Tucker hung up, and Peter collapsed onto his sofa. Seconds later, the president’s text message was disseminated through the emergency alert system, cancelling the alert.
The nation breathed a collective sigh of relief.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Tuesday, October 22
California State Warning Center
Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES)
Sacramento, California
Alix Adams was a loyal soldier. She’d been hand-selected to join the Cal OES about six months ago. Prior to that, she’d worked on the president’s election campaign in the state. Her experience procuring signatures to initiate ballot referendums had landed her a lucrative position in Sacramento within the California State Warning Center.
At first, she didn’t understand why she was offered the full-time position at just over fifty thousand a year but also given a consultant contract by the president’s campaign team that doubled that annual salary.
The prior evening near the end of her shift, she’d received a text message to meet a campaign coworker at the Thai Bistro restaurant nearby for drinks. Adams hadn’t heard from the man she’d casually dated during the campaign since the inauguration. She liked him and was willing to let him buy her a few drinks.
Upon arrival, he got right down to business. He slid her an envelope with five thousand dollars in cash enclosed. His request was a simple one. Accidentally hit the wrong button. Nothing more. Nothing less. Afterwards, apologize profusely. Cry, if she felt compelled to do so. “Don’t worry about your job or your side gig,” he’d said to her. “Just push the wrong button when the time comes.”
They shared one drink and made small talk about the new administration. He abruptly left, and she went home. The next night, as her shift was in its last hour, her supervisor advised her that during the shift change, he wanted to run an unscheduled drill to make sure everyone was on their toes, as he put it. He advised Adams that he was going to contact the emergency management team, pretending to be with U.S. Pacific Command. He just wanted to give Adams a heads-up so she would do the right thing when she was instructed by the team to act.
Adams was thoroughly confused. Was her supervisor part of the subterfuge? When he said do the right thing, was he actually referring to pushing the wrong button, as she’d been instructed?
Minutes later, as the emergency workers began filing out of their offices and cubicles, Adams remained at her post. About the time the room was cleared, she received a call.
“This is not a drill. Activate incoming ballistic missile alert received via USPACOM. Exercise. Exercise. Exercise.”
Adams froze. The first sentence indicated the instructions were valid and to be followed. The last three words were agency code to indicate a test rather than an actual emergency. She’d been paid to push the wrong button and given a heads-up about the drill by her supervisor. But which command should she follow?
She did her duty. Push the wrong button.
Adams sent out an actual notification that triggered the state’s ballistic missile preparations computer program. She even clicked through on a second screen, per safeguard protocols, to confirm the directive. Instantaneously, the alert message interrupted radio, television, and satellite broadcasts in California and, moments later, in Oregon and Washington, too.
Once the false alarm was rescinded and the panic subsided, Adams told the head of Cal OES that the directive from her superiors had been confusing, and out of an abundance of caution, she’d issued the alert. She never revealed the payment she’d received or the brief conversation with her supervisor. She claimed to be one hundred percent certain issuing the alert was the right thing to do, and if anyone was to blame, it was the government for their system and process failures.
It took the Cal OES twenty-three minutes to override the alert and notify its citizens of the false alarm. Fear and panic spread across the West Coast like wildfire as residents were gripped with confusion. With no warning and little in the way of instructions, most people were unsure of what to do.
The next day, the death toll was in the hundreds from accidents, suicides, and heart attacks. Criticism was directed toward the governor of California and Cal OES. The governor immediately called on the legislature to form a commission to study the cause of the incident and the aftermath when it came back into session next week. Congress vowed to start hearings to assess the nation’s emergency alert protocols to coincide with California’s investigation.
The state and national politicians were unified in their statements condemning the mistake. They also agreed that hearings beginning on Monday would focus on the fact it was time to prepare the nation for the types of nuclear strikes endured by the people of the four countries on the other side of the world.
Next week, the politicians promised, they would tackle this very important issue.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Tuesday, October 22
Dumbarton Bridge
San Francisco Bay
Owen ran like the wind after he’d reached the end of Dumbarton Bridge and hit terra firma. Word had spread amongst the pedestrians fleeing to the east that Patterson Elementary School near the Nimitz Freeway had a fallout shelter. Thousands of people from the surrounding neighborhood coupled with stranded motorists attempted to cram into the closed school. They broke through windows and doors only to run helter-skelter in search of the basement facility that didn’t exist. About the time Owen gave up on the quest for safety and exited the school into the driving rain, the notification came through the alert system advising Californians of the false alarm.
Relief turned to anger. People whipped each other into an angry mob that vowed to march on Sacramento the next day to voice their displeasure. Things have to change, they yelled. Recall the governor was shouted by some.
Owen ignored the rancor and focused on how he was going to get his car off the bridge. Hundreds of motorists had fled their vehicles, looking for safety. Some had perished as they’d crossed the concrete dividers into oncoming westbound traffic. The bridge was littered with mauled and mangled bodies that had been run over repeatedly. Owen suspected many of those who’d died drove cars abandoned ahead of his.
He was at least twenty miles from the house. In the rain, and wearing Johnston & Murphy dress shoes, he’d be lucky to make it there in seven to eight hours unless Lacey could meet him somewhere in between.
Then there was the matter of Lacey’s car, which he’d driven so she could pack the Expedition. The four-door Nissan sedan would probably be towed to an impound lot somewhere. It would be aggravating trying to find out, and he suspected a fee might be charged. But the prospect of waiting for hours that might even stretch into daytime tomorrow to fix the mess didn’t appeal to Owen.
He tried to call Lacey and Tucker. The call wouldn’t go through, as everyone else in the state at the time was doing the same thing. Owen thought of what was left in the car. He didn’t bring his work home at night, so there was no briefcase or laptop. There were no valuables in the glove box. He felt his pockets for the keys and realized, in his panic, he’d left them in the ignition. If it was stolen, he had insurance.
He loosened his tie, set his jaw, and started the trek home, doing his best to avoid the angry motorists who couldn’t decide if the traffic jams or the overall predicament should be the target of their ire. The streets were clogged with debris, vehicles, and pedestrian refugees. A continuous downpour from the sky added to the aggravation.