A KENTUCKY STATE TROOPER KNOCKED ON Governor Tad Parker’s bedroom door, waited a respectful ten count, then knocked again. There was a deep cough, then the sound of footsteps. Parker opened the door.
The governor, hair tousled and wearing a baggy terry-cloth robe, rubbed his eyes. He’d just gone to sleep, thanks to two large glasses of red wine. He hadn’t had more than a few hours of sleep a night since the earthquake five days earlier.
“We’ve got a satellite transmission from Washington, sir,” the trooper said. “It’s Doctor Weston. He said it’s urgent.”
“I’ll be right there,” Parker said.
It was a short walk, just up a flight of steps, to the state disaster operations office.
The governor’s mansion, an early twentieth-century Beaux Arts building with a granite facade and beautiful English gardens, had been heavily damaged during the quake. Parker and his wife had moved across Capital Drive into the Executive Office Building, where they’d taken up makeshift quarters in the basement.
They were doing better than most residents of the Bluegrass State. At least they had portable toilets and bottled water. Critical shortages of drinking water were widespread. Telephone service was nonexistent. With virtually all of the relay towers knocked down or badly damaged, the cell phone system had also collapsed. For long distance communications, disaster officials continued to rely on shortwave, packet radio, and infrequent satellite transmissions.
Frankfort was roughly halfway between Louisville and Lexington, and all three cities were in bad shape. For that matter, so was virtually every other city, town, and village in Kentucky. Bowling Green was probably the hardest hit. Two hospitals had been destroyed. There’d been a bloody riot over food. Shooting had broken out along the Old Morgantown Road as people tried to force their way into a grocery store that had managed to reopen. The day before, a relief convoy was attacked on the Green River Parkway just outside the city limits. Four National Guard soldiers had been shot dead, the trucks looted by a large group of armed civilians.
Parker’s people still hadn’t been able to get him a detailed damage estimate. With the exception of limited shortwave transmissions, most towns were cut off from the outside. The earthquakes had shattered the interstates and local highways; bridges were down, over two hundred at last count. The rural folks were in the best shape; most of them had horses to ride and food to eat. They also had well water.
From the front door of the Executive Office Building, Parker could look south, toward shattered Interstate 64. Just beyond it, on a granite bluff, stood the tomb where Daniel Boone was buried. Parker appreciated the grim irony that Kentucky was just about as cut off and inaccessible as it had been when Boone made the first of his long hunts through the state more than 200 years earlier. The Indian name for the area was more haunting than ever—Dark and Bloody Ground.
When the governor arrived at the emergency communications office ten minutes later, they’d lost the satellite link with Washington. It took over an hour to reestablish one. Like everything else, the satellite system was overloaded. The Intelsat network was struggling just with priority traffic.
Weston finally got an uplink.
“This isn’t a secure line,” an aide warned the governor.
“Let’s go with it,” Parker said.
Weston appeared on screen. He looked haggard, upset. He told the governor about the discussion in the White House. Swallowing hard, he said the president was considering exploding a nuclear device in Kentucky.
Parker gasped. He held on to the table to keep from staggering. He was aware that people were staring at him, all of them trying to hide their emotions. His head was throbbing.
“He can’t do that,” Parker said hoarsely. Then more strongly. “The sonofabitch can’t do that! I won’t let him do that! Not in my state. Not in Kentucky!”