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“Of course you are, Marshall. You’re the Great American Pretender.”

“Defender, Sachs,” Marshall said sharply, his smile disappearing. “Defender.”

“Defender,” she repeated, trying to put everything together that she had seen. “You were so confident we could win this war with minimal casualties.”

“Maybe we can,” Marshall said.

The radio crackled. “Defender Ten, all clear.”

“Defender Nine, all clear.”

Sachs realized Marshall had established the secret frequency she needed to recall the Defenders. If only she could reach the radio. “You actually built your Defender system, didn’t you?”

Marshall cracked a grin. “I’ve got ten airborne COIL lasers that can pinpoint and destroy enemy missiles hundreds of miles away.”

“So you blew up Washington?” Sachs said accusingly.

Marshall grew scarily calm, but his eyes were ablaze with purpose. “It was clean, Sachs. I took out buildings. Not people.”

“What do you call four thousand Americans?”

“Not much more than 9/11,” he said. “Any reasonable president would have launched under attack. But you wouldn’t.”

“So you blew up SAC headquarters,” she said. “And you went after my daughter!”

“Something worth thinking about now, Sachs, if you want her to live.”

Marshall took another step closer, and Sachs took a step back. Suddenly she wondered why he hadn’t killed her yet.

“What do you want with her, Marshall?”

“Just a little leverage,” Marshall said, raising his gun to her head. “I might need you to make one more address about your attack on the Chinese.”

“Oh, my God,” she said, realizing that Marshall — and history — was going to blame this apocalypse on her failed leadership.

“You’re going to take a bullet for America, Sachs,” he told her. “You think the Chinese promote multiculturalism or celebrate diversity like you want your students to? You’ve seen the trends. You’ve seen the future. You really want your daughter to grow up under red skies? Or, worse, a multi-polar world of war and chaos? I have to protect western civilization before people like you piss it away.”

“How convenient,” she said. “Is that what you’re going to say the day after?”

“This is the day after,” Marshall told her. “Now hand over the gun, Sachs. We both know you can’t pull the trigger.”

She said, “Not until I can see the enemy.”

She felt the veins in her hand throb as she gripped the gun. She could barely catch her breath, her heart was racing so fast. One way or another, she told herself, she was going to take a bullet. Whether she took the shot or not, she was going to die. She had to take the shot. She had to pull the trigger.

Marshall smiled. “Those who can’t, teach,” he said, coaxing her. “Come on. Give it to me.”

Sachs, her hands trembling, started to lower her arms. He was only a few feet away now, more confident than ever, his hand swinging up with his gun.

Sachs jerked up her gun and fired three times fast, one bullet snapping his head back, the others catching him in the chest, driving him against his radar equipment. He bounced off and fell onto the liner plate floor, a stream of blood trickling into a crack like waste in a gutter.

Hands trembling, gun smoking, she dropped the pistol on the floor with a clank.

“Decapitation, Marshall. Your own philosophy.”

Marshall was lifeless. Powder burns surrounded the black hole in his forehead. His piercing blue eyes remained wide open in surprise. Sachs stood there numb, staring at Marshall, her heart sick, her stomach swelling.

The crackle of the radio broke her trance: “Defender One, update.”

Sachs staggered over to the console. She felt weak as she grasped the microphone with her hand and then saw blood on it. She looked down at her body. More blood. Somewhere along the line she already had taken a bullet. Now she had to recall the Defenders before that bullet took her last breath.

57

1649 Hours
The Pacific / Northern Command

High over the Pacific Ocean, ten 747 jumbo jets were strung out like white pearls in the moonlight. Inside their respective cockpits, President Deborah Sachs’ very weak voice came through the secret frequency: “Arm your phasers,” she said. “Target is now U.S. Minutemen missiles entering Chinese airspace. Repeat. Target is now ten U.S. missiles entering Chinese airspace.”

• • •

Inside Northern Command, General Block heard her too, thanks to the Defender One pilot who was patching everything through for verification since General Marshall had ceased transmission.

“Good God,” Block told his senior controller. “They’re really up there, fully operational. Ten actual airborne Defenders.”

“They’re requesting confirmation for the destruction of outgoing U.S. missiles in place of potential incoming Chinese missiles,” the senior controller said.

Even now, Block realized, elements of his own armed forces still refused to heed the words of their new commander-in-chief. “You tell them they heard right.”

• • •

Floating at 35,000 feet, Defender One swung into position. Mounted on its nosecone, a large swiveling laser cannon turret containing a beam director and infrared sensor scanned the horizon for missile launches.

The beam director shot a low-powered laser beam to track the missiles and measure atmospheric distortion.

Meanwhile, inside the forward fuselage of the Defender, a mirror adjusted while the displays of a computer console flashed. One display read Atmospheric Distortion 34.222. Another display read: missile tracking: locked.

The mirror locked into place.

Inside the rear fuselage of Defender One, walls of transparent storage tanks lined both sides of a narrow aisle—30,000 pounds of chemicals moving at supersonic speeds, mixed in a rocket engine-like chamber. A flash in the mix lit up and shot through the clear shaft.

The laser burst out through the beam director in the nosecone of the 747.

Over the Pacific Ocean, the first Minuteman exploded over black waters.

• • •

Not cheers but stunned silence lay like a cloud over the Northern Command headquarters as one by one the blips representing Minuteman missiles coming down on China disappeared.

Block exhaled with both admiration and horror. “Goddamn Marshall.”

It didn’t take long for General Zhang to call.

Block picked up his red phone. “What do you want, Zhang?”

Zhang said in perfect American English, “We wish to cease hostilities.”

“I’m sure you do,” Block said. “You saw that we can destroy our own missiles. Which means we can destroy yours too.”

Zhang continued, “We suggest an immediate, verifiable cease-fire.”

“Lucky for you, President Sachs agrees. But she wants a long-term, verifiable treaty we’ll work out later.”

“Agreed.” Zhang said. “Over.”

Before Zhang cut off, Block caught several more words in Mandarin that he didn’t understand. He hung up and looked at his senior controller, who was fluent in Mandarin.

“Tough broad,” he translated. “But what can we do?”

“You got that right,” Block said. “Tell her we’ve got teams from Grand Forks on the way to her with medical attention.”

But his senior controller said, “She’s not responding anymore, sir.”

58

1650 Hours
Bedford Country Club

Jennifer came to a half hour later, struggling as the Green Beret on top of her forced her against the floor caddyshack, one hand grabbing her hair and snapping her head back, the other pawing at her breasts. Her clothes were still on, nothing open so far, thank God. This drunken perv had only dry humped so far, but his grinding repulsed her like nothing before in her life.