‘Go on, Admiral,’ she said.
Ritchie snapped open his briefcase and handed over a sheaf of documents. ‘I had the JAG office here run up this brief for you, ma’am. It’s about the line of succession. Realistically, the President isn’t coming back. Nor any of the cabinet or other nominated successors. In terms of elected officials who can assume the office of Presidency, as best we can tell right now it’s you, the deputy governor in Anchorage, or maybe the Speaker of the state house in Washington.’
‘Oh,’ said Lingle, as an uncomfortable stillness wrapped itself around the room. ‘So, which one of us?’
Ritchie glanced over at Culver, who was now watching him like a rattler. ‘Frankly, ma’am, it could be any of you. There is no statute or precedent covering a disaster of this magnitude. Between you and me, we may have to make it up as we go.’
Jed Culver eased himself back a little. His shoulders, which had been noticeably hunched up, relaxed.
‘He’s right, Madam Governor,’ the lawyer offered, unbidden. ‘Elaine Chao, the Secretary of Labor, is in Geneva – I checked – but she is not a native-born citizen and so is specifically barred from the office. There is no procedure for dealing with this. Even a nuclear war would not have decapitated the government as cleanly and completely. The admiral is correct. We need to make it up as we go. And we do need to act. I’m sure Admiral Ritchie is thinking of his comrades in the Gulf, and that’s only reasonable, but there are still millions of US citizens who haven’t been taken up, or whatever, by this thing, and they need to be protected.’
‘But can we protect them from the Wave?’ she asked. ‘My understanding is that you have no idea what it is, Admiral.’
Before Ritchie could answer, Culver butted in again. ‘That may be so, ma’am, but that’s not what I mean. Maybe that thing will gobble us all up before breakfast. In which case, too bad. But the world is a cruel and unusual enough place, even without bad Star Trek episodes suddenly leaping off the screen at us.’
One of the younger aides couldn’t help himself. ‘There was a Star Trek episode…?’
Culver shrugged. ‘I’m extemporising.’
‘Oh. Okay.’
‘Gentlemen,’ said Lingle, raising the sheaf of papers. ‘I’ll read these tonight, I promise. But you’ve seen what’s happening out there. My immediate responsibility is to the people of Hawaii. That’s who I was elected to serve and protect, and, for now, that is the extent of my office. Admiral, I can understand, given the situation in Iraq, why you need to resolve this, but for now can I suggest that you simply use whatever chain of command has survived the day. You know what you have to do and how to do it. I presume you won’t be going ahead with any attack?’
Everyone in the room was suddenly staring at him, hard. Ritchie had spent decades in the military and every cell in his body rebelled at the idea of having to discuss operational issues in a forum such as this, but what choice did he have?
‘Madam Governor,’ he began, ‘given the circumstances, no, at this stage we are not intending to commence hostilities. For one thing, as I’ve made clear, we have no executive authority to begin a war.’
‘Bush signing a bit of paper wouldn’t have given you -’
‘Quiet, Jim,’ Lingle snapped at the staffer who’d spoken out of turn. ‘It’s not the time or the place. Go on, Admiral.’
Ritchie ignored the distraction. ‘But in any event, that decision may be taken out of our hands if the Iraqis themselves attack.’
‘Is that likely? It would be suicide for them.’
‘Yes, ma’am, it would,’ agreed Ritchie. ‘But rationality went down the toilet today.’
A few moments’ silence followed, with everyone locked inside their own thoughts.
‘Well,’ Lingle said at last. ‘As I said, you have an intact chain of command – use it as necessary. For now, we have our own problem right here. These islands cannot feed themselves. There isn’t going to be any food coming from the mainland and people are going to starve if we don’t get it from somewhere else, and soon.’
14
KUWAIT
The night-time desert was a crumpled drift of blue-white silk below the chopper, which was all hot metal and grease and the suffocating body odour of soldiers. In the gloom it enfolded him like an unpleasant memory. Bret Melton had jumped out of helicopters and into another war not far from here, not long ago, and at times while riding out towards the line he had wondered if he’d be doing the same thing in another ten years. And ten more after that, forever and ever, amen. Now he knew that he wouldn’t.
The thundering engine and rotors made normal conversation impossible but the four troopers in the cabin with him all needed to talk, to know what was happening back in the real world. In the faint glow leaking through from the cockpit, their faces were hollowed out and haunted. They all knew him, or knew of him. As a former Ranger, Melton was a popular embed. His shit was stowed according to regs and he could be trusted. He was as close to a believer as an outsider could be. Hitching the flight back to 3rd Infantry Division, the questions started as soon as they recognised him.
‘What the fuck’s happening, man?’
‘What about our families?’
‘Is it a fucking attack or what, dude?’
He’d done his best to explain what he knew, but really, what did he know? As Melton had laid it out for them, bellowing over the thump of the rotor blades, the looks on their faces had made him feel like a mental case. They gaped in horror and disbelief as he described what he’d seen and heard – and how could he blame them? He couldn’t really believe it himself. He sounded authentically mad. After twenty minutes they’d all lapsed into silence and the rest of the flight passed in a sort of stunned, half-catatonic state. Melton knew that by the time these guys relayed the news to their friends, it’d be totally bent out of shape, but he didn’t see much point in holding anything back. Everything they were defending was gone. Their homes and loved ones – everything. They had a right to know. In fact, that was the only reason he was still here. He had open tickets back to Paris and could check out any time he wanted, but he could no more fly out to Paris than he could to New York now. He had no immediate family. No steady girlfriend. His relationships had always been short term and contingent. One woman he’d been closer to than most called him ‘commitment phobic’, but she was wrong. Melton wasn’t scared of commitment; he just wasn’t committed to her. Ever since he’d left the army after Somalia he’d had one faith, one love from which he could not be diverted: the telling of soldiers’ stories.
The pilot’s voice came through, a clipped monotone announcing they were five minutes out. Melton craned around on his perch and briefly popped his head out into the slipstream. The 1st Brigade Combat Team’s desert base wasn’t totally blacked out, but it was much darker than the last time he’d come in, three days ago. Even so, under the moon it still glowed as a bed of pearls in the wide vessel of shadows that was the desert at night. On a satellite image, the tent city and masses of equipment would show up as a vast glowing metropolis of blood and iron, but what the hell. There was no sense in making it easy for Saddam, hence the blackout.