  When the conversation turned to the worldwide depression that would inevitably follow the complete collapse of the world’s largest economy, Rapp made his way toward Irene Kennedy and the men she was speaking to.

  “Looks like we screwed up, bad,” he said when he got within earshot. “What now?”

  “We were just talking about that,” the FBI director said.

  “And what did you come up with?”

  “That we’re the only people who can fix this.”

  “I’m not an electrician, Darren”

  “In a way, that’s the point,” Kennedy said. “It wouldn’t matter if you were. Evaluating the physical damage to the grid, repairing it, and bypassing the frozen computers of thousands of individual utility companies is going to take six months if everything goes our way. It can’t take that long, Mitch. The majority of our population will be dead and America will have ceased to exist.”

  “I assume you have a plan?”

  “There’s only one person in the world who can answer the questions we need answered—what lines are down, what substations have been damaged, and how to access utility company computers.”

  “PowerStation,” Rapp said.

  She nodded. “With the information he or she has, we could get at least intermittent power to our major population centers and other critical infrastructure.”

  Rapp dug Rashad Asfour’s phone from his pocket and handed it to the NSA director.

  “What’s this?”

  “Call it a Christmas present. I took it from the man who tried to hit the substation in North Carolina,” he said, turning to leave. “I doubt there’s much on it, but it’ll give the three of you somewhere to start.”

  “Where are you going?” Kennedy asked.

  “Home. I don’t know shit about the grid or disaster relief and I’m not taking a bunk from someone who does. You know where to find me. Get me a name and a location on this asshole and I’ll take care of the rest.”

  CHAPTER 25

  WEST OF MANASSAS

  VIRGINIA

  USA

  RAPP felt around on the floor next to the sofa, finally finding the beer he was searching for. Drinking it proved to be problematic, though. His refrigerator was wildly energy efficient but, still, opening it for no good reason seemed like a waste of hard-won electricity. Unfortunately, his back porch lacked the kind of cooling precision he was used to.

  He slid the bottle across the wood floor, getting it to within a foot of the fireplace that had raised the temperature in his den to a decadent seventy-three degrees. The rest of the house was being kept twenty-five degrees cooler. With the dense cloud cover, his solar panels weren’t worth much, so he was relying entirely on wind. No reason to drain his batteries or cause his generators to kick on. They were only a few days into a situation that could stretch out for a very long time. In fact, if Kennedy and her brain trust didn’t come through, it could be permanent.

  Confident that his Sam Adams was on its way to being fully liquid again, he turned his attention back to the television. It was tuned to a French news report focused on the recent drops in the world’s stock markets. Most were down more than twenty-five percent, but there was a lot of confusion because the US markets were completely off-line. The economist being interviewed actually looked a little panicked. Probably not a good sign.

  The clock on at the edge of the television said 22:57 and he turned it off in favor of the radio. Over the last few days of inactivity, he’d stumbled upon an amateur radio show that was a hell of a lot more entertaining and informative than the mainstream media reports or government public service announcements. And, apparently he wasn’t the only one who thought so. A number of commercial stations that were still operational had taken to rebroadcasting it live. So, while the normal outlets extolled the virtues of warm hats and standing by, this guy would tell you the best way to cook grasshoppers or wipe your ass when you ran out of toilet paper.

  A recycled segment on treating contaminated water was just winding down and Rapp half-listened to it as he rolled off the sofa to retrieve his beer. Apparently, the guy had been doing survivalist podcasts for years, but their appeal had been limited to the fringe. Now he was headed for rock star status.

  When the clock hit the top of the hour, the prerecorded program faded and was replaced by a familiar southern drawl.

  “Good evening, America! This is your host Jed-The-Survivalist-Who-Doesn’t-Seem-Quite-As-Crazy-As-He-Did-Last-Week-Jones. I hope you’re staying warm and safe out there. I’ve got Claire radioing in from Los Angeles and I’m not sure how long the connection is going to last, so let’s kick off the show with her. Claire, you there? What’s going on in the City of Angels?”

  “Hi, Jed. The local authorities are reporting that they’re getting control of the fire on the south side of the city.”

  “Are they telling the truth or is this just more government bullshit?”

  “It’s hard to say. The smoke is still really bad where I am. They’re calling for rain tonight, thank God. So
, we’re keeping our fingers crossed.”

  “What about aid stations. Do you have a list?”

  “I do, but it’s a moving target. Most of these locations were good as of an hour ago.”

  She started going through them but was abruptly cut off after about thirty seconds. These kinds of radio connections were tricky—dependent to some extent on atmospheric conditions.

  “We’ve lost her. Hopefully, I’ll get her back before the show’s over, but the aid station thing makes me think I should talk a little more about food. I know some of you are hungry out there, but you’ve got to conserve. Don’t trust the government when they say they’re going to get this under control. A little food every day—particularly protein—will double or triple the time you can survive over just eating everything you’ve got during the next week and counting on your Safeway getting restocked. Hell, look on the bright side. If you’re like me and just about everyone else, losing a little weight isn’t going to be the worst thing in the world. My wife says my abs are getting—Hold on. I think we’ve got someone on the line. Let me patch them through.

  “Yeah. Go ahead. Who and where are you?”

  “Tom. I’m in Alabama.”

  “What’s going on down there?”

  “I just wanted to say that those people in LA had it coming. They—”

  “Fuck off!” Jed said, shutting the man down. “Do I really have to go through this again? The shit has officially hit the fan and we are all Americans. There are no more Democrats and Republicans. No more rednecks and snowflakes. We’ve got to work together. Us knuckle draggers might be able to kill and gut a deer, but those little nerdy guys might be able to set you up with solar panels or keep you alive if you eat some bad barbecue. United we stand, assholes. Divided we’re screwed.”

  Rapp heard the door behind him open followed by Anna’s padded footfalls. A moment later she took a position in front of him wearing the fleece onesie her mother had wrapped her in.