computer chip and switch in all of AOL's servers, routers, and computer banks, one of the largest collections of computer equipment on the planet. Fortunately much of the telephone network that fed this massive complex was fiber optic and unaffected by the energy jolt that passed through it. However, the miles of copper telephone wiring that led to and from the fiber-optic system acted like giant antennas, soaking up energy and frying every electronic switch for miles, switches that had not been zapped by the first E-warhead explosion over the Pentagon.
This warhead effectively destroyed a huge chunk of bandwidth throughout the world. The Internet wasn't dead, but it was severely crippled.
All over Washington, Metro trains coasted to a stop as electrical power ceased to flow. Even if power could have been quickly restored, the computers that directed the operation of the trains were toast. Elevators froze in whatever position they were in, trapping people by the hundreds; escalators stopped; the computers at banks, airlines, travel agencies, and in every hotel in the downtown area died instantly. Hotel doors that were controlled by computer chips could not be unlocked, preventing people from getting into hotel rooms. Every motor vehicle or ignition key that contained a computer chip was inoperable. Radio and television stations were turned off in midsyllable.
In five hundred trillionths of a second the heart of this major city of more than four million people had been reduced to an artifact, unable to sustain human life. Reston was similarly affected. All refrigerators, stoves, ovens, and food storage and preparation machinery, all public and private transportation, all electronic communications devices, all automatic teller machinery were kaput — everything.
From the White House, Jake Grafton and Toad Tarkington walked south on Fifteenth Street, across the Mall, toward the Fourteenth Street Bridge that spanned the Potomac. People were rushing in the other direction, toward the flaming White House, which was lighting up the dark city like a bonfire.
The rising moon was just bright enough to reveal the Washington Monument, which stood like a giant Stonehenge megalith against the darker night sky. Off to the south the fire in the wreckage of the Airbus that crashed at Anacostia was dying as the last of the jet fuel was consumed.
An old man stopped them on the Fourteenth Street Bridge. He got in front of them, forced them to stop and address him. Only then did he see their uniforms and looked relieved.
'It's my wife. She needs help. Won't you help me, please?'
The woman was sitting in the passenger seat of the nearest car, staring fixedly at nothing at all. Jake took her wrist, felt for her pulse. There was none.
'She's having a heart attack, I think,' the old man said. He was so nervous he trembled. The night wind ruffled his white hair. 'Her defibrillator went off. There was this explosion right above us — right over our heads — and the car stopped dead. The engine just quit all of a sudden. Like bang! And she grabbed her chest. The damned defibrillator just whacked the hell out of her for a while, then it stopped.'
'How long ago was this?'
'Oh… when the lights went off. I've been talking to her, but she hasn't replied.'
'She's dead.'
'Dead?'
'Her heart has stopped.' Jake replaced the woman's wrist in her lap and closed her eyes. 'The defibrillator isn't working. She's gone.'
'Dead?' His eyes widened. 'My God, she can't be—'
'This happened what? An hour ago? Hour and a quarter?'
Despite himself, the old man nodded affirmatively. 'What happened?' he demanded. 'What went wrong?'
Jake Grafton didn't know what to say.
The old man thought about it, looked at the dark, silent city, letting it really sink in. Finally he said, 'A plane crashed over there.' He pointed at Anacostia. 'Big plane. Rolled over and dove into the ground. Boom. Just like that… I was telling my wife about it. You can still see some of the flames. No one fought the fire or rescued the people. Anyone who survived the crash and couldn't get away from the plane on his own hook was left to die. It's like no one cares.'
'Maybe no one could get there,' Jake Grafton said gently, trying to calm the man.
'Our car just up and quit on us. Like everybody else's. They all quit at once. Our Taurus never did that before. . We live in Be-thesda and decided to drive down a while ago to see the city at night. Now.. the lights in the city are off. All of them. My wife's dead. That plane crashed. It's like the world is coming to an end.'
'Yes.'
'This is America,' the man said, grasping Jake fiercely by the arm. 'America!'
'Yes,' Jake Grafton said again. He used his left hand to gently pry the man's hand away from his arm, grasped and shook it.
Then Jake and Toad walked on across the bridge.
Callie was at the apartment in Rosslyn, across the river from Georgetown. He wondered if she was okay. There was no way to get in touch with her, of course, unless he walked home. Like the old man, he studied the dark, dead city. At least during the nineteenth century the people of Washington had lanterns, candles, and horses, then gaslight.
He stopped in the middle of the bridge and watched the dying flames from what must be the wreckage of the plane that crashed in Anacostia. Unlike gasoline engines in automobiles, which require an ignition pulse for every piston power stroke, jet engines are continuously on fire, so the electromagnetic pulse of the E-bomb warhead would not cause a flameout. It would play havoc with the fly-by-wire flight controls, however, and all the computers that control the airplane's other functions, for example, those that regulate fuel flow. The pilots of the sophisticated modern airliners, Jake Grafton knew, must have lost all control. In a way the vulnerability of the airplanes was a horrible irony: The more modern the jet airplane, the more computers were incorporated into the design to increase the efficiency and maintainability, the more vulnerable the design was to electromagnetic-pulse weapons.
There was a fire in Arlington National Cemetery and another south of the Pentagon. Both, Jake suspected, were crashed airplanes.
Kolnikov. The missing American, Leon Rothberg… they had done this. Presumably for money.
'Money,' Jake whispered to himself as he contemplated the dim reflections in the dark water. Or perhaps something else.
Toad broke into his musings. 'Wait until the reporters find out the CIA trained those sons of bitches to steal a Russian sub,'
Tarkington said. 'Tomorrow morning, I figure. It'll be a feeding frenzy. They're going to rip the president a new asshole.'
Jake merely grunted. He was thinking of Callie. He wanted to go home, see her, hold her in his arms. He wasn't going to do that, though, not with that submarine out there. The pirates had fired two Flashlight warheads and had eight more in the launching tubes. And one more conventional explosive warhead — enough to create a great deal of havoc. No, he needed to go to the Pentagon.
Yet try as he might, he couldn't keep his mind on the submarine. As he walked through the darkness of a city under siege, he found himself thinking of his wife.
There were four of them, all Germans. Steeckt seemed to be the unofficial spokesman. Kolnikov was eating when they came into the control room and lined up in front of him. Two hours had passed since the missiles had been launched. They had hit their targets or crashed. The submarine was at fifteen hundred feet, so he wouldn't know until he could once again raise the communications mast and listen to a commercial radio station. That wouldn't be for hours. There were ships up there, and planes. Until then..
'We want to know what is going on, Captain. Why did you launch those missiles?'
'We are being paid. I explained all that.' Boldt, he noticed, turned away from his console to look at him.
'You launched one of those missiles at the White House.' It was a statement, not a question. Of course Rothberg had whispered to them.
'That is correct.' Kolnikov finished scraping his plate with a spoon and laid it on the maneuvering monitor. He turned to face them squarely and looked from face to face. Two of them lowered their eyes.
'You are goading the tiger. We did not bargain for this.'
'You think they did not look for this boat after we stole it? That they weren't looking before we fired the missiles? They could not look with more fervor if we threatened to destroy the entire planet. The entire American navy is hunting us.'
