The Big Bang (22 page)

They had just finished their breakfasts when army Humvees and armored personnel carriers began to roll down Madison Avenue toward the Smithsonian. This was different. Yesterday's convoy had been run by the National Guard and had included large, roomy, and comfortably appointed hydrogen-powered vehicles, not these utilitarian and threatening behemoths.

Soldiers poured out of the vehicles and spread out rapidly, weapons ready, scanning the crowd of nearly five hundred weary, dirty government workers. A whip-thin Hispanic officer pulled out a bullhorn. “This convoy is only for Senior Members of the Legislative Branch, Supreme Court, or District Courts,” she barked.

A low moan of dismay went through the crowd. “When I call your name,” the officer continued, “Come forward. You and your family will be transported to safety.”

One voice called from the crowd, a Congressman from Kansas. “What about our staff?”

“One staff member will be allowed to accompany you,” came the answer from the bullhorn.

Another noise of distress grew like a physical wave passing over the crowd. Most of them were staff. Standing on tiptoes, Karen could see that the bullhorn officer held a three-by-five card in her hand. There couldn't be many names. Karen began to understand that the soldiers weren't worried about attack from the people who'd tried to blow up DC.

The Hispanic officer began reading names. It didn't take long…there were only fifteen total from the two Houses, plus those from the Courts. Those who were present hurried from the angry crowd to the safety of the military vehicles, usually taking their most senior assistant with them, leaving stunned and weeping members of their office staff behind.

There was a commotion, and Karen saw that Kevin was pushing his way to the front of the crowd, with Harriet hobbling behind him. He was big and strong, and he was able to shove people aside with relative ease. Harriet aided him by flinging her elbows like ninja stars. Karen felt she had no choice but to fall in with them. The Congresswoman was her boss, the person to whom she'd given her allegiance.

Nervous soldiers swiveled toward them, guns ready. It made Karen's skin crawl to think the weapons of her countrymen were trained on them.

The Hispanic officer lowered the bullhorn. “Name?” she asked.

“Congresswoman Harriet Porter, from—”

“You're not on the list, ma'am,” the officer said with irritation. “Please move aside.”

“Do you know who I am?” Harriet demanded shrilly, and Karen felt her stomach lurch. It was the same kind of thing her creepy Republican dad had said from time to time, demanding presumed privileges that he imagined were due him based on his position in society. She never thought she'd hear those words from Harriet.

“No, ma'am,” the officer said, her voice matching Harriet's in intensity.

“I'm the representative from the 37
^th
District of California. I demand you take me to join the House of Representatives!”

“Ma'am,” the officer said with great finality. “We do not have the time or the room to take everyone.
You are not important enough
.” With that, she dismissed Harriet from her awareness. She turned to the soldiers and said, “We're done here.”

Harriet's face was ashen with rage as she stood there impotent, watching the convoy drive away, soldiers covering the crowd with mounted machine guns, leaving her with the rest. That was the moment; Karen would come to decide, the moment when the officer had told Harriet she wasn't important enough. That was the moment that Harriet turned traitor.

The President awoke after only a few hours. He'd slept maybe seven hours in the last three days. When he was younger, he could get by for days on a just a few hours' sleep, but no more. It was fear that woke him, fear of what else might have happened when he was asleep. He knew it was a waste of time to be afraid, maybe even a sign of a lack of faith, but he was just a man. A man who worried about his wife and his daughters, his parents, his brothers, even as he tried to do his job. He reeled to his feet, wearing wrinkled dress slacks and a tee-shirt. Okay, it wasn't his
job
, he thought as a Secret Service agent silently brought him a freshly pressed business suit. It was his duty, one he'd assumed, but his duty as surely as it was his duty (and honor) to care for Laura and the girls.

“Would you like some coffee, sir?” the agent asked.

“Sure, Leonard,” the President replied. “And some juice if we have any, thank you.” While the agent stepped out of the small room, the President washed his face and brushed his teeth. His knees ached a little, and he found himself smiling, however briefly, at his own foibles. The world was going crazy, and he was annoyed because he hadn't been able to work out for two days.
Been plenty of heavy lifting the last couple of days
, he told himself.
That's exercise enough for anyone
.

“Beg pardon, sir?” Leonard was back with the coffee and tall glass of juice.

“Just talking to myself, Leonard.”

The agent was medium height, and not overly broad, but he was as steady as a pillar of marble. His expression was usually as inscrutable as a frog's. “As long as you don't start answering yourself, sir.” There might have been the glimmer of a smile on Leonard's face.

“I'll let you know if I do,” the President promised, draining the glass of juice. “Time to go to work, son.”

“Yes, sir.”

As soon as he entered the situation room, the President could tell that nothing good had transpired while he slept.

Wild Bill, typically blunt, caught him up as they walked toward the presidential desk. “We've had secondary strikes all through the night. They're going after water, power.”

“Where?”

Wild Bill still had that nasty cigar with him. Filthy habit. He took it out of his mouth, gestured with it. “Everywhere. Detroit, Chicago, Tampa—hell, even Dearborn, Michigan.”

Leonard's rock-like composure slipped a bit. “What's in Dearborn that makes it worth blowing up?” At Wild Bill's inquisitive look, Leonard said, “I went to community college there. It was a nice place.”

“Well, lately, it's filled up with immigrants. Immigrants who cheered on Hezbollah. Their anti-American friends blew them up as a way of saying thank you for all the support.” Wild Bill turned back to the President. “Syria tried to invade Israel.”

The President sat down, his attention fully on his old friend. He'd awakened before the next scheduled meeting with his staff. Even now the Cabinet members were being roused by the Secret Service and would be with him shortly. There would be a full briefing for all of them when everyone was assembled. For now he knew he would get a quick, dirty, and accurate summation from Wild Bill.

“Iran launched a North Korean nuke at Tel Aviv. The Israelis shot down the nuke.” There was a moment of grim satisfaction in his voice, but it quickly vanished. “Israel has gone into full Masada-mode.”

“
They
launched?”

Wild Bill nodded. “They hit pretty much every asswipe in the area except Jordan and the Palestinians. Damascus, Tehran, Riyadh.”

The capital of Saudi Arabia. “Even the Saudis?”

“Sir,” Wild Bill replied dryly. He didn't need to say more. Members of the Saudi royal family had been funding Islamic terrorists for years, and, in spite of their declarations of being allied with the United States, Saudi Imams and even their official school textbooks had been preaching jihad and death to the infidels and Jews for years. Of course Israel would strike them. “They also erased Mecca and Medina, sir.” The two holiest sites in Islam. Never let it be said the Israelis don't hold a grudge.

With Russia and China out of play, that took care of the primary strike packages, the President realized. Our friends in Tel Aviv removed the usual suspects who had been funding Islamic terrorism for years. The other, smaller countries would be safe from immediate direct strikes by the United States, as hitting secondary targets on the way to complete Armageddon had never been part of American policy.

His advisor went on, explaining the Israelis had left the Palestinians alone initially, preferring to hit their more heavily armed opponents first. Ignored them, that is, until Hezbollah had launched wave after wave of suicide attacks from the Palestinian camps. Wild Bill seemed to have lost his relish in other people's stupidity. “It was crazy. Not just suicidal, but insane. The Israeli Air Force wiped out the camps. Israel is surrounded by a ring of fire now.”

“Jews and Arabs, dying together,” the President mused. So much death in the desert. He offered a silent prayer for the survivors. Leonard appeared with a tray. Breakfast. “I'm not hungry, Leonard,” he growled.

“Sir…you need to eat.” The Secret Service agent stood there, looking at him like a reproachful nanny.

“You're right, Leonard. Sorry. Can you bring a tray for Bill, too?”

“On its way, sir.”

He picked up the fork, uncovered the plates. He forced himself to eat, chewing and swallowing as an act of will, saying to his advisor, “Is there any good news?”

“No, sir. We're losing control of the cities. People are getting hungry and cold. There's looting, rioting. Our own homegrown nutcases are taking their chance.”

“Which ones?” There were so many.

“The animal rights goons are going to be the biggest problem in the short run. Testing labs across the country are being broken into. Ft. Meade was bombed.”

He had to search his mind for a moment. Ft. Mead was a secure Army installation, not twenty miles from DC. For bio-weapons defense. The Army was supposed to be there. “Was it breached?”

Now Wild Bill's wild energy was diminishing. “Yes, sir. A lot of specimens were aerosolized. We can expect viral outbreaks within a few days.”

“How far will they spread? Is there anything—”

“George, we aren't going to be able to hold the country together.”

Wild Bill was the most no-bullshit man the President had ever known. He would never piss down your leg and tell you it was raining. If Bill said the country was going to fly apart, time to buckle on your flight helmet and get cleared for an emergency takeoff.

Still, he was the President, and he wasn't going to let the country go down without a fight. “There's
nothing
we can do, Bill? The army—”

“Two weeks,” Will Bill said flatly. “Two weeks at the most. It's one domino toppling over and taking out something else. The cities will go first. We've got radiation poisoning in the largest cities, and food is going to run out…most of it is trucked in, Dub. Refined gasoline won't be available soon, probably no power to run the refineries or staff to work it. Or hell, Dub, even a way to get it where it's needed. People will die from hunger or accident. Disease from the dead bodies will break out and kill more people. Then there's just the crazies. For every PETA pissant hitting Ft. Meade, you're going to have five other fringe losers taking their shot at whoever or whatever in society pissed them off in their pathetic lives, further destroying what's left. Railroads are getting blown to hell by…somebody. Whether it's the ones who attacked us, or just jerkweeds with a beef, we may never know. To say nothing of the organized gangs in the urban areas who will probably begin trying to take control of their turf. If they're smart, they'll hook up with some of the separatists groups like La Raza to consolidate their efforts. Down south, the damn Border Patrol is spread too thin. We can't get data from the cameras. A few on-scene reports say a hell of a lot of people are coming across the border.”

The President was holding himself very still, watching his oldest advisor tell him the war was lost before they even knew they'd been in one. “Anything else?”

Wild Bill took a deep breath, pulled the stogie from his mouth and threw it in the trashcan by the President's desk. The cigar hit with a wet, squelching sound. “We can't contact the Special Ops boys we sent after Laura.”

“What was their last report?”

“Roads blocked with cars. Cities choking on their own automotive vomit. Fires burning out of control in the cities they flew over.”

“But they never found Laura.”

“No, sir. They were close to Dallas when we got a report of another nuke going off at DFW airport.”

The President swallowed hard, clenched his hands together. For a moment, he didn't trust that his voice wouldn't betray him. “So you don't know where Laura is.”

“No, sir.”

George stared at his hands. The country was going to be lost, and his wife, his dear fine wife, was already lost. He stood up, and took off his jacket, draping it over the office chair. There was only one thing do.

So help me God, he thought, as solemn and as sacred a vow as he'd ever made in this life, he was going to find his wife, and then he was going to put the country back together.

Whistler (2)

After watching the two imbeciles drive away, Whistler looked down at what remained of Anselmo Lopez. Boy, was this morning turning to crap in a hurry. Lightning squatted beside the body, observing it with the detached interest of a professional.

“He wasn't shot,” she announced.

“Figured,” Whistler said. He knelt beside her and began unwrapping the chain. “He'll turn fast in this heat.”

“I'll get a bag.”

“Thanks,” he grunted. Delicately, trying to get as little blood on himself as possible, he loosened the shackle under what was left of the dead man's arms.
What the hell
, he thought.
I'm older; I probably had better health insurance than anybody for a hundred miles around. My immunizations were up to date
.

He'd rather not do this, but his other choices held less appeal. Leave a perfectly good length of steel chain with the body when it was returned to his family, or have Lightning free the chain. That would expose her to the dirt-caked blood and fluids. This way, only one of them risked infection. It was another gift from our Islamic guests. With the breakdown in interstate commerce and transport, along with the fracturing of the manufacturing infrastructure, diseases long forgotten had made staggeringly virulent comebacks. Antibiotics, even those in crumbling foil packages long past their expiration date, were worth more, literally, than their weight in gold. The only things more valuable than the antibiotics were working batteries and bullets.