“Besides that,” Mayweather put in, “if I had a weapon that had made a third of the world’s population disappear in a heartbeat, I think I’d be threatening to use it again instead of denying I had it. The Russians showed no mercy in their attempted attack on Israel. Why would you think they would deny possession of a weapon of mass destruction that worked on a magnitude this great?”
“And American weapon development has run in tandem to Russian research,” Marsden said. “They got ahead of us with Sputnik, but they paid the price for that because they focused the American nation’s need to get into the space race instead of allowing the Russians to get there first. We’ve never been behind them since.”
“Do you think the Russians could invent something we haven’t already had on the drawing boards?” Mayweather asked.
Delroy appreciated the way the two older generals worked. They were smooth as hand-varnished wood, and they had put the walls around the younger general with accomplished ease.
Someone knocked on the door. The lance corporal crossed the room and opened the door. A quiet, quick conversation ensued.
When the lance corporal stepped back inside the room, a young Air Force colonel accompanied him. The colonel saluted sharply, feet tight together like he was on parade.
“Colonel Emerson Carter, General Marsden.”
“Colonel.” Marsden leaned back in his chair. “Obviously you’re here on some matter of concern. Otherwise you would not have interrupted a private meeting.”
“No, sir,” the colonel said. “General King said I was to get a message to you at once, sir. There’s a story breaking on FOX that General Farley thought you might want to see, sir.”
Delroy placed the name after a moment. The only General Farley the chaplain knew of was General Hamilton Farley, who was in command of the NORAD base at Cheyenne Mountain. Cold fear stabbed through Delroy’s heart.
The world was at DEFCON 2, perched at the edge of now and never. Giant airplanes hung like hunting hawks over cities around the world, their bellies filled with nuclear death. Ohio-class and Typhoon-class submarines glided through the oceans of the world, already in position to attack key sites in Russia, Korea, and China. All of those engines of destruction were cutting-edge, built with firststrike capability and armed with nuclear warheads that were designated city killers and could earn that sobriquet in one searing blast.
Marsden punched a button on a keypad built into the conference table. A cube of television screens lowered from a recessed spot in the ceiling. The screens quickly changed to the FOX station.
“—here just outside of Gdansk, Poland,” a young reporter spoke into a microphone. “Nobody knows what brought the plane down in this wheat field outside the small city, but speculation exists that there was an aerial battle between American and Russian fighter jets.”
The camera view locked in on the raging fire clinging to the unmistakable skeletal shape of a fighter jet. Several emergency vehicles ringed the area. Uniformed men with flashlights worked to keep the small crowds back.
“Will, do we know whether the aircraft was American or Russian?” someone off-camera asked.
The reporter brought the microphone back up to his face. He wore a coat and went bareheaded. He squinted against the wind. “No, Bert. As yet the local authorities haven’t gotten close enough to make any kind of identification. Local residents that I’ve talked to said that they saw streaks that might have been machine gun fire and—”
“When did this happen?” Marsden asked.
Colonel Carter didn’t even check his watch. The time stamp was posted on the television program. “Seven minutes ago, General.”
“And whose plane is this?”
“One of ours, sir.”
Marsden looked at the television screen. “What happened?”
“That plane was a flanker on Bronze Eagle.”
Delroy didn’t know what Bronze Eagle was, but since the fighter jet was close to Russia, an educated guess told him that the code name was for one of the B-52s put into the air for first-strike capability against Russia.
“The pilot of that aircraft judged that a Russian MiG got too close. Command agreed. The pilot was under clearance to fire a few warning rounds to turn the MiG away. Instead, our pilot was shot down.”
“What happened to our pilot?” Marsden asked.
“Dead on impact, sir. There was no seat ejection.”
Another young man lost, Delroy couldn’t help thinking. He thought of the black coffin Terry had been buried in, thought of the way his wife had taken the flag folded into a tight triangle.
“Of course,” Cranston said, “the Russians will say that we reacted in a hostile manner first.” He leaned forward on his elbows, his hands wrapped together. “With the jet in Gdansk, not far from the Russian border, that may sell in the public view.”
Marsden turned to the Air Force officer. “Was there anything else, Colonel?”
“No, sir.”
“You’ll keep me apprised of this development? And any others that may happen?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you, Colonel. You’re dismissed.”
With a final salute, Colonel Carter turned on his heel and marched for the door.
Marsden pressed the keypad again, and the television cube disappeared into the ceiling.
“After this,” Cranston mused as he watched the screens recede, “the Russians will be in a perfect position to start putting more pressure behind their demands that we give their people back.”
“Give their people back?” Delroy didn’t realize he was speaking until the words were already out.
“Yes, Chaplain,” Cranston said in a hard voice. “The Russians claim we kidnapped their people.”
“What about the rest of the people in the world?” Delroy was flabbergasted.
“They don’t care about the people missing from other countries,” Cranston said.
“What about the people we’re missing?”
“They don’t believe what they see on television. They think this is all a production. A Hollywood special-effects presentation.”
“That’s insane,” Delroy said.
“Is it, Chaplain?” Cranston sounded sarcastic. “I wouldn’t know. Of course, I might mention that people telling me God Raptured the world and took all the believers to heaven sounds insane as well.”
Delroy sank back in his chair.
“Unless you can convince me otherwise, Chaplain?” Cranston said. “Maybe you want to trot out your
