Though he suspected, like everyone else in the command booth, that resistance would probably be pointless, the idea of simply throwing his hands up and doing nothing to stop the Germans was unthinkable. Such a decision, he believed, should not be made by Harrison or Lowery, regardless of how many stars they had. Slowly Wilks replaced the receiver on its cradle and stood up.
Dumbfounded, Lowery looked at Wilks for a second before he realized what Wilks was doing. Recovering from the shock of his aide's insubordination, Lowery repeated his order. "Captain Wilks, I am ordering you to call Major Harkins now."
Wilks said nothing. Instead, he simply stepped back away from his desk and assumed a rigid position of attention. Even when Haas reached for his automatic weapon and trained it on him, the young aide stood his ground.
Incensed at his aide's insubordination, pushed to the breaking point by the tension of the moment, and galvanized by Haas's hostile reaction, Lowery jumped to his feet and began to yell. "Damn you, Captain. Damn you to hell. I gave you an order." Still Wilks did nothing.
Below the command booth, several of the officers in the rear rows of the operations center, hearing Lowery's muffled shouts reverberate through the thick glass window of the command booth, turned to see what had gotten their commander so upset. Unaware of what was going on, they watched wide-eyed as Lowery lunged across the command booth and bodily pushed Wilks out of his way with one hand while grabbing a phone with his other. After punching up a number and while he waited for the person on the other end of the line, the staff officers in the operations center could see Lowery glaring at Wilks, still standing at attention, and clearly hear Lowery yelling at him, over and over, "Damn you, Captain. Damn you to hell."
Charley Mordal didn't even give Jan a chance to say hello before he blurted out, "Jan, you were right! You were the only one who saw it coining."
Though she was used to being called like this in the middle of the night at her Gaithersburg, Maryland, home, Jan's reactions were far from automatic. Where her husband, Scott, could jump out of bed and be fully alert before his feet hit the floor, Jan's mind needed time to come to life. Still not fully awake and having no idea what Mordal was talking about, Jan blinked her eyes a few times, looked at her alarm clock, and yawned before responding. "Of course I was right, Charley." Then after thinking for a second, she added, "Exactly what was I right about this time?"
"The Germans. Jan, can you believe it? The Germans apparently overran the Air Force base in Germany where the nukes were waiting for transport back to the States and seized them. You and Lewis seem to be the only people in this town that saw that coming. You're incredible."
Jan didn't really hear anything after Mordal mentioned that the Germans had overrun an American base. For several seconds all she could think about was Scott and his safety. Where was he? Was the American Army already involved? Those and other questions rushed through her mind as Mordal, more animated than Jan had ever heard him before, rattled on and on. Knowing that sitting there in her bedroom wondering and worrying would accomplish nothing, Jan cut Mordal off. "Okay, Charley, thanks for calling. I'll be down at the studio in less than an hour."
Without so much as a good-bye, Jan hung up, leaving Mordal wondering why she was coming to the studio at that hour. After thinking about it for a moment, though, he decided that perhaps it wasn't a bad idea. His only regret was that he hadn't thought of it first. Of course, Charley Mordal didn't realize that Jan wasn't going into the studio out of dedication to the network or her profession. Her motives that night were purely selfish. At the World News Network headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C., she would have firsthand access to every major news agency in the world and sources of information that rivaled the CIA's and FBI's. In the avalanche of information and news that would flow into WNN headquarters, Jan hoped to find a scrap of news about the only person in the entire world that she really cared for, a man who by his nature and profession was bound to be in the middle of things in Germany. Though she could do nothing to change things or help him, at least she would know what was happening to him.
Bounding out of bed, Jan dashed to the bathroom. As she stood before the full wall mirror quickly combing her hair into a presentable style, she glanced down at the black nondescript comb, green toothbrush, and unused razor that sat next to the second sink that was Scotty's. Though he hadn't been able to tear himself away from his command in Europe for months, Jan, out of habit, kept his personal things in order and handy, just in case. For despite her reputation as a hard-nosed news correspondent, Jan Fields-Dixon was an eternal optimist. Scott, she knew, would somehow find his way out of this mess, just as surely as the politicians in the White House would find a way to suck him into it.
Suddenly the focus of everyone in Washington shifted from an obscure spot on the eastern fringes of Europe to the heart of the continent. Overwhelmed by the new German crisis, matters concerning the Ukrainian crisis were relegated to other senior members of the State and Defense departments while President Wilson and key members of the National Security Council met to discuss and deal with the German crisis.
As was her style, Abigail Wilson had listened to what everyone had to say concerning the matter at hand, in this case the German crisis, without comment. When she was satisfied that everything that needed to be known had been presented, she gave her initial guidance and then sat back and let her staff, in this case the Security Council, work out a solution. From her seat, Wilson watched the process in action. A steady stream of people, some in uniform, some in shirtsleeves, flowed around and past her, coming and going, sometimes giving the impression that they had no apparent direction or purpose. Every now and then one or more of these people would stop another in midstride and hold a quick hushed impromptu discussion where they stood. Finished, they would part and continue to pursue whatever mysterious errand they had been on. Elsewhere in the room small clusters of people were huddled discussing some matter or the other. The whole scene unfolding before her gave Wilson the feeling that she was sitting in the eye of a hurricane. After thinking about that analogy for a moment, she decided that it didn't do justice to the current situation. What she had started, Wilson decided, was shaping up to resemble more and more a firestorm. How to stop that firestorm, which at that moment was completely out of their control, was the question she pondered and the throngs of people around her debated.
For several minutes Wilson studied each of her key staffers, people who had led her into the Ukrainian crisis and now were expected to find a solution to a new crisis in which all its attendant problems had yet to come to the surface. Off to her right, Peter Soares was holding court with her foreign affairs advisor and a number of serious-looking State Department bureaucrats. The expression he wore and the manner in which he held himself or threw his arms about to make his point reminded Wilson of when he had been running Wilson's gubernatorial and presidential campaigns. Watching, she had no doubt that his line of thinking and the approach he was using to deal with this crisis were similar to those he had used then. Unfortunately, this was not a political campaign. For a moment Wilson wondered if his ability to negotiate the American political landscape for diplomatic skills and his knack for organizing campaigns for leadership gave him the insight necessary for dealing with this issue. In her heart she knew that his tried-and-true methods, those that had gotten her into the White House, would be of little use in resolving the expanding German crisis, one which his decisions had precipitated. The fact that the Ukrainian operation had turned sour, despite his assurances, introduced an element of uncertainty into Wilson's mind that was now tainting her trust of anything that Soares said.