The first people to respond to the explosions at the CCC
were those just beyond the blast radius who managed to
escape injury and scramble for their cell phones. Most called
their homes to speak to loved ones, but a few dialled 911.
Information concerning the blasts was conveyed to the office
of the disaster management area coordinator (DMAC), some
two miles away from the explosions. Staff at the office had
heard and felt the blasts, but it was not until they received the
call that they knew for sure a major incident had occurred.
The DMAC was an old hand and had dealt with more
than a dozen major incidents in LA since taking up the
position over a decade earlier. He knew the emergency
management system as though it were etched into his brain,
and he flew into action. His first call was to the County
Emergency Operations Center (CEOC), located some three
miles away from his office. The staff there had heard and felt
nothing, not only because they were further away from the
explosions. Their building could shake off such effects in the
way a super-tanker would react to the wake from a toy boat.
After making his report, the DMAC placed his number two,
the assistant management area coordinator, in charge. He
was then driven to the CEOC.
The operational area coordinator (OAC) was called,
along with the director of health services (DHS). They
headed straight for the CEOC. En route, the OAC called the
Californian governor, the Area H fire chief, the police chief
and the Community Emergency Response Team. Meanwhile,
the DHS contacted the health authorities, who immediately
put all local hospitals on red alert and mobilised scores of
paramedics and the Red Cross.
At the CEOC, advisors contacted the chief administrative
officer, the Department of Beaches and Harbors, the
Department of Children's Services and the Department of
Public Social Services. In that first wave of calls they also
alerted the Department of Parks and Recreation so they
could prepare areas for evacuees.
As soon as the governor heard the news, he called the
Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Transportation
Security Agency and the White House. After consultation with
the President, White House staff contacted the Department
of Homeland Security, the CIA, the FBI and the North
American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which
had the second-largest satellite network in the world.
A chain of command was quickly established. Protocol
dictated that this remain a local management issue unless a
direct call for outside help was made. The federal government
had been contacted almost immediately because no one
could be certain the explosion at the CCC was an isolated
incident. As the federal agencies swung into action, the chain
of command in Los Angeles started to take shape. And on
the ground – at the frontline – things began to move fast.
Methodist Sugar Land Hospital, Houston, Texas
The digital clock on the wall read 21:25. Outside, the night
was shredded by city neon. From the eighth floor of the
hospital, Maiko Buchanan could see all the way to George
Bush Park, a distant smudge of darkness nestled in the
urban glow.
It was very quiet in the room, just the steady wheeze of the
respirator and the occasional click and whir of the machines
keeping her mother, Eri, alive. Mai walked back from the
window and sat in the chair beside the bed. She could only
see parts of her mother's face, the soft pale flesh around
the respirator mask, and her eyelids, almost translucent and
flickering. Eri Kato's white hair, still luxuriant, lay across her
left shoulder. There were two tubes running from under the
right sleeve of her gown. They trailed away to shiny boxes
beside the bed.
Mai held her mother's hand. 'You haven't had much of a
life, have you, Mom?' she said quietly. 'And just when I was
able to help, you go and have a stroke.'
Images were racing through Maiko's mind. Memories of
her disciplinarian father, who had believed females should
be married off at the earliest opportunity and should never
work outside the home. Mai had started to resent him before
she had reached her tenth birthday, and she had quickly
realised the best way to get back at the man was to do the
very opposite of what he expected of her. She was not going
to follow the example of her mother and subsume her
personality to his liking.
Maiko had excelled at school, won a scholarship to college
and left home. Her father disowned her. Her mother was
forbidden to see her again. But, of course, she had ignored
this command. Eri and Mai would meet whenever they
could, clandestinely, for almost five years. Mai had only
gone to her father's funeral to keep her mother company.
She'd been surprised at just how little she had felt as the
coffin was lowered into the soil. She hadn't even felt relief –
she had moved far beyond that.
It was probably another act of rebellion that had got her
pregnant at college. The father of the child never knew he
had played a role. And it was certainly more rebellion that
had given her the strength to keep the baby, her daughter
Greta, and to keep studying and to graduate with a GPA of
4.5, the best in her year.
That had probably been the hardest part – until recently. After
obtaining a PhD, Maiko had joined NASA and risen through
the ranks. By the age of 32 she had her own command mission
aboard the
Discovery
. Yet as she was reaching her peak as an
astronaut, her family was falling into disarray. She had married
and divorced, and now found she had sacrificed far too much
in achieving her goals ever to find a balance between family
and work. Greta had begun to drift away when she hit puberty.
Now Mai rarely saw her, and when mother and daughter did
get together they could barely exchange a civil word.
There was a light tap at the door. The face of a young
woman appeared. She had a puckish face, bunches of black
hair and too much eye-shadow. She looked startled for a
moment. 'Mom.'
Mai stood up and went to put her arms around her
daughter. The girl stood like a piece of wood and Mai pulled
back. 'Pleased to see me, then,' Mai said. Her voice was sad
rather than sarcastic.
The girl was chewing gum. She shrugged. 'I didn't think
you would bother.'
'What is that supposed to mean?'
Greta shrugged again.
'How did you get here?'
'Dad dropped me off.'
They walked over to the prone form lying in the bed.
'So why
are
you here?' Greta asked.
'She's my mother. What do you expect?'
'Thought you'd be too busy with Buzz Lightyear.'
Mai glared at her. 'If all you can do is insult me you can
just go back to your
step
father's.'
There was a pained silence between them. 'Look . . .' Mai
began.
'Save it, Mom. It's such a cliché – estranged mother and
daughter bond over sick granny.'
'Why, you –' Mai stood up, fury etched into her face. A
loud beep came from under her left sleeve. Instinctively, she
pulled back the fabric. On her wrist was a metal bracelet,
with a high-res screen that lit up like a beacon in the dim
room. A face appeared.
'What the hell is
that
?' Greta exclaimed.
Mai ignored her, and with a supreme effort composed
herself. 'Mark. What a pleasant surprise.'
'I'm sorry, Mai. I wouldn't have disturbed you, but –'
'What's happened?'
'Two bombs in a conference centre in downtown LA.'
'But we're not operational.'
'We are . . . as of three minutes ago.'
Mai swallowed hard. 'Okay.'
'We need you.'
She turned away from the screen, noticing the stunned
look on her daughter's face, and felt the undertow of
emotion. What lay there? Sadness? Resentment? Pity? She
turned back to the tiny screen and nodded.
Captain James McNally was 59 years old. He had been in
one of the first fire trucks to arrive at the World Trade Center
on 9/11, and that day he had seen dozens of his colleagues
die. A year later he had retired and moved to Los Angeles
with his invalid wife, Geraldine. But the boredom of early
retirement was killing him, so he joined the Los Angeles
Fire Department. Initially, his was a teaching role, but he
could never resist the smell of a fire and the power struggle
between man and nature.
The call had come into the station at 7.22 pm, and they
were out of there within 90 seconds, roaring through the
gates of Fire Station 9 and onto E 7th Street. It was smack
in the middle of Skid Row, one of the most deprived and
dangerous areas in Los Angeles. Even this early in the evening,
it was getting pretty funky. Station 9 was the busiest in the
country, dealing with 50 or 60 incidents a day, of which
only a few were fires. The crews at Station 9 were the last
defenders of the public, going in to mop up junkies or to get
smashed-up kids to hospital after the cops had given up or
were too busy with bigger business.
McNally watched the ramshackle shops flash by, the light
from the fire truck doing battle with the cheap neon. All the
trucks had left in convoy, with his in the lead. One of his
young guys was at the wheel. Freddie Bantelli was only 21,
with just a year on the job. He was still full of enthusiasm
and sincere in the belief that he could change the world.
The word was that something really huge was going down;
so maybe Bantelli would have his chance.
Captain McNally surveyed the small screen of the laptop
fixed to the dash. It was part sat-nav, part feed to the internet,
but in his old-fashioned way he felt more at home keeping
in constant touch with the communications operator, a
human being sitting in a control room.
At Main, they cut left, blaring the horn every few hundred
feet. From a side street to the north they saw another truck
heading towards them.
'That's from Station 14,' said Bantelli, nodding towards
the vehicle, its lights blazing and horn blaring.
'Yep. Whatever's going down, it's big,' McNally responded.
He turned to the radio. 'This is 9-Alpha. Got anything new
for us, guys?'
'9-Alpha. What's your ETA?'
McNally glanced at the laptop. 'Six minutes.'
'Roger that. Incident is a multiple blast. Paramedics are
right behind you. We expect high casualty figures. The
structure of the CCC has been compromised. Advise extreme
caution. I repeat, extreme caution.'
McNally knew precisely what the operator meant – there
could be more bombs.
The operator was talking again. 'Looks like you'll be the
first rig there, 9-Alpha,' she said. 'You'll soon have company.
We're bringing them in from across the city, as far as San
Fernando. Out.'
McNally whistled and turned to the other three men in
the back of the rig, Gene Connor, Maney Steinberg and
Raul Burgos. Their faces were flushed with excitement. Two
helicopters roared overhead – LAPD – their searchlights
sweeping across the glistening city.
Apart from the emergency vehicles, the streets were
unnervingly quiet. One of the guys at the station said
he'd felt the explosions. This close to the incident it must
have seemed like a quake. Anyone with half a brain would
have hunkered down.
They took Main all the way to Pico and hung a right,
sweeping across the lanes, cars and trucks stationary or
heading away from the CCC, east along Pico Boulevard.
They were only a couple hundred yards away now. The
smell of burning was getting intense. McNally signalled to
the guys in the back and they all put on their masks. He
held the wheel as Bantelli did the same. McNally gave the
operator an update.
Halfway through his report the truck came over the crest
of a hill and they could see the incident site for the first
time. 'Holy crap!' McNally said slowly. Then he fell silent as
the operator babbled away. He had only ever seen anything
like this once before. The memory of that day still burned in
his brain, as hot as the fires he'd fought, the fires that had
killed his friends and colleagues. 'Bastards!' he said quietly.
The main hangar at Base One was foaming with human
activity. At one end Ringo, one of the Silverback jets, was
being made ready for its first operational flight. It was a
small aircraft, 49 feet from the tip of its shapely nose to its
tail, with a wingspan of only 27 feet. But it was incredibly
beautiful, like a flying Ferrari or something designed by
Philippe Starck. Each of the Silverbacks had been sprayed
a distinctive colour. Ringo was a metallic auburn, John was
black, Paul grey and George a deep blue. Each was coated
with Camoflin, the high-tech material that confused cameras
and camcorders.
A team of engineers in pale-green boilersuits was making
final checks. One man was lying on the wing and peering
into the sleek port engine. He adjusted something inside,
carefully closed the engine cover and slid off the wing
to the floor of the hangar. As he straightened up, he saw
Josh Turner, kitted up in his cybersuit, striding towards
Ringo.
'Ready to go, boss,' the engineer said. 'Good luck.'
Josh gave him an exaggerated salute and climbed a short
flight of stairs. A panel in the side of the plane slid open,
revealing three more steps up to the cockpit. The black
Perspex-titanium canopy was levered upwards. Josh lowered
himself into the padded seat. The panel on the side of the
plane slid invisibly back into place.
Josh touched a sequence of keys on a virtual keypad to
his left, and the canopy came down slowly, locked into place
and let out a high-pitched hiss. He pulled on a lightweight
helmet that covered his skull and ears like a swimming
cap. Three thin wires hung in front of his face. The lower
one, a tiny transceiver, came close to his mouth. The upper
two were miniature projectors that displayed holographic
images close to his eyes.
With the canopy closed, much of the noise from
the hangar disappeared. Enclosed in this beautiful,
sophisticated machine, the pinnacle of human technology,
Josh felt empowered and protected. It excited him and he
felt completely at home – almost a part of the machine
itself.
In a way, this was more than just a feeling, because Josh
was indeed interfaced with the Silverback. Nanobots that
ran many of the plane's systems interacted directly with
the nanobots in his suit, and they even communicated
with those implanted in his ear, behind his eyes and in
his brainstem. It was the closest anyone had come to
genuine cyborg technology, a synthesis of human being
and machine.
Josh surveyed the controls in front of him. The console
was a single sleek piece of ultra-strong plastic. Imprinted
into it was a collection of panels showing an array of lights
and strips of colour. He ran his fingers over a virtual keypad
and a holographic display appeared in front of him.
'Ringo's ready to roll,' he said into the transceiver.
'Copy.' It was Mark's voice from the control room.
'Opening roof.'
A moment later the vast roof of the hangar began to part.
It was smooth and quiet, but surprisingly fast. Within ten
seconds it had opened, revealing blue sky above.
'All systems green.'
'Copy that, Josh.'
'Initiating launch sequence.' His hands skittered over the
virtual keys and he kept his eyes fixed on the holographic
image now changing rapidly in front of him.
The twin engines under the wings of the Silverback began
to hum. 'VTOL jets on green,' Josh said.
The plane began to lift. It slowly cleared the roof of the
hangar. Then it appeared to hang in the air. Josh kicked
in the main VTOL thrusters and the plane shot upward at
phenomenal speed. Within seconds it had reached the first
plateau of 10,000 feet. Josh then put the forward thrusters
onto minimum power and the plane flew horizontally for a
little over twelve seconds. It then started to climb vertically
again. Three minutes after taking off from Base One, Ringo
had reached its operation cruising altitude of 60,000 feet.
Pausing for a second, Josh sat back in his seat. 'Sybil?' he
said. 'Play song selection 0891, please.' The opening notes
of Lynard Skynyrd's 'Freebird' burst through his earpieces.
Josh engaged the forward thrusters and gradually crept up
the speed. Ninety seconds later he was rocketing towards the
west coast of the United States at mach 10, heavy rock guitar
reverberating through his cochlear implants.