Ghost Rider, completely full of fuel, climbed through 10,000 feet and headed towards her next stop. The pilot switched over to autopilot, Pete was asleep a couple of minutes later. Neither he, nor the radar screen, would have been fast enough to see, or monitor, the Pakistani-made, Zedong Electronics Shaheen (White Falcon) III ballistic missile 100,000 feet above them, already in a vertical dive at Mach 3 straight towards Tiananmen Square in the center of Beijing. Its powerful nuclear warhead exploded several seconds later at 1,000 feet above ground five miles away, exactly over where the famous hero of Tiananmen Square had stood in front of a tank many years earlier.
Air Force General Pete Allen never felt a thing.
*****
The members of the Politburo were not present when Comrade Mo Wang entered the board room on the aircraft carrier. He had been summoned by the chairman a couple of hours after he had left the stateroom earlier that morning.
“Comrade Wang, sit down. I wanted company on this important day, the day I mark our dynasty on the map by taking the life of another dynasty so that we may flourish. This is my choice as Chairman of the New World, and I make this unfortunate decision alone so that I may bear the blame if it is the wrong one.”
Wang noticed that he, the chairman, and the chairman’s two guards were the only people in the room. The new console with the four red buttons he had seen earlier was on the table and the chairman’s fingers were playing with them.
“These buttons cost me a fortune with Pakistan. Wang, do you know what these buttons are?” he asked the man sitting at the other end of the boardroom table.
“I will assume that they are buttons of mass destruction, Comrade Chairman,” Comrade Wang replied, knowing that at the very least these were not buttons of peace. For a split second, he looked directly at the chairman, who had not an ounce of emotion on his face and was looking intently at Wang. It was at that moment that Wang wanted to kill him—he wanted to destroy this madman who considered himself the first ruler of the New World Dynasty.
“Guards, make sure Comrade Wang does not move from his seat. I think he wants to harm me.” The guards moved towards Comrade Wang, weapons at the ready. “Cousin Mo Jo Wang, I dedicate this first rocket to all the Chinese dynasties that came before mine. May they live in eternal peace,” and he pressed the first button. “The missile silos were built in my secret headquarters in Harbin, where all the aircraft have flown to,” he added. The chairman then pressed the second button and then the third.
“May I ask what terror you have now unleashed on the world, Comrade Chairman?” asked Wang, knowing that he didn’t really want to know.
“Of course, Comrade Wang. The first is a nuclear warhead on a Pakistani missile, one of four I purchased a couple of years ago with the promise that I wouldn’t shut their country down when the time came.”
“But you did shut them down, Comrade Chairman,” interrupted Wang.
“Correct,” replied the chairman. “But I didn’t shut them down when I shut down America. And I never told them how much time I would give them. I thought that one extra day per rocket was a good deal for both sides. The first missile will wipe out all of Beijing, and the surrounding area for at least 100 miles around Tiananmen Square. The second missile will completely wipe out our arch enemy Taiwan, and the third is going in between Hong Kong and our third largest city of Guangzhou, where our family has had many enemies for the last century. The fourth missile is for Shanghai and it will not be used until we have all our troops out of Shanghai. I’m transferring all our troops into Harbin as of later today. Within 15 minutes, those first three areas will be totally destroyed.”
“But you just sentenced 50 million people to death!” replied Wang, now shocked to the core.
“Yes, people who have turned against me and my dynasty. People who would not take orders from me, but now will come and kiss my feet for mercy. Many of them were going to die from the cold and lack of food in the coming weeks anyway. All I’ve done is end their misery earlier. It is also just a small part of our Great China, and the greatest people of China are the farmers and landowners who will begin to feed our people in the spring when the growing season comes. And Wang, 50 million people is a small number of people compared to our overall plan and the numbers that have already died in North America, Europe, and Russia. I don’t really need more than a billion people serving me and my Politburo and the fewer people there are on earth, the less chance I have of them rising up against me in the century to come.”
“When will all this killing of innocent people end?” asked Wang, sick to his stomach.
“When I say it does!” the chairman shouted. “When I rule America and the rest of the World! And, when the world lives in accordance to the regime The Group of Four wanted in China a half century ago in accordance with my father’s wishes. That’s when, Wang. Now go away and start preparing for the attack on America. We have ten days to get everything ready.”
They were too far away to see or hear the explosions, but ocean swells larger than normal brushed against the ships several hours later. Wang did not know what to do. He was powerless to try anything brash, and he looked down at the water trying to figure out how everybody had been so enthusiastic at the beginning, and whether all in the Politburo would still be as enthusiastic as they were in the beginning if they had witnessed what he had just witnessed. Humans were obviously not as civilized as they thought they were, and if death and destruction was the only thing consuming mankind, then this world was not fit for humans to survive.
*****
Carlos, wakened by the general, was watching his simple screen half awake when he heard electronic chatter coming in from the satellite feed. Something was going on. The satellites were directing something. They seemed to have a new line of input data coming from this new location and he was powerless to do anything. He looked at the information coming in. The three satellites were directing more than one object out of North China, and suddenly he knew what they were.
“Oh, my God!” he said to Sally, still in bed sleeping. She came to life sleepily. “What is it, Carlos?” she asked, watching as his face went white in front of the screen.
“I think the satellites are directing in missiles,” he replied. “Where?” she asked, sitting up and suddenly wide awake.
“They could be anywhere. I can’t see them, and the only thing I can see is the transponders from the 130s going into Russia and General Allen’s leaving Beijing.”
Oh, my God!” he said again, and this time Sally wrapped the blanket around her went to stand next to Carlos. His face lit up slightly several minutes later as the screen showed a brilliant blast of light larger than the size of a pinhead. “Some sort of missile has detonated in Beijing, right on top of Ghost Rider. It must be a nuclear warhead with a light that strong!”
“Somebody is blowing up Beijing with a nuclear bomb?” asked Sally.
“Not just one,” replied Carlos, the satellite feed shows multiple missiles. “They could be coming straight here for all we know, if they are intercontinental or ICBMs.”
“The general was in Beijing?” asked Sally.
“Yes, he had just taken off from there. He would have been less than 20 miles from the blast. Enough to disintegrate Ghost Rider, and the shock wave would have turned Ghost Rider into confetti.”
“Ghost Rider… General Allen… is gone?” she asked.
“Looks like it,” Carlos replied. “Try and call his number. Oh! There’s a second blast, right on top of Taipei in Taiwan. Somebody is bombing China, Sally. And there’s a third one, just north of Hong Kong. That’s three nuclear explosions in three minutes!”