Ovitz smiled. “Are we better off now?”
“I doubt the dead or unemployed would agree,” Deborah said. Millions had died in the war and millions more were completely out of work. “We cannot be anything, but sneaky now, if we want to win.”
“All we have is an insane plan that might fail… and fail badly enough to convince the aliens to wipe us out,” Ovitz grumbled. “What happens if that fails?”
“It’s the best plan we have,” Deborah said. “Failure remains a possibility, but… what choice do we have?”
“If the plan fails, and the country suffers, we will move for impeachment,” Ovitz warned. “The country is on the verge of collapse. New blood is needed.”
“Well, you’ve been in politics for nearly forty years, so you don’t count,” Deborah snapped, standing up sharply. “If it fails, I dare say that the best the new government could do is get a slightly better deal out of the aliens. Good day, sir!”
“You’ve looked better,” Ambassador Francis Prachthauser said, as he was shown into the President’s private room. He hadn’t seen the President for nearly a month and was shocked by the changes. The President looked to be permanently on the verge of a stroke, or a heart attack. “Have you been eating properly?”
“You’re my Ambassador and Special Representative, not my mother,” the President said. He sounded as if he was amused, but his voice was as thin as tearing paper. “I have been eating enough food to feed a mouse, all very bad for me, of course.”
“Of course,” Francis agreed, genuinely concerned. The President was the best looked after person in the world, but there was nothing the staff could do about the real problem. The only plan they had was halfway insane. He’d finally secured permission to brief a handful of non-Americans, but it had only made it clear just how insane the plan actually was. “You need a break.”
The President snorted. “Yes, I suppose I could go to Camp David and have a month away from the stress of government,” he said. He laughed harshly. “A year ago, a crisis could be handled with proper reflection and I could take hours to decide what to do. Now… if I don’t react at once, the crisis will just get worse… and the entire country has a knife to its throat, while I’m stuck in this bunker.”
He paused. “Do you know how many plots there have been to kill me?”
Francis blinked. “Mr President?”
“The Secret Service and FBI broke up several,” the President said. He smiled thinly at Francis, who could only stare at him. Plots against the President were hardly unknown, but in times of war? “They didn’t know about the bunker, but the White House got attacked twice by people who blamed me for the invasion and everything else. The Senate blames me for their loss of influence, the rest of the world thinks that I should have deployed some super-secret weapon system that only exists in the imagination of a science-fiction author and blown the aliens out of space and the aliens… the aliens want me dead. At least they’re honest about it.”
He sat up suddenly. “But enough of that,” he added. Bright eyes focused directly on Francis. “What news do you have for me?”
Francis felt almost relieved. The President wasn’t as far gone as he’d feared. “The French, Germans, British and Russians are onboard,” he said. The President looked relieved. The absence of any one of them would have made the plan much harder. “They’re convinced that the plan is absolutely crazy, but they don’t have any other option, although they drove a hard bargain and demanded the plans for the shuttles.”
“Not such a bad move,” the President said, dryly. He seemed to be considering events properly again, even if there was a morbid note to his thoughts. “If America gets scorched from end to end because of this, they’re going to have to try it next.”
“If they can,” Francis warned. “Europe’s been pretty much coordinating the insurgency in the Middle East, as far as anyone can, with weapons, aid and even commando units, hitting the aliens as hard as possible. They have plenty of young Muslim men who want to fight in a jihad and they’re shipping them in by the boatload. Now that North Africa is under alien control, it’s a lot easier to slip in weapons and supplies, and there were a lot on the ground anyway. Someone actually managed to fire a string of Scuds directly at an alien base… and actually got one of them down to the ground.”
The President laughed. “How did they manage that?”
“The Egyptians had designed them to break through Israel’s defences and they were configured to confuse any defences,” Francis explained. “All, but one of them got shot down, but the one that landed packed enough punch to really ruin their day.”
He scowled. “The bad news is that most chemical weapons don’t seem to work on them either,” he added. “The Libyans managed to deploy some chemical weapons they didn’t have — officially — and drenched the aliens in some, but no apparent effect. It could be just their masks, but the scientists in Europe are wondering if their biology is so different from ours that nothing designed for us affects them.”
“That was our conclusion,” the President said. “Overall, how are the Europeans with the plan?”
“They need a month to finish their preparations,” Francis said. “That said, once the weapons are set up and ready, they could move at a moment’s notice. Coordinated action is our only hope for any victory and they all understand that. Now that we have the new communications links set up, we’ll have the submarines in position and ready to act.”
He smiled. “Can you imagine what we’re asking the Russians and French to do?”
“It does have its humorous side,” the President agreed. “If they all cooperate…”
“If they all play ball,” Francis agreed, “we might actually manage to get this insane plan to work.” He frowned. “I think that the aliens might be preparing for a third landing.”
“A third?” The President snapped. “Where?”
“Australia,” Francis said. “I got it from MI6 — that’s the British intelligence service — and they got it from their counterparts down under. They’re taking more alien KEW strikes now and it looks as if they’re going to be knocked back down again; every harbour and airport has been destroyed. Indonesia is also taking a beating, but it’s just not as interesting to the aliens as Australia. If they want Australia, they can take it, probably.”
“And their deployments?”
“The Australians know as much as anyone else about how the aliens work,” Francis said. “They should have made preparations for resisting an alien landing, but… if they land in enough force, they can probably take Australia completely within a few weeks. They don’t have a large enough army to stand off the aliens.”
“And so another state is lost,” the President said. “Once they control Australia, they can bring other nations into line and keep consolidating their control. Japan… Japan is effectively on their side now, while China is just trying to avoid an uprising.”
“They got hurt worse than we did when the aliens attacked,” Francis said. “Their economy is a shambles and the chaos from the Korean border isn’t helping. If their government falls completely, they’re fragile enough to go through a second warlord period… and that will remove them from the balance sheet. By the time they recover, the aliens will probably hold the rest of the world.”
“Not if we can help it,” the President said. There was a note of renewed determination in his voice. Francis welcomed it, even though he knew it wouldn’t last. The President studied the map, noting the red shade that covered Texas, the Middle East and North Africa. The aliens were having real problems with the Pakistani border, but Islamabad seemed to have lost control completely, leaving the disposition of their nukes a total mystery. Francis had even heard a rumour that the Indians were considering a strike against the Pakistani nukes before they could fall into the hands of fanatics who might turn them against India, even with the aliens breathing down their necks.