The explosion came like a clap of thunder, sharp and so hard that Dan dropped the razor. Dan not only heard it, he felt it. The floor jumped. Earthquake? he wondered. But now he heard a long rumbling growl.
“What the hell was that?” Dan called, his face covered with lather.
“A sonic boom?” Jane answered from the bedroom, where she was dressing for dinner.
“Didn’t sound like a sonic boom,” Dan said, reaching for his razor. This was earthquake country, he knew, although nothing seemed to be shaking. Just that one shock. The roll of toilet paper wasn’t even swaying.
From far away he heard the wail of a siren. A fire truck, maybe, or an ambulance. Then another.
“Oh my god.”
He wasn’t certain that he’d heard Jane correctly.
“What did—”
“Dan. Come here.”
“What is it?”
“Come in here! Now!” He’d never heard Jane’s voice sound so urgent. “Now, Dan!”
He grabbed a towel and started wiping the lather off his face as he stepped into the bedroom. More sirens were screaming down on the street outside. Jane had turned on the television. The screen showed the Golden Gate Bridge. The middle of its main span was covered in billowing black smoke. Where the suspension cables come down from the towers, Dan realized.
The sound was muted. Dan looked for the remote control. Then he saw the central span of the bridge split in two and both sides sagged into the water, slowly peeling away from each other like two limp strips of cardboard and plunging down, cars and trucks and buses sliding along their collapsing lengths, falling, splashing into the cold deep water far below.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Dan gasped.
Jane stood horrified, her fists pressed to her face, her eyes filling with tears.
The remote was on the floor, Dan saw. Jane must have dropped it there. She stood frozen in front of the TV screen, half dressed, unmoving, unspeaking.
Dan sat on the edge of the bed, suddenly feeling very weary, drained, as if all the energy had been sapped out of him. He bent down and retrieved the remote, thumbed on the sound.
“…no telling how many have been killed,” a voice-over was saying, shocked, hollow. The screen showed the bridge span dangling into the strait, objects still splashing into the water. “Our traffic helicopter was apparently caught in the explosion. We’ve lost contact with it. I guess it’s down there with all the other wreckage.”
Jane sank down onto the edge of the bed beside him, still stunned into silence. The screen was showing people in the streets now, dazed, staring, as billows of dirty gray smoke wafted into the bright blue sky. Police cars were arriving. Fire trucks pulled up, the firefighters looking bewildered, perplexed, with really nothing to do except stare at the shattered bridge in helpless anger.
A frightened-looking young man in his shirtsleeves appeared on the screen, obviously in the television station’s studio. His hands were trembling as he held a flimsy sheet of paper.
“We’ve just received word,” he said, his voice shaking, too, “that the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City has also been blown up. And the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay in Florida has been attacked, as well.”
“Those sons of bitches,” Dan muttered. “Those murdering sons of bitches.”
For hours Jane and Dan sat there watching the horror. Three bridges destroyed. Thousands killed. Bits and scraps of information were added as the Sun sank into the Pacific, slowly turning their hotel room dark except for the flickering TV screen. A huge supertanker filled with liquefied natural gas had blown up precisely as it passed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. The same tactic blew up the Sunshine Skyway Bridge across Tampa Bay. In New York, three trucks loaded with chemical fertilizers had stopped precisely in the center of the Brooklyn Bridge and then exploded. The terrorists presumably went up in the blast Three bridges. Thousands killed.
At nine P.M. the president of the United States appeared on television from his home in Florida, where he’d been spending the holiday weekend.
“This is a tragic Fourth of July,” he said, his face ashen, bleak. “The American people will not forget this day. Nor will we stop until the terrorists and their sponsors are rooted out and destroyed. I have ordered the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to meet with me tonight…”
Once the president finished his grisly little speech, Dan clicked off the television. The only light in the room came from the window. Down in the streets sirens still wailed like lost demons keening for the dead.
Beside him, Jane stirred. “No. Turn it back on. I want to see—”
“We’ve seen it a couple dozen times, Jane. There’s nothing new to show.”
“We drove over that bridge,”she said, as if just realizing how close they had come to death. “An hour or so later and…”
“We’d be dead, along with the rest of them.”
She nodded.
“But we’re not dead, Jane. We’re alive. And I love you. I’ll protect you. We’ll be all right, I promise.”
She rested her head on his shoulder and he held her tightly. “It’s all right, Jane. We’re safe. Don’t be afraid.”
“I know,” she murmured. “I love you, Dan. I don’t ever want to be separated from you.”
He lifted her chin gently. In the shadows he could see a wisp of terrycloth fiber that clung to her cheek. He brushed it off, then kissed her.
“Let’s get married,” he said. “Right away. Tonight.”
Dabbing at her eyes, Jane made a weak smile. “You want to make an honest woman of me?”
“I want to marry you, Jane Thornton. I want you to come to Japan with me.”
“You’re going back to Japan? Now?”
“I’ve got to,” he said. “Yamagata’s demo satellite is almost finished, but there’s still a lot of work to do. And I’m under contract. I’ve got to go back.”
She said nothing for a moment. Then, “And I’ve got a reelection campaign to start planning for.”
“But that’s years away, isn’t it?”
“There are only one hundred senators in the world, Dan. I’m not going to give that up. I can’t.”
“But—”
“Dan, it’s my career. My world. Now, with this terror attack, I’ve got to be there.”
He nodded glumly.
“You can get out of your contract with the Japanese.”
“But I don’t want to:”
“You don’t? Why?”
“That power satellite is vital. More important now than ever.”
“With this terrorist attack, and more to come, you think playing in outer space is important?”
“It’s not playing! Jane, if we can get electrical power from space, we can thumb our noses at the Arabs and their oil.”
She stared at him as if she couldn’t believe what he was saying. “Dan, that will take years! If ever. We have to fight the terrorists now.”
“As long as we’re dependent on oil from the Middle East they’ll have us by the short hairs.”
“And you think going into space is going to help us?”
“Yes! Generate power from space—”
“In a hundred years, maybe.”
“Ten! Five, maybe, if we push it.”
“Ten years,” Jane said. “My god, Dan, ten years is as good as a century in politics.”
“If we don’t start now, we’ll never have it!”
“The costs,” Jane muttered. “Everything NASA does costs so much.”
“It can be done cheaper.”
“It will still costs billions, won’t it?”