177982.fb2 Without warning - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 25

Without warning - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 25

PACOM HQ, PEARL HARBOR, HAWAII

Admiral Ritchie found his eyes straying from the television news broadcast to the silver-framed picture of his daughter on the desk in front of him. The photograph was old. Nancy was nineteen now, but on his desk, she remained forever three, holding a small bear, sucking her thumb, and staring off a thousand miles into the distance.

He had to tear his eyes away. It was almost too painful to bear. She should be all right – she was supposed to fly out from Chicago for Europe very early this morning. But they had heard nothing from her. Had she made the flight? Had it escaped the Wave? He didn’t know. His wife Amanda was frantically trying to find out, but without much luck. With a grinding effort of will, Ritchie turned his attention back to work.

Thank God for cable news at least, he thought. He had wondered if he might have to press the Governor’s office for a declaration of martial law, fearing that violence would be inevitable as the population of the islands digested what was happening. But far from sending mobs onto the street, the wall-to-wall media coverage, all of it sourced from Asia and Europe, seemed to be keeping Hawaii’s civilian population glued to their TV and computer screens. Every available police officer had been called in, and a battalion apiece of Marines and the army were hurriedly kitting out with crowd-control gear, just in case, although all of the reports he’d received so far had the streets half deserted. Hopefully they wouldn’t be needed. The surf breaks off the north shore were a little less crowded than usual, but not much. Apparently even the end of the world wasn’t going to interfere with some people’s search for the perfect wave.

‘Governor’s office called, sir.’

Ritchie looked up from the drifts of paperwork that covered every square inch of his desk. A couple of pages had even dropped to the floor. His PA, Captain McKinney, bent forward and retrieved them.

‘Yes, Andrew? Good news, I hope?’

‘Mixed, Admiral. Curfew starts at 1800 sharp tonight. They couldn’t agree on the rationing though. But they have organised emergency flights from Tokyo and Sydney for any perishables or medical supplies that run low. The National Security Committees of both the Japanese and Australian cabinets are still meeting, but their local liaison staff have passed on messages from both prime ministers that they’ll give us whatever help we need.’

They’re the ones who’ll he needing help soon enough, thought Ritchie. But aloud he only said, ‘Well, that’s something at least. For now.’

The armed forces had considerable stockpiles of rations and medical supplies on the islands, but they didn’t store items like insulin for diabetics, or drugs for cancer treatment or a dozen other common maladies. Ritchie couldn’t help wondering just how much of a supply of antidepressants there was in Hawaii, and how many people were likely to kill themselves or suffer heart attacks or stress-related strokes in the next few days. Given the number of tourists from the mainland here, probably lots.

Nearly two-and-a-half decades earlier, he’d written his masters dissertation at Annapolis on the navy’s crisis management at Pearl Harbor. He’d been scathing of their efforts on 7 December, 1941. Now, faced with his very own calamity, he had to wonder if he would have done any better. There was just so much to do and so little to do it with. Events had accelerated to a point where he would possibly never catch up.

‘Thank you, Captain,’ he grunted, dismissing young McKinney, just as an officer in Army greens appeared at his door.

‘Colonel Maccomb, Admiral. I have your updates if you have a moment.’

Ritchie didn’t, but waved the man in anyway. Maccomb looked like he had run all the way over from the 500th Military Intelligence Brigade – a decent hike in the midday heat of the equatorial sun. PACOM was just months away from taking possession of a new headquarters, the Nimitz-MacArthur Pacific Command Center, which would have centralised everybody in one modern facility. It looked like they’d be sticking with the old campus now, however, necessitating a lot of time wasting as his subordinates remained scattered about all over the island.

‘Sit down, Colonel,’ he said. ‘Give it to me as quickly as you can without losing track of the story.’

The intelligence officer nodded brusquely, snapped a sheaf of paper in his hand and worked down a series of bullet points. ‘Both of our alliance partners in the AOR have either activated their treaties, or will have within twenty-four hours. Land elements of Japan’s Self Defence Force have been recalled to barracks, their naval forces are making preparations to put out to sea, and the air force is already flying CAP over the home islands. The Aussies have called up their Reserves and moved all of their remaining high-readiness forces onto alert -’

‘Remaining?’

‘Yes, sir. They have a special forces group, a squadron of Hornets and a naval task force in the Gulf with us, for Iraq.’

Ritchie nodded.

‘All of the other regional powers have gone to varying states of high alert,’ Maccomb continued. ‘Taiwan has been placed under martial law and the armed forces there have put Plan Orange into effect. South Korea has declared that a curfew will come into effect as of 2200 hours tonight. Their forces and ours are ready, watching the DMZ, but Pyongyang is sitting very, very still. There’s been nothing on their media at all.’

‘And China?’

Maccomb gnawed at the inside of his mouth like a man with a lifelong chaw habit, before replying. ‘They’ve put a lot of troops onto the streets, sir, and our satellite cover shows a lot of activity around the Taiwan Strait batteries, but the force projection capabilities they do have remain dormant for the moment. They’re as spooked as anyone, and they know we still have the forces in theatre to check them if necessary.’

Ritchie nodded, feeling a headache building behind his eyeballs. ‘That’s a dreadfully dangerous amount of hardware and armed men moving around.’

‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Maccomb. ‘It is.’

* * * *

‘It just reached out and took him,’ said Kwan, a little breathlessly. ‘Like, I dunno, like a sort of liquid metal blob or something. Faster than anything I’ve ever seen.’

Musso nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak just yet. His heart was still going like a rat in a trap, and he recognised the hollow, shaky feeling of having dodged a bullet, or something just as nasty. Musso had been a Marine for longer than he had been anything else in his life. He knew war from the inside, the way an addict knows their poison. He knew what it was like to make a ball of himself, tight and small, like a clenched fist, as death zipped like a swarm of bees through the air all around him. He knew too well the fragility of the human body, the way that war respects not age, not courage, gender, righteousness, intelligence or any of the limitless personal touchstones that everyone thinks will get them through, just before everyone starts dying. He had held in his arms grown men, reduced to bloodied rags and cooling meat by a few dumb grams of flying metal. He had carried a little Somalian girl in his hands, no more than two she would have been, her poor tiny body burnt and disintegrating as he ran for a medic. He knew the filth and horror of war as a contagion buried just beneath the surface of his own skin. He knew fear.

But he had never known it as he had in the few seconds after Eladio Nuсez was consumed. Fear like a rancid, suppurating pustule that suddenly burst all sweet and bilious in his guts, flooding his mouth and throat and stomach with a distillation of terror in its primal state. He was going to take a few moments to get over it.

The Cubans, he saw, had freaked the hell out, but were holding it together under the lash of Nuсez’s deputy, Captain someone-or-other. Musso couldn’t recall his name. His own people were no less upset, although they were hiding it a little better. Everyone had withdrawn back up the road towards Guantanamo, pulling over to the side about five hundred metres from their original position. The energy wave hadn’t altered in the slightest.

Musso released a ragged breath. ‘Okay. As of now, nobody gets within five hundred metres of that thing, okay? I can’t tell the Cubans what to do, of course, but I’m guessing they won’t argue.’

Kwan nodded and looked around for the nameless captain. ‘I don’t even know if he speaks English, sir.’

‘Me neither, Lieutenant,’ he said. ‘Get someone to translate. Your sergeant, Gutteres, he’s sharp. Put him on liaison if you can spare him.’

‘Guilio’s specialty is binary nerve agents. I don’t think I’ll be needing him,’ she replied flatly.

Kwan saluted and turned away to find their new translator. Musso took a sip of chilled sports drink from an insulated bottle. They had withdrawn to a spot on a slight rise where a small clearing allowed all of the vehicles to pull off onto the shoulder. The Americans still tended to their equipment, attempting to take readings from something that their equipment told them wasn’t there. The Cubans had gathered into a loose line under the watchful, if anxious, gaze of their latest commanding officer. They were sure getting through them at a fair clip.

Musso calmed his breathing. His heart rate had dropped back to something a little more reasonable and the unpleasant low-grade voltage that had been buzzing away just under his skin had finally died down. He couldn’t help but wonder where Nuсez had gone. If anywhere. That thought led naturally to thoughts of his wife and kids and what had happened to them. His stomach turned over again. Another slug from the drink bottle and he put it away, pushing himself off the side of the Humvee and walking over to his radio man, determinedly trying to ignore his personal anxieties.

‘Corporal, can you hook me up with Pearl, via Gitmo?’

‘No problems, General. Just give me a moment.’

Musso left him to it, taking a minute to go off and talk to the Cubans’ new CO. Jenny Kwan and Sergeant Gutteres were deep in a three-way conference with the scared-looking officer, who snapped rigidly to attention when he saw Musso approaching. The marine gave him a tired smile and a nod in reply.

‘How’re we doing, Lieutenant?’ he asked Kwan.

‘Pretty good, sir. Captain Бlvarez here speaks pretty good English. A hell of a lot better than my Spanish, at any rate. Sergeant Gutteres is filling in the blanks.’

Musso addressed the Cuban directly. ‘I’m sorry about Major Nuсez. He seemed a good man and an excellent officer.’

‘He was,’ Бlvarez replied. ‘We liked him. All the men like him very much.’

‘Well, Captain, I’m about to seek guidance from my superiors, but for myself, I’d like us to keep talking, to help each other out if and when we can. I’d suggest you try and find someone further up your chain of command to report to, but son, you need to prepare yourself for the possibility that you are it.’

Sergeant Gutteres had begun translating quietly as soon as he’d seen Бlvarez struggling to keep up with Musso. He finished a few seconds after the general.

Captain Бlvarez grimaced a little at the thought that he might well be the sole surviving authority figure in his country, but, to his credit, he sucked it up and gave the Americano his sternest warrior’s face. ‘Cooperation, yes, General,’ he answered. ‘Perhaps, in this emergency, we might discuss a joint command, no – a combination command?’

At the look of incomprehension on Musso’s face, he launched into a burst of Spanish. Gutteres waited, taking it all in, before passing on the gist of what he’d said.

‘Long story short, General, Captain Бlvarez is offering to temporarily place his men under your command. He emphasises the temporary nature of the arrangement, sir.’

Musso nodded. He understood the Cuban was covering himself against the unlikely eventuality that they might all click their heels three times and find everything had returned to normal. In which case he’d probably need to seek immediate asylum.

‘You do me an honour, Captain,’ said Musso, nodding to Gutteres to make sure he translated the phrase literally. ‘Your men have comported themselves with great bravery and forbearance today. They are a credit to your country and it would be a privilege to serve with them, however temporary the arrangement might be.’

Бlvarez, who seemed more than happy with that, asked if he might borrow the sergeant to speak to his men. Musso agreed, laying a light hand on Gutteres’s shoulder before he left them. ‘Take it easy, son. A light touch is called for. Let Бlvarez do any yelling and butt-kicking that’s required.’

‘Got it, General.’

His radio operator indicated from the command Humvee that he’d established the link to Pearl and Musso exchanged a salute and, less formally, a handshake with his newest subordinate before hurrying back.

‘Admiral Ritchie on the line, sir.’

‘Thank you,’ said Musso, as he took the handset. ‘Admiral, it’s General Musso, sir. I’m afraid I have some more bad news.’

* * * *

Ritchie hung up when he was done with Musso. He didn’t know what was more disturbing, the way the energy barrier had reached out and snatched Major Nuсez when he strayed too close, or the fact that the surviving Cubans had been so neutered by the events of the day that they’d effectively surrendered control of their territory, or what was left of it, to the United States – or what was left of her.

A terrible melancholy had settled upon his spirit in the last hour or so. He hadn’t noticed it stealing up on him, but having received Musso’s report he found himself in such a bleak frame of mind as he couldn’t recall ever having known before. He could hear an increasing hubbub outside his office as more and more people poured into PACOM headquarters. Hundreds of phones appeared to be ringing, and so many voices competed with one another to get their message through, to have their tiny part of this unfolding nightmare recognised as important, that the normally hushed environs of the command centre reminded him of the stock exchange in New York. He’d visited there with his wife and daughter a few months before 9/11.

‘Admiral?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, a little roughly, pretending he’d been lost in thought about something more than his own personal tragedy. His PA was at the door.

‘It’s General Franks, sir. On a secure line from Qatar. He says elements of the Iraqi Army are leaving their entrenched positions and appear to be heading towards the border with Kuwait.’

Just for a second Ritchie thought his heart might have stopped. Then he realised it had simply jumped. It felt as though it had gathered itself up and tried to leap right out of his chest. He felt momentarily dizzy and covered it by nodding as he leaned back in his chair. ‘Patch him through, Andrew, if you would,’ he said quickly. ‘Any other good news?’

‘The Israelis have moved extra units into the Gaza Strip,’ Captain McKinney reported. ‘A street party there got out of hand and turned into a riot. One of their guys got shot trying to close it down.’

‘A street party?’ Ritchie couldn’t keep the dismay out of his voice.

‘They’re breaking out all over, sir. All over. Plenty in the Mid East, of course. But plenty more in Europe, even Britain, in some of the northern areas, with big… er… migrant populations.’

‘You mean, big Muslim populations.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Very well. Patch General Franks through to me here.’

Ritchie had a few seconds alone before Tommy Franks came on the line. My God, he thought, silently. This is going to turn bad even quicker than I thought.

* * * *